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OldestDaughter
Rohan
Jan 9, 5:13pm
Post #1 of 28
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When were you first introduced to Tolkien?
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Hey everyone,
I'm pretty sure this has been done many times over, but for the sake of a new year and some new and older faces returning, let's have some fun with this, lol.
When were you first introduced to Tolkien, his world, his books, the films, etc?
For me it was in 2011, when I was 12 years old. I had grown up with the Rankin Bass films but wasn't a fan until I started replaying the Hobbit 2003 Video game on Playstation 2 (hence my Avatar), and then I read the Hobbit, followed by the Lord of the Rings, watched the OG trilogy while I was in the middle of reading the Two Towers, then continued to finish the trilogy of books and then went on to read the Silmarillion. My family got me the Extended edition of Return of the King and the Children of Hurin and I have been obsessed ever since. I'm now 27 and still consider myself a diehard. Last year was a fun year for me being a Middle-earth fan.
How about you all?
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Ataahua
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Jan 10, 1:52am
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is that I didn't take up a friend's urgent request for me to read The Hobbit when I was c12 years old. All I saw was the name and thought, "What the heck is a Hobbit?", and dismissed it. I finally read it in my late 20s but it didn't do much for me - and I just know that if I'd read it as a teenager, I'd have been all over that story.
I finally delved into Middle-earth when I was 18 and in the library trying to find something, anything, to read, and came across FOTR. I thought I'd heard something about 'a rings book' and figured I'd give it a try ... and I've never looked back.
Imagine my delight when I got to the end of FOTR and realised there were two more books to go! 
Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."
"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.
Fantasy novel - The Arcanist's Tattoo
My LOTR fan-fiction
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jan 10, 2:06am
Post #3 of 28
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In 1969 I discovered "Riddles in the Dark" from The Hobbit in our Fourth Grade Reader. It's one of my fonder memories of Albion Grammar School (Albion, NY). I'd been aware of the book before that, but I could not tell you how.
“Hell hath no fury like that of the uninvolved.” - Tony Isabella
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NottaSackville
Valinor
Jan 10, 2:45pm
Post #4 of 28
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There I was, a new kid in town, just moved from a little farming town to a "big city" (boy, I had no idea what a big city actually was back then!), and really struggling to find friends during those brutal early teen years.
Spotted one of Tolkien's books with one of the kids in the group I was sitting with that day at lunch. Started with the Hobbit in an effort to fit in. Devoured all the books. Then came Earthsea, Dungeons and Dragons, and incredible lifelong friendships with many of those same kids. I'm very grateful to the professor for being my gateway!
Happiness: money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important and so are friends, while envy is toxic -- and so is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude. - The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner as summarized by Lily Fairbairn. And a bit of the Hobbit reading thrown in never hurts. - NottaSackville
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grammaboodawg
Immortal
Jan 10, 3:49pm
Post #5 of 28
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My now-ex-hubby (we're still good friends) handed me a raggedy old set of LotR when we were traveling the country in a raggedy old 1961 delivery van. I started reading them right away and never put them down. I've read that same set at least once a year ever since... just a few weeks away from 54 years ago :) They became my lifeline and my precious!!! Later I grabbed an old copy of The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.
We have been there and back again.
TIME Google Calendar
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dernwyn
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Jan 10, 4:53pm
Post #6 of 28
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I was in 7th or 8th grade...so around 1967.
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My older brother recommended I read it. Then I remember a friend and I searching the shelves of a local bookstore for the paperback LotR - we came across the "bootlegged" versions, but purchased the set with Tolkien's warning about illicit publications on the back cover. Yes, sir, Mr. Tolkien, we would never disrespect you!
In high school, we and a few others would write notes to each other in Tengwar, and we each took a Tolkien-type nickname. And I've been "dernwyn" ever since.
I've still got my parents' '60s-style vinyl rocker chair I'd curl up in, to read through the four books at least once a year. 
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"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
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OldestDaughter
Rohan
Jan 10, 9:33pm
Post #7 of 28
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don't truly know the whole extend of Tolkien's world until his trilogy, so I can totally appreciate how you got into it! The trilogy is so incredible and ageless.
