UNIQUE ID,AGE,GENDER,DATE,LANGUAGE,CITY,STATE,COUNTRY,TRANSCRIPT
1,66,Male,20170729,eng,Littleton,Colorado,United States,"I am sixty-six now, and I first encountered Tolkien when I was probably about sixteen. I read a book called Dune you might have heard of; and on the back, the blurb said, “Can only be compared to The Lord of The Rings.” Well, I loved Dune so I started looking for The Lord of the Rings. It took quite a while—it was never in the library; it was always checked out. It turned out the Ballantine paperback edition showed up at my local bookstore—without The Hobbit—so I waited till I got The Hobbit and then I started. Ever since, I have not been able to get Middle-earth out of my mind or Tolkien’s other writings for that matter. I think partly I’m a fan because of the beauty of his work, that it wasn’t black and white as a lot of critics claim, that there was a lot of subtleties in there. The older I’ve got the more subtle I find he is about many things. At some point, I started wanting—when they came out with the new edition of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, I wanted that too. And I started collecting posters and other representations of Middle-earth or Tolkien’s work because I wanted to see how other people saw it. I know the first thing I got were those maps and those posters that Barbara Remington did: “Come to Middle-earth,” the mural, and the disproportionate map that Ballantine published that was inaccurate. Since then it’s been a lot of things that I’ve ended up collecting, including pencils, toys, games, clothing. I’ve got a couple hundred t-shirts related to Tolkien. I’ve got a couple hundred posters, including the first Elvish ad printed in Britain for Harper Collins. I am here to present a paper on chess sets that have a Tolkien theme. I just found it fascinating the way the designers chose their characters, or maybe they did it with cards drawn out of a hat. But it’s very interesting the different characters that were made into the same chess piece. Also, Mythcon has become important to me. My first Mythcon was in 1987, and I’ve only missed one since. That was Hawaii because it was more than we could afford that year. This is like a family reunion every year, and I think there’s something about this community that is very supportive and fulfills a lot of human needs. I love that about this whole business and the Tolkien community. Thanks for this opportunity."
2,33,Female,20170729,eng,Bremerton,Washington,United States,"I am thirty-three years old, and I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien through my mom’s Hildebrandt Brothers calendars that she had bought in the Seventies when she and my dad were first married. We moved so often—because my dad was a minister—that every time we moved, she would come across them. She would get them out and we would look at these paintings and she would tell us snippets of the stories based just on the pictures we were seeing. Beyond that, I had the Rankin Bass Hobbit on VHS and tape-book, and that terrified me. I had nightmares for years about Gollum to the point that I didn’t actually read The Hobbit until after I had finished grad school because I was so terrified of that version of it. But I read The Lord of the Rings when I was in eighth grade. It was a big deal in our family when mom would hand us the books and say you’re ready for these now. Throughout high school and undergrad I wrote a lot of research papers on Tolkien—anytime I could come up with my own topic. Then, when I became a librarian, I focused really heavily on fantasy and YA. My undergraduate degree is in Myth and Fairytale as an English major, so I kind of combined those two. It’s had an interesting impact on my life because Tolkien has been my way to build community every time I’ve moved, and I’ve moved to five different states. I went to at least eight or nine different public schools. In fact, on my first date with the man that I’m marrying, he was messaging me before we even met and somehow The Lord of the Rings came up. And he asked me a question about Gandalf and Gandalf’s motivation in saving Faramir and leaving the battle. Then his immediate response to his own question was, “That’s going to take too long. That can be your homework assignment for our first date.” And meeting someone who cared enough about Lord of the Rings to want to discuss it with me on a first date to the point that I had homework before I met him is kind of when I was like, “I think I’m going to marry this man.” And now I am. The works of Tolkien—they bind together the archetypes of mythology and fairytale, but they’re so relatable in the way that he paints his characters. They become people as opposed to just towering figures, and you find yourself in them. The characters I like are the ones that I see myself in or I see my family members in. So, he has been in my childhood from my earliest memories until now."
3,65,Female,20170729,eng,Indianapolis,Indiana,United States,"I am sixty-five years old. I first encountered the worlds of Tolkien as a reader when I was in middle school. But quite early—maybe six, seven, eight years old—in the baby name book I discovered that the name Sylvia means “wood-elf.” As in Penn’s woods is Pennsylvania, my name means wood elf. So, when I did come across Tolkien, I immediately found that I was home. I was one of the wood elves and I very quickly created a back story for myself that I was Thranduil’s wife, who was never mentioned. I was Legolas’s mother. And I created in my mind—I’ve never written any of it down—a whole story of myself and Legolas’s sister and what badass warrior women we were while our men were off fighting the war. So, I had a very personal connection. I was a Tolkien reader very early because of the love of adventure, but as an adult I found that the themes of Tolkien have influenced my life. As a teacher, my primary goal beyond teaching French conjugations or English poetry rhyming schemes, I’ve wanted to teach children that they have power. That they may feel like they are the least powerful and the powerless of the world, but even the most powerless being is the flicker of hope in the storm of life. And that those children that think that they are meaningless are actually the ones that are going to save the world. As a teacher that’s been an important part. As a parent that’s been an important part. It has informed my world view. More than the phone case and the license plate and the shirts that are Tolkien, I have incorporated Tolkien’s themes of hope beyond the wildest possibility of hope, of the smallest person being vitally important, of each one of us having some role—the Butterfly Effect—that when we manage to do good in our realm of immediate reality that we can change the world. We can save the world. Tolkien has meant everything to me, and I have passed that along to my students and my children in every way I can. I recently had a student who graduated twenty years ago find me on a Pokémon game because he saw the name “Sylvia Wood-elf” and he said, “I knew that had to be you.” So, Tolkien has been a huge influence in my life, and I have tried to pass that on."
4,33,Female,20170729,eng,,,,"I’m thirty-three years old. I first encountered J.R.R. Tolkien when I was a sophomore in high school. It was right before the movies came out, and I had a journalism teacher, his name was David Van Wyk, and I love him forever. He told me that I should totally read these books before the movies came out and ruined them. And he 100% pegged that. I really did need to read those books. They really helped me through puberty because that’s rough for everyone, right? However, he was wrong—I didn’t think that the movies ruined the books at all. I really latched on to the movies. I have watched them every year since then. I’ve read the book once or twice a year since then. But around the time I got married, about seven years ago, my grandfather died, and I grieved him by watching The Lord of the Rings movies because Ian McKellen looks an awful lot like my grandfather. He has the same facial mannerisms and everything, and I just keep telling everyone in my life when Ian McKellen dies, I’m just going to disappear and go into mourning because I don’t even think I could deal with that because all of my sadness for my grandfather has gotten tied up with Ian McKellen. He got me through that whole grieving process; and later, about three years ago, I got run over by a truck while I was biking to work. In the process of healing from that and being really like weakened, and I felt like I couldn’t do anything, I lost myself in Middle-earth for a good long while. And I realized that I couldn’t do things that I could previously do because physically I was just kind of incapacitated. But I decided to go back to school and I decided to go back to school because Cory Olson is running a school now where you can major in Tolkien Studies and I was like, “Yes! This is what I am going to do. I am going to go back to school and get my life back and study Tolkien because I love him and it’s kind of given my life meaning and structure.” And he’s been really important to me. He’s gotten me through all of the bad things that can possibly happen in someone’s life as far as I’m concerned. He’s gotten me through death. He’s gotten me through feeling completely powerless. I grew up with Tolkien at this point. He’s always been sort of there for me. And yeah, just immensely important."
5,64,Male,20170729,eng,Berkeley,California,United States,"I am sixty-four years old. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien because I broke an arm when I was in junior high and they said, “Well you’re going to go work in the library”. And I forget how I encountered it, but I ran an into article entitled “Ooo, those awful orcs”. And the world sounded so fascinating to me that when I was on vacation visiting relatives in Cleveland they said, “What do you want for a Christmas present?” and I said “The Lord of the Rings.” So that was how I first got involved reading The Lord of the Rings. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Well, I am also a child of the Sixties and if you were of a certain mind bent in the Sixties, Tolkien had its own built-in appeal. Because it was kind of against the military industrial complex and part of the environmentalism and all that kind of stuff. So, I guess that’s why I am a Tolkien fan, because he resonates with where I am and where I came from. What has he meant to me? I also grew up in an Evangelical Christian environment and have been ever since. Tolkien’s Christianity has also resonated with me. He is coming at me from two different directions. One, from that kind of anti-establishment environmentalism of the late Sixties that I grew up in; and also through the fog of Christianity that you can perceive in the works of Tolkien. The numinous quality comes through so true to me. And this is my 44th Mythcon in a row. So, I guess you can say that it’s meant quite a bit to me. So, that’s pretty much Tolkien and what he means to me."
6,73,Female,20170729,eng,Lake Forest,Illinois,United States,"Age seventy-three. I first encountered the works of Tolkien in 1957, very early in the year, because I was babysitting for Bernard Malamud’s son and he had been at a writers’ conference in England and had gotten ahold of the British edition. I happened to see the books in this kid’s house and he said, “These are the greatest! They got dragons and all this stuff.” I said, “Okay.” I read them then, and I thought I was the only one who knew anything about it because it wasn’t in the news or anything. So, for a long time I was a pretty lonely Tolkien fan. And now, of course, it’s absolutely mainstream and that’s been a really fun trajectory to watch. I am a Tolkien fan because it is well written first of all. I am a Tolkien fan because it includes morals—people actually care about whether what they do is right or wrong; and because it includes the Numinous in the Lewisian sense, and many books certainly do not. It has meant to me lots and lots and lots of very interesting and diverse friends. And I’ll conclude with my favorite reaction to Tolkien I had, which was after one of the movies. I was coming out and seeing it like for the second or third time. And I saw a couple of boys—local boys from the hood—dressed as they do, and one was saying to the other, “What was Gandalf thinking?!” "
7,18,Female,20170729,eng,Perrysburg,Ohio,United States,"I am eighteen. I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was maybe nine. My mother had an audiobook, but I didn’t really get into fandom until I read The Silmarillion at eleven and that was probably what did it for me. I don’t really know why I’m a Tolkien fan. There’s so much content to get into and there’s this feeling I get of a combination of loss and high tragedy and still having good people trying to do good things that appeals to me. And I just really like some of the individual characters and that’s been important to me. I grew up being homeschooled in the Midwest. Not really a ton of opportunities to make friends. Probably most of my significant friendships have been through fandom honestly—Internet fandom in particular, now that that’s a thing. It’s just been a really formative element in my life. I got into writing, art, all of that, through Tolkien actually. And he kind of got me into medievalism and history, too. And that’s actually something I might major in, so yeah pretty significant. I don’t know, it’s just been a defining feature of my identity for the past seven or eight years. "
8,54,Male,20170729,eng,Weatherford,Oklahoma,United States,"I am fifty-four. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien in a class when I was in the seventh grade. My friends were sitting around talking about this new book and I was going, “What? What?” When I got the names The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings I went out and bought it because I wanted to be doing what everybody else was doing. It took me probably the next four years. I read it seven times because it was so hard. I couldn’t really get it. But there were things like the sense that there was something—a God—that was ultimately running things was very meaningful to me. Over the years, you know at different times, I’ve sort of ticked it off, and I’ve read it about fifteen times and there is great depth. I studied philosophy at college. What I really love is fully developed worldviews. So, that is the thing that I love about Tolkien. He provides a worldview. It’s an ecological thing. It’s spiritual, and it has depth. Ultimately as an adult, I write papers and have been published about Tolkien and so he continues to be meaningful to me."
9,67,Female,20170729,eng,Eau Claire,Wisconsin,United States,"I am 67 ½ years old in about a week and a half. I will celebrate my 30th wedding anniversary—although my 45th year with my husband—at about the same time. I first read The Hobbit in 1964 when I was fourteen years old and my brother brought it back from college. He is four years older than me and he’d gone to college at UW-Madison. He brought this back. Before that time, the first few books I had read in my entire life were science fiction and fantasy. David and the Phoenix was one of the first books. So, I was kind of ready for it, and I also was an avid reader of Prince Valiant in the comic book strips. One of the things that Tolkien has done for me is he has validated and interconnected lots of different parts of my life. He keeps drifting in and out of other projects that I am involved in. I’ll elaborate a little bit on that. One of the first things that happened is I was an extremely shy child and I had had a tragedy in my young life, which made me even more shy. I didn’t have many friends, but The Hobbit kind of drew people--drew me to people and people to me. I started developing these friends who had read The Hobbit, and we were scrambling in 1965-1966 to get copies of The Lord of the Rings. At the public library you could never get the first book and things like that and so I found these friends and then through them, between 1965 and 1968 I started meeting people from other high schools. I was going to a working class high school in my community and I lived on a farm in northern Wisconsin. I started developing friendships with people who were likeminded, because up to that point I thought I was like really weird, that I liked strange things and that sort of thing. By 1968-1972 I developed all these friendships. He also drew me into medieval studies. I ended up helping to organize Marquette conferences, programming for 1987, got to meet Christopher Tolkien. I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to my husband, who then also started joining the Mythopoeic Society and going to the Tolkien Society in Madison. He has drawn me into languages, I ended up getting a PhD In Anglo-American, French, and Chinese. Do medieval studies, give conference papers at Kalamazoo, Leeds, Medieval Congresses, the Popular Culture Association, the Mythopoeic Society and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. And write for reference books. I now lecture in China, because my PhD minor is Chinese. I lecture on Tolkien in China when I go there. So, all those things going on because of Tolkien."
10,73,Female,20170729,eng,Nehalem,Oregon,United States,"I am seventy-three. I first encountered Tolkien when my friend in graduate school insisted that I had to read it when I told him how much I liked Narnia. So, I read the books; and in 1968, I moved to California. Southern California. And I went to the Renaissance Fair; and at the Renaissance Fair, I saw a man dressed up like Elrond. He was in front of a cardboard volcano, with a hole in it. There was a large sign that said, “Throw the Ring into Mordor.” I thought, “This must be my people.” That was Glenn Goodnight, and that’s when I met him."
11,60,Female,20170729,eng,Santa Fe,New Mexico,United States,"I am sixty years old. I have been known to say that discovering The Lord of the Rings was the only good thing that happened to me the year I was thirteen. Anybody who has been thirteen may be able to understand that. I remember having read The Hobbit before that, but it hadn’t affected me as much. I remember I got the last two volumes in my Christmas stocking, and so I read the whole thing, and I said to myself, “I can never read anything else ever again because nothing else could ever be as good”. I dived in and read it again and read it again, and I finally did eventually work myself around to reading other things. But for a long time after that, and in some ways still, Tolkien was The Author. And his works kind of sifted down into the way I saw the world and see the world, and I’ve been a Tolkien fan forever after that. And I read the Appendices, and I tried to write in Tengwar. Then in college, I discovered the Mythopoeic Society by going across the way—I went to Barnard College in New York City and across 116th street there was a little book store called The Logos Bookstore, and I think the proprietor must have been a member because in the middle of the store somewhere he had a bean bag chair. And stacked near the bean bag chair was a stack of Mythopoeic Society publications. And I pored over those endlessly and finally got in touch with the Society. I came to my first Mythcon a few years after college, and for a while in the New York- New Jersey area I ran a Tolkien discussion group called Romena. I called it Romena, which is “eastwards”, because I felt to be way out east from all the activities that were going on in California. But there is still a Romena hanging around, because the reports of the meetings that we had I wrote up and sent round to other people, and they’ve got citations in Hammond’s and Scull’s Readers Companion to The Lord of the Rings."
12,58,Female,20170729,eng,Grosse Point Woods,Michigan,United States,"Age fifty-eight. I first encountered the world of J.R.R. Tolkien through his obituary. My oldest sister had read The Hobbit. I think it had been assigned to her in high school, and I had just started freshman year in high school, and we were getting ready to go to school and she saw it in the Detroit Free Press and was reading it. The way she exclaimed over it, I went over and read it too, and I can remember leaning over the table reading his obituary, but I didn’t really know who he was. The following year—Christmas of ’74—she wanted the Ballantine gold foil box set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. So, I bought it for her for Christmas, and she started reading it. She was already in college then and she came home for a visit and said, “Paula, you really should read this. You like knights and dragons, and this would be right up your alley.” She finished The Fellowship of the Ring and she brought it home, and I read it. She had started The Two Towers, and I just had devoured The Fellowship of the Ring—I had read The Hobbit and then The Fellowship of the Ring. I said, “Bring home The Two Towers the next time you come home.” She goes, “Well, I am still reading it.” I said, “I’ll finish it. You don’t have to worry about it.” So, she brought that, and she brought The Return of the King, and I just ate it up and read it—finished it before she did—and just loved it. And then when I was a senior in high school, I re-read them. I went from really loving them to becoming obsessed with Tolkien’s work. In 1977, right before I went to the University of Michigan for my freshman year, The Silmarillion came out, and I went to Ann Arbor early to get a copy of the hardback because they had it in stock and nobody locally had it in stock. So that’s how I got involved, and I’ve just been kind of obsessed ever since. I am a Tolkien fan because I love his worlds. I am Catholic so I was thrilled to find out he was Catholic because then I felt, “Why is this resonating so much with me?” And then after I read letters—The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien—I understood it better. I thought, “Okay, this is why.” He is touching on the notes that, as a Catholic, I just kind of get instinctively, and that’s why it’s so powerful for me. That is one of the reasons I am a fan, and I love his worlds. My creative life actually changed once I read Tolkien. I started illustrating his work, and he made me a better storyteller. I went off and got a Master’s in filmmaking, and it helped make me a good screenwriter because I was inspired by how he told stories and how they unfolded."
13,70,Male,20170729,eng,Robbinsdale,Minnesota,United States,"I am seventy. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I was in sixth grade. My teacher read The Hobbit aloud to the class. I am a Tolkien fan basically because of my love of language and I continue to be and find his work meaningful because of the spirituality of it. Now, as I said, I had The Hobbit read aloud to me in Sixth grade when we came in from recess. Everybody was hot and tired, and Mr. Story thought that it would be a good idea to let the people relax. So, he read to us, and one of the things he read was The Hobbit. And I loved it. I was aware that Tolkien had written other things but they were not generally available in this country at that time. So, it was not until just after I graduated from high school that I first read The Lord of the Rings and it was right after my grandmother had passed away. It was kind of an emotional time for me. But I read The Lord of the Rings, just devoured it, got to the Appendix, and immediately started learning to write the Elvish letters. And he said somewhere that he has not attempted to do a really phonetically adequate, English version of these. And I said, “Oh! I’m gonna do that!’. So, I worked with that over the summer and in the process learned something about Anglo-Saxon runes as well. But that was what first grabbed me but it wasn’t just the Elvish languages but it was the beauty of Tolkien’s English, and his genius for names I think is wonderful. And one thing that struck me particularly was the song of Galadriel. That is so full of a profound melancholy. There’s a joy there but also a melancholy. And that sense of exile, being born for another world, that is something that has been important to me throughout my life and the idea that by giving up our power we can find joy at the end. This to me is a profound spiritual statement that goes beyond literature."
14,65,Female,20170729,eng,Escondido,California,United States,"I am sixty-five years old. I became aware of J.R.R. Tolkien because my brother, who is five years older than I am, gave me a copy of The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings for Christmas when I was probably fifteen—I might have been sixteen, but I think fifteen. And I inhaled them over Christmas break. I was just consumed by them. I truly lived in that world. Even now when I re-read the books I have to be careful about the timing of when I re-read them because I so occupy Middle-earth. His creation is so well-rounded for me and just draws me in. When I found people that I could talk to about Tolkien, that was exciting. I found the Mythopoeic Society when I was thirty years old, in 1982. And these were my people! They were into Tolkien. They were into Lewis. They were into this guy named Charles Williams, and it became a huge part of my life. I have spent more than twenty years on the board of directors at the Mythopoeic Society. A lot of energy in my life has gone into Tolkien-related things. I was on the committee for the Tolkien Centenary in Oxford at Keble College in 1992. I’ve been a member of the British Tolkien Society for a very long time. Most of my close friendships have been related in one way or another to Tolkien or the Mythopoeic society. And that’s extraordinary to me. He’s been extremely influential in my life, both as an ethical voice and as a spiritual voice—that deeper reality behind the reality. He created a world which often feels much more well-rounded than the one we currently live in, and I’m very appreciative of that. I’ve been honored to get to meet a number of members of his family. Tolkien has made my life much richer. I am very grateful to my brother for introducing me to J.R.R. Tolkien."
