cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/650959
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.
I have vague, terrified memories of watching the Rankin/Bass *Hobbit *movie in first grade back in…uh…1986, but it obviously didn’t make me into the fan I’ve become. I hardly remember anything about it other than Bilbo climbing the tallest tree in Mirkwood and the spiders.
My next introduction to Tolkien went much better when our 7th grade class got assigned to read The Hobbit for language arts. From the first look at the map in the front of the book I was fascinated. I’d just started getting into (A)D&D and fantasy in general, and finding the wellspring from which much of that material came from was amazing. To this day, I think that The Hobbit is my favorite Tolkien book. I’ve read most everything Middle-Earth related outside of the HoME series, but the tone and the nostalgia of The Hobbit makes it special.
I’m glad to hear you have such an affinity for The Hobbit. It seems like most prefer LotR books and I may be in that camp, but The Hobbit does have glimmer to its own.