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squire
Half-elven
Jan 11, 3:36am
Post #8 of 28
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In 1963, I was seven when Mom started reading 'The Hobbit' to my older brother and me
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I loved it, especially Tolkien's paintings and illustrations that helped me follow the story. The color picture of the wickedly smiling Smaug on his pile of treasure, greeting a ghostly Bilbo, remains my favorite Tolkien illustration.
So then a year or so later Mom decided we were ready for The Lord of the Rings. But I wasn't - I remember whining when I learned that the new book's hero wouldn't be Bilbo! What kind of sequel is that? And I found the new book, when read aloud, much harder to follow at age 8; I was confused and confounded when I suddenly grasped, somewhere near the end of Book I, that Frodo's friend Mary wasn't a girl at all!
But soon enough I was a devoted Tolkien fan, making topographic models of Middle-earth's map out of flour paste as a Cub Scout craft project, and devouring my mother's copy of The Tolkien Reader. She was the original Tolkien fan in the family, obviously; having received back in 1938, when she herself was eight, the first-edition Hobbit that she read to her sons in 1963. I still have it - rebound.
And the rest is history - The Silmarillion (not what I expected, that's for sure); The Letters; Unfinished Tales; Ralph Bakshi's LotR film; the Rankin-Bass Hobbit film; History of Middle-earth (not a narrated history at all, as far as I could tell from a bookstore browse, and so I ignored those books for another decade or so); and then ... the upcoming Jackson films and my discovery of TheOneRing.net and its wonderful, witty, snarky, smart, and silly discussion boards.
And I've been a Tolkien fan and sorta/kinda scholar ever since, in ever more various ways.
squire online:
Unfortunately my longtime internet service provider abandoned its hosting operations last year. I no longer have any online materials to share with the TORn community.
 = Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
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DGHCaretaker
Rohan
Jan 11, 5:22pm
Post #9 of 28
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A friend was reading Lord of the Rings. I asked if it was science fiction because that's all I was interested in reading on my own time other than school-assigned books. My friend gave me a nebulous answer in the affirmative if one considers what kind of science must exist behind the powers of the rings. A kind of tricksy answer to get me to read it on false pretenses, really. After reading the trilogy, I went back and read The Hobbit as a prequel rather than in the published order. Tolkien is the only fantasy author that interested me. Otherwise, simple movies sufficed.
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dernwyn
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Jan 12, 9:01pm
Post #10 of 28
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Now that would have been an interesting fellowship! Considering the discussion of Merry going on in the RR, what differences would the gender of that character have made if Merry had been Mary?
And what was your first impression, when you found that Tolkien had re-written Riddles in the Dark, having been brought up on the original chapter?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
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Ataahua
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Jan 12, 9:18pm
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She was the original Tolkien fan in the family, obviously; having received back in 1938, when she herself was eight, the first-edition Hobbit that she read to her sons in 1963. I still have it - rebound.
The value of that first edition isn't so much monetary as it's the memories and shared love that it carries. That's so special, squire.
I'm definitely the only fantasy fan in my large family of readers. I was bereft of fellow fans to share any LOTR-love with until I came across TORN.
Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."
"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.
Fantasy novel - The Arcanist's Tattoo
My LOTR fan-fiction
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Ataahua
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Jan 12, 9:18pm
Post #13 of 28
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*snort* I love it when friends know exactly how to lure us in - using their evil for good, as it were. :D /
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Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."
"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.
Fantasy novel - The Arcanist's Tattoo
My LOTR fan-fiction
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squire
Half-elven
Jan 12, 10:29pm
Post #14 of 28
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The 'Riddles' rewrite didn't find me until I was reading the story to my own kids.
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As you say, I was raised on the original Hobbit where Gollum is a malevolent rogue, but an honest one who helpfully shows Bilbo the way out of the caves after losing the contest.
And then, three decades later in the 1990s, I'm reading The Hobbit to my own little girls, and - What?? Horror! - Gollum has become purely evil. He actually tries to kill Bilbo to get the Ring back, and Bilbo has to invisibly track Gollum up the tunnels to escape both the ghoul and the goblins.