15,51,Female,20170729,eng,Orlando,Florida,United States,"I am fifty-one years old. My first encounter with J.R.R. Tolkien actually was in an English class when we got to read The Hobbit. I just can’t even tell you—it was so amazing to be able to get that little snippet of what was going on in the stories. I obviously had an English teacher who was a Tolkien fan, and I think she probably snuck it in there. That was in the Seventies. I guess the reason I’m a Tolkien fan is I did get turned on to the stories not so much because of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings—although I did read both of those—but because of The Silmarillion, which is dear, dear to my heart. That is the biggest love of mine. I have lectured on it. I have published on it. I tell the stories all the time. I read The Silmarillion several times a year. Different stories here and there. I suppose, if I was looking at being a Tolkien fan, it’s everything that I’ve read by him. I mean The Silmarillion I would say is probably the biggest thing, but everything that I have read by him, and I have read pretty much everything. And I’ve taught really strongly Leaf by Niggle and stuff because the symbolism is there; it’s easy for my students to understand. But really the language has got to be it. I grew up when there was not as much in the sense of television shows or even really movies that would really spur your imagination and was something that was accessible. Nowadays it’s all over the place and it’s really hard to get away from them. But because of that I got into language, and language is what created the picture in my head. If there was anybody who did that incredibly well it was Tolkien. Having those images and then going to actually see the movies when they finally came out, which was phenomenal, I saw that Jackson had that same thing. I saw it as very universal, if you want to call it that. “What does it mean to me?”  I have been very lucky to go to Oxford a couple times now. And I went to Enyalië which is where they take the wreath and they lay them on the grave of Tolkien in Wolvercote Cemetery. I got to carry the blue one, which is great because blue has always been my favorite color. They said, “Oh, you’re going to cry.” I’m thinking, “It’s a graveyard.” I love cemeteries. I love going to see the stones. It was very interesting the feel that was there when I went. And I actually walked up and laid the thing down, and I whispered, “Thank you for your stories.” And then I just had to walk away. But it means to me that the stories are just so poignant. They are something that you carry with you in the sense of tragedy and loss but being able to get strength and rejuvenation from them."
16,45,Male,20170729,eng,Stickney,Illinois,United States,"I am forty-five years old. I first encountered Tolkien as a child where my mother would read to me The Hobbit and when that was done—which I thoroughly enjoyed—she would read The Fellowship. And then I had gotten older so I read the remaining two Lord of the Rings books myself. I can still remember when in Fellowship when Gandalf died and being completely broken-hearted and the joy of when he comes back and returns. I like to say I saw it coming, but I don’t think I really did. But it was so wonderful to have him back because I associated so much with the books in my own life. They touched something within me that made me feel like they were real. I didn’t truly blur the lines between reality and fantasy, but to me the characters and who they were and their personalities were friends. And still are I would say. Why I am a Tolkien fan is just that. The characters are so real and the writing is so good. Tolkien touches on themes of beauty and goodness and truth in all of his writings. As a child, of course, I would have understood them as stories, as fairy stories, but now as an adult I see the writings that he does as having a truth world view. And, of course, I would associate that with a Biblical world view. Now that I’m more aware of the Bible and I’m more aware of life as we know it in this world. Today, truth and falsehood and beauty and ugliness are blurred. When you read Tolkien, you see them back to where they should be. Truth is truth, good is good, evil is evil, and truth is always seen as something that should triumph over falsehood, and in the end does. I think what’s great about Tolkien is that he takes a Biblical world view and incorporates that into his world that he has sub-created; and for me as someone who also likes to write and make up stories, the best stories that I’ve read or that I’ve even developed myself would have to incorporate that world view. If it doesn’t, it is hard for us to enter in and grapple with the reality that is created and see it as reflected in this world."
17,42,Female,20170729,eng,Stickney,Illinois,United States,"I am forty-two. I didn’t read Tolkien when I was a child, but I first encountered him when the first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, came out. I was just reading The Lord of the Rings and I hadn’t finished the trilogy, but I had finished Fellowship because I have strict rules about reading the book first before the movie. I finished Fellowship, but as we watched the movie—it was great, it was beautiful to see Middle-earth—but I couldn’t wait to get home and finish the story because I had to find out what happened in the story. So that was my first encounter. I just fell in love with Tolkien and the more I’ve read the more I’ve loved. I am a principal of a classical Christian school, and so I loved Tolkien because of his importance to literature and to history, of course, but as I’ve grown to know him more and more it becomes so much broader than that because he actually teaches us all about culture and about Christianity. It helps your own beliefs and faith and knowledge grow so much more to see somebody who truly cares about the depths of knowledge—not just for knowledge’s sake of getting more and more intelligent, but finding out more about the world that we’re in and why we’re in it and what we’re supposed to be doing here. That’s what I see as his contribution, why I am a fan. What has Tolkien meant to me is the hardest question to answer because every single year it grows more and more. The more that I read and the more I understand what he is doing, it just gives you such a wealth of importance and depth. And I think one thing when I was exploring the topic of the magic of the Elves and whether or not they are magic, and how Sam thinks that they are but Galadriel finds that thought curious, it occurred to me that whatever our own world view is, whatever we think the natural laws of the world and the natural things are, if we see something outside of that, it becomes magic to us. So that, for Galadriel, all of the things that she and the Elves did was her natural world view. It wasn’t magic. It was part of how you should take everything that you’re doing and make it the utmost—most beautiful, most rich and colorful thing that you’re doing. That’s the responsibility of every one of us in whatever part of life that we’re in—to enrich everyone around us and make it more beautiful, really for the Glory of God. That’s what I see in Tolkien."
18,57,Female,20170729,eng,Wichita,Kansas,United States,"I am fifty-seven years old. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was in high school. In fact, for Christmas one year—and my mother started doing this when I was in junior high—I would tell her what books I wanted for Christmas and then she would get them for me. And one of the books I got for Christmas when I was seventeen was the Silmarillion. I am a Tolkien fan because when I first read The Lord of the Rings it was just something I could completely escape into. My family life was my parents fought a lot—all the time when I was little—and I would escape into books. In Tolkien, you really escape. You are gone. I wasn’t in my house. I couldn’t hear my parents fighting. I was with Frodo and Bilbo and Sam and the Elves in a completely foreign place, totally different than my own, wherever I was. So, for every year after that for probably 20 years I re-read The Lord of the Rings. Every year. And it was a memory of childhood but also just a way of re-priming the pump about fantasy. He has meant a lot to me because when I finally went back to get my doctorate, my dissertation was on fantasy literature and in no small part because of Tolkien. My favorite chapter in The Lord of the Rings is “The Battle of the Pelannor Fields,” where the female rider of Rohan, who is disguised as a man, comes out and she cuts off the head of this horrible monster. I just thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever read when I was seventeen. He has meant a lot to me—the idea of literature as escape but also literature to fulfill at the same time. So, I continue to be a fan of Tolkien. Even when I became a feminist, I still was a fan. Loved him anyway. I still find meaning in him when I re-read the stories and it’s always something I will cherish for the rest of my life."
19,36,Female,20170729,eng,Carol Stream,Illinois,United States,"I am from Wheaton Illinois, thirty-six years old, and the archivist of the Marian E. Wade Center Collection. I first encountered the works of Tolkien in eighth grade when I was in middle school and my sister had gotten the set, given by me—by my parents through me. And she wanted The Chronicles of Narnia, so she was disappointed that she got The Lord of the Rings. She ended up reading The Hobbit and about a quarter of the way through The Fellowship and gave up. I picked them up when she recommended them to me when I was bored one afternoon as a middle schooler on a school break and never put them down again.  I read The Hobbit first and really enjoyed it and then burrowed my way through The Lord of the Rings and chipped away at The Silmarillion until I could make sense of it. I am a Tolkien fan I think because his works captivated my imagination, my heart, my spirit, and they really gave me a sense of what it meant to have courage, conviction, loyalty, and put some of the things that I held most dear in my personal life and in my faith—they gave it legs to walk on, and they gave it characters to point to. And that was really inspiring for me as a young person and continues to be into my later years. He has meant a lot to me personally and professionally. I am now the curator of a collection containing some of his personal items, and I’ve met a lot of people through that context and really enjoyed the journey. I have a society on campus that is affiliated with his works and enjoys hanging out together and talking about fandom. I’ve enjoyed other fandoms that have come in connection with Tolkien and his works and just had lot of great experiences through that."
20,62,Female,20170730,eng,Ephrata,Pennsylvania,United States,"Sixty-two. I first encountered Tolkien through my older sister, twelve years older than me, back in the late Sixties. She was a culture-surfer par excellence of the time. She had the Tolkien books in her house and when we would go visit—my mom and I would go visit her—she would always have books for me to read because she knew I was a total reading person at 12, 13, 14. And I had read, of course, Alice in Wonderland. I was certainly in a period at that time of just consuming fairy tales. And so she said, “You’ll love Tolkien” and I said well, “What’s it about?” She tried to explain to me about Hobbit and then there was these three books—three books of fantasy! Like one big long story across three books! I’d never heard of such a thing. And I was also very much a reading snob at that time—6th, 7th, 8th grade. Total reading snob, classics, fairy tales. Don’t bug me with this artsy, fartsy stuff. I said, “Well, The Hobbit sounds kid-like. I can’t read that. I’ll try this.” So, I picked up and started with the Preface, because at that time I always read prefaces. I was a reading snob. And so I started reading about “Concerning Hobbits” and after about two pages I went, “What is this?! I don’t get this! This isn’t reading like a story! It’s reading like-like history or something! But it’s pretend!” I had no category for it at that time. And so I put it down. And I did not go back until college when I backed into it after reading the Narnia books. So yes, I am a very latecomer in that sense. In college, somebody recommended Narnia, and I ate up Narnia. I adored Narnia. I wanted to go to Narnia, and they said, “Well, read Tolkien.” So, I finally read it. That’s how I first encountered Tolkien. Okay, I have poor taste. Some of the things Tolkien has meant to me, across the years is that he’s been like a canary in the gold mine for me, for all my life, because he was a Christian writer who had phenomenal popularity. I didn’t know that would be possible. I’ve seen fandom develop and now fandom is passing him by. Now they’re deconstructing him. I feel like he is just totally like a Zen Koan for our culture and this time that I’ve been in with the baby boomer generation and everything. He has made parenting a delight because he’s given our whole family a world to live in."
21,22,Female,20170802,eng,Olympia,Washington,United States,"I am twenty-two years old, and I am from Olympia, Washington. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien… I think I was about twelve or thirteen. I believe I saw The Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies first, but I always knew that I was going to read the books. I just hadn’t quite gotten to that age yet. The first time I started reading the Fellowship, I stopped at about page ninety, and I’m not sure why I put it down; but I don’t think I was quite old enough for it yet. But I picked it up probably a few years later and wondered how I could have ever stopped. I am a Tolkien fan… wow… for so many reasons. It’s hard to explain. It’s not just his expert world building or shall I say universe building, although I do love that. It’s partly his characters as gorgeously simple and complex as they are. It’s partly that he lets his characters be deeply noble or shallowly crooked as they are without apology. The world itself feels familiar although the names were not names I knew, and I met each character in place when I first opened the book. There was something in them all that I felt I knew and had always known. Maybe it is that simple love for all that is good and kind and green and growing and beautiful and eternal. And the knowledge that in the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing. There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. That evil only exists in destroying good; it cannot exist apart from it, and that one day it too shall pass away. He’s meant a great deal to me. His stories have such rich depth to them. They’re the kind of tales that stay with you through everything, reminding one to hope even in the darkest hours."
22,55,Female,20171129,eng,Rochester,Minnesota,United States,"I am fifty-five years old, and I am from Rochester, Minnesota. In 1977 I received a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring as a birthday present from my next-door neighbor and friend, Lori. I had heard nothing—not a whisper—about the book, but Lori said, “Trust me.” So, on a late winter evening I started reading a book that was a birthday present, which ultimately is a book about a birthday present; and like Gollum, it is precious to me. I was a shockingly well-adjusted teenager. I was happy. I was loved. I was a good student. I had nice boyfriends, and I had great friends. Reading Tolkien wasn’t an escape from a Dickensian existence. I was happy. But I had an increasing need for something that was lacking. I needed meaning and big ideas, adventure, high romance, truth. All the clichés of teen angst were blooming in my heart like a culture in a petri dish. I think I felt profoundly let down by life. It all seemed less than it should be—less beautiful, less perilous, less meaningful, and there weren’t nearly enough heroes. So, it felt a bit barren and disappointing, and it felt incomplete; and it made me feel very melancholy. You asked why I am a Tolkien fan. In the 1977 Rankin-Bass production of The Hobbit, after Bilbo tells Gandalf and the dwarves of his escape from the goblin tunnels, there is a belabored line that has supplanted the original lines from the book in my mind, and I apologize profoundly for that. I am sorry. But I loved the silliness of this line. Gandalf says to Bilbo: “Your story has the ring of truth; yes, it RINGS true.” It’s a very bad pun, I know. Nevertheless, when I read The Lord of the Rings, it has the ring of truth. There is an ineffable familiarity, a feeling of recognized truth to the world he created. The world we live in is true, the world he created is true, and I am not even sure what that means or how to explain it. But he unveiled something that exists, and I think that our souls know it. One of the great things about getting all there is a dawning awareness that there is so much more to this universe than we can imagine. That sometimes you cannot empirically prove all the truths—not yet. And I am okay with that. So, when I see an old bumper sticker that says, “Frodo Lives,” I think, “Yeah, I agree.” Tolkien made me feel complete. He showed me what was missing. He gave me high romance, purpose, and beauty. Beyond my love of the maps, the dense histories and genealogies, languages, heroes, and dark lords, I have just loved it. It has shaped me. I love being outdoors because of it. I run because Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas could run forty leagues and five. I love food and parties and dancing even more because of it. I love painting because of it. I try to be dutiful like Frodo. I try to be cheery like Samwise. It has molded me, comforted me. It has made me happy beyond expression. "
23,21,Male,20180110,eng,Neenah,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-one and I am from Neenah, Wisconsin, and I am a student at the University of Notre Dame. When did I first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien? I actually don’t remember. As long as I can remember, I’ve known about Tolkien because of the Peter Jackson movies. I must have seen them when I was like four or five. So I have always been a Tolkien fan, but I got into the books I guess in like fifth grade. I read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. And then in high school became much more interested in them and read The Silmarillion and started looking into Tolkien himself, so like read his letters and his biography and became really fascinated by him as an author. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Well, pragmatically I guess, because of the movies. If it hadn’t been for the movies I would never have discovered Tolkien for probably quite a while. But actually, it’s just that he’s a really fantastic author who is so great at creating these unique worlds that have so much detail and life in them. It is wonderful to be able to experience a world like that and fall in love with it and find it so, you know, there’s so much interesting to see about it. Even more so, just the way that he writes it’s so incredible. Not just with Lord of the Rings. He has his short stories and his more academic stuff. But he pays attention to every word that he writes. He puts so much attention, he writes so poetically. And everything he says there’s like just a driving philosophy behind it that makes everything kind of fit together and makes it, I guess, in some ways unmistakably and relentlessly true. Not literally true but true in that it speaks to you in some way. I guess that kind of answers the last question too which is ‘what has he meant to you?’ He’s been just a huge influence in my life because of the fact that he’s kind of influenced the way I think and how I see the world. You can’t really see a tree the same way after reading Tolkien, after reading Leaf by Niggle or reading about Ents. They become such a larger being instead of something sitting in the background in a field. It’s something that’s there and has been there for hundreds of years. And then also friendship. When I was studying abroad at Oxford, I made such good friends--hanging out with people who are also obsessed with Tolkien. They threw me in a river to honor Frodo’s parent’s Drogo and Primula Baggins. We had a giant Tolkien quiz with the Cambridge Tolkien Society. It is just so much fun to be nerdy with people who share your interests."
24,63,Female,20180518,eng,Omaha,Nebraska,United States,"I am sixty-three, soon to be sixty-four; and I am from Omaha, Nebraska. I realize that in this fall it will be fifty years since I first picked up The Hobbit. My older brother kind of brow-beat me into doing it. I read the book and, as heretical as it sounds, I really didn’t like it. So, it took me almost another year before I picked up Lord of the Rings. My older brother used the argument the family knew would sway me—it had horses in it. And I picked it up, started reading it, and I’ve never really, truly put it down since then. I think what fascinated me at first was just Tolkien’s imagination. The world he came up with, the characters he created, the languages. I was in awe that anyone could have that kind of imagination. And then the more I re-read it and started reading some of the critical studies and things, I really began to see the depth of it, which just fascinated me all the more. When I first read Lord of the Rings, it came at a time, fifteen, all-girl Catholic school, kind of sheltered, and not exactly the best experiences growing up in school. I was bullied and so Tolkien and Lord of the Rings kind of became my haven, someplace where I could go where nobody could follow me, and where I could read and kind of immerse myself into the world. Since then it’s developed into an obsession. I fully admit that. I have made a huge number of friends, all over the world, who are similarly inclined. The movies have helped/hurt a little bit, but it’s become something that motivates me to keep wanting to do more, to learn more. And that’s about the best I can come up with."
25,45,Male,20180530,eng,Cologne,,Germany,"I am forty-five. I am from Cologne in Germany. And I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien at the age of fourteen. We went on holiday, and I had a sunburn the very first day when we went to the beach; and there was nothing to do but stay indoors for three days; and there was a book, which was called The Lord of the Rings. And ever since then The Lord of the Rings and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien have had a huge impact on my life. I went to the British Council Library in Cologne back home, at fourteen, became one of the youngest members of a library—the British Council Library—to get all the books of the professor. And realized, after a couple of years, that there are a lot of people out there who had not really the same experience but similar experiences. You can find fellowship and community if you use those words. And then I came to Oxford for the first time in 1994 to a meeting of the Tolkien Society in Oxford, and realized even more people than I ever imagined. But there was no Tolkien society in Germany so I decided to found one, and that’s what I did. And since then I have founded four regulas tables, one literary society, one high school group, one role-playing specialist group, a film fantasy convention. I met my wife thanks to Tolkien, because she is a Pratchett fan and thinks Tolkien fans are not as funny as Pratchett fans are; and I said you are wrong. We discussed, we married. Ever since I first read The Lord of the Rings, I realized that you can come to those books, all the different ones, and find a sense of fellowship and understanding and support that you won’t really find with any similar writers, particularly not the ones that followed him. I am a Tolkien fan, first and foremost, because it’s fun reading. It’s fun meeting other people. It’s even more fun to organize events, found societies, found specialist groups, and get people together. I’ve sort of become a networker, and bringing people together. So that’s why I’m a Tolkien fan. If my wife were here she would say, “What a lovely writer John Ronald Ruel Tolkien is, because otherwise I wouldn’t have met you.” We met at a fantasy festival where she was promoting the interest in Terry Pratchett, and I was promoting interest in the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien. And that’s what we do, and I’m quite happy about that."
