Your journey into Middle Earth is very similar to mine. The Hobbit was a birthday present to me in the 50s and I found the trilogy in the library in the early 60s and was the first person to take it out. I bought a giant paperback while at university in the 60s and was quite miffed as the saga became a cult; after all I'd discovered it originally when I was about 10 and I didn't like it becoming public property! A friend borrowed it (by this time falling to pieces under its own weight) and never returned it, so I subsequently bought hardback copies in the 70s and of course have them still.
Early readers of LOTR (those who read it in the late 1950's and early 1960's) obtained a sort of "freehold" to the work. After all, we discovered it before all these hippy Johnny-come-lateleys with their "Frodo Lives" and "Go Go Gandalf" came along and sullied the purity of the experience by popularization.
The other thing I have noticed is that for many the books are meaningless because the movies say it all. That is the case with many of my son's generation but for him he was read to each night from the Hobbit and LOTR and we listened to a BBC dramatization on the way to school (along with audios of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books). So he had his imagination images well and truly fixed when the movies came along.
BTW - season 2 of Rings of Power starts tomorrow. I am of two minds but the completist in me says watch it and then make a judgement on it. Can't reach a conclusion without evidence.
Your journey into Middle Earth is very similar to mine. The Hobbit was a birthday present to me in the 50s and I found the trilogy in the library in the early 60s and was the first person to take it out. I bought a giant paperback while at university in the 60s and was quite miffed as the saga became a cult; after all I'd discovered it originally when I was about 10 and I didn't like it becoming public property! A friend borrowed it (by this time falling to pieces under its own weight) and never returned it, so I subsequently bought hardback copies in the 70s and of course have them still.
Early readers of LOTR (those who read it in the late 1950's and early 1960's) obtained a sort of "freehold" to the work. After all, we discovered it before all these hippy Johnny-come-lateleys with their "Frodo Lives" and "Go Go Gandalf" came along and sullied the purity of the experience by popularization.
The other thing I have noticed is that for many the books are meaningless because the movies say it all. That is the case with many of my son's generation but for him he was read to each night from the Hobbit and LOTR and we listened to a BBC dramatization on the way to school (along with audios of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books). So he had his imagination images well and truly fixed when the movies came along.
BTW - season 2 of Rings of Power starts tomorrow. I am of two minds but the completist in me says watch it and then make a judgement on it. Can't reach a conclusion without evidence.