When was the last time you read The Lord of the Rings?

Extollager

Extollager

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2010
Messages
9,271
And which reading was it? Your first? Second reading? Twentieth? For that matter, when did you first read it?

For purposes of this discussion, I take "have read The Lord of the Rings" to mean that you've read the main story. You might not have read or reread the appendices. I like the appendices, but I don't reread them every time.

My last reading was 1 June-3 July 2012, which was my 12th reading of the complete book. To my regret, I don't know when I began my first reading, but I'm virtually certain that I finished my first reading sometime in 1967.
 
I read it twice in a row back in about 1997. I believe that I read it once more in 2002, but I haven't read it since.

That's a good repeat rate for me. I'm not a voracious reader. The only books I've read more often are Hyperion and Stranger in a Strange Land.
 
I've only read LOTR once, around the time the first Peter Jackson movie came out. I went on to read The Silmarillion several times, though. For some reason it just resonates with me. The Music of the Ainur is one of the most beautiful mythologies I have ever read. Put into the perspective of The Silmarillion, LOTR is one of several epic stories. It's just the only one that is fleshed out in its entirety.
 
I loved "the Hobbit" when I was 7 or 8 years old. Tried the LOTR, and balked a couple of times, until I was ? Maybe 11 or 12 years old. When I grocked LOTR, I re-read it once a year; I made myself wait a year to re-read it... like half a dozen times. (ca late 60's to early 70's)

I let it rest until the movies emerged. Read it again. Loved it again.
 
First read LOTR when I was about 12, then read it every two or three years until about ten years ago. Since then, I haven't read the whole thing through. I've read the start a couple of times, but haven't reached Rivendell. I don't know if it's just too familiar now, or if my tastes have changed.
 
Read it about the age of 12, then back to back for a while, then every year for a bit. Then nothing much until the films came out and made me go and check bits. I last read it a couple of years ago.
 
The first time I read it was after supper on my 12th birthday. I read it from cover to cover in one sitting, finishing at about 6 the next morning.
(not the appendix of which there was only one in that edition)
I then read it more slowly over the next week or two, and have reread it many times since.

The last time i read it right through was about 10 years ago when I read it in French as an excercise. I thought that I'd start reading in French to improve my command of the language, on the assumption that I was unlikely not to be able to understand a book I knew so well.

These days, although I still love it as a book, I find the nostalgia and politics hard to swallow though.
 
My last reading of the entire novel was 11 years ago this December. I've begun it once since then, but things just got too tight schedule-wise, and I had to put it aside (an increasingly common problem these days, particularly with any lengthy bit of reading -- something I bloody well need to correct before I blow a gasket!). I'd like to re-read it this next year, along with just about everything else I have by Tolkien, but we'll have to see.... Oh, and as for what number that one 11 years ago was -- I think it was about number 25 or 26, but I wouldn't swear there haven't been more....

As for my first reading... I began it a couple of times shortly after I got it (December 1972), but it wasn't until October of '73 that I finally got past "Fog on the Barrow-Downs", at which point I ended up reading it about 3 or 4 times in rapid succession. (And yes, I tend to reread all the appendices as well. In particular I consider all of A and B to be integral to the story itself, while the others add layers to my enjoyment of it.)

I've read The Hobbit and The Silmarillion multiple times as well, almost as many times as LotR; though I've only read the other books (with the exception of the old Tolkien Reader) only once or twice.
 
My best guess is that I read Tolkien's opus eighteen to twenty times between 1980 and 1984. Then I read it at least once a year from 1985 to 1995, but I have not read it since 2001.

j.d. I agree with you about the first two appendices. I discovered them almost immediately in my first reading of The Return of the King. I read every sentence of the chronology and was heartbroken to discover that some guy named Elessar swooped in to steal both Aragorn's kingdom and bride. At age thirteen, I learned my lesson about peeking...
 
Last edited:
I read it under the desk at school for the first time, age around 12 maybe? It was a library book and someone else had put in a request for it, so I was under time pressure to get it back. Tried to read The Hobbit afterwards, but struggled with the childishness and inconsistencies vs LOTR (although I can't remember what those are now).

After that I read it and The Hobbit roughly once a year until the next generation discovered them, and stole all my copies (both thick all-in-one and separate volumes). They've promised to return them.

Tried the Silmarillion but just couldn't get into it for some reason, although my daughter loves it.
 
Dunno, but I did absorb the first 50 pages a while back, to analyze it. It's pretty darn good, one could learn a lot about how to write a trilogy from it. *
 
Started reading again September 23, and following along chronologically, I've paused till Christmas when the Fellowship sets out.
I have know idea how many times I've read it. When I received my first nice edition I read it like seven times in a row.
 
Philzilla, are you saying that you're reading a portion of LOTR corresponding to the given day of our calendar? Because if so, that sounds like an interesting experiment!
 
When I was 14, so 30 years ago! I was so into Middle Earth back then, I tried to teach myself the two Elvish languages and memorized the lineages of rulers. I'm not sure if I could sit all the way through the books again, though.
 
Also read for the first time in 1967, and many times since, but haven't done a full re-reading in at least a decade. I find I either re-read my favorite parts, or just pick it up and open it at random and start from wherever I am.
 
I've felt the idea of rereading favorite passages as kind of a temptation to be resisted, not to say someone else should.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
Foxbat The last dreadnought History 3
Astro Pen Foiling "last page first" readers Writing Discussion 23
P Hoping to Find Novel--Aliens Raining Down Fire and Ice--Last Bible on Earth--Read in the 80s? Book Search 6
Z old book title- similar to ready player one and the last starfighter Book Search 0
S Space Shuttle Simulator & Apollo Simulator ready for blast off Game Discussions 0

Similar threads


Back
Top