26,28,Female,20180530,eng,Oxford,,England,"I am twenty-eight years old. I come from Lancaster in the Northwest of England and now live in Oxford. I first encountered Tolkien… well, my first encounter I think was when I was about seven. My previously estranged grandparents came into my life bringing presents of books. I had beautiful editions of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit, which I didn’t read for several years because I thought they would be too scary. But then around the age of nine or ten I read The Hobbit. Later The Lord of the Rings films started coming out. In 2001, I was eleven, and I read the books. At that point I was falling headlong into online fandom, in the heady days when Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings—the two things I loved above all else—were active on the Internet and resurgent; and it was fairly, fairly wonderful. I had found more internet friends and far more internet connections in my early teens than in real life. As I grew up I came to study in Oxford, attended the meetings of the Oxford Tolkien society, Taruithorn, and started to meet fellow fans in real life as well. I met my wife through Taruithorn, and I think we probably met at eighteen as students and now we’ve been married for several years. Many of my best friends I also met through that society and other Tolkien fandom avenues. I think I am a fan really because of the community and the people and having all these people that I love in my life. The books meant very different things at different points in my life. As a teenager I was very earnest and grumpy about anyone who got Tolkien wrong in anyway, which was everybody else in the world. I got more relaxed as I got older. I just love Tolkien’s prose and his themes and his characters, the sort of almost Anglo-Saxon way he sometimes writes about the world being a place of despair and things going wrong, but you still got to endure and still have hope despite everything around it. I think it’s in “The Monsters and the Critics” where he puts that most clearly. I love that Anglo-Saxon sensibility about the books. They are really good stories and have brought me to where I am in my life."
27,28,Female,20180530,eng,,,China,"I come from China. I am twenty-eight years old this August, so I am twenty-seven. I first came across Tolkien, I think just sort of a book seller recommended it to me, and I got the whole set—the Chinese translation—at the age of eleven or twelve, and I immediately read The Hobbit, and I liked it. But then the story ended there, and I had no motivation to carry on reading somehow. So, I parked there; and I don’t know how many years later the films came out, the trilogy, and my mom got a set of pirated editions of the DVDs. We were watching it at home. I sort of just joined in, and after going through the whole set of films being confused of the whole story. But, really my curiosity’s been tickled, so I went back to read the books—the Chinese translations—and I remember jumping over all the poetry. That’s when I was probably fifteen years old. I’m not sure why I am a Tolkien fan, but he’s sort of fed my curiosity in terms of languages, and he’s the main motivation for me to learn English. He’s largely responsible for me being here in Oxford, speaking English, studying book history, leading to publisher/author relationship between him and his publisher, and then led on to my current Ph.D. study on the history of Allen & Unwin. That was what he has meant to me. He gave me most of my friends apart from those I knew from a very young age. All the friends I’ve met—basically because we had the same interest of Tolkien—and all the friends I met here in Oxford had something to do with Tolkien. Yep, that’s me."
28,28,Male,20180530,eng,London,,England,"I am originally from Croydon in South London, England, and I now live in Oxford in Oxfordshire, in England. I first encountered the works of Tolkien through my mum. I think she maybe felt that I was not spending enough time reading or something like that, so she decided that I ought to read The Hobbit. She had first encountered The Hobbit listening to J.R.R. Tolkien extracts from Tolkien himself reading it on the radio I think when she was in her early teens. She wasn’t aware that it was Tolkien at the time, but she referred to him as a man with a comfy voice, reading about Bilbo Baggins and Gollum, and she did an impression of that. I thought the book sounded stupid to be quite frank, and I wasn’t interested; but eventually I gave in, and I was given a copy of the book for Christmas, and I loved it. I’ve never looked back. And around about that time—I was about eleven years old—the films of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring were just coming out. I wasn’t able to go see The Fellowship in the cinema, but I remember dragging my dad down to Blockbuster as it then was to buy a VHS copy of The Fellowship. Watched that. Loved that. Watched the rest of them. I had read The Lord of the Rings just prior to watching the movies, and really they’ve had an immense impact on me in terms of my friends. A lot of my friends are Tolkien fans, my family. It was a thing that we all talked about when we were younger in our teens, just going through the stories, talking about our favorite characters. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve really begun to appreciate more the ethos of what Tolkien was creating, the kind of world he was creating, the nobility, the beauty of that world, and of the vision of life that it presents. Some people have spoken of it as almost too much of a Utopian head in the clouds vision, but I don’t think so. I don’t think Tolkien is looking at politics or a particular political solutions or specific solutions to world problems. He’s looking at the quality of the character, of the person, of the things that interest them and that drive them forward—of friendship, of loyalty, of compassion. I think that that flows particularly from his Christianity. I think through that Tolkien has become to mean more to me than just a wonderful story that fascinated me as a younger person but has continued to inspire me as I grow older."
29,30,Female,20180604,eng,Sterling,Virginia,United States,"I will be turning thirty years old in a month, and I am from Sterling, Virginia. Tolkien has always been part of my life. We joke in our house that my siblings and I got Tolkien from our father and Lewis from our mother. Just because when it came to story-time, our father would read Tolkien to us and our mother would do the Narnia Chronicles. But my first personal, intimate moment with Tolkien… umm sorry I might cry a little bit because this is…. yeah. When I was five years old my godfather gave me a copy of The Hobbit all for myself. When I got it, it was like a magic book. It was one of the bigger ones. It had bigger print, and it had colored illustrations by Michael Hague. And on the inside, under the cover on the first sheet, he had inscribed it, “To Valerie: May it kindle the fires of your imagination.” It’s one of my most prized possessions. Unfortunately, the cover has come off over the years of moving and stuff. But I still have that, and it’s on my bookshelf; and it’s one of the things like if there was a fire that would be one of the ones I would grab. It’s like a family affair basically at this point. It’s always been there for us. I really like writing stories and I think that—having Tolkien, having Lewis—it not only created a foundation but then I was able to branch out from them and look at what their inspirations were. I’ve continually traveled away from them as I’ve gotten older. But when I find myself falling flat or I need a little rejuvenation because life has beaten you down—things are tough—they are always the sparks you go back to, to find that sense of adventure. The Hobbit, yeah, it’s just my absolute favorite and it’s where it all started. So, yeah, Tolkien is kindling."
30,54,Female,20180623,eng,Ashburton,,New Zealand,"I am fifty-four, and I am from New Zealand. I first read The Hobbit when I was age seven and Lord of the Rings about eleven. And since then I’ve probably read it yearly, thereabouts. My interest as a Tolkien fan—I always loved him, but I didn’t really go crazy over him or become a Tolkien scholar until about fifteen years ago when the films came out. Initially, it was just I got interested in the languages and thought they were beautiful and began soon studying them. I went online and one day when I was online I saw this little ad by Dimitra Fimi for a course in the stories behind The Lord of the Rings, and that was it. I was hooked. I’ve been doing it ever since. I’ve done my M.A. I am currently doing my Ph.D., about third year. And so my interrelationship is sort of with the books but also with the films. I guess being a Kiwi you can’t escape being influenced by the films, which has been a good thing for me. I mean it’s great to see my country use it. And I like, certainly, The Lord of the Rings films to a degree. I hated The Hobbit but never mind we won’t talk about the Hobbit films. I guess the thing that destroyed it a little bit for me was watching the films and there is a scene with the Elves and you hear the Bellbird go and immediately I am torn from “hey, this is Middle-earth” to “whoa, this is New Zealand.” You know, New Zealand for a landscape. So, what has he meant to me? I guess a number of things. He’s a connection to my mum. My mum read to me from when I was 2 days old. Books have always been an important part in my life and fantasy books have been important. I, as a scholar, have become increasingly fascinated in the stories. As a New Zealander, I am a young country, and I don’t have a lot of connection to my ancestors or my past. This has been a way to connect to them and hearing the voices and the things that they cared about which I find fascinating. I also do a lot of palliative care. So, part of their influence for me has been what’s important in life: Friends, family, friendship, love, which comes through very strongly. Riches, gold—those sorts of things don’t really mean much. For me Lord of the Rings is very much about escape and recovery. Spending my time with the Elves, it’s time to get away but also a time to evaluate what’s important in life. "
31,34,Male,20180703,eng,Krakow,,Poland,"I am thirty-four, and I am from Krakow in Poland. When did I first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien? It was in high school during the late Nineties. I remember spending a vacation at the mountains, and I remember reading The Lord of the Rings for the entire day and the day after that until I was through the entire trilogy. It’s not like it was an individual experience because the book was recommended to me by some of my colleagues. During those days, virtually everyone you talked to was a huge fantasy fan. And Polish fantasy literature of the day was practically one single name: Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of The Witcher. Even though The Lord of the Rings was originally translated, I believe, in the Sixties—I was kind of a second-generation fan—in the Nineties he was still kind of an introduction to the genre for everyone there. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Well basically due to the complexity of this work of his. For me world building was always number one as far as non-existent worlds are concerned because to me a truly believable world must be complex and the thing I really love about Tolkien is that you can exactly find those complexities in so many fields. Initially, I remember falling in love with Silmarillion due to this mosaic of Noldor kingdoms and all those genealogies of Noldor rulers, which was pretty amazing to me at the time. But later on there were other things. I remember much, much later when I discovered that newer languages are constructed by Tolkien as they were derived from the older languages. It was kind of mind blowing, this sort of attention that he put to detail. So, that’s probably the most important reason for me to really love his fiction. What has he meant to me? Actually, this is kind of a complex thing because for me it was kind of long-term relationship that we’ve got—me and J.R.R. What he really meant to me also changed. Initially, it was when I was a teenager it was basically one of the books that formed me in a way. Later on, it became more intellectual of sorts. I began to look out more about the creational process behind it all. I started reading The Book of Lost Tales, the Unfinished Tales, Tom Shippey and all the scholars. Actually, I went as far as writing two papers on my own and I became a PhD. student in literary studies. But still I feel this childish amazement whenever I open Silmarillion, and I think “yeah, that’s something that no other book does to you.”"
32,26,Male,20180704,eng,Minneapolis,Minnesota,United States,"I am twenty-six. I am from the Midwest and I currently live in Minneapolis. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I must have been eight or nine years old. My father gave me a book that his father had given him. I don’t know if my grandfather had ever read it, but my father had read it and loved it and cherished it; and it was a large leather bound copy with beautiful engravings of the tree of kings in Minas Tirith and it was just a wonderful copy and it included all three books of The Lord of the Rings including the appendices. I would stay up at night with my father, reading these. We’d trade of chapters and he would make me read in all the voices of the characters. At first it was kind of a slog because those were very long, incredible but also very detailed books for a kid of that age; but then I remember after a while we finished them and then I realized that I couldn’t stop thinking about them and then I read them all on my own. Those were probably the first lengthy chapter books that I dove into of my own accord and couldn’t put down. I spent a few summers just going through reading them—re-reading them. It actually wasn’t until later that I discovered The Hobbit. For me it was always the original series that was just… it was so meaty and so expansive and so wonderful. I still am a fan entirely. It seems like every year and every kind of phase of my life and phase of literary kind of appetite, there’s something else that he’s related to that I love. Recently I’ve been reading The Silmarillion for the second time around. It’s this wonderfully nuanced more kind of gritty and mythological piece that I can really lose myself into. I think that the reason I love him so much is because he lost himself so much in this world he created—this just wonderfully, wonderfully detailed world. I have never seen anything in another book that comes close to how just thorough and incredible it is. And so, I’ll keep losing myself in it for probably years and years and years."
33,31,Female,20180704,eng,Urbana,Illinois,United States,"I am thirty-one years old—I will be thirty-one in a couple of days. I grew up in Albuquerque. I currently live in Central Illinois. I first encountered Tolkien when I was a kid. I must have been around ten or eleven. My mom’s stepbrother had sent a copy of The Hobbit to my younger brother, and I read it, and I thought it was really weird. I wasn’t enamored with it right away. I think what really got me into Tolkien--I know this is kind of anathema to say—but it was the films that came out when I was around fourteen years old. The Fellowship of the Ring came out, and I remember seeing it in the theater for the first time and just being completely in awe. And, of course, this was during a time in my life, you know early teens when I was like figuring myself out. And I was like, “Dang this is really for me.” You know? So, then I went from there and I read the books, The Lord of the Rings, and I was really taken in by the values in those books about kindness and heroics and how even the smallest person can save the world, can save the day, and destroy evil. That was really, really important to me. The older I’ve gotten, the more those values have stayed with me, and I’ve turned to Tolkien and his works like in times where I’ve been having a really hard time in my life. Usually with my work but also just like trying to figure myself out. Things like that. My favorite character is Éowyn and I have tattooed on my arm a quote of the scene when she kills the Witch-King. It’s not like the most poetic scene, but I always turn to it when I’m like really fighting my own personal battles. So that’s why I decided to get that tattoo. I think even now with like the political situation of this country, I’ve been turning to Tolkien even more. It seems very dark and hopeless, but Tolkien reminds us that there’s always a light shining in the darkness. It sounds kind of silly, but that’s really important and having that there has really been a huge inspiration when I’ve felt as if this country is going to the dogs and going to hell. It’s been a very important thing for me. I really love Tolkien. I’ve read The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, and I think they’re amazing works."
34,53,Male,20180706,eng,Minneapolis,Minnesota,United States,"I am fifty-three years old. Originally from the great city of Buffalo, I live in Minneapolis now. [long pause] Mr. Tolkien…. So, I think it was the summer of 1976, the Bicentennial year of these here United States of America, I think it was. I was already into the Hardy Boys and various things, but someone—I don’t remember who it was—gave me a copy of The Hobbit. And that was the end. I carried that copy around with me EVERYWHERE. And I mean everywhere. And I read it over and over and over, and I mean over and over. At last count it was well in the triple figures, well over a hundred times. Though I admit, I lost count somewhere around 67-68. The Hobbit redefined my life. When I was a young kid in Buffalo, New York, and looking for some kind of fantasy escape, this was it. Middle-earth was it. I became obsessed. My first nickname is Frodo. There are still a few people on Earth who know me by that nickname. But it really says everything about me. Everything I own that has any value to me is named after something from Middle-earth, whether it’s my bike, which is named Asfaloth. My various computers that are named everything from Merry and Pippin to Boromir to whatever. If it has value to me it has a nickname from Middle-earth. I can’t overstate what Tolkien’s writings have meant to me, have influenced me. I used to review fantasy and science fiction for Walden Books in the Eighties, and it was because of my fascination with Middle-earth. I am writing a novel myself, set in Venice, in 2012, and inspiration comes from the original writings of Tolkien. One of these days I will make the pilgrimage to Oxford. I’ve been all over England but for some reason I’ve never been there. So, I want to thank you John Tolkien for what you have meant to me. The writings that you have given us. Thank you."
35,59,Male,20180718,eng,Westlake Village,California,United States,"I am fifty-nine years old. I am from West Lake Village, California. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien in Christmas 1971 when I was twelve. My cousin Sharon had hidden them in a clothing box from a department store; and I am ashamed to admit when I opened it, I didn’t know what they were. But I was disappointed because I had expected something like a sweater. I am a Tolkien fan because I decided by January to read the books that she had given me. She gave me the four Ballantine paperbacks of The Hobbit and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings. And I read them, sneaking them in eighth grade algebra—inside the algebra book—and I loved the stories immediately. But I had never heard of them until that point. What has Tolkien meant to me? Well, as an Eagle Scout I knew a lot about hiking and backpacking, and so that element of The Lord of the Rings, the nine Walkers, was immediately appealing. Tolkien’s love of nature, of trees in particular, I found appealing. But most of all, Tolkien has meant to me an opportunity to perform professional development at my work—I am a professor of English—that’s meaningful. And I do pay for my visits to the Marquette Archive. My school will no longer reimburse even partially. "
36,19,Male,20180729,eng,Winnipeg,,Canada,"I am nineteen years old. I first encountered a derivative of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien by playing a videogame at my friend’s house. I played The Battle for Middle-earth 2, which remains one of my favorite videogames of all time. And it was the lore of the videogame that got me into it. So, I played the game, and then I watched the movies; and then after watching the movies—probably about twice all of them—I read the books; and then probably after the third time reading the books, I became very much a Tolkien purist and decided that the films were insufficient adaptions. And so I’ve been reading and further exploring Tolkien ever since. Why am I Tolkien fan is a tough question. I think there is something about Tolkien that is very much inexplicable, but I think it’s fundamentally—it’s probably just very good story. Everything he writes, whether it’s the Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings or his fairy stories. Smith of Wootton Major is one of my favorites. And so I think his story, in and of itself, is reason enough to love Tolkien. I didn’t particularly like reading. I never liked English class until grade 10 when I started reading The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien was kind of my stepping stone from good story to good literature. Probably about the fourth time reading The Lord of the Rings I started getting the subtleties of it and I started delving much deeper. And so for me Tolkien remains kind of the first thing that enabled me to appreciate literature on a deeper level, and so that’s why it’s still a very important part of myself and my literary life. What has Tolkien meant to me? Well, it’s interesting because I have a difficult relation with Tolkien the man. I recently read the Carpenter Bio and I don’t think I would have gotten along with him. I think as a person I don’t think I would have gotten along with Tolkien. I have a very devout Christian friend who I am good friends with. So, I think we would have had Lewis and Tolkien-like arguments except I don’t convert. I think Tolkien and I would have had similar squabbles. So, I don’t think I would have gotten along with him. But for me Tolkien has been a lot of things. He was my introduction to Norse mythology and those sorts of things and so he really just opened up a wider realm."
37,47,Male,20180814,eng,Fox Point,Wisconsin,United States,"I am forty-seven years old. I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, about half an hour South of Seattle. And I have lived quite a bit of places over the last, especially, twenty years—everywhere from the Northwest to Tucson, Arizona to Phoenix, Arizona, to Park City, Utah and now living in Milwaukee for the past year or so. Well-traveled through occupation, which is fine; but anyway I first encountered the works of Tolkien probably late Seventies when in school—grade school—I was exposed to the animated film The Hobbit. And being a young kid who was very much into science fiction and fantasy, it kind of ignited an interest in the story a bit. And so I read The Hobbit. I am not a very fast reader, never have been, but I very much enjoyed The Hobbit book and after reading that and learning afterwards that there was another book that went on from that and learning how voluminous it was, I of course started reading that as well. The first time I read The Lord of the Rings was probably when I was ten or eleven or twelve years old. And at that time, it was more just the storyline and picking up key characters—and just with the overall storyline, because obviously it was a lot to grasp. But I very much enjoyed it and became engrossed in it just because I was interested in the science fiction and fantasy aspect of it. As did my friends, because it was the era of Dungeons & Dragons and things like that, and it just fit perfectly in with that. Then, probably about 6-7 years later, I read it again, in high school, and I could really actually comprehend it much better and much deeper than I did the first time. I picked up on more of the characters rather than just the key storyline or the key characters. I could actually pick up the secondary characters and start understanding it more on a little deeper level. About every seven or eight years I re-read it; for whatever reason, I just see it on my shelf, and I want to read it. And I’ve noticed every time I’ve re-read it I’ve gotten much more out of it. It’s like the next time I read it, I really started understanding the depth of the characters and their development from the first few chapters to the last chapters and how you’re following the development over the course of this. Then the next time I read it, the depth of the world they’re in and how vast it is and the detail. It is not only the breadth of detail in the characters in the world, but the depth of that as well. Then my most recent reading of it was really kind of drawing parallels to Tolkien’s background and how he came to those storylines, and how much it relates to probably his experiences in the Great War, and the common person being a factor amongst all the other heroes and having a difference at that. So, it has always connected me on a lot of different levels—on a lot if deeper levels—everytime I’ve read it."
38,66,Female,20180817,eng,Wauwatosa,Wisconsin,United States,"I am sixty-six, and I am from Waukesha, Wisconsin. I first read The Fellowship of the Ring when I was thirteen and I was just captivated by the story, the character development. I don’t know why, but I was. I read it. I got the book as part of a book fair which they had in the day. We had study hall and you had to either study or read. I just randomly picked up that book and just was taken by it. So then getting to the end I’m like, “I better find out what these other books are.” So, I ended up getting the other two books. I’ve always read the book if you know what I mean. I have a book that I’m going through all the time. I didn’t get into all the Tolkien fandom. I’m just happy he wrote my favorite book. But other than that, I’m not a fan club member or anything like that. I sure enjoyed your presentation. That was cool, and now that I’m retired I might look into it a little more because it was pretty interesting. But like I say, I’ve always had it. I still have that first book. It was paperback, and I can still smell the paper because it was distinctive at the time for whatever reason. It’s all torn and tattered. I’ve always had it going if you know what I mean. I’ve got favorite scenes and stuff like that. I enjoyed the movies too. They were good. But the books are my favorites and so, anyway that’s all I got."