Looking into it, I realized we were reading the new paperback edition of TH (the Michael Hague one from 1989 - excellent pictures!) that I had gotten for the family to avoid reading that rather fragile old book of my Mom's. The text had been revised by the Prof to become more consistent with the Ring story told in LotR. Who knew?
And I've clung loyally to the idea that the original Hobbit text that I love should have been retained, with the clash in plotting and character quietly handled in the Prologue of LotR for anyone who was interested. But over the years I have found just how completely outnumbered I am on this issue, compared to the vast number of fans who know what happens in the 'Riddles' chapter and are likewise shocked - shocked! - when they stumble across the first-edition text and its relatively benign Gollum in now-specialized TH volumes of a scholarly bent.
squire online:
Unfortunately my longtime internet service provider abandoned its hosting operations last year. I no longer have any online materials to share with the TORn community.
= Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
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squire
Half-elven
Jan 12, 11:49pm
Post #15 of 28
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We changed Merry to Mary ... "Sue them!" said the Prof.
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The mind boggles at the prospect of Tolkien including a 'hobbit-lass' on the quest of Mount Doom, even if that maiden was a determined, smart, and plucky female relative of Frodo and Pippin.
The only remotely similar female character that Tolkien created, I'd say, was Eowyn. The others are wise-women and domestic goddesses, holding down the fort back at home when the men venture forth. But Eowyn does venture forth, even if she has to disguise herself as a man to do it - and she comes from a martial culture whose aristocrats include "shield-maidens', according to her. We never learn what the other shieldmaidens of Rohan were doing during this war, of course, which makes one suspect the Prof was tossing his cultural terminology around a little freely to justify such an unlikely (but welcome) plot twist as Eowyn represents in a very male-heavy epic.
But nothing at all in the concept of the Shire allows for female hobbit heroines. Even the male hobbits aren't supposed to be heroes, by definition, so that the Free Peoples are gobsmacked when the halfling forth did stand, as it were.
So I have a bad feeling that if, for whatever reason (paging Priscilla Tolkien here?) Tolkien had decided that a female hobbit heroine would improve his story, she would have proved as much a liability as a strength, unlike Merry. That is, she would as a female (non-martial version) have required male assistance in the questing, even if at other times she would perhaps have provided Frodo with some desperately needed nurturing and affectionate support.
Oh. Wait.
Couldn't Sam be short for Samantha?
squire online:
Unfortunately my longtime internet service provider abandoned its hosting operations last year. I no longer have any online materials to share with the TORn community.
= Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
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Kimi
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Jan 13, 1:19am
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and at high school. In English class one day our teacher was having us talking about books we'd particularly enjoyed, and one boy (thank you, Ray, wherever you are these days!) mentioned The Hobbit. Mr Kimi and I were already an item; he bought a copy, and we passed it between us every few days, though much of it we read aloud to each other when we were together. Then of course we had to get LOTR, and did much the same with that. I can still remember Mr Kimi saying that the Ring turned out to be important in this "new" book we'd just started.
We still have those copies, so fragile with age that I handle them only rarely, but still precious to me.
The Passing of Mistress Rose
My historical novels
Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
- A Room With a View
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dernwyn
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Jan 13, 8:50pm
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Frodo's nanny, who never left his service?
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I would imagine that "Sam" would have a handy supply of cutlery, also have herb-knowledge of a medicinal kind, which could be worked into the narrative. Aragorn and "Sam" discussing the merits of Kingsfoil/Athelas?
One does wonder whatever happened, with the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, what their adventures were. Could Belladonna have had a great-niece, Marigold, "Mari" for short, who was a close friend of her elder cousin (once removed) Frodo?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
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Ettelewen
Rohan
Jan 14, 12:35am
Post #18 of 28
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I'm not certain, but I believe I was in 7th grade which would put it around 1975 when I first read The Lord of the Rings. I didn't read the Hobbit until some time later.
I intensely disliked the films (cartoons?) made before Jackson's interpretation was released, and actually didn't see The Fellowship of the Ring until I bought it as a gift for my husband as I didn't expect much from it. Boy, was I wrong, and I've been a devoted fan of the Trilogy films ever since.
But the books are my favorite medium and I re-read them annually.
