What do you remember about your first reading of the LOTR?

[Rivendell_librarian]

Which could have been quite recently of course. For instance, there may have been something you didn't like about the tale. I didn't know much about the story when I first read it but I do remember being disappointed by the breaking of the fellowship. Once you've finished the book it becomes pretty clear why that had to happen though.

This leads me on to a more general question - is it better to know as little as possible about a book's plot before you read it? I always used to read the Introduction (if there is one) first, but now I'm reading it after I've finished the book. Of course you need to know whether it's the kind of book you want to read but that might not mean much more than knowing which part of the bookshop it comes from and who the author is.

Even so, I believe many people will continue to listen to Hamlet, watch Swan Lake etc. even though they know the stories well, unless Fahrenheit 451 becomes a reality

 

[Halasían]

I remember getting bogged down after the Old Forest my first read. I took a break from trying to read it when I hit the Tom Bombadil chapter, and I mentioned to my neighbor who had loaned me his paperback that I was finding it hard going. He told me that chapter was an anomaly and to push through it as it got better. I did. It got better. I got keenly interested with the Barrow Downs through to the Council of Elrond, and I was all in after that short pause. On subsequent readings I still would browse through the Tom Bombadil chapter.

I went into Lord of the Rings after reading the Hobbit, and started with the Foreword the first read. It was different, and it did eventually engage me to a point that I read Lord of the Rings many times, while only having read The Hobbit once.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

I shamefully had never heard of Tolkien or LOTR before the movies came out. I saw Fellowship in theaters and then read the book. I remember it being the best fantasy book I'd ever read and promptly read the next wtwo within the next few months. Tolkien had become my most favorite author and then I started reading more. I read the Hobbit and then a teacher in high school that I realy liked gave me my first copy of The Silmarillion, which I also devoured. After that, I read LOTR once a year from cover to cover for at least 5-6 years straight. While I haven't read LOTR in a few years now, it still is one of my favorite books ever and helped me to want to read fantasy a lot more, which I do!

 

[Rivendell_librarian]

Nothing to be ashamed about of course Erestor Arcamen, and this is a good thing about the films, they encouraged people to read the books.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Agreed, that was more a bit of humor/laughing at myself lol. The films, while not the best, did get me to ask a lot of questions about Middle Earth and the more mysterious things, such as the Entwives' fate. This definitely helped me to enjoy the books and want to read deeper into HOME etc. (and eventually join TTF!) so that's one thing they were good for, for me.

 

[HALETH✒🗡]

My father read me "The Lord of the Rings" when I was a child. He used to read me several pages before going to bed. Dad told me that one of the characters would die and then resurrect but didn't specify. So, when Gendalf dyed, I didn't loose hope, although I was not sure if it was him who would survive. This spoiler didn't spoil the book for me as I was a kid and really needed to hope that the wizard would be okay. Tolkien wrote in his letter that the stories were not aimed to be read to children before bedtime. I beg to disagree. I slept sweetly after listening to the book. LOTR made my childhood magical and full of wonders.

Even so, I believe many people will continue to listen to Hamlet, watch Swan Lake etc. even though they know the stories well, unless Fahrenheit 451 becomes a reality

I really like "Swan Lake", by the way. There's no doubt that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had a great talent. I always feel fascinated while watching this short video.

How can I express my admiration for the whole ballet then?

 

[Rivendell_librarian]

Yes that culmination of the music makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and listen

 

[Maeglin]

I remember getting bogged down after the Old Forest my first read. I took a break from trying to read it when I hit the Tom Bombadil chapter, and I mentioned to my neighbor who had loaned me his paperback that I was finding it hard going. He told me that chapter was an anomaly and to push through it as it got better. I did. It got better. I got keenly interested with the Barrow Downs through to the Council of Elrond, and I was all in after that short pause. On subsequent readings I still would browse through the Tom Bombadil chapter.

I had a very similar experience (though with my uncle, not a neighbor). I had loved "The Hobbit" before picking up LOTR, but I got bogged down right about the same point you did or maybe even sooner (maybe when they were wandering through the Shire) and I put it down for about a year. My uncle encouraged me to pick it back up, so I did and remember getting to the Barrow Downs chapter and being hooked from there.

I also remember thinking to my 11-year-old self, "Wow, this would make a great movie! I want to be a filmmaker and turn these books into movies"...and a year later I randomly had the old show "Entertainment Tonight" on and saw that the movies were in production, and thus my Hollywood dreams were dashed.

 

[Olorgando]

Very little. It was 1983, I was in West Berlin during the first of two years of business administration training with the company, and before a colleague in this company class loaned me her German translation, we (perhaps four or five of us) had watched Ralph Bakshi's 1978 semi-animation. I have a dim memory of being confused by the description of Aragorn's ancestry - not even sure I connected the description to Aragorn at the time.

Something like two years later, now a full employee with the company in the Frankfurt region, I had gotten hold of my by now rather worn Allen & Unwin paperbacks. Again I couldn't say much about reaction to content; but I do remember when the story really gripped me (I've posted this before).

I'd been reading and gotten part of the way through FoTR, is my guess, when I woke up at six in the morning on a Saturday (!!!!!), grabbed the book, and continued reading (interrupted only by unavoidable "calls of nature") until 1 AM on Sunday morning. Which binge without a doubt carried me into RoTK.