39,51,Male,20180823,eng,Shrewsbury,Missouri,United States,"I am fifty-one years old, and I am from St. Louis, Missouri in the United States. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I was eleven years old. I received a boxed set of The Lord of the Rings for Christmas. I remember clearly that that year my brother got a television—my younger brother—and I got books. I was horrified, until the next day I began reading the books. And they sucked me in and took me on a journey. That was years and years ago. Nobody knows where the TV is, but I’ve actually had those books rebound. I’ve read them so much and I’ve rebound them in red leather and read them every year now. Some years I read them in Spanish; some years I read them in Latin and other languages--Portuguese. But usually my English copy. And Tolkien has been a big part of my life because The Lord of the Rings have done for me what he talks about in “On Fairy-Stories” really. Fantasy and recovery and escape and consolation. Not to escape from the world but to get perspective on the world. Traveling with the fellowship in Middle-earth is a way to step aside and think about what’s going on in my own life. Never again setting aside completely reality, but just giving some perspective, and so that’s been important to me. It’s been huge for me because I’ve then used it in my professional life. I am a Christian minister, and I am a professor at Eden Theological Seminary, and I serve a church as pastor. I’ve also traveled around the world and done contextual Bible studies with people in dozens of languages. And I often use that idea of Myth as we talk about encountering and engaging the Bible. I find that people really relate to that well. Tolkien has meant a great deal to me. I think also, over the years, it’s been interesting to get into his other works. I remember that my mother followed up knowing that I liked The Lord of the Rings and got me a copy of Unfinished Tales. It took me a while. Now, I am glad to read all those pieces as well. But for me The Lord of the Rings is really the key text. So, I’m delighted to be a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, and I’ll continue to read his work."
40,67,Female,20180828,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am sixty-seven years old, and I actually am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first encountered The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in high school. And we’re talking the late Sixties here. I was the first in my school to wear a “Frodo Lives” button, which I still have. And I began to re-read the books every August, which I still do. I have maintained that tradition for decades at this point. Why am I a fan? It opened worlds to me beyond what I had seen before. Not only the world of the imagination, but other people, other cultures, other places.  It inspired a lifetime of travel; not only to go to England to see if I could find the Master’s grave and possibly where these sites were, but just to see other people and how they interacted because he created all these other cultures and languages. What has it meant to me? Well, in the long run not only did it give me a lot of pleasure, not only do my husband and I have bookshelves full of books related to this; but I’ve realized in the long run, it actually led me on my life’s trajectory. I first became a travel agent so I could actually see the world. And even more recently an anthropologist to continue to study all these other cultures, the ones in our living world as well. So, I think that’s it for me."
41,47,Male,20180831,eng,Menomonee Falls,Wisconsin,United States,"Forty-seven, from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Boy, Tolkien. My first experience with Tolkien, I was in third grade, so this would have been 1980. My dad had The Silmarillion on the bookshelf. I read what my dad read, so I pulled it off and started reading it, and that was a terrible, terrible mistake, reading The Silmarillion when you’re in Third grade. I was a smart kid. I was not that smart. And then my dad gave me The Hobbit. And I read through that like four times that summer. Just devoured it. Loved it. It was his from when he was a kid—well kid-ish, like college age. Then I found out there were more books, and I got those the year after. So, it was in Fourth grade I started reading through them, and it led me down this rabbit hole of fantasy. And then led me to—I had a benefit in that my father was a book binder, so he would get free books, and this was when they were doing the Time Life “Enchanted” series books. Tolkien led me into those, because my dad was like, “You like The Hobbit. Here, have these other books.” And then I’m reading stories about elves and fairies and dragons and then other mythologies to the point where I majored in Comparative Mythology in college. So, it’s been a part of my life since that young age. I always had an affinity for those stories. I remember watching the rodoscoping in The Lord of the Rings movies back in the day when I was a kid, and then I had those on videotape, so I wore them out. And I read so many other authors because of this. I got into Fritz Lieber and going back into some of the older stuff. I am still an avid fantasy fan today. I’ve been playing role-playing games since the 70’s so I got my first toe in the water a little bit before Tolkien. But then once I started reading the books and being able to read the books, it was just fascinating. The vast majority of my friends, I would say—like my longstanding friends—I met through my love of fantasy. Between Dungeons & Dragons and Tolkien, those are the two things that made now going on forty-year friendships in some cases. And it’s just been an extraordinary part of my life. I don’t know where I would be without it. I don’t read them as often as I used to. I used to read them every year. Now it’s about every two or three years. The Silmarillion is actually now my favorite of all of his works. A lot of that was because when I was in college with mythology I got into all the sagas. That’s how it’s written, and I love the tales they tell. He was a master world-builder and that’s fascinating. "
42,58,Male,20180921,eng,Arlington heights,Illinois,United States,"I am fifty-eight years old, and I grew up and still live in the Chicago area. I live in Arlington Heights now. Grew up in Chicago. I first encountered Tolkien—I guess I’ve always been aware of Tolkien. When I was a growing up, I always knew who he was, and I knew what Lord of the Rings was, but I didn’t actually read anything by him until I was in college. That was when I was doing an independent study in my senior year on Anglo-Saxon poetry. One of the things that my professor assigned me to read was Tolkien’s essay on Beowulf, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” I remember him pointing out at the time that yes this is the same J.R.R. Tolkien that wrote Lord of the Rings. He is also an Oxford professor and a noted authority on Anglo-Saxon literature and language.  So, I read that, and I think maybe because of that I started picking up translations of his, like his translation of The Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I really like those because I really like Medieval literature. I think to this day some of my favorite things by him are actually his translations. His Beowulf, The Pearl, The Fall of Arthur, and some of the more recent ones that have come out. I think the reason why I’m a Tolkien fan is he has a great creative body of work, but he was also a scholar and a professor, and I think those two aspects of his work really informed each other in a really interesting way. For example, you see very few twentieth century poets writing alliterative verse. Tolkien did, and he actually did it pretty well I thought. I really like particularly The Lays of Beleriand, which I think is probably one of my favorite things from the Middle-earth canon. So that pretty much is why I’m a Tolkien fan. What his work has meant to me I think has been a couple of things. First of all, it’s been an example of just how far you can go if you follow your passions. I remember reading in Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien that, from an early age, he wasn’t just fascinated with language, he was passionate about it. And he would actually get excited when he found a new word, and it was that interest that led his scholarly work and that also led to Middle-earth. And I think also his work speaks to a basic human need to find a moral compass and to find a moral order in the universe. And so I think that pretty much says it."
43,63,Female,20180928,eng,Danville,Kentucky,United States,"I am sixty-three years old. I am from Danville, Kentucky but I moved there from Wisconsin, so I lived in Wisconsin most of my life. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I was in high school. I was living in Green Bay at the time and I was part of a theater group. We would write our own plays, and so we were trying to decide on a play to write, and we decided to do The Hobbit. We actually wrote our own script and staged it all, cast it all, and so forth. I was a goblin, and it was great fun. I found it a fascinating book. It sort of opened up ideas and other places that I had never thought of.  So, I decided I needed to read more Tolkien. I purchased the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, and proceeded to read it in one weekend. I sat on my favorite chair in the living room starting probably Friday night and I just read into the wee hours of the morning. I would eat in the chair, and I read the entire thing in one weekend. It was amazing. Probably like one book a day—just totally immersed myself in that. Why am I a fan? I’ve sort of alluded to that a little bit. It was my introduction to fantasy and I just found that intriguing, the idea of escaping to another place and so forth. But the interesting thing is—as I’ve gotten older, because I mean we’re talking like fifty years ago that this happened—is as I’ve matured, I’ve found nuances to his work that were not apparent to me as a kid. As time has gone by, I’ve delved into that a little bit more. My husband is a writer and a researcher and one of the works he is looking at right now is the concept of war and faith, and how do theologians deal with the idea of war. So, he’s looked at some of Tolkien’s things and the influences of World War One. We’ve kind of delved into that sort of thing. We’ve delved into the theological underpinnings of his work. I like to think that my interest in Tolkien has matured as I have matured and as I have increased my education. It’s pretty amazing that something can be attractive to kids and adults. "
44,37,Male,20181024,eng,Shelbyville,Indiana,United States,"I am thirty-seven years old, and I am from Indianapolis. I first encountered Tolkien when The Hobbit was assigned my sophomore year of high school. And any time a sophomore is assigned a text to read in high school, it’s usually a burden and a chore and an obligation; and I was pleasantly surprised to find that The Hobbit was not at all—I really enjoyed it. I kind of became enamored with that world and with fantasy literature since then. I did not read any further Tolkien until college when The Lord of the Rings movies came out. Peter Jackson’s vision of Middle-earth I think was very appealing to me at the time, a lot of the aesthetics from the costuming. I can’t read Tolkien’s works without picturing Legolas as Orlando Bloom now, for better or worse. Why am I a Tolkien fan? I love the way that Tolkien gives you context. He’s able to masterfully give you deep history in a few lines. I’ve always craved context. I don’t know if that’s because I’ve been with Tolkien for so long and read his works for the last almost twenty years. But I love context. I love the world that he built. It’s super fascinating. He’s been an inspiration. I am currently working on my PhD. and I’m focused on genre fiction of the twentieth century: science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I don’t think that I’d be interested enough in any of those genres if it wasn’t for my experience reading Tolkien and my affinity for his works and I greatly enjoy seeing how his influence has spread throughout various genres. I think there’s a lot of modern science fiction that focuses on world-building in ways that are very similar to the one that Tolkien built in Middle-earth. It’s a fascination. He introduced me to the genres that I’m going to spend the rest of my life researching, and talking and writing about."
45,8,Female,20181025,eng,Oregon,Wisconsin,United States,This interview is restricted until 2027 because the fan was only eight years old on the date of the interview. 
46,38,Female,20181025,eng,Oregon,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-eight years old from Oregon, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was six years old, the summer between kindergarten and first grade. My mother brought out The Hobbit and read the book to us, and I could not get enough of it. I hated that school ended and my mom brought Tolkien into my life to substitute school for the summer and I ate it up. She got done with The Hobbit, didn’t think she was going to read The Lord of the Rings to us and then totally went into all three of The Lord of the Rings books. And he’s been a part of my life ever since. I am a big fan because his works opened up so many doorways to other fantastic writers, with the fantasy and different amazing worlds. But he created so many amazing places and people and characters that it was just so much fun. It opened to the door to The Chronicles of Narnia and different stories like that. And it’s meant so much to me that my mom shared that with me. She was introduced to Tolkien when she was in college and couldn’t wait to introduce it to somebody else so that she could talk to somebody about it. And we would have just fabulous conversations about the characters and the places and, “Well what if this happened?” or “What if that happened?” And it just spurred on a whole bunch of different conversations. It’s been a part of my life for quite a long time and I’ve really enjoyed his work and his characters and the books and his life."
47,31,Male,20181101,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-one years old, and I am from Youngstown, Ohio. I think it was in a reading class in seventh grade. It was one of those assignments—like open assignments where you get to choose whatever you want to read—when I first encountered Tolkien. I might have had some vague notion that a movie was coming out the next year--this was in 2000. But I just know I went all-in on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings just based on reputation. From the get-go it was the romance that captured me. The great warriors and fair ladies and adventure across desolate landscapes on perilous journeys. That won my heart. But then once you think about it a little bit more it’s like, “Okay, why did I like it so much?”. There are other things that have plenty of adventure, but it was the richness of it, of the texts. The lived-in universe. The depth and breadth of that world. It seemed so authentic. It seemed so real. And that’s something that’s kind of weird to say because it’s a fantasy. But it was so richly written—The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, these works—that it felt real. And that’s something that I had never felt before in a piece of fiction. And over time you read these works on a few more occasions it starts to become more meaningful to you. So much that it becomes kind of like a religious text in a way. Not for the divinity of the work but for the cultivation of spirit. These are really special things to me. Samwise says, “There are some things worth fighting for” and that’s what I really got out of this. It was a triumphant work, but it was bittersweet. There is always something that’s lost in your fight. But there are some things worth fighting for and two things that I fought for that really were connected to The Lord of the Rings: I married my high school sweetheart and Lord of the Rings is something we really bonded over. In mid-high school she gifted me this beautiful, beautiful handwritten chapter of The Houses of the Healing that she wrote in like an elvish script and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was and is a magical gift. Also, a lot of people groan at the descriptions of nature that Tolkien gave. But I loved it and I found it engrossing.  I am a forester now and I am wondering, “Would I be married, would I be a forester if it wasn’t for J.R.R. Tolkien?”"
48,26,Male,20181120,eng,Waukesha,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-six years old, and I am from Waukesha, Wisconsin. I was first introduced to The Lord of the Rings by my older brother. We were up at our grandparent’s house on vacation. I was raised by parents who were raised by parents who believed that things like Dungeons & Dragons and Harry Potter and even Pokémon were unfit for children. A religious home. And that extended to Lord of the Rings because my mom had only heard of it in passing from friends or murmurings at church or references in Zeppelin songs. I had grown up reading Chronicles of Narnia and after doing a bit of digging and my brother reading to me or letting me read his copies of the books while we were on vacation, I was like, “Mom, can I read these books?” and she was rather set in her stance. He and I did a bit of digging and found the very tangible connections between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and that kind of eased a lot of her concerns. She finally let me rent the books from the library and started reading through them; and from page one, I was enraptured. I read the same copy from the Waukesha library. It was a compiled version of the entire Lord of the Rings, not The Hobbit, but the three books, all of the appendices—1,193 pages. That number is forever burned into my memory, because I read it over and over and over from third grade on. I’ve maintained that tradition ever since. I’ve read—at the very least—read The Lord of the Rings every year. Time permitting, I’ll go through The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Hobbit as much as I can along that annual re-read. It’s one of those works that I can consistently come back to even if I’m not reading books as often as I used to. I’m still always paging through these. So, I’ve been a fan for as long as I can remember. The books were artistic masterpieces. The man could write about paint drying and it would still be a moving and poetic piece. It’s the kind of thing that works across all mediums, whether it’s movies, games, books, audio… everything."
49,25,Female,20190103,eng,Lebanon,Pennsylvania,United States,"I am twenty-five years old, and I am from Lebanon, Pennsylvania. The first time I encountered Tolkien was when I was twelve years old. It was back in 2003. My older brother was going to see The Return of the King, which had just come out in theaters, and I wanted to go with him. My mom wouldn’t let me. She said I was too young, and it was too gory. But somehow I found my way in anyway, and ever since then, it was like a calling to my little twelve-year-old brain. This was different than anything I had ever seen, anything that I was going to see, ever. It was like a calling home. It was like somewhere that I knew I belonged, and something that I could be a part of. As soon as I saw that movie, my mom was really mad, but who cares. I dove into The Hobbit. I dove into The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As I got older, The Silmarillion, Lost Tales. Then I started to get into his mythology, just anything that I could get my hands on. I was a woman obsessed. I wanted to know everything. Arguably that hasn’t changed. There are so many reasons why I am a Tolkien fan; but I think at the root of it, it’s something about the realm and the history that he created just speaks to something that is at the core of who I am. It’s even a part of myself that I’m not sure I even understand yet; but it’s something old and primal. Who knows, maybe I was like an Ent or an Elf in a past life. That would be really cool. But just the depth that he brings to Middle-Earth: the characters, the wild locations, the storyline. His whole realm of Arda its astonishing. And it gives me a very real place—almost like a parallel to our world—to retreat to, and characters that you can feel like you can really get to know. I have also always found comfort in nature. That was a huge inspiration for Tolkien. He just paints these pictures in your mind, and it gives you a longing to go see these places like they’re real. That’s surely a main reason why I’m a fan. And that Aragorn guy isn’t so bad, either. Tolkien has meant everything to me. His influence can be found in almost every facet of my life—my career as a wilderness guide, as an outdoor educator. Those vibrant descriptions he makes, that makes me want to share with other people. My family, we bond over Tolkien. My personal life, it gives me somewhere I can retreat to, somewhere to learn and discover; and even in my spiritual life led me to paganism, since his is rooted in that. I owe a large part of who I am to a man I’ve never met but feel like I’ve known my whole life. So, thanks Professor Tolkien."
50,27,Female,20190111,eng,Berkley,Michigan,United States,"I am twenty-seven. I am from Michigan. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when my mother took me to see The Fellowship of the Ring when it came out in theaters in 2001. I was immediately hooked. It led me to reading The Hobbit and the works of The Lord of the Rings, of course seeing the other movies and even collecting a little bit of paraphernalia and getting myself really familiar with a lot of Tolkien trivia. The reason I love Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit so much is because they are stories that everyone can relate to. You can connect with at least one character in every story, or more than one character. I ended up reading a book entitled Finding God in The Lord of the Rings, and it talked about how Tolkien incorporated aspects of the Bible as he was a Christian; and love and kindness and compassion, which is just woven throughout all of his works. I think that whether a Christian or not individuals can see that timeless example of good overcoming evil. When we band together and stick together then anything can be accomplished. I think that that is why it resonates so much with myself and others is because, despite the hardships that all the characters go through, they’re ultimately victorious, and I think that we all want that in life as well. The obstacles that we face we know that with the help of our friends and our family we can overcome that. And I think that’s why it tends to resonate so much with people as a result. Additionally, the intricacies of the story are just phenomenal when you think about the timeline and how it matches up perfectly and how he connected all these characters and really created an entire world for us. Family trees and histories, and archives, and languages. When you think about how in-depth that is, it’s really quite phenomenal. We don’t really get that a lot in literature where we have an entire world at our fingertips."
51,42,Male,20190128,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am forty-two years old. I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien—I actually haven’t read the works, believe it or not; but I became familiar when I was interested in the movie trailers that came out in 2001. I thought, you know, this might be a really cool idea to go and see those because it looked really cool. Based upon that, went with my step-dad, my step-brother, step-sister. They were all game, but my step-dad had no clue what was going on. I guess I’m a Tolkien fan because of the movies for sure; but also my brother-in-law and my sister and their kids—he read them to their kids growing up, and they’re older now and in college. They’re huge fans. That was actually something I missed out on, but they love talking to uncle Nick about Tolkien and the movies and what have you. So big fan there.  As far as what Tolkien has meant to me, being a Christian and being in recovery, I know that Tolkien was a Christian as well, and you can definitely see that in his writings. It’s a lot like a Christian allegory. I mean there are so many big huge themes that he talks about related to human beings and their frailties, such as lust, such as betrayal, redemption, resurrection. Those stories have really meant just a ton to me in my own recovery walk. Those movies and those themes have enhanced the recovery work that I do. Those movies have been a huge blessing to my life, especially when it relates to the whole idea of Gollum being addicted and unfortunately, as an addict, not getting the redemption, the resurrection that we all hope he gets. So many others getting that such as Frodo, such as our King… I can’t remember his name right now. But anyway, that’s the biggest thing. It’s a spiritual journey, and I am just so grateful for it, and I am going to keep revisiting it.  "
52,30,Male ,20190131,eng,Limerick,,Ireland,"I am thirty years old now. Originally, I am from Russia although currently I live in Ireland. Speaking of when I first encountered the works of Tolkien, actually it was a two-phase process. First of all, when I lived in a very small and remote village in a forest in Russia, while I was about seven or eight years old, when I got in our local library a book called The Hobbit, I enjoyed it quite a lot, and I actually have read it a few times over. But my parents declined my request to buy The Lord of the Rings although I had learned that Tolkien wrote the sequel. As odd as it might sound for some hard-core Tolkien fans, my first encounter with The Lord of the Rings was through the movies. I was fourteen years old at the moment. My older brother he presented me for Christmas a videotape of the first movie of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. That exactly was the moment when I became a Tolkien fan. The night after watching the movie, I had already begun dreaming about Middle-earth. And so it went since then. Then, of course, it was the fandom and such and such and such and such. Why I am a Tolkien fan? I guess a number of reasons. Reason number one, it somehow played along with my interest in history, which I had from as early as I remember myself. My interest in my heritage—partly it is Celtic heritage—of course, we know that Tolkien was more interested in Germanic rather than in Celtic but nonetheless. Apparently, I am a Tolkien fan because it resonates with my interests, with my Catholic faith, with my interest in history and in mythology. I think it meant for me more than just a book because it actually created maybe the whole part of my life with my education, with my current research, with my current attempts to write something myself. Basically, it provides me with a lot of friends, a lot of life experience, and pretty much everything else."
