how old were you when you read LOTR?

i was 10 and i skipped entire pages that bored the living shit out of me

>>7628679
middle school.

I moved on when I realized that fantasy is just a substitute for people too dumb to get into history.

>>7628685
I see

>>7628679
9 or ten. I vividly remember borrowing them from my elementary schools shabby library.

For all that people here prattle on about how pleb tier its prose and themes are, I wish that people would consider that LotR is foremost a children's book. To that end it's very effective at appealing to its audience.

>>7628685
Get a load of this smartypants.

>>7628679
I didn't because it's not literature.

>>7628679
I was 15. It was probably the first book I actually "enjoyed" reading.

>>7628685
Top b8

>>7628713
How is that bait? That seems rather accurate.

>>7628724

Post suggests that one can't enjoy both history and fantasy at the same time.

How is such a bare and strong claim is not bait?

>>7628679
11 but I didn't finish until until I was 15

I read about half of Fellowship in 6th grade. I really didn't enjoy it.

>>7628679
16.
It was fun.

LOTR is gay

12

Still one of my favourite novels, I've read it at least 10 times.

18

I was 9 when I read the Hobbit and I loved it. I tried reading the others when I was 10 but I only read the first two. They seemed very boring to me at the time but I should probably give it another go since I'm 11 years older.

18 now and I struggle to get through it. I'm at the part right before the fellowship is formed

>>7628682
I must have been nine. I believe The Two Towers film came out in 2002 and I remember trying to finish all the books before seeing it in theaters.

>>7628891
Thats when it begins to have actual stuff happen, at least in my opinion.

>>7628679
11

I managed to finish all of them (including the Hobbit) before Return of the King came out.

24. Literally this month. I felt weird that I've read the complete works of shakespeare but not this thing everyone reads by age 17 so I felt obliged to read it. It was decent.

Eleven.

In the first half of age ten I finished The Hobbit. That made for a much easier read than LotR did eight months or so later. Both were utterly captivating, but LotR was more taxing on patience while also being more rewarding.

I read The Hobbit around age 8 and LoTR around 12 or 13.

I think The Hobbit is better and have read it over a dozen times, once in a single day

8 years old

14

>>7629354
r u me

>>7628679
I read about halfway through Fellowship in first grade before growing bored of it and reading the much more interesting and overall better His Dark Materials series.

>>7628685
>I moved on when I realized that fantasy is just a substitute for people too dumb to get into history
>I moved on when I realized that I didn't possess the ability to indulge the nonexistent imagination my parents had denied me.

fixed!

9 years old, but I stopped around the middle of Two Towers. I read the Odyssey even before that though, that was the book that really made me like reading.
Also did the Hobbit before and Silmarillion a bit later on (10 years?). Didn't much care for the Silmarillion, it very much read like a patched up, incomplete story (which was obvious even at that age)

>>7628685
>not enjoying it as a creative productive of its time and an exploration of that historical time period
Cool.

>>7629298
Almost this.
Got the hobbit and Silmarillion in norwegian as a gift from my mother so I started reading them not long ago.
Read part of LotR in english when I was much younger but it didn't really appeal ot me as much back then.
Now I'm all set to read through it all in english after I finish the norwegian version of the hobbit and I'm looking forward to it.

>>7629868
>it very much read like a patched up, incomplete story
Because that is literally what it is.

>>7628679
17

>>7628908
Yeah but the shire parts are the best because the comfiest

I've read the hobbit several times in my childhood but I distinctly remember being bored with lotr when I was young, never getting past 50 pages. I read them all including the hobbit again when I was 24... Maybe 25 and enjoyed them immensely.

>>7629991
This.
Which makes sense given the target audience is just that.

>>7628679
Me and my dad read it together when I was 10

15. Liked it. I personally liked Dragonlance Chronicles better

>>7628679
Never did. Now I'm past the age for that and I know it's a classic but I still have absolutely no desire to read it. The movies were enough. I get the gist.

Haven't read it, but I was 8 when I read the hobbit

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People who don't like LotR have never read it
I'm nearly done with the second book and it's fucking awesome
Unreliable characters, incredible imagery, plot structure is classic yet unique to only itself, relation to human ideas like God, friendship, death, war, smoking, things like that.
Overall a simple yet enjoyable read. It's dense for sure, but not confusing if you can grasp the language.

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>>7629991
It's a very detailed and subtle story

13-14

>>7628679
13. I dropped it halfway through the third book, as I felt I had got everything I could out the book. There were too many battles and shit characterisation and I had tired of the setting.

28, reading right now. I can't believe people had the patience to read it pre-adolescence, it's so dry and boring for long stretches.