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Eledhwen
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Jan 16, 5:41pm
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I must have been given the Hobbit first, but my main memory is sitting devouring FOTR one New Year's Eve while my parents were hosting a dinner party, and I'd been allowed to stay up (because NYE). I got through all or most of it and then zoomed through TTT and ROTK too (have always been a fast reader). Can't remember when I first read the Silmarillion.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jan 17, 7:24pm
Post #21 of 28
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Merry, The Hobbit Named Sue (always dresses in black and plays the guitar...)
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So yes, Tolkien's adventuring characters are male (with Eowyn and Luthien as exceptions).
But hobbits in character are so un-macho that our four male LOTR adventuring hobbits don't become unbelievable as characters if you were to imagine gender-switching them.
This reminds me of a discussion whose sane part I enjoyed, in which squire you quoted William H. Green's The Hobbit: A Journey Into Maturity (Twane, 1995):
In his section subtitled "A Storm and the Absence of Women" (pp. 66-68), he points out that Tolkien's adventure in the Alps with rolling boulders and rockslides - the model for the dwarves' crossing of the Misty Mountains - was led by "his botanist aunt". He comments:
...this suggests one obvious way of dealing with the absence of women in The Hobbit. Perhaps figures who would ordinarily have been women have been fictionally costumed and recast as men, without wholly losing their original character. ... The submerged feminine is particularly implicit in Gandalf, who doubles as a surrogate mother and father to Bilbo and performs the transforming function that Jung attributes to a man's inner feminine image, or "anima." ... Mythologically speaking, we find Erich Neumann emphasizing the gender ambiguity of wizard figures. After noting their originally feminine character, Neumann says, "Even in a later period the male shaman or seer is in high degree 'feminine,' since he is dependent on his anima aspect. And for this reason he often appears in woman's dress."
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It is possible to make too much of this, for even as characters act out the absent feminine, they remain literally male. Nevertheless, beyond being called he, Bilbo is scarcely more masculine than Dorothy. Though marginal female figures do appear in The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo's starkly womanless adventures can be explained by an unconscious or half-conscious pattern of alternation, pronoun shifts, and minor costume changes to "masculate" characters whose roles might suit actresses better than actors. Female readers may identify with characters who transcend masculine pronouns and act out "feminine" traits.
Indeed, what is macho in The Hobbit is bad. Androgyny, a blend of masculine and feminine traits, is the hobbit-hero's character. ... Courage is essential, and Bilbo is not lacking it, but the androgynous hero's courage (like Dorothy's when she defends her dog from the Cowardly Lion, who has defeated her companions) is a response to human necessity, not an act of gratuitous masculine will. Bilbo cooperates and shares; he does not compete to establish personal dominance. His most powerful stance is invisibility, not the claiming of territory. Like Bilbo, Tolkien's true military heroes fight reluctantly and only to the extent needed to protect themselves and the good. Violence is justified by the ideal of peace. Bilbo, with courage and wisdom "blended in measure", is concerned at the end not with treasure but with "going home soon."
squire http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=696064#696064
Actually in retrospect the insane part was fun too - I'd been on the board a year and this was the first (but not the last) time someone was calling The House Committee On Un-American Tolkien Interpretations on me. That bit was sufficiently mad that the admins deleted it.
~~~~~~
"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Jan 17, 7:30pm)
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jan 17, 11:54pm
Post #22 of 28
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That last House Committee part is pretty funny, seeing that
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our author, as he himself has said it, is an E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-english man!
 
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Meneldor
Valinor
Jan 18, 10:41pm
Post #23 of 28
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They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. -Psalm 107
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jan 18, 10:52pm
Post #24 of 28
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And in spite of attempt[ation]s
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to be claimed by other nations.
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ange1e4e5
Gondor
Feb 7, 2:52pm
Post #25 of 28
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I started with Tolkien when I was about 11 or 12,
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having started my fantasy book-reading with Harry Potter (I had finished those books when I was about 10, shortly after the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, had been published). I actually started with The Hobbit because it was published first in the book collection I had (The Hobbit plus the original Lord of the Rings), then moved on to the Silmarillion after I had finished with The Lord of the Rings.
I always follow my job through.
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