53,53,Female ,20190222,eng,Buffalo ,New York,United States,"I am fifty-three years old, and I am from Buffalo, New York. I first encountered Tolkien when I was in the seventh-grade, so 1977. I was a seventh-grader taking some eighth grade classes so I sort of felt like an outsider. One of the teachers had the map of Middle-earth on a bulletin board behind his desk. It took me three weeks probably to work up the courage to ask him about it. But when I did, his demeanor changed completely. He walked me over to it, told me it was a map of Middle-earth, an amazing world. I could hear joy and wonder in his voice. He pointed, “This is Rivendell, and Moria, and here’s Mirkwood.” I was fascinated as he told me about elves and dwarves and hobbits. Then he did an amazing thing. He handed me this well-worn paperback of The Fellowship of the Ring and told me this was the place to start. The world is so immersive and the characters so relatable. I can’t imagine how anyone could read Tolkien and not be a fan. For me, I read it at a time when I was feeling awkward as if I didn’t fit in anywhere. It was just such a wonderful escape. Along comes this amazing story where characters have the courage of their convictions, and friendship matters, and history matters. Faith and belief are important, and music, and language, and poetry; and it’s all set within this epic adventure. After the trilogy I read The Hobbit. After The Hobbit, I re-read the trilogy. And then The Silmarillion; that took a couple tries, but there’s just so many great characters and stories I fell in love with that one, too. Years later I was given an illustrated copy of The Father Christmas Letters, and that is always a joy to see at holiday time. That’s it really: Joy. That’s why I am a fan. His writing has brought me a great deal of joy. What has he meant to me? People seem to love the “not all those who wander are lost” quote. It’s a good reminder that the journey matters; but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? The journey matters, but so does arriving at our destination—even if it isn’t a place we want to go. Most of us would never choose to go to Mordor, but there was important work to do there. So, journey. Enjoy your companions. Notice the songs and the forests and the food and the characters that you meet along the way. But have the courage to arrive at the place where you are needed. Tolkien taught me that, and that lesson has meant more to me than I can adequately express.   "
54,32,Female,20190225,eng,Falls Church,Virginia,United States,"I am from Cleveland, Ohio originally. I first encountered Tolkien’s work through The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings at a pretty young age. He was a favorite of my father’s. He first encountered him in college. His books had a huge impact on my dad’s life. He really found a kindred spirit in Tolkien. So, when were even too young to appreciate The Hobbit, he would tell us bedtime stories based off of The Hobbit in his own words, kind of introducing us to the world and the ideas of Tolkien long before we could actually read them. His work and his thought has always been closely associated for me with my father and with the joy and the life that his work has brought to him through all the years. I would have read The Lord of the Rings for the first time in high school and fell in love with the story and everything that Tolkien does and went on, on my own, from there to read The Silmarillion, and read his letters and just get as much as I could about him and what the inspiration was for his work. I think I appreciate so much about Tolkien, but I’ve always loved literature in general. I think one of the things that most moved me—initially encountering him but then also every time I go back to Tolkien—is also just how real his stories are, which I think is so grounded in his view of the world. Even just an initial reading of his work--but then after that the more you know about him and his life, it just becomes increasingly evident how interested he was in all kinds of aspects of life and how deeply sensitive and moved he was by things, by the experiences he had had. He had such a love of life and the world I think is really evident. His work and his life has meant a lot to me and been a big inspiration for me in my own journey and in my own life as I am pursuing a doctorate degree right now and hope to teach in the humanities. Tolkien continues to be an inspiration for me and someone who really entered into the heart of the human experience and was able to communicate that to all of us. "
55,51,Male,20190227,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am fifty-one years old, originally from Philadelphia, currently living in Milwaukee. When I was around ten or twelve, my mother tossed a copy of The Hobbit at me and said I should read it. She was not a particularly large Tolkien fan, but she just every now and then would throw some bit of culture at me that she thought I was ready to take in. Around that same time, I fell into a group of friends who were the ridiculous sort of Tolkien nerds who at twelve were writing in Elvish and playing Dungeons & Dragons and all that sort of stuff. So that all kind of happened at around the same time. But my first encounter was my mother throwing that book at me. I think that was about a year or two before The Hobbit animated movie came out. In terms of why I am a fan, what he meant to me—I think it was really about my first introduction to a world, a world that I could escape into. I had always been an avid reader but nothing ever really ever pulled me that way or maybe engulfed me into that experience of being not just part of something but it being like an identifier sort of thing. Like yeah I like Tolkien and that lead me into tons of other reading: science-fiction and fantasy. I went through The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings fairly quickly and then from that went on to the John Carter “Mars” and the Conan books and all the fantasy stuff. And then from there went to various science fiction.  But he always kind of remains to me that nostalgic pull for that first experience of being in that area. In fact, whenever I read The Lord of the Rings there are certain scenes that in my mind are the areas around where I grew up. The scene in The Fellowship of the Ring when the ringwraiths are washed away by the river was a little swamp near my house. I made a point of reading all the books one more time before the movies came out. I knew that whatever the movies had was going to be better than my imagination. Anyway, that’s the short version. "
56,43,Female,20190301,eng,Oshkosh,Wisconsin,United States,"I am forty-three years old, and I live in Oshkosh Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien—I was introduced by the Ralph Bakshi film when I was eight years old. My friend’s mother said, “Hey, these are books,” and she loaned them to me and went right through them and loved them. Read The Hobbit. Then I didn’t rediscover Tolkien until High School. At that point I had just made a break with my evangelical upbringing, so his beautiful biblical—not biblical but almost biblical—language really spoke to me in high school. I think as you mature different parts will call to you. I was pretty much hooked after eight years old. One of the reasons that I really admire Tolkien—his writing style. He is very precise in his language. It’s apparent in everything I’ve ever read by him that he has this respect for the spoken and the written word and the way they form together to form sentences. He’s got a music to all of his language, even the stuff that has nothing to do with verse. He just loves language and that really calls to me. His characters are incredibly believable. Even if to our quote/unquote “contemporary millennial minds” the language might be a little overly formal, his characters are absolutely representative of the whole spectrum of human emotion. It’s rare since I first read him to find anyone else’s characters who are so complete. Even the smallest characters are not one-dimensional, and I really appreciate that attention to every tiny detail. He does that completely. What he means to me going forward: I have adult children. I raised them on Tolkien. I think that every one of his lessons of goodness and being honorable is absolutely essential to all ages and all generations. And I try to carry that good work forward. "
57,48,Female,20190301,eng,Wausau,Wisconsin,United States,"I am forty-eight. I am from Wausau, Wisconsin. I’m going to start out by saying I am really glad to have the opportunity to do this. The second thing I want to say is, I was a fairy tale child. My parents had a set of collected fairy tales, and that’s kind of where I started my fantasy journey. I remember being in fifth grade and my mom had a set of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I somehow snuck in and started reading the first one. By the end of fifth-grade and into the summer after that, I finished them all. I spent that particular Labor Day on Rib Mountain. It was my sister’s birthday. We were having a picnic. I took my portable radio so I could listen to Wisconsin Public Radio as they ran all thirteen hours of The Lord of the Rings audio. I remember writing them a letter, and they sent me back a really nice poster that has since disappeared. That was my most exciting Tolkien moment, and then I remember getting into sixth grade and opening up my reading book, and in the back there was a list of recommended things. And there it was! The Lord of the Rings! So, I knew I wasn’t alone. That was sort of my jumping off point for becoming a fantasy and eventually a science fiction lover. Since then, I haven’t gone back to re-read them, but I feel like they are constantly a part of my life. I’ve stumbled across Tolkien in school doing academic work, reading some of his more scientific or academic kinds of things. That’s always been really interesting to me, being an English major. He’s just had such an impact on my life. One of the funny things that I do remember is I’m a huge fan of bears—the animal—and I was telling my ex-husband, “You need to have more bears in the fantasy novel you are writing.” He said, “There no bears in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.” I said, “Yes there are!” That was my revenge read of The Hobbit. I had to re-read The Hobbit to prove that there were bears in there.  So, that’s kind of my life with Tolkien. "
58,33,Male,20190301,eng,Wausau,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-three years old, and I am from Wausau, Wisconsin. My first introduction to The Lord of the Rings—it was because my mother was a huge fan. She read to my sister and I, The Hobbit, and from there I was always interested. Just a better connection to nature in general, being outdoors; it’s a very outdoorsy kind of a tale. And then as I grew older, I ended up reading The Lord of The Rings altogether, I don’t know, half a dozen times in high school and junior high. It really opens your mind to interesting ideas, and the intrigue and the depth of which Tolkien went into to actually describing an entire world—just to tell the story of Frodo—it was all pretty interesting, You can really pick at it for a long time, and that’s what I like to do. I suppose I don’t have much else to say other than it’s certainly enhanced my life. "
59,21,Male,20190302,eng,Lenexa,Kansas,United States,"I am twenty-one. I’m originally from Kansas City. I first encountered Tolkien’s works, probably in a similar way that lots of people my age did—in the movies that came out. I saw those when I was a kid, a young kid. There were so cool and I was very enthralled by them. I didn’t read one of the books until I tried to read The Fellowship of the Ring, like sometime mid-grade school. I found that tough. I didn’t get through it the first time. Then I went to The Hobbit and The Hobbit was much smoother. I sped through that and loved it. Really enjoyed it. But I didn’t actually read The Lord of the Rings until sophomore year of college I think, when I picked them up again. Because I was afraid of them, because I hadn’t seen them in a while—or the first time I had seen them it was too much for me to get through. But the second time around—I absolutely loved the way he writes. It is something I am a huge fan of. His description of things and events and places is fantastic. I mean the imagery, you can say it really feels like you’re there, but it really does. You can see everything going on in your mind’s eye. I’ve continued to read The Lost Tales of Tolkien that Christopher Tolkien has put together. I think I’ve continued to read it, not so much for description, but he has something like the world or like the way that he displays the characters. They all seem very honest and true. It is kind of tough to pin down what exactly it is in the characters. But something about the way they present themselves, the way they talk or do things, or their goals in life. Very neat. And I’ve started to do a little bit of learning Old English on the side. And so that’s also a cool thing to see that, Tolkien’s respect for language in what little I know about Old English and how he brings that in. "
60,57,Female,20190304,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am fifty-seven years old and I am originally from Monroe, Wisconsin. I think I first encountered Tolkien in the eighth grade because my parents, for Christmas, bought the family a set of the trilogy—The Hobbit and the trilogy. One of my older brothers—I come from a family of nine—was so enthusiastic about it. He kept talking about it and he was so excited that I couldn’t wait to pick up the next book that he finished. It was like that with my other siblings too. I loved it immediately. I think even though it’s a fantasy, the virtues that are portrayed are so real. He makes them so beautiful and so attractive. For me it was really an inspiration in my life, even though it’s fantasy. The idea of dedicating my life to a noble cause. All the virtues that come from love. If you really love, it brings out bravery, fidelity, courage. A host of other virtues—self-sacrifice. The other thing that I loved about the books that doesn’t come through in the movies—his writings are pervaded with cheerfulness and love of simplicity. Appreciation of the simple things in life, which I really love too. Even in the midst of suffering and difficult times that the hobbits still are cheerful and telling jokes and cheering one another up. So, I think this is what has inspired me with Tolkien and why I have read him over and over again, I think at least ten times. So, that’s it."
61,63,Male,20190305,eng,Anchorage,Alaska,United States,"I am sixty-three years old. I am a professor of English at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. I first encountered J.R.R. Tolkien back in 1965. I was a schoolboy in Oxford, England, and my school decided to do a musical performance of The Hobbit. Tolkien, of course, lived in Oxford, and he actually knew my father. And so he came backstage and he greeted all of us. He shook our hands and was just delightfully modest and avuncular. He wasn’t necessarily tremendously famous at that point; but he was well enough known that it was a really important moment in the life of the school to have done this musical performance of The Hobbit and to have done apparently quite well. At least he said it was quite well, which was charming of him to say that. Then I asked a fellow student of mine at the school what else had he done in addition to The Hobbit. The answer was he had done The Lord of the Rings. Of course, once I read The Lord of the Rings I was hooked. As far as why I am a Tolkien fan, I go to Shakespeare because I need to understand what it means to be human. I go to Tolkien to understand how the world works. I consider myself a fairly sophisticated thinker, but I will admit that ultimately I do believe in the reality of good and evil. And I do agree very much with Tolkien that evil can be defeated only as long as good is vigilant and forceful. And I do think that it is entirely feasible that evil will recur and that good has constantly to defeat it over time. What Tolkien has meant to me—well the answer, not to be hyperbolic, is frankly everything. I teach courses in Tolkien. I re-read him pretty much annually I’d say. I am writing a book about him that gets published sometime this year, towards the end of the year. What I find particularly compelling about him is that he has this really resonant message, but it is resonant within a context of a narrative—particularly Third Age, but frankly First Age and Second Age as well—which is just tremendously compelling. To that I’d add that his language is elevated in such a way that it’s hard not to take him seriously if you believe in the message. I wouldn’t say it’s a biblical use of language but it’s, as it were, pseudo-biblical. It’s elevating in a very interesting kind of way. That I think is pretty much all I have to say about Tolkien except that I wish he’d written more than he actually managed to. "
62,18,Female,20190306,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am eighteen years old, and I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When I was probably about fourteen, a friend of mine texted me and said, “Hey, it’s New Year’s Eve. Do you want to watch all of The Lord of the Rings movies—the extended cut—back to back?” I think it took something like twenty-four hours for us to get through all of them because we did take breaks. That was sort of my baptism by fire into the Tolkien world. I just loved them. I thought they were fascinating. I thought that Peter Jackson did an amazing job of portraying these fantastic works on to screen and making them a bit more accessible to the everyday audience. I thought that the stories themselves were so rich and so full of history and of myth and of metaphor and some satire, and just a great sort of look into how our world works and how the stories have survived over the years and how they are constantly being recreated and referenced. I mean how many Led Zeppelin songs have Tolkien references in them? So, I just found them to be absolutely fascinating. I think that he, as a writer, had an amazing ability to take his own experiences in his own life and referencing a lot of what was going on in current day events when he was writing these stories and what he himself had experienced and sort of disguising them in a way that made them accessible to nine-year-olds that wanted to read a fantasy book—while also providing some sort of commentary on the world and how that commentary has survived and how it still applies today. And how heavily referenced it is in pop culture I think is absolutely amazing.    "
63,51,Male,20190313,eng,Buffalo ,New York,United States,"I am fifty-one years old, and I am from Buffalo, New York, although originally I am from Westerly, Rhode Island. I first encountered Tolkien’s work back in 1979. My father had passed away. We were living in Westerly. Then from Westerly we moved to my mom’s family in western New York. People I had hung out with over the summers, I was now hanging out with them year-round. And that summer relationship with those friends changed, and I found myself becoming isolated. There was a cultural shift coming from Westerly to western New York. I was somewhat isolated. I had always been a heavy reader. I’d gotten away from that a little bit when I came to western New York; but I discovered my cousin’s library. He had been in college, so he was considerably older than me. In there was The Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship book art looked so attractive that I pulled it off, read it, and then I “borrowed” his other two books, and I finished the series within a month. I was hooked ever since then. At the same time, I was getting into Dungeons & Dragons, so it was a perfect gateway, I guess, to role-playing. Since then I’ve been a Tolkien fan. I’ve read—devoured—The Silmarillion, which actually I like much more than The Lord of the Rings. It’s a deeper read. I guess that’s why I’m a fan. As an historian, I see deeper meanings in events, and I think that’s what Tolkien brought to his literature. He addresses a deeper truth. Through fellowship, through struggle, through journeying, there’s a deeper meaning there. His Catholic faith I also think is important. There’s a structure. There’s an order even to disorder. Even to chaos, there’s an order, there’s a rhythm. I think those themes in his literature come to pass. I think his meaning is important because in our days—where everything is transitory, things are digitalized—there doesn’t seem to be deep meaning. I think Tolkien brings that. He brings value. He brings things. He talks about issues that last. I think that’s important."
64,56,Female,20190313,eng,Oak Creek,Wisconsin,United States,"I am fifty-six years old, and I live in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I got a three-book set of The Lord of the Rings for Christmas from my mother, and I read them. I played bass drum in a drum and bugle corps here in Milwaukee, and we drove a long bus trip down to New Orleans to play in the Mardi Gras. It would’ve been like February-March of 1977. I read the books on that trip, and I just became entranced. I loved them, and I am trying to figure out why. I think it was the difference between good and evil and maybe that meant a lot to me at the age of fourteen. His characters were just so vivid. I loved his use of language. I had not learned a foreign language at that time. I wouldn’t study Spanish until a couple of years later—and other languages. But I loved his use of language, and I loved his use of words that you knew came from another language but had been repurposed for his purpose. Why am I a Tolkien fan? I have admiration for anybody who can create a world that is not of our world but feels just as real as the planet that I am walking on. Tolkien certainly has done that. What’s interesting is that after I finished The Lord of the Rings I thought, “Oh! I’ll read The Hobbit.” I am embarrassed to say The Hobbit just didn’t do it for me. I struggled. I really had a hard time reading The Hobbit. I’m embarrassed to say that, but that’s the way it is. I’ve never read any of his other stuff. I read a biography of Tolkien, but I am just huge into The Lord of the Rings. That was just a big, big deal for me. And then when the movies came out, my first thought was “Ugh, I hope they don’t screw this up.” I am happy to say that I don’t think they screwed it up. I really love the movies; and as much as I didn’t like the book, The Hobbit, I really enjoyed The Hobbit movies. I think now that I am much older I would like to re-read The Lord of the Rings and see if they still mean as much to me. "
65,24,Female,20190315,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-four years old. I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I think a lot of people my age first encountered Tolkien’s works through Peter Jackson’s movies. I think I was about five or six when the first one came out. My family was always a “read the book first” kind of family.  So, my mom and dad pulled out The Hobbit, read it to me and my brother when we were kids. Kind of enjoyed it. My favorite part was that there were ponies in it; and then the ponies died, so I was not really too happy about that. Went on to see the movies, and I was upset that suddenly we lost Bilbo and Gandalf, who were the only two characters I knew. But I was still interested.  I guess I was really inspired by the women in the movies. I loved Arwen and Éowyn. Eventually I grabbed the books because I wanted to know more, specifically about those two characters. I was in fourth-grade when I read Fellowship of the Ring. Worked through the other books throughout the summer. Then I let them go for a while. I watched the Peter Jackson movies a lot. But I put the books aside, put the movies aside. I came back to it my last year of high school; and into college I started getting involved with more online communities. I was involved with a couple of different writing groups. People who wrote fanfiction. Did that for a while. But I met a couple of people from different places in the world. I’ve got two friends in Italy. We started writing Silmarillion pieces together. I’ve also got friends in Indonesia, some friends in Britain, Australia—pretty much all around the world. I was eventually able to meet up with them for a couple of trips. I’ve been to Vienna and London just to specifically talk to other Tolkien fans. It’s just been really great. A lot of what’s drawn us together as a group is just these pieces of information that we’re given in The Silmarillion. They’re quite under-developed in a sense. There’s an entire history of this world and not all the pieces are quite there. Everyone had their own angle to take when they went and looked at these pieces of writing. I’ve got a friend who’s a meteorologist, and she lives in Oklahoma. One thing that really interested her was weather patterns in First Age Middle-earth. So, it was fun for her to model how certain areas could be misty and how the mountains would affect that. And I just thought that, that was really great, that everyone with their backgrounds in linguistics, history, meteorology could all bring something to the fandom discussions."