>>7630401

It is a problem for those coming of age after The September That Never Ended. I would not be surprised to learn publishers have moved their expected target demographic for maximum sales of Tolkien's work a decade ahead of where it once stood.

Aside from the business end, the sweet spot for commanding attention and absolute immersion is probably now between the ages of 18 to 25.

These days it's a little like throwing Proust at someone who thinks a never ending mass market fantasy series of door-stoppers is the hight of literary experience.

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I read it in third grade, so I had to be around 8 or 9.

21. I read it in a psychiatric hospital. That was also the time I read the Bible for the first time.

There wasn't a lot to do while committed.

I also knitted an 8 foot scarf and spent 50 hours crocheting a blanket.

>>7632277
those fucking backgrounds
unf

i was 32

my first novel

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>>7630169
silmarillion is the only book worth reading. all the sequels are just bullshit.
>be weak piss ant stoner hobbit
>oh shit, responsibility
>impossible task
>yup i am fucking dead five steps out of the shire
>conflict
>suddenly a wild wizard/tom bombadil/elves/giant birds/magic spell/sword/armour saves the motherfucking day for no reason other than the author wrote himself into a corner.
>everything goes better than expected

pic related. its gandalf.
>heart ring

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>>7632309

I'm reading it now

Not yet but planning to this year, should I first pick up LOTR or the Hobbit? What about silmarillion?

Is it odd that i really enjoyed the Hobbit and hated all the other books.

>>7632645
The Hobbit, then LoTR, then the Silmarillion.

It's really the only way to read them

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>>7632645
Read the Hobbit, then LotR, then the Simarillion, then read LotR again.

I'm not sure when I first read it, except that I read the Hobbit in English class in 6th grade.
Then I read LotR when I was in 10th grade, then I found out about the Silmarillion, got a copy of it, then I re-read the trilogy.

>>7628679
Fellowship of the Ring is my favorite book. I just love the endless adventure and the characters just going eastward and seeing new things.

Any other books like that?

I kind of want to make a cute comic about a lone young traveler who just has non-sequitur adventures, kind of like Usagi Yojimbo.

>>7628679
Ten, maybe? Can't quite remember.

When did /lit/ read Dune? I think I started on the series at 11 or 12.

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Around 12 maybe. I only read The Fellowship and half of The Two Towers though. I bought this hideous set from a school book fair with all of the books. This is the worst of the covers.

I recently bought an edition of The Hobbit from the 80s because it is the same as the book I read from the library when I was a kid.

Hobbit and LoTR from like... 8/9 to 11 I think?
I think I'd read the hobbit when the first film came out, then read the rest of the books. I was surprised that while the cool battles were what were good about the films (to child me), in the books they were boring compared to the characters and the creatures they meet.

>>7628679
8.

>>7628679
16. English is my second language and I waited until I felt I had good enough command of the language.

Also it's not a book "aimed at children" like some dumb anon said, even though they(some, definitely not all) can appreciate it. You just have to see past all the fantastical locations, elves and battles. Hint: realize that all the Middle-Earth writings form an uncompleted mythology, and LotR has a specific place within it, and you need to understand the themes and motifs of the mythology to appreciate it fully. Yes it's timeconsuming but it's well worth it.

It's a kind of shame that the movies were so successful, if they hadn't been, maybe the overall quality of discussion around the books would be higher, since the barrier of entry would be higher and those discussing the stuff would more likely have read everything and have an understanding and appreciation for it. Now it stands next to Star Wars and Spiderman.

Read them when I was 18, before the movies. I enjoyed them but found myself skimming every other page because Tolkien felt the need to explain every detail of his imagination when I could easily fill in the blanks with my own.

>>7633317
>Also it's not a book "aimed at children"
The Hobbit certainly was, I think he write it intending to read it to his kids before going to bed.
LotR however, has it's roots in his WWI service.

>>7633848
>LotR however, has it's roots in his WWI service.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Tolkien only conceived of the Lord of the Rings after he had already written The Hobbit. He did begin inventing Middle Earth, however, while he was in the hospital after being injured in the Somme.

11 or 12, around the same time the movies came out. I remember enjoying the series, but at the same time a good lot of it probably kind of went over my head. Wish I waited a couple years to appreciate it fully. Now I'm 24 and I have The Hobbit sitting on my shelf, but I can't be bothered to read it.

seven

my dad read me the hobbit as a bedtime story, then started lotr and told me if i wanted to know what happened, i had to read the rest myself

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>>7628679
started when i was 14 or 15
i'm 20 now and still haven't finished

12

>>7628685

Tolkien is shit sure, but "fantasy" isn't flawed.

>>7628679
17. I tried at 15, but the Council at Elron put a stop to that.