The three LoTR volumes had all been reprinted by 1984 at the latest. TH is a reprint from 1985; The Sil, UT, and BoLT vols. 1 and 2 from 1986. I don't recall if I bought all eight books in one fell swoop, or the "other five" after having read LoTR. They all have the same black GA&U paperbacks spine, while the next four volumes of HoMe (up to RoTS) were all Unwin Hyman / Unwin Paperbacks.

 

[Will Whitfoot]

My father read me "The Lord of the Rings" when I was a child. He used to read me several pages before going to bed. Dad told me that one of the characters would die and then resurrect but didn't specify. So, when Gendalf dyed, I didn't loose hope, although I was not sure if it was him who would survive.

I read it in high school, 1969. My best friend loaned me the books, but did not give any spoilers. I was devastated when Gandalf fell. I cried to my friend, who simply agreed, yeah that was bad. But then when Gandalf returned I was elated beyond belief, and kinda mad at my friend for not telling me! I get it, but to this day I prefer to have spoilers.... I will watch the spoiler reel BEFORE watching a film, because that episode with Gandalf was such a load of needless grief.

 

[Starbrow]

I first read The Hobbit when I was 12 and thought it was okay. Then I had to read it again for my freshman English class in high school and I fell in love with it. I immediately bought the next Tolkien book I could find, which was Return of the King. (This was long before Amazon.) I read ROTK first (Thank goodness for the synopsis at the beginning.) and devoured FOTR and TT when I got them. Since I read the last book first, I knew Gandalf came back. I know stayed up late into the night reading the books because I couldn't put them down.

 

[Goldilocks Gamgee]

When I was about three, my grandfather read me the Hobbit.

I thought it was a nice book, kind of silly (three-year-old me really enjoyed Bilbo's song about the spiders), but then I left it at that.

In 2014, at the age of six, I read the Lord of the Rings. Unlike most of y'all commenting up above, I found the start of the book very interesting. Personally, I like happy lives, even in books, and I just loved Goldberry. The Council of Elrond chapter was way too long and way too boring. But after that it got interesting. I remember being heartbroken when Gandalf died. It was the first time I cried for a character, and I remember crying myself to sleep that night. I memorized Frodo's poem about Gandalf, back then. When Gandalf came back to life, my emotions were mixed. I was glad that he was alive, but he felt... different.

I really like "Swan Lake", by the way. There's no doubt that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had a great talent. I always feel fascinated while watching this short video.

I play flute, and we are learning to play "Swan Lake" in my school's band. It's so hard! But it does sound really nice.

 

[Olorgando]

... In 2014, at the age of six, I read the Lord of the Rings. ... When Gandalf came back to life, my emotions were mixed. I was glad that he was alive, but he felt... different.

You certainly got that right at that early age. He was different.

 

[HALETH✒🗡]

You certainly got that right at that early age. He was different.

Gandalf became even more wise and powerful. Do you mean these differences?

 

[Olorgando]

Gandalf became even more wize and powerful. Do you mean these differences?

Powerful, yes. Wise perhaps in being allowed to remember more of what he knew in Valinor as Olórin, who was the wisest of the Maiar.
Not that much of this becomes apparent immediately upon Gandalf the White being reunited with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in Fangorn Forest. Except perhaps by Gandalf's statement to his three companions in TT, Book Three, chapter V "The White Rider"

"... none of you have any weapon that could hurt me." This includes Aragorn's Andúril ...

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

As one of those swept up in the first "paperback wave", my story is closest to Will Whitfoot's, if slightly older; I began my reading in 1967, after hesitating for several months, because it seemed everyone in my high school was carrying one or another volume of the paperbacks around -- including many of the "non-nerds" -- and I, in my foolish ignorance, thought "If those people are reading it, it can't be that good" (I was being an idiot, of course).

I finally dipped my toe in, in my typically oddball way, when on a whim, picked out The Tolkien Reader from a revolving rack at my local drug store one day; an eccentric decision, but it led me to eventually break down and read The Hobbit, and then of course LOTR. And I loved them.

This has been a fascinating thread so far, not least as it underlines Tolkien's remark that
. . .the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved.

For me, the early chapters describing wandering through the Shire, and beyond, had a special resonance, as I was doing the same myself at the time, in my own "Shire", alone or with a friend or two, through woods and up and down small mountains, by day or night. In fact, after reading the books, my best friend and I set some of the poems to simple tunes of our own, and used to sing them as we walked along, ready to meet "a sudden tree or standing stone, that none had seen but we alone".

The other thing I remember quite clearly is the shift in tone, right after Bilbo's party, from the relative light-heartedness of The Hobbit to the alarming clash with Gandalf over the Ring: some dark mystery was being unveiled, and of course I had to see how it unfolded.

Oh, by the way, no one "spoiled" it for me, for which I remain grateful. 😊

 

[Rivendell_librarian]

Another interesting point is that we are book readers not literary critics: reacting to the story itself.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

An important distinction, showing the difference between a "subjective" and "objective" approach to literature. Though both can exist in the same person. 🙂

 

[Olorgando]

An important distinction, showing the difference between a "subjective" and "objective" approach to literature. Though both can exist in the same person. 🙂

There is no such thing as an objective approach to literature, no matter what lies pompous buffoons at universities, newspapers and whatever may try to foist upon us. We humans simply are not capable of objectivity; what passes for it in some sectors is group-think that the group führers desperately want accepted as that figment of human fantasy.

 

[HALETH✒🗡]

Taste is subjective in general but there's an objective minimum of taste that allows to distinguish high-quality literature from low-quality books.