66,78,Male,20190315,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am a Jesuit at Marquette. I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am seventy-eight years old. I first encountered Tolkien from my freshman college English teacher who was a bit of an Anglophile and who had a friend who sent him the volumes as they came out in England. They started coming out I think in Fall of 1954. He would tell us about them as part of the class. I didn’t read The Lord of the Rings until I was in graduate school, which would have been in the late Sixties; and I read The Lord of the Rings before I read The Hobbit, which was probably not the best idea. I read it at least twenty times since. So, I am obviously a fan. I have found that it’s just fascinating to go back and read it over and over again because every time I read it I find something new. And having seen the films, of course, I am taken by the similarities and differences between the films and the books; things which are in one character’s mouth in the book are in somebody else’s mouth in the movie. I think Jackson got it, but the movie is clearly limited. It can’t possibly capture everything. What it means to me? I guess I am struck by a couple of things. First of all, I am struck by the impotence of power, which is one of the major themes of the book; that power never conquers anything. I am also taken by the character of Éowyn. But mostly I am taken by the fact that there is a kind of unspoken Providence involved in this. Frodo fails, but the Ring is destroyed anyway. So that was what really struck me was that nobody destroys the Ring, but the Ring is destroyed. "
67,68,Female,20190312,eng,Vancouver Island,,Canada,"I am sixty-eight years old, and I come from Vancouver Island. I first encountered Tolkien in the late Sixties when the hippie movement in England was at its height. It truly was the most wonderful time to be alive down in St Ives, the hippie haven of the time. The excitement, the open-air camping in the summer at night, the beach with the gang. We read. We talked through the nights. And then we thought about the wisdom of the time, which was to hitchhike to Katmandu. Groove, of course, was the music and poetry of the day. And then the must do: read Tolkien. I am a Tolkien fan because coming from an old Scottish industrial town, it was poor but had excellent schools. I am grateful that I learned to read early, found that later on Tolkien’s writings can soothe me. I drank in the magic he created, the love of the Shire, the wonderful use of language, and the beautiful poetry. The glorious and terrible places he took me to. And the shock of Frodo’s inability to discard the ring. I took that personally and almost wrote to Tolkien about it as I was so upset by it. That it was Oxford don, a middle-aged man, who wrote such a mystical and magical tome was a real surprise to me. He wrote of a time when people were decent and morally, ethically clear in their manner and behavior. I have used the book endlessly, taking it with me on my travels from England to Scotland and then my home in Canada. I have reached for it in times of great personal stress during my life for both comfort and to help me cope. I can’t begin to tell you how it hurts me that this treasure is not in the Bodleian in England, although I know it was bought and came by honestly. My own copy of The Lord of the Rings was given to me in the summer of 1971 for my twenty-first birthday, which is kind of hilarious to read Gollum’s birthday present. I still have it. It’s a bit battered and bruised but along with my two sons the most prized possession. It will be forty-eight years old this year. The impact for me from Tolkien’s works, I realize now, was that I gave him a spot in the corner of my heart, subconsciously see that I traded my early teen life with all its enchantment, first in St Ives for my later life in Vancouver Island, where this hulking giant tree, the oceans, the mountains, and the old forest trees of Cathedral Grove. My funky little house which while not in the Shire is pretty close to it. "
68,35,Female,20190322,eng,Madison,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-five years old, and I am from La Crosse, Wisconsin. The first time I can remember really knowing Tolkien, I think was middle school. I think that’s the time frame because I can distinctly remember being on vacation in Florida and not being able to fall asleep and looking up and thinking that the door kept opening like when Bilbo was in the cave and he can see the cave opening in the background. And I have that memory really strongly in my head. I think I started reading The Lord of the Rings in high school, and we also got to play part of The Lord of the Rings symphony in band, and that was amazing. I really loved that. Then my freshman year in college was the year that The Fellowship of the Ring came out in theaters. So that pretty much consumed my entire life and existence. Another thing that happened that year was that I started playing Lord of the Rings-themed LARP—Live Action Role Playing. So that’s where I met a lot of people in college, including the father of my children. We were pretty big Tolkien fans and that was entirely how we met. Tolkien has meant a lot to me. It was kind of the only thing that made sense when I was in college was how much it meant to me. Revisiting it now as an older adult, it’s really profound, what I remember and what I don’t remember. I don’t think that I’d read the books since I’d really grown up and gotten divorced and had a lot of complicated life relationships. So, reading that and then reading the interactions between Éowyn and Aragorn and really understanding some of that and noticing how good the writing was and how much time he paid with that situation. So yeah, there’s just a lot. Obviously, I have a deep connection to the books, but I also have a very strong connection to the films. I can’t ever thank Tolkien or anybody that has been part of collecting and sharing his works enough, because, it is so important to who I am. "
69,9,Female,20190322,eng,Madison,Wisconsin,United States,This interview is restricted until 2028 because the fan was only nine years old on the date of the interview.
70,24,Male,20190322,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-four. I grew up in northeastern Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien—my dad was a huge Tolkien fan. Growing up, I think he would read The Lord of the Rings at least once a year. That was his yearly stepping back into the world. I had two older brothers, who were five years older than me. By the time I grew up, we were watching what they wanted to watch. So, I was watching The Lord of the Rings probably sooner than I maybe should have been. I remember, even as a little kid, I would wake up first, and I’d turn on The Fellowship of the Ring VHS. And as soon as I was done watching it. I’d rewind it and I’d start watching it again. I think those movies had a big impact on me. One, because it’s really interesting. I love fantasy genre, the sort of fantastical and other-worldly aspect to it. But just the depth of the story that’s being told is—every time you watch it, especially at different age increments—you start picking up on things that you didn’t pick up on before. The movies themselves are I think a visual masterpiece and got me into the track of studying TV and film in college. Watching the behind the scenes of The Lord of the Rings is what sent me on my major path. But I think what’s great about Tolkien is his command of language. He’s a linguist. The way that he incorporates not only English but his background in studying other languages and other ancient languages as well and builds such a complete universe for us to explore is really fascinating. I remember talking with my dad, who is the ultimate nerd in this, “Why does Aragorn show up here? Why does Aragorn show up there?” to “What is the theology going on in this world? What’s the God structure here? And why does the world exist?” I think that’s a great part of The Lord of the Rings is that you get these fantastic battles, but it’s exploring what’s good and what is evil. But it’s also exploring what is friendship? What is the purpose of life? Is it to be this great thing or is it to enjoy a book? Or dinner? Or friends? You get all of that. It’s sort of an experience that keeps on giving the more and more you read it. "
71,26,Male,20190325,eng,Chicago,Illinois,United States,"I am twenty-six years old, and I live in Chicago. I first encountered Tolkien when I was about seven. My family actually moved about seven times before I was twelve, and I am the oldest of four kids. When we were up and running and moving across country, obviously my parents always put on Lord of the Rings, which is kind of an odd choice for four kids under the age of eight. So, Lord of the Rings was always like a super constant in our family and something that’s really kept us connected and grounded over the years. Then I first actually read The Hobbit when I was about twelve. I would say I’m a Tolkien fan just because I love that, whether it’s reading the books—which normally I am a firm believer in reading books first before any movies—or watching the movies. It’s just in that whole other world that you can fall into, and everything is so carefully thought out, from the characters to the different places. It’s always something inspirational that I can cozy up with or to get like super into. I just love it. It’s a whole other universe to fall into. What Tolkien’s meant to me—like I said, I’ve just been a huge fan for as long as I can remember. I think on a more personal level I’ve gotten a lot of life lessons out of his work, whether that’s the courage that the characters have, or the lifelong friendships, or overcoming differences through different groups of people for the common good. I just think that there’s a lot of cool things and inspirational pieces—the love of adventure. I think that’s what I’ve taken from it. And I’ve also dressed up like a Hobbit on three separate occasions. So, it’s a true fan."
72,33,Male,20190328,eng,Calcutta,,India,"I am thirty-three years old. I am an assistant professor here at Marquette University in the Computer Science Department. I first encountered the works of J.R.R Tolkien way back in 1992. I grew up in Calcutta, India, and my father used to take my sister and I to that book fair every year. And so, one year he took me to this book fair pavilion, to this publisher that I haven’t heard of before. He bought me two books, and he said, “Son, your education starts now.” They were The Two Towers and The Return of the King. My first book that I read of Tolkien was The Two Towers. I didn’t even start with The Fellowship of the Ring. I read The Return of the King, and then the following year I went back and got The Fellowship of the Ring. So, it was all out of order. And then I read The Silmarillion and then I read The Hobbit. That just opened the floodgates. Then when I moved to the United States, of course, I read Book of Lost Tales, History of Middle-earth, and then started devouring everything that I could possibly find. That was all kind of in the Nineties. My age range was between seven and fifteen. So, it was great. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Well, there’s three components of Tolkien’s works that I really like. First, I’m very interested in languages and learning languages. I read, write, and speak four languages. And then when I encountered Tolkien and when I encountered Quenya and Sindarin, I was like, “Ok, I have to learn one of these.” So, I spent a lot of time after my book fair adventures going back to the appendices of The Return of the King and reading and trying to learn Quenya. So, that was one component. The second component was that was my first introduction to fantasy writing, and I am just a huge fan of the old school high-fantasy, good and evil kind of work. Then the third component of that is that it just—I guess I’m escapist—it kind of takes me to this different world which is wonderful and I just really enjoy that. What has Tolkien meant to me? Well fundamentally, Tolkien has actually—or his works have actually—informed my interest in research. My current research interests center around computationally analyzing text in different forms and trying to figure out what changes from one version of a particular text to the other. A lot of Tolkien’s works kind of center around that. Having read the peoples and the history of Middle-earth, I started kind of figuring out well could I learn how to kind of unpack all of these different things and themes that are going on? And being a computer scientist, I always wanted to ask the question: Could we do this via computers, data, and algorithms?"
73,25,Male,20190329,eng,Oak Lawn,Illinois,United States,"I am twenty-five years old, and I am from Oak Lawn, Illinois. I first encountered J.R.R. Tolkien when I was about ten years old. I was in the second grade and The Fellowship of the Ring had just come out onto DVD. From that point on I decided that I wanted to be involved in Middle-earth. I really liked it. My brother got the set of the trilogy; he got The Hobbit, some other sources. He didn’t let me read it for a long time, so I am still behind a little bit. I’m a big Tolkien fan just because I like the creativity of all of it. I didn’t realize that he created Middle-earth because he created so many other new languages. I just thought he was just creating, just to create a fantastical epic. I really admire Tolkien’s message in all of his works, the Christianity behind it, the good versus the evil. I really liked it. I always felt he was kind of ahead of his time. One character in particular is Éowyn. She was kind of a champion for women before, I believe, there was even thought of women being in the battle. She was strong. Of course, all of his characters you just feel so resonated with them. You feel connected to them. You feel sad when some people perish. But the most favorite I believe for most people is Gandalf. Everyone loves him. He’s meant a great deal to me. I wanted to take a creative writing class this semester to begin trying to mimic Tolkien a little bit, but I was not able to take a class. Eventually, I hope one day there are more spin-offs or maybe more background stories to come out of Middle-earth. I am very excited for the Amazon Lord of the Rings series to come out. There’s no doubt that Tolkien was a main contributing factor to the fantastical epic genre in a sense. If it wasn’t for him, I would not have enjoyed so many countless videogames and movies, and television shows with elves and dwarves. I really wish he had the technology today to be able to write faster, to create more, because I want more. "
74,64,Female,20190331,eng,Stroudsburg,Pennsylvania,United States,"I am sixty-four years old. I live in northeastern Pennsylvania. I first discovered Tolkien on Christmas. It was either ’66 or ’67. My older sister had requested The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and my mother, knowing I was a Narnia fan, thought The Hobbit would be good for me. Well I read it in a day; and then since my older sister was in high school and had a social life, I snuck into her room and read her copy of The Lord of the Rings while she was out having fun. And I think I finished it before she did. Since then, I have read The Lord of the Rings at least once a year. Fortunately, that sister eventually gave me the audio books, so it’s easier. I listen to them as I walk. I am a Tolkien fan for the same reason I snuck into my sister’s room: I loved the depth of The Hobbit. At first it was the maps and the runes, and when I got to The Lord of the Rings, I loved the appendices. I still read them. Later, I was one of the generation that had to wait ten years before The Silmarillion. So, between that time, I read “Leaf by Niggle,” “On Fairy-stories,” and “Smith of Wootton Major.” Oddly enough, despite the fact that The Lord of the Rings is my favorite work and remains to this day because some of his words still after fifty years just bring me to tears when I listen to them—it can be rather embarrassing when I’m walking in the neighborhood, to be sobbing—but I think the more important thing, I was thinking about this last night, the fact that Tolkien, when I read “Leaf by Niggle” and “On Fairy-stories,” and the fact that this was someone who was so creative and had such depth of knowledge also had a really deeply spiritual life gave me permission, when I went on my own spiritual journey, to take it seriously. I, in some respects, credit him with allowing me to come back to my faith because I respected his work as an artist, and he took that very importantly. It’s been a wonderful source for me, and I am glad that I am now taking my study of him more seriously. And I hope to come to Marquette and look at the archives."
75,44,Male,20190401,eng,Alpine,Utah,United States,"I am forty years old. I am from Utah—alpine Utah. My first exposure to J.R.R. Tolkien’s work frankly is from his influence. I was a big fantasy geek. I was part of the Dungeons & Dragons generation as I like to call it, and so I first encountered his works through his influence in cartoons and other media. But the first book I read of his was actually The Lord of the Rings. I was a teenager. I was a struggling reader as a teenager. I was kind of trying to find myself, and it was interesting because at school my teachers were telling me “oh, fantasy is not good, it’s not quality literature” and so as an act of rebellion—and also I kept seeing The Lord of the Rings in the library—I picked them up and then I plowed through them. It was a big moment for me because I got a lot of confidence from completing that series and really kind of saw myself as a reader and then that helped springboard me later on into studying English as a career and then get my PhD. in Education. That had a big impact on me in my confidence as a reader and as someone who can comprehend and engage in difficult texts. But that’s not why I keep reading them, and that’s not why I celebrate Hobbit day every year with my family—it’s second to Christmas as a family holiday. It’s not the reason why, when my dad passed away, I quoted Lord of the Rings in the funeral speech. His works have had a profound impact on my life. He made the comment that he was trying to create a mythology for England, but I think he’s created a mythology for all of us fantasy geeks that’s had a much broader impact. His works engender hope in a way that I think no other fantasy works do. We see that both in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and we see that—as a former English teacher we talk about that theme of how Tolkien’s work came out of a world that was very nihilistic—post-World War One—and he decided to help people see that despite all that darkness, despite all that tragedy, that we can have hope, that we can have hope for a brighter day, and I appreciate that. And also from an academic side I just cannot say how much I am amazed at what he created. When you think about the depth and the breadth, he is unmatched. I am grateful for Tolkien. We wouldn’t have the fantasy and science-fiction genres of today without him."
76,26,Male,20190401,eng,Nashville,Tennessee,United States,"I am twenty-six years old, and I am from Nashville, Tennessee. I first encountered Tolkien unconsciously. When I was in grade school, my parents apparently had the Ralph Bakshi and Ranken & Bass animated films, and I watched them when I was little, and I have no memory of them. But I encountered him for the first time when I was in about fifth grade. The Return of the King was coming out into theaters, and so my parents bought me The Fellowship of the Ring movie and The Two Towers movie—the Peter Jackson films obviously. I re-watched those films over and over again until the night we saw The Return of the King in theaters as a family. It was a huge event. The theater was packed. After that, I just kept re-watching the two movies in anticipation of the third one coming out on film. I bought the videogames. Played those a million times. Then when The Return of the King came out, I just had those on repeat all the time in high school and even in college. I actually didn’t read any of the books until college, and so that’s kind of where my first encounter ends. I’m a fan of Tolkien—kind of piggy-backing off my Tolkien origin story—is I picked up Tolkien back in college, started reading him, and I was not a very good student until I started reading Tolkien’s works as an extra-curricular activity. So, I had a full load of class work that I was ignoring, not doing my homework. I was reading The Hobbit. I was reading The Lord of the Rings. The whole thing. Even The Silmarillion, I jumped right into that, too. It improved my academic work. I am a person of faith, I’m a Christian. I was wrestling with my faith journey and reading Tolkien’s works brought me closer to my faith journey, brought me into deeper understanding of my faith. And even just everything—his themes just help me, the whole escapism into a different world kind of brought me into a deeper understanding of reality. I think that kind of leaks into what Tolkien means to me. Tolkien is just someone who has brought a deeper understanding to me. Through the arts, through professionalism, recreation and just trying to apply some of the values like humility and good food and good friends. "
77,74,Female,20190401,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I live in Milwaukee. I am seventy-four years old. I think what’s important is that I have three grandchildren—that’s part of why this is important to me. I’ve been trying to figure out when I first started reading Tolkien. I think I started with The Hobbit first. The impetus—I’m trained as a Montessori teacher, and I was a pre-school teacher first—three-to-six-year-old teacher, and there’s a real emphasis on the right use of imagination. So, I tended to avoid all kind of fantasy kinds of stuff because I like to read non-fiction anyway, and then this was my professional life of thirty years was as a Montessori teacher. I did teach elementary then later. We always read to our children out loud. In the evening, a chapter a night—you know, all the classics. Then we got into C.S. Lewis and then that kind of broke the ice. It’s like “Gee, this is really great stuff.” So, I think that’s kind of the impetus of what brought me into—and searching for things to read to our children. And then finding Tolkien. There’s another series, other things like The Dark Is Rising series, which is about the Arthurian legends. And then Joseph Campbell, which came about this time. We didn’t have TV and all that at our house, but that all is part of the whole milieu of the Myth. And then I read a book by Laurens van der Post called Carl Jung and the Story of our Time. So, all of those pieces come together for me. The Tolkien story is very important. He was resurrecting for us something that we lost when the Christian church took over basically and said, “All these old mythology things are not good.” They are who we need to know as ourselves and as a culture, as a society, as human beings. So, I think they speak to us. This Christmas I was watching The Hobbit with my grandchildren at their house, and it just really struck me that he was comfortable. We, as Americans, are comfortable; and we need to break out of our comfort and go. When everybody disappears, and my house is empty, and I feel that longing, we need to be Shambhala Warriors as Margaret Wheatley says, and step out and face the challenge of our times. And I think that’s why these books are deep mythological stories that speak to our humanness and how we can relate to each other and the healing that we need internally and the healing that we need externally"
78,25,Male,20190401,eng,Salt Lake City ,Utah,United States,"I am twenty-five, and I currently live in Salt Lake City, Utah. I started with J.R.R. Tolkien’s work in my childhood seeing that first Lord of the Rings movie. As a kid I walked out of the movie just being like “This new world!” I needed to go and explore this more.” So, I remember as a kid, running around with sticks pretending to kill Orcs with my buddy. Running around the neighborhood fighting things. I had the perfect stick that I got that reminded me of Gandalf’s staff. So, I’d run around pretending to be casting spells at stuff. It was kind of my first start in what fantasy was throughout my life. Then getting ready for each of the new movies to come out. Once I was through that, okay, “What else can I do?” There’s books. I’d start reading the books. Over the years, I think I have four of the different audio books now. I have three different copies of Lord of the Rings. Then I started going into the Children of Húrin and all those other books. Currently, I’ve been slowly making my way through The Silmarillion. Then also, I’ve started playing Dungeons & Dragons and relating all that Tolkien history from that into there. That’s what I’d do with that friend that I used to run around with sticks as a kid. Now we play Dungeons & Dragons together and keep up that fantasy aspect of our lives. We even talk to each other in movie quotes and Gandalf quotes. Something new comes out we all say, “Don’t tempt me Frodo!”—something we want to buy or something like that. What my childhood is is The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien. Now that I’m old enough to understand a lot of the topics and the stuff that he goes over in his books like the subtle things you don’t realize. I fall in love with it even more every time I read it. I recently got the audio books and just finished the audio books. Read all the books and then The Hobbit again. It’s just something that’s affected me my entire life, and it’s still affecting me, and I love it. "
79,33,Female,20190401,eng,Houston,Texas,United States,"I am twenty-three years old, and I am from Houston, Texas. I first encountered Tolkien when the very first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, was released in theaters. I was only six years old. But I started when my parents bought the movie and were watching it, and I happened to walk in on them watching it, and I immediately fell in love with all of the adventure and excitement. After that I watched them as they came out in theaters. Then in middle-school I finally read The Hobbit; but I didn’t read the full Lord of the Rings series until I was in college. With each Tolkien encounter that I had, my love for it, as well as my knowledge of the world that he built, just grew more and more as I began to understand the depths of the characters and how fantastic the story was. The stories of Tolkien, whether they’re in Middle-earth or some of his shorter stories like “Leaf by Niggle,” have really spoken to me over the years. They have taught me so much just in the course of my life. They’ve taught me about friendship, loyalty, duty, honor that really make human beings what they are at their best. But he also shows what human beings can be at their worst, and that human beings are dynamic. Because even in his stories of fantastic creatures, he’s really just showing human beings. He’s showing human nature and what we have the potential to be in the paths that we take and the decisions that we make. His characters were really my friends growing up. They showed up in my dreams even sometimes; and I learned a lot from them as I said before. As his characters are his own creation, I have felt like Tolkien has been a friend to me in a lot of ways—a kindred spirit and sometimes a mentor just through his own works throughout my life. "
80,31,Female,20190401,eng,Indianapolis,Indiana,United States,"I am thirty-one, and I am living in Indianapolis right now. My first experience of reading Tolkien was reading The Hobbit for a ninth grade book report. I read through that very, very quickly, and decided that in order to do a good job on the project I needed to read it again to keep all the dwarves names straight, and to figure out what was going on. By the second time through I really loved it. Then, after I read The Hobbit, I naturally turned to reading Lord of the Rings. This was about the same time the movies came out, too. This work in particular has shaped my life. With a few exceptions I have read it annually for fifteen years, starting on September 22nd, of course. I think I liked it initially for the adventure, the journey, the monsters, the natural magic, the unwilling hero, and camaraderie; but I knew it had a depth to it where other fiction falls flat.  I think there are three main reasons for this.  First, Middle-earth is steeped in a very realistic and far-reaching history. Even other world-building books are not as intricate as what Tolkien has created.  Secondly, the characters all respond to challenges in unique ways.  There are good guys who maintain integrity in the most difficult times, and there are good guys who fail but are redeemed. Frodo himself fails, but he is redeemed in a beautiful way. Even Melkor, the most evil guy of all, he’s initially not beyond redemption, but his failure is shunning that grace that’s offered to him. Finally, Tolkien’s works are just saturated with Christian values. I’m a Christian too, so I see it everywhere, and you can’t ignore the fact that Tolkien was a Christian—that just comes out. Truth, beauty, and the ultimate triumph over evil permeate the books, and Tolkien did this in a very effective way. He doesn’t shy away from writing real temptations, real failures, and real evil. Nor do his characters live in some contrived happiness after their main battles have been won. So, it’s beautiful. The sadness is bearable, and I just love him. He’s meant the world to me, It’s such a big treasure to have somebody like that shaping my character. That’s all."