12

The Fellowship is a book whose enjoyment is directly proportional to the skill of the reader. When I was a kid, I couldn't finish it. Just this past summer I picked it up again and it was amazing. It's challenging to be able to picture the fullness Tolkien's world, but being able to picture the angle of the sun, the rich colors of middle-earth, the path under their feet, etc. makes it a really rewarding read.

t.snob

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>>7634091
>Tolkien is shit
Care to expound on that thought?

I read the Hobbit when I was six. I do not remember when I tackled LotR. My best guess is ten or so.

>>7635140
that which is self evident requires no elucidation

>>7636566
So maybe you could have been less retardedly obsessed over your prose wankery and deduced from my comment that it was not in fact self evident.

>>7634037
From, pretty much the ages of one through six my folks played a audio tape of the Hobbit to put MRE to sleep. It was not terribly hard to read it after that.

>>7636603
$%&@ tablet auto correct. Going from the age of ten to twenty three I read LotR each summer. The third, and subsequent times I would skip the singing bits.

>>7636566
Funny, Christians use that same argument to "prove" the existence of God.

>>7628679
I tried to read it twice and each time stopped at the end of the two towers. Maybe it was the translation or Maybe I was just bored. I felt it to be pretty dry at the time.

>>7636624
After reading it for over a decade, I do feel it needs some brevity in several sections.

>>7632298
You're awesome.

>>7628679
My dad read The Hobbit and the entire LOTR trilogy out loud to us starting when I must have been 7 and finishing each safely before the movie came out.

What does /lit/ feel about the Peter Jackson adaptations?

>>7636619
Some, but usually it's cosmological arguments, teleological arguments and argument from design.

>>7636647
LotR was surprisingly good. Haven't seen the Hobbit but heard it was... less good.

>>7636647
The Hobbit was The Lord of the Rings: the Prequel, not the children's fantasy it was intended to be. I couldn't get over it.

>>7636647
fellowship of the ring is really good. they fucking nailed it
two towers and return of the king worked less well, but had lots of great bits.
the hobbit trilogy was a huge bloated mess that fucked up far more than it succeeded at.

>>7636647
LOTR was brilliant. While they did differ from the books in some regards they were mostly pragmatic changes and worked well.

The Hobbit was disappointing, it really didn't need to be 8 hours. It should have been a single film

I have not read them yet even though I have all of them. I just haven't found the time to start them.

>>7636647
LOTR are amazing, probably my favourtie films although they aren't perfect adaptions.
I wish he would have included stuff like the Grey Company, the Knights of Dol Amroth and the armies of Gondor arriving in Minas Tirith, and then kept the storyline with the Army of the Dead more true to the books. But on the other hand that would have made the movies even longer.

The Hobbit movies are dreadful. Only the first one is tolerable. They should have been 1 or 2 movies.

>watching fellowship on a stormy winter night, under a blanket with the lights dimmed, heater on and your squeeze next to you

>>7628679
My mom read it out loud to me as like a bedtime story when I was between the ages of like 4-8. I fucking adored it, to this day it's one of my favorite things in the world.

24. Currently half way through Two Towers. I figured it was about time I got around to actually reading it.

i wonder how the movies would have been if they'd preserved the structure of the books, and the two towers was two movies, one about gimli, aragorn, legolas et al, and the other just about the frodo/sam/gollum love triangle and so on

I still haven't read it

>>7628679
I only listened to the 1979 radio drama when I was 6 or 7 but I tell everyone I've read it.

>>7628679
Its on my shelf but i never read it

>>7636647
I felt the movies took out stuff that bogged down the storyline. It felt like a more polished version of the trilogy.

I had the opposite reaction to the Hobbit. The book was nice and lean, while the movie felt bloated and out of control. I did like the additional scenes they included for Dul Gordor.

>>7628679

>>7628682

Like the first reply-lad, I was maybe nine or ten. I seem to remember the end of the Two Towers being incredibly boring, like they were running down a hill or something; more generally, there were large descriptive passages that must have gone over my head but I just kept going. I got the important bits of the plot: they start in the shire (again, post-Hobbit), go east (again), then a bunch of shit happens in the middle that I forgot about but for the memory-jog of the movies. Big battle near mordor, nearby they succeed to destroy the ring and go home the end or something.

Somewhere in there I seem to remember "oliphants" as suggestive of elephants, a possible link to our world..?

>>7628679
3

>>7628679
14 or 15
I read the Hobbit a few years afterwards, and found it to be a lot better

>>7628679
>tfw can't remember
must have been at around 14.
>tfw this was 20 years ago

>>7628685
>tfw studied historian

>>7628679
Elementary for Return of the King, high school for the other two.

>>7641496
And what is your actual comment? Do you agree with him?