I feel like everyone has a special memory of how they first learned about Lord of the Rings. For me it was right around when the first movie came out. I watched it non-stop with my sisters friend’s elder sister. Anytime my sister would go over to play I’d be watching. I ultimately got the books but it was a huge undertaking for my age and never actually read it for an embarrassing long time. I did memorize the dwarvish rune alphabet in the appendix of my copy. Drove my teachers nuts writing with it.
We had the Rankin Bass Hobbit movie on VHS when I was little
My elementary school librarian recommended The Hobbit to me in grade 7. Over the summer camping on the coast I read LOTR and The Silmarillion. Now I’m a lifer.
We actually had to read The Hobbit in an AP English class (roughly a decade before the movies, not to carbon date my fossilized ass or anything). I remember being so engrossed in the story, that I went to the school library, checked out TLOTR Trinity, and burned through it in about 2 months or less. I have to say though, it’s really worth reading The Silmarillian for additional context and deeper lore, if you haven’t already. It’s a hard read (think bible read, then followed by over a hundred pages of genealogy), but still worth it.
That’s super interesting because my school had it as the non “honors” book assignment. Essentially the one you had to read if they thought you’d have a heard time reading anything.
My parents gave me the books shortly before the movies came out, likely because they were coming out. So the books then the movies for me.
The movies came out and everyone watched them. Sometime after ROTK I purchased my first set of the books. Dunno where they ended up. I now have some old ass hardcover ones.
So weird to think back on theatrical releases being almost universally liked and positively received. God damn social media fucked us up lol
For me it was after reading Dune. I was looking for something similar in terms of world building, and the librarian told me to read LotR.
I read everything failry quickly, putting a few all nighters while listening to Rachmaninoff, so I actually have two soundtracks in my head for this story, Rachmaninoff and the movie one :-)
Shortly after, I read about the movies being in the work and they are just perfect.
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