81,20,Female,20190401,eng,Austin,Texas,United States,"I am twenty years old from Austin, Texas. I first encountered Tolkien through my dad. I remember sometime around when I was seven. For Christmas I helped wrap The Lord of the Rings extended edition movie set; and when my dad watched those, I watched with him. Since then I’ve probably watched all the movies 5+ times. Later, my dad read The Hobbit out loud to me and that was my first experience with the books of Tolkien. I am in college now and I am actually reading the trilogy for the first time. I don’t think I was mature enough to really read the books when I tried several years ago, but now I can really appreciate the extra tales and details of the writing. There’s so much lore and poetry in the books. It makes you really appreciate the creativity and attention to detail that Tolkien had. The maps and creating an entire history of a world is amazing. There’s so much philosophy in the lore too. The Silmarillion I think is next after I finish The Return of the King. Tolkien’s world really gave me a way to connect with other people and inspired my lifelong love of the fantasy genre. As far back as a summer camp when I was in elementary school, I made friends because I impressed them with my Gollum impression. A small group of us bonded over talking about our favorite Lord of the Rings characters. We did a little bit of role-play. The races that Tolkien breathed life into—elves and dwarves and orcs and wizards—also gave so much content to Dungeons & Dragons through which I have also found another community. There’s just so much magic in Middle-earth. And public figures like Stephen Colbert spouting off their knowledge of Tolkien lore has also helped make fantasy cool and shown that people who appreciate Tolkien are everywhere. And that’s really amazing."
82,38,Female,20190402,eng,Coralville,Iowa,United States,"I am thirty years old. I live in Coralville, Iowa. I first encountered Tolkien, actually, pretty much my entire life. Every time me or my sister would trip or drop something my mother would say, “Carefully with the plates,” and everybody would laugh: everybody except us, because we had no idea what she was saying. But aunts, uncles, everybody, they all understood and thought it was funny. And finally I asked her one day, I said, “What the heck are you trying to say to me besides don’t trip?” She said, “When you’re a little older, and you’re able to read this book, I’ll give it to you.” And I was like, “What book would that be? What are you talking about?” She said, “Oh, it’s part of a really funny song in a book called The Hobbit, and they gather up all the dishes really clumsily and they don’t drop a thing.” I said, “Ok, I think you might be crazy, but ok.” And then when I was, I think, eleven, she finally gave me The Hobbit for my birthday and said, “I think you’re old enough that you can comprehend this book now, and… here you go.” It was right around the time when The Fellowship of the Ring was coming out, the first movie, and I thought, “Ok, I’m on board now.” So I read it, and I thought, “This might be the coolest thing ever.” I’d heard of it. I kind of knew what it was about, but then it wasn’t a big thing. I saw the movies and thought, “Ok, this is cool.” Then I read the books. I think I got about half way through The Fellowship of the Ring and thought, “It’s boring, I can’t handle this.” Then I saw the movie and thought, “Ok, it gets better.” But then, later, it got to be really a part of me. When I kind of moved away from home when I was fifteen, I was reading them again and a lot of it was one line that really resonated with me was Sam’s line in Return of the King, “His will was set and only death would break it.” That was a big one. I thought, “You know, yeah, I’m that stubborn too.” I’m a bit of an introvert—a bit of a loner. I’ve met a lot of friends through Tolkien—a lot of friends—been to a lot of different Comic Cons, learned a lot of different things, and it just always stayed with me. A friend of mine who said once, if there was a book that ever changed her life, it was Lord of the Rings. So I thought, “Yeah, you’re absolutely right.”"
83,73,Female,20190402,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am seventy-three, and I came over from West Allis, Wisconsin.  I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien in the Wilmette Public Library in 1959. The Lord of the Rings was in hardcover; and as a nerd about to start high school, I discovered his works while reading my way through the stacks alphabetically and fell in love with him. I even went back and read The Hobbit, which I had somehow missed in the children’s room. Why am I a Tolkien fan?  Because of the message of hope and of perseverance. The Lord of the Rings has become one of my comfort reads when I am depressed or unhappy, and it always is restorative.  What has he meant to you? Well, I was the oldest of four children. I got all my brothers and my sister started on him. Then, I got my nieces and nephews and my daughter started on him; and now my grandson has discovered him. Part of it is the message, I’m sure, and part of it is the quality of the adventures.  I know when the movies first came out my eldest niece and my middle niece were in their teens, and one fell in love with Viggo Mortensen and the other with Orlando Bloom, but that wasn’t the reason for the boys, of course—they all just became caught up in the quality of his storytelling."
84,55,Female,20190404,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am fifty-five, and I’m from Milwaukee. I grew up here, and I actually went to Marquette as well. The first time I encountered Tolkien was one of my—I have many older brothers and sisters—and one of my sisters loved—she just loved—the Tolkien stories. When she was in grade school, she was reading them, and I remember her telling me the story of The Hobbit. I think I was five or six. She would tell it to me as a bedtime story. She didn’t read it; she just told me the story, and I just loved it.  She must have been a great relator of the story because it was just so wonderful. I remember thinking, at some point, that I was going to read them. She didn’t talk to me about The Lord of the Rings, just The Hobbit. The main memory I have of the story is when she told me when Thorin died at the end of the book.  I choke up just thinking about it. I was so sad when Thorin died. I think that was the seed. Then I think I started reading them—The Lord of the Rings—a couple years later, maybe in high school, but I read the whole series like every other year. Why I’m a Tolkien fan is…I guess because his story gives me so much hope. There’s so much reason not to hope through the whole story, and every character is so three-dimensional. My favorite character is Faramir. That’s why in the movies when they messed with his character I almost walked out.  I’m like, “You don’t mess with Faramir.” But anyway, I would say hope is what draws me to his books year after year.  What he has meant to me is really about the hope. That he has crafted such an amazing story that it just keeps drawing me back. That’s why I keep reading it, and I will keep reading it.  Thank you."
85,32,Male,20190404,eng,Oak Creek,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-two years old, and I am currently living in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien thanks to my mother. She brought home a boxed set—it was the 50th anniversary edition done by Ballantine in 1991. She got it new, which means I must have been about five or six at the time. It had The Hobbit and then the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings. I don’t know where she got the idea to buy that set. I certainly wasn’t reading stuff like that on my own yet. But she loved reading The Chronicles of Narnia out loud to me, long before even I could read on my own. Maybe she thought Tolkien would be similar, and they were friends, right? So, I remember her reading The Hobbit to me a few times; and as I grew as a reader, I picked it up on my own, and I loved The Hobbit. But when I started in on The Fellowship of the Ring hoping for more of the same, I got lost. I think that’s a fairly common experience. I couldn’t get out of Bag End until my early teens. But once I did, then I was hooked. Why am I a fan? I think if I had to boil it down, and with the benefit of hindsight, I think it was because Tolkien appealed to those seeds in my psyche that would eventually lead me to a career in the study of literature. I was fascinated by the notion that something as fantastical and imaginative as Middle-earth could be rooted in something as common and familiar as language. I was reading The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion at the same time that I was discovering that the words of my own language had earlier forms, earlier versions. Etymology was a big word for me when I first figured out what that was and what that meant. Some of the words in my own language came from other languages. They came from older languages. They came from dead languages. That connection to the past, and to something tangible, seems to be very important to my bent as a scholar and my tastes as a reader. I tend to prefer literature that offers a tangible connection to a verifiable past. I’m a sucker for books that talk about places and things that I can experience with my own senses: Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo journalism. Two years ago, I went to Iceland, and part of my trip there was climbing the volcano that Jules Verne describes in Journey to the Center of the Earth—that tangible connection is very, very important to me. And I think Tolkien is the source of that for me. "
86,38,Male,20190404,eng,Lawrence,Kansas,United States,"I am thirty-eight years old. I live in Lawrence, Kansas now, but I was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. I first encountered Tolkien’s work when I was eight years old: my dad gave me that famous blue and green covered Harper-Collins Hobbit. I was reading that on a family trip to North Carolina. I think I’d left my copy at home somehow, so we had to stop at B. Dalton’s Bookseller and buy the black-covered Bantam paperback version with this really scary picture of Gollum with this sort of thing hanging off his nose on the cover. I got stuck in Gollum’s cave. You know, eight years old, I’m terrified, it’s dark in there. A couple of sleepless nights and I couldn’t read any farther, but I couldn’t sleep anymore, and my dad finally was like, “Hey buddy, you gotta get Bilbo out of the cave, you know. You gotta keep reading. So, in the bright sun of a North Carolina afternoon, I kept going and we got Bilbo out of there. I read the trilogy at age twelve, and was just enthralled by the maps, and just a world that was so much larger than me. Then, in my twenties, I read The Silmarillion. I went to Wheaton College, and I did my undergraduate work there and barely touched the Wade Center, didn’t realize what I had been missing until I left. Three years out of Wheaton I was just finishing up an M.A. in Philosophy of Religion at Denver Seminary. Did an independent study in the philosophy of Tolkien and realized what I had missed; and so after I completed my M.A. I went back to Wheaton and did some archive research there and decided it was time for a career change. I switched from Philosophy to Literature, and a big part of that switch was thinking about Tolkien’s relationship to Gandalf and to Bilbo and going like, “You know if you understand something of Bilbo’s relationship to Tolkien, or Gandalf’s relationship to Tolkien, you understand something of Tolkien’s relationship to God.” That really shaped my view of authorship, and it’s something that’s kind of built into my research now. I did my M.A.—my second M.A.—in Literature at American University in Washington D.C., and then came to the University of Kansas where I’m just finishing up a doctorate in nineteenth and early twentieth century Brit Lit. My research now is a little further afield of Tolkien. It’s in the years kind of leading up to the Great War. I’m studying the Romance as a form, but I’m studying the Scientific Romance, and so the ways that machines in Romance sort of lead up to the Great War, which is really a kind of species of Saruman thinking right—sort of retracing that and the imperial implications. But I see Tolkien’s legacy as being environmentalist, simplicity, and advocacy for a simple life, and that makes him timeless.  "
87,26,Male,20190404,eng,Modesto,California,United States,"I am from Modesto, California. I am twenty-six years old this April. I first encountered the works of Tolkien through the movies since The Fellowship of the Ring came out when I was eight years old. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in high school that I read The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. Since then, I have read up on most of his other works up through the rest of high school, and even college. Today, I have a complete collection of all the books, swords, and movies, keeping them very close in my personal library. One of my personal hobbies is world mythology and storytelling. I am also a world history graduate. Tolkien paints a world that blends two of my greatest passions into one.  As compared to some of the other legends like Beowulf or King Arthur, or even real world histories, including the First World War, the story, its world, the histories, and characters of Tolkien’s imagination continue to educate and inspire me, even to this day.  For me, Tolkien gives everything and everyone a voice.  Whenever I’m surrounded by nature, and I see the trees, I believe that they can talk.  But most importantly, Tolkien taught me that I have a voice, and with it, I made friends in which we became our own Fellowship. But most importantly, he gave me hope that even in the darkest of times light eventually triumphs. In The Two Towers, Sam tells Frodo that, in the end, a shadow is only a passing thing, and that even darkness must pass. For me, Tolkien has gotten me through some very dark times and helped me see the light that I thought I couldn’t see. I owe him much for that."
88,48,Male,20190404,eng,,,United States,"I am from the U.S., pretty much all over, so it’s hard for me to specify one place, and I am forty-eight years old. I first encountered Tolkien when I was probably in either the second or third grade. I had read the Narnia books, the Madeleine L’Engle books; and my aunt, who is in education and sort of an amateur archeologist, she encouraged my reading habits and one day gave me as a gift that four-book boxed-set with the yellow, blue, green, and red books of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and I never looked back from there. I would read the books and then I would go back into the forest behind my house and either with friends I had also drawn into the cult, or alone, I would reenact scenes that I had read in the books over and over again. I re-read the books every few years or so. Those are the happiest days of my life when I first encountered Tolkien.  As to why I became a fan and I would say why I still am a fan of his, it’s sort of difficult to sum up, but as an introvert and a loner, the idea of going off on an adventure with a select few people really was appealing to me. That’s how my love of him began. I am a writer myself now, and there’s something about the detail—how real his world is. It’s real because of the research and the detail and the history: all the work he put into it before he even wrote the stories that we all know. He didn’t just haphazardly throw down a story. He really created a language, a culture—everything. It still feels real to me today.  In some ways, when I was a kid—I was adopted, shaky relationships—he was almost like a parent to me. I learned about goodness, justice, giving everything for those you love. I learned these things from reading his books. I learned new words and poetry from him. As an adult, I still look to him as a source of inspiration, and really as the epitome of dedicating yourself to your art form. That’s why I was and always will be a dedicated fan of Tolkien’s."
89,38,Female,20190404,eng,Madison,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-eight years old, and I am from Madison, Wisconsin. I first came onto Tolkien at a really early age. When I heard about him there were some really odd cartoons coming out interpreting his work in the late Seventies/early Eighties, but really when I got into him was really closer in college. While I ended up being a nurse by profession—I’m a nurse practitioner—I ended up taking a lot of classes just because I actually really like English.  So, I was taking some classes—actually one was on modern criticism and literary theory, that I ended up taking that really changed my life at the time—how I read, how I interpret things.  Then, kind of just by chance, Tolkien was on my list.  I just decided to do it for fun afterwards because I wanted to read it before any movies came out and ruined my vision of it. So, I read it and I was just fascinated. I was fascinated, and now here I’d spent all semester plugging my mind with how the author doesn’t matter—deconstructionism—you need Saussure, you name it. Derrida. Whether or not his work was in response to this, that I don’t know personally, but it came at such an amazing time where he said, “You know what? I’m going to put it all back together.” The author does matter.  Not just that but mythology matters and creation--and the way that he made his own creation myth, which I found fascinating because earlier, I think at some point in time, I had read The Faerie Queen. Then I had read Spencer. I said, “Well look, this is the next man in line, and this is amazing because it’s happening now.  This is within one hundred years of when I was born and experiencing this, versus, as much as I love you Milton, it’s, you know, a little less relevant. Here I’m getting to experience something so amazing, and that was really influential to me in the time that it was actually happening. That’s a lot of what it meant to me, to see the beginning of Fantasy and where that all comes from. He kind of took all those questions that had been flooding my mind, through Modernism, post-Modernism and, “You know what? I’m going to put this all together.”  "
90,35,Female,20190405,eng,Oshkosh,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-five years old, and I’m from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien in middle school. There was a boxset of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and it was lying around the house, and I’m pretty sure it was my older sister’s. I think it was a present because she really had no interest in fantasy, so I don’t know how else she could have gotten a hold of it. I was just finishing up another high fantasy series, the Shannara series, and I was looking for something else to read, and poking around the house, and that’s how I stumbled across these books; and I’m like, “Oh, well, these look interesting. They have attractive cover art. I’ll give them a try.” So, I started reading them. That kind of lead me to be a fan, but it wasn’t instantaneous. I read The Hobbit first. I read it, and I wasn’t terribly impressed the first time I read it. I had to read it a few more times and I had to grow a little bit older, I think.  I didn’t tackle the actual Lord of the Rings trilogy until high school, and go beyond that to The Silmarillion, and so forth, until probably college. What has he meant to me? This was one of the first times I’ve really encountered a complete world. He had new languages, new maps, new cultures, new people, and it was very immersive. You could read his books and actually think that, “Okay, this might exist somewhere out in the world.” To me, that was extremely important—was the realism and the ability to kind of suspend my disbelief. That is why I am a big Tolkien fan."
91,37,Female,20190405,eng,Lorain,Ohio,United States,"From Lorraine, Ohio, and this is my gift to myself on my thirty-seventh birthday. I was first drawn to Tolkien as an adult, after seeing a Fellowship teaser trailer. This was long before the movies were even anywhere near complete, but it was just the scene where Frodo drops the One Ring in the snow, and Boromir picks it up. He’s so tempted by it. I found it so striking—immediately I went out right after a different movie I saw, and I bought Lord of the Rings to read it. Reading the trilogy, anticipating the movies. One of the things I find really striking about his writing is his words are just so beautiful. I mean, it’s like lyrical, but like spare at the same time. It’s like a history book written by a poet. That’s astonishing, really. But what really makes me a fan is the content. I mean, you have to love Gandalf. He’s got all this wisdom on life and death and dealing with the worst times. He’s just a very comforting figure.  But I really appreciate Tolkien’s themes of greed and the destruction it causes. It chokes life from society and nature. You’ve got the Rings of Power, obviously, but then there’s the Númenóreans’ longevity, and the Sackville-Bagginses, the greed for Bag End, even within your own family, Denethor and the ruling of Gondor, and Thorin’s Arkenstone, of course, and the struggle for the Silmarils. In contrast, you have Aulë’s creation of the Dwarves. They were created out of love, and with humility rather than a desire for power, so they were allowed to remain, and given life. But Galadriel, I really find inspiring, and that she also had desire in her.  She wanted to rule; she wanted to explore, and she did that without taking from others and destroying. She crossed the Northern Ice. She explored Middle-earth in darkness. She didn’t swear any terrible oaths, but she achieved her goals through sacrifice and strength of will. And when ultimately offered the power of the One Ring she had the strength to overcome her internal greed and turn it down and save herself from corruption. In the books, a lot is made of Bilbo voluntarily giving up the ring, but I imagine that’s much more difficult for powerful beings like Gandalf and Galadriel to turn that down. So, there’s great lessons there, in harnessing your desires and ambitions without stepping on others to do so."
