I am a huge "book-lover". Do I see a book that seems intresesting I just have to read it. My father learned my from early years that a book can be your best friend (off course I had real-life friends too ) and that books can learn you lots of things.

My first contact with Tolkien was when I was nine years old. We have many books at home (from floor to ceiling) and one day I found this scabby book with practically no cover. Nothing fancy. I asked my father if he had read the book and he told me that he had read it long time ago and that it was the first one in a serie. Well, I gave the book a chance (even if the cover didnt appeal me) and ever since then I am hooked on Tolkien.

Thats my story about my first contact with Tolkien. Does somebody else have a story that you would like to share?

I found The Hobbit in my elementary school library (probably 4th or 5th grade) and loved it. Two books of the trilogy were there as well, but since one was missing I decided to hold off on those until I could read all of them, and fairly soon afterwards bought the boxed set of the Ballantine editions. (Thank goodness I held off... can you imagine trying to read any two books of the trilogy without the third one?) That was my first experience with Tolkien.

My first experience with Tolkien occurred in the autumn of 1967 when I picked up The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring to read on a business trip to southwestern Spain. I finished reading them in three days and had to go cold turkey for another two weeks without knowing if Merry and Pippin were rescued, whether Frodo and Sam encountered Golum or were captured by Saurons evil minions, or whether Galdalf would rise again like the phoenix.

The worst of it was, this was during Spain's Franco years and there weren't any other books for sale there worth reading. So I couldn't even find a murder mystery, or a spy or an adventure novel; and of course any other fantasy novels had yet to be published, even at home, for Tolkien was just then making his splash in the USA.

As I was waitng for the ferry ride back home from Seattle, after landing at the SeaTac Airport, I found a bookrack which had both The Two Towers and The Return orf the King and bought them forthwith and started reading right away. I later read them all to my wife.

I had to endure waiting another ten years for The Silmarillion to be published; though I was able to find Tolkien's short stories and poems and did have the enjoyment of many re-reads of The Lord of the Rings over the intervening years. I also found both the BBC's and The Mind's Eye's audio versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I also found the two Lost Tales volumes; but hadn't even heard of the rest of the H.O.M.E. series or Unfinished Tales until I found Planet-Tolkien four years ago.

(Oh what a relief! After spending 45 minutes on the above, my computer locked up when I hit the save post button; I thought you the reader had probably been saved from being subjected to the above reminiscence.)

When I was, I think, eleven, someone my older brother knew in college told me I should read The Hobbit. This was 1962 or 1963 and I'd never heard of it. I got it from the library and WOW, it wasn't like anything else I'd ever read. It was one of the three artistic passages of childhood.

(Another was getting glasses in the second grade, going from legally blind to 20/20. I remain astounded by the detail of being: trees have an unbelievable number of branches. The third was finding out you could make things look three dimensional with pencil shading. Thank you, Jon Gnagy.)

I really liked the illustrations to The Hobbit. They really realize that world. I retain a love for them that far outweighs their level of artistic skill.

Anyway, a year later the same person recommended "The Lord of the Rings." ("There's more?!") That was really fantastic. I had to get it through inter-library loan. The librarian urged me to just get one book at a time, so I just got "The Fellowship of the Ring." It wasn't like anything else, as you all know. I'm glad that I got the next two together rather than stumble about for a week or so waiting for the third volume after the end of "The Two Towers."

(The man who recommended the books to me recounts being woken up at 2 in the morning by someone he had loaned the books to, one at a time. He had just finished "The Two Towers.")

I ran across the trilogy in the infamous Ace version a few years after that and they became my precious. It was really amazing to me when "Lord of the Rings" became (almost overnight to me) so immensely popular. I think I was somewhat annoyed. ("Hey! That's mine.")

I've kept re-reading them and have eventually aloud to my children. By this time, I'd say "The Silmarillion" is my favorite book. I had it and "Unfinished Tales" set up with little penciled directions to flesh out the parts that are partially expanded on in UT. ("Go to UT, page xx; Go to Silmarillion, page YY) Now I mostly listen to them and a lot else on tape because I can draw at the same time.

Word for word, though, "Leaf by Niggle" is the most valuable thing he wrote, for me. It goes very deep. I don't know that that is objectively true. It's just that it's just my experience of being an artist. I don't think it's universal.

After I saw The Fellowship Of The Ring ,I had to find out what would happen next so I started to Read LOTR . I am still reading Tolkiens books

i was at the library, very small library so the hardy boys are right near tolkien and so there tolk is and there i am and im like ooo fantsy cover! (the one w/ orthanc on it) and so i get the fellowship and then i read them all in 6 months in 4 grade. so yes, re reading them was a good thing....

My first contact with Tolkien was on a beautiful December day, just a few days before Christmas, when I saw "The Lord of the Rings " trilogy in a bookstore. That's when I realized it was the perfect book to read during the magic winter holidays, so... I bought it. I had seen "The Fellowship of the Ring" movie few weeks before that, but there were too many things I hadn't understood from it and which made me curious. Besides that, something kept telling me to start reading that book, enter Tolkien's world, and so I did. This was two years ago, when I was 16.

Now I'm reading LOTR for the third time, still discovering and enjoying the magic and depth of what it is the perfect book for me.

Also, reading "The Silmarillion" was an even more spectacular and spiritually educative experience.

I started reading The Hobbit and LotR in October of that same year Halbarad.