92,27,Female,20190405,eng,Kenosha,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-seven years old, and I am from Kenosha, Wisconsin. The first question is, “When did you first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien?” I first encountered the works when I was in middle school. It was shortly after the first release of the first movie, The Fellowship of the Rings, so it was a huge bias in middle school, and everyone’s talking about it. I had to delay it a few years because my parents didn’t think I was old enough—just because it was more adult content at the time.  So when I started getting into reading—and I was reading, like, Nancy Drew; I was reading other mystery types of books—I came across the movie, and I was just really drawn into it. It was very immersive.  It had very detailed descriptions.  It was not anything that I had encountered before, so it was something that definitely paved the way for me with Harry Potter, Game of Thrones—other types of fictional worlds—just because of how immersive it was.  For me, I was really drawn to it because of how detailed it was.  It was just something that I could look to, kind of as an escape from the everyday world.  I just really liked the detail—the whole character aspect.  There were so many rich characters to Tolkien.  The different languages that were made up, and the atmosphere, and how vivid everything was really stuck to me. I also really liked the descriptions about war, just because it was something I was not familiar with, and it was something we were always talking about in school.  It was something that just had a whole different side and aspect to it.  So, his references to World War One, and just like the grotesque and vivid descriptions of war, really won me over with Tolkien.  I liked that aspect.  I liked the loyalty of the friendship.  I liked the love and romance.  It just kind of had everything I was looking for in a good story. It is my favorite story that I love listening to.  That’s why I’m a Tolkien fan. I think it’s very wholesome.  There’s a lot of really good values to the stories.  What he has meant to me is just bringing a lot of good value into everyday circumstances.  I like his some of his quotes like, “Not all those who wander are lost,” or his other quotes, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”  There’s just a lot of really good quality to his work, and I’m able to quote it and reflect upon it every day."
93,35,Female,20190405,eng,Gurnee,Illinois,United States,"I am thirty-five years old. I am from Libertyville, Illinois, in the United States. I first encountered Tolkien when I was seventeen years old, just before the movies came out. I saw the trailer for the first movie and I had never seen anything like it, and a friend told me he was going to be very disappointed if I didn’t read the book first. So I did, and I was blown away. I had never seen anything like it before. I had never read anything like it before. I think one of the things I love about Tolkien is that I think his writing is beautiful—some people disagree. And he really taps into my love of mythology. I’m a big fan of myths and legends. His writings, they fill you with this longing; and they make you homesick for places that aren’t even real, and for people that never existed. Every time I read one of his works I find something new--every time—that I didn’t remember reading the time before. Ever since I became a Tolkien fan—you know I’ve gone through a lot in my life; you know it’s been a number of years now—and his works are always…they’re like a place to come home to, which is a little weird to say, because none of it is real. But one of the things I love is that even in this simple tale of good winning over evil—which is what a lot of his stories are—there’s always a price. There’s always something lost. I think he’s a way to remember that just in living life, joy and sorrow are going to be tied together, and that’s okay. Just by living, you’re going to lose some things, but you’re going to gain things. And that’s alright. I think he just puts that beautifully."
94,35,Male,20190408,eng,,West Virginia,United States,"I am thirty-five. I am from West Virginia. I first encountered Tolkien almost on accident. I don’t even know where I got it from, but I had a—probably 1970’s from the cover art—paperback Hobbit on my shelf. And I never read it because it looked silly. But when I was probably in middle-school, sixth grade, read it—absolutely fell in love with it. And the rest was history. It was nice when the movies came out to some extent because people around me who had given me grief about reading it all this time are all of the sudden coming to me saying, “Wow you were right. This is so cool.” I know. I told you. What has he meant to me? In a way, similar to scripture in that it grows with you. No two times in your life do you pick the same thing out of it. When you’re a kid it’s wizards and elves and Balrogs and adventure and magic rings and dragons. But once you’ve lived a little and experienced some of life, you actually start to pick out more the finding and the losing. The joy and the sadness. The hope and the despair. Flawed, even corruptible characters in a tired world. That the world itself is fantastic. But it’s real enough; you feel like you can touch it. You feel like it exists and you’re just visiting it briefly, and then you’re leaving. But it’s always there. And it’s not so fantastic that you can’t relate to it. When you lose a loved one—Frodo’s description of the rain curtains turning to silver glass and rolling away to see the far green country. I’ve used that five times, both for myself and for people I know. It’s one of the most comforting paragraphs in all of literature. Sometimes when you’re going through a tough time you notice the Ride of the Rohirrim, arriving at the absolute nick of time: The gate is busted. The Nazgûl is there. The cock crows. The horns blow. And it’s just like, “Wow.” When you’re twelve maybe that part doesn’t move you—it’s the Balrog and the Nazgul. But when you’re thirty-five and you’re having a tough time the horns of the Rohirrim are hope. Like I said it just grows with you. You never get the same favorite part twice. Although I have to say, in general, I am very partial to Rohan. I have a flag—a reproduction of the movie flag—hanging in my basement. There’s just something about Rohan. The stories about Númenor and Elves—but without Rohan, everybody loses."
95,35,Male,20190408,eng,Springfield,Missouri,United States,"I am thirty-five years old, and I am from Missouri. I first encountered the works of Tolkien, oddly enough, through the original Hobbit cartoon. I came across it as a kid spending the night at my grandparents’ house. It came across on, I believe, Cartoon Network back in the early days. But unfortunately, in the days of yore, when television just played and there was no digital onscreen guide or pause and rewind or any of those fancy features we have nowadays, I had no idea what I watched. I had no way to figure out what it was what I just watched, but I was absolutely entranced by it. I knew that I needed to figure out what this was. And I spent I don’t know how much time over the course of probably the next year or so trying to figure out what this strange thing was that I had watched. Unfortunately, nobody that I spoke with could discern what it was from my kind of feverish descriptions of this crazy story about a little guy and his bunch of friends. Unfortunately, I had also started the movie about halfway through, as is common with broadcast TV, so I really didn’t know where it began or what it was about. I just knew that there were dragons and there was this archer guy and a lake and a mountain and all this gold. I was just absolutely entranced by this. Fortunately, after about a year or so, I managed to come across it again on television. But this time I saw it from very near the beginning; and through a couple of commercial breaks, I was able to figure out what it was as they gave their intros and outros. As soon as I realized what it was, I went to the library and I found a copy of the book. I just had to read it. And since then I have been an absolute rabid fan. I have more Tolkien merch in my house than you can possibly imagine. My wedding ring for my 10-year anniversary, my wife replaced with the one ring. I have the script from the ring tattooed around my arm. I am just absolutely rabid. And fortunately for me, the greatest thing to come out of my love of Tolkien is that now both of my children are absolutely obsessed. My son who is fourteen in about a week has just started reading the Fellowship again and has asked for his birthday to be Lord of the Rings themed. So, the love continues on."
96,35,Male,20190408,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-five years old, and I live here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, though both of my stories have to do with when I was living in Winona, Minnesota. I like that it starts off with when did you first encounter the works of Tolkien because I received them for Christmas from my family in a boxed set, The Hobbit and the three Lord of the Rings. What The Lord of the Rings specifically did was show me about the ability to tell a story and then also the limitations of ways in which you do that. I read The Hobbit and enjoyed it, but I really dove into The Fellowship of the Ring to a great degree, and it’s still my favorite of the set, and then getting to The Two Towers and Return of the King—when the narrative bifurcated into two—would lose interest in the second half of each of those because I wasn’t as interested in the long narrative of Sam and Frodo going through. Then upon reaching the appendices was even less interested in it. It was more of a slog. So, while this thing that I loved and as a whole story appreciate that way in which it was told limited the ending of it and my ability to enjoy it at that point.  How do you tell a story that allows people to go that deep while still reaching a wide audience? So, when The Lord of the Rings movies came out, or were coming out, there was this moment of like, “I can see this on the big screen,” which was cool, but then also, in a sense, the unfettered telling of that story in a visual context. Opening night came out and I ended up going with my father, who had given me the books, and I absolutely fell in love with the first movie to the point where I ended up seeing it four times in the theater. The fourth one was one too many; but when it was over, I asked him, “What did you think of the films?” and he was like “It was good. It was a good movie.” I was confused because he loves movies as a medium even more than he enjoys books. And so I was like, “What was it about this that didn’t live up to what you had read and enjoyed when you had read it?” He said, “Well, the movie didn’t end because there were still the two pieces to come.” Once The Return of the King finally came out he was like, “Oh, this is a great piece of cinema.” But it really showed that even in a visual context, to take it by itself as a movie, a story needs to have at least one vital thing, and that’s an ending."
97,39,Male,20190408,eng,Redding,Connecticut,United States,"I am originally from Woodbury, Connecticut; and I am thirty-nine years old. I first encountered J.R.R. Tolkien’s work when I was very young. My mother used to read The Hobbit to me when I was a child and used to show me the 1970’s Brothers Hildebrandt calendars as a visual aid to go along with what she was reading. I grew up in the woods, so I always had a strong connection to nature, so these stories appealed to me right off the bat. I read The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings every year for about fifteen years, from about age ten to about age twenty-five. Now my reading is a little bit more sporadic, and I usually leave out The Silmarillion. I’ve read that one enough. Tolkien’s really been ingrained in my life since childhood. Growing up on a dead-end road in the middle of the woods, my best friend and I used to name everything after Lord of the Rings. We had a Gollum Forest. We had an Ithilien in the woods, which was much brighter, and things like that. We were always really excited about it. My best friend and I later went on to start a library software company, which we named ByWater Solutions after The Lord of the Rings, because it’s open source and there’s a lot of collaboration. We named it ByWater because of the reference to the Green Dragon and how everybody would get together and kind of share the news of the day. Our librarian customers really love it, too. I love all things Tolkien. I’ve got a pretty good collection of books, different editions of the trilogy. I’ve got a hand-sized Brothers Hildebrandt picture of Gandalf visiting Bilbo from the 1976 calendar—I think it’s January—hanging in my office. I love everything about it. Been to New Zealand. The software that we support was originally developed in New Zealand. I know that Tolkien’s definitely not a kiwi, but the movies have a connection, and we were able to visit a lot of the filming sites there. One of the best experience that I’ve had. And when I showed up to the Hobbiton set with a ByWater Solutions shirt, it made the other tourists really excited, too. So, I really look forward to passing on the tradition that my mother passed onto me, to my son when he gets old enough to enjoy these works as well. So yeah, that sums it up. "
98,30,Male,20190408,eng,Mount Clemens,Michigan,United States,"I am thirty years old, and I am from Southeast Michigan. I first read The Hobbit at the age of eleven when my father gifted me the book. He had read it around that age and he really enjoyed it. And we enjoy a lot of the same things, so I knew that I’d love it. I fell in love with the characters and immediately afterwards started The Lord of the Rings books. I read the books repeatedly through my adolescence and teenage years and then started The Silmarillion soon afterwards. The rich mythologies and histories that Tolkien created are unmatched in most literature, and his works are so inspiring, and his characters are completely noble, unforgettable, and relatable. As one of my favorite authors he means a great deal to me. His works inspired bravery during times that I was not particularly brave growing up and a hope that I could affect things around me. His feminine characters were so strong as well, and I really appreciated that in my life, knowing that I could be a strong feminine woman. And the love of the rich literary and cultural foundation formed by his works are something I shared with my husband when we first met and are what we joyfully pass down to our young children as well. They love the songs in his books and the characters, and I can see the positive effects that literature has on them already. "
99,59,Male,20190408,eng,Kennesaw,Georgia,United States,"I am fifty-nine years old. I’m from the southeastern United States—it’s a little more complicated than that. I was I’m going to say fifteen when a friend at school introduced me to Tolkien. I had been reading Andre Norton books and really loved her fantasy stories and couldn’t find any more, so this friend suggested I try Tolkien. She told that he had two books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and said I should read The Lord of the Rings first and then follow up with The Hobbit. So, I kind of read them backwards and just fell in love with Middle-earth and Tolkien. I bought The Silmarillion when it came out, and I bought every book that Christopher Tolkien published when they came out. I bought a number of other books—The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and biographies and have read lots of academic research and things like that. What has Tolkien meant to me? Well, for the last twenty years or so I have been an insufferable know-it-all on the Internet, answering fan questions. At first it was just the challenge because people were asking interesting questions that I didn’t know the answers to. And so I thought, “Well, I’ve got the book right here. I can look it up,” and I’ve been looking up the answers ever since. It’s been a lot of fun, been a big challenge. I stopped counting the number of times I’ve read The Lord of the Rings front to back after three hundred, but there’s a good chance I’ve probably read it over five hundred times. I try not to remember it each time so that I kind of feel fresh going through. What else does it mean…well, it means that I’m eternally banned from all Tolkien trivia contests, apparently. Every convention that I go to, if they know I’m in the audience and they have a quiz, they tell everybody I’m not allowed to participate. So, it’s a talking point that I’ll be able to share for the rest of my life, I guess. "
100,42,Male,20190408,eng,Blanchardville,Wisconsin,United States," I am aged forty-two, and I currently reside in southern Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien from my father who presented me with his own copy of The Hobbit. This was around about fifth grade, at the age of ten or eleven, I’m not really sure. He endorsed it as being filled with adventure and monsters, and, of course, a dragon. I recall initially being dubious about this because, while I was an avid reader up to that point, I almost exclusively consumed non-fiction—mostly science and technology and the like. In fact I have a vivid memory of this time because there was a classroom questionnaire of sorts that was posted for a parent’s night or something and one of the questions was “Name a famous person that you admire,” or some such; and there was quite a shock in my family that this had shifted from Jacques Cousteau to J.R.R. Tolkien. In any case, this experience led me to read The Lord of the Rings the following year, and this opened the door to a lifetime of appreciation for speculative fiction, literature, and art. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Tolkien’s works to me are an amalgamation of ideas and stories that appeal highly to many of my interests—or rather, they are what sparked many of those interests to begin with. So, language, travel, blacksmithing, arms and armor, equestrianism, history, and mythology among them. While there are other authors whose worlds I cherish dearly, his is one that has perhaps the most deeply influenced every aspect of my life, both personally and professionally. For me Tolkien has meant friendship—since I first began reading him and taking my school notes in Cirth runes, it has brought me fellowship through the years, bringing forth those others sharing in common interests. For the past decade, for example, I’ve been involved in an online community dedicated to the Rangers of Middle-earth; and more recently the Middle-earth Reenactment Society, in which we take practical skills into the wild with a view to reenact daily life of those very uncommon persons from his world. Companions in trekking, cooking, camping, and crafting—some of my closest friends—share a vision we largely owe to Tolkien: To see the extraordinary in the ordinary, a sense of adventure and wonder in the everyday."
101,25,Male,20190712,eng,Eau Claire,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-five years old and I am from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of the Professor when I was in elementary school at the time. There was a poster of Faramir on the notice board outside of the school cafeteria with a little bit of information about his character and the Rangers of Ithilien. Me being interested in medieval fairytales and stuff like that at the time, I’m like, “Oh, this kind of looks like that. So, what is it about? It’s something called Lord of the Rings."" At the time, Peter Jackson’s films had just been released onto VHS. My parents were watching the first film in the series later on during that week, and I asked them if I could see it, and, being in like first grade at the time, they were like, “Uh, we’ll see.” And then, of course, I discovered I would have to wait until fifth grade to see the movies eventually, but I was able to get ahold of the audiobook recordings by Rob Inglis. From that point on I was just hooked. To me, I am a Tolkien fan because his works represent the importance of having a sense of culture and tradition. There’s a lot of history and fleshed out characters in Arda in addition to the lore that no matter what kind of background the reader comes from they can always find a sense of hope from his stories. What makes his stories so unique is that underneath the triumph of good over evil there’s this lingering feeling of kind of profound sorrow intermingled with an appreciation for the simpler things in life. I think that’s what makes his work so memorable, and it gives it the ability to withstand the ages of time. Tolkien, to me, means so much that it’s kind of hard to put into words, but I’ll do my best here. To me, his works serve as a reminder that even when things seem at their worst there’s always hope to be found."
102,39,Male ,20190408,eng,Houston,Texas,United States,"I’m thirty-nine years old, and I’m from Houston, Texas. I was first introduced to Tolkien…it was actually the animated film The Lord of the Rings by Ralph Bakshi. It was probably 1986 and my mom rented it from the library, and it both terrified me, and it intrigued me. I couldn’t finish the movie, but I was really spurred to read more, and so I began kind of a yearly—it started with audiobooks, when I was probably seven or eight, listening to them every summer and then started reading them every summer, and have pretty much maintained that for the last, now probably thirty years. When the movies came out, certainly that’s been a big part of my life as well, something that my wife and I enjoy together. Which is also one reason I admire him—it’s for his creativity, his world-building. It seems like most of the fantasy things these days have a correlation to his work. And the effort that he put into the -coming up with his own languages, it was just kind of not done before then, and it was just really impressive. As far as why I’m a fan, certainly the entertainment value that he’s provided to me over the years. I mean just innumerable hours of entertainment and intellectual engagement. It’s also been a kind of connection point with my daughter. It’s something I’ve been able to share both the movies and get her started reading The Hobbit and things like that, and so I’m excited to see where some of the more recent things—news has come out—where some of that’s going to go. So certainly excited about that. But that is pretty much it for me. "
103,36,Male,20190409,eng,Colorado Springs,Colorado,United States,"I am thirty-six, and I am from Colorado Springs, Colorado. I was first introduced to Tolkien during my fifth grade year. Our teacher actually did it as a read-aloud, and she started with The Hobbit and went through the end of Two Towers and left us to finish Return of the King on our own. We started beginning of September; by the beginning of October I was begging my mother for my own copy so I could read ahead. There was some debate about whether or not she would get me The Hobbit or whether we could get the four-pack with all of them. I convinced her to get the four-pack. Two weeks later I had finished the whole thing, and spent most of the rest of that year, when I had available time, discussing it with my fifth grade teacher. I really like to credit The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, especially the character of Samwise Gamgee, with providing me with an inspiration to improve my behavior. Nowadays I probably would have been ADD, something along those lines. I had trouble in school—behavior issues. I was able to use characters from Tolkien’s writing to give me inspiration and an example to follow. Treat everybody kindly. Do what needs to be done. You know, that kind of thing. I later read Silmarillion, History of Middle-earth. I’ve read pretty much everything I can get my hands on. I just recently, through interlibrary loan, got a copy of Parma Eldalamberon, which has published some of his linguistic works that I haven’t been able to purchase online, so I got one through ILL to read that. Finally, I’d like to say that if it wasn’t for reading The Hobbit, my wife and I would never have met. I was working on a stage production of The Hobbit in college and she volunteered to join the show. That is how we met."
104,28,Male,20190409,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old, and I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was, I want to say three years old. It’s actually one of my first memories. My dad read to me every night; we read a very short passage of Tolkien. We went all the way through Lord of the Rings. I’m told that The Hobbit also happened, although I don’t remember that outside of a brief encounter with Radagast the Brown. That is the one memory I have from that. But I have very vivid memories of growing up, lying in bed, listening to my dad read the Tolkien paragraphs, and I remember he got into it! It was the language. It was the characters. He just was able to get lost himself occasionally. He would fall asleep and I would try to see if I could read it as well. I could not at that time. But I encountered it there and then throughout my life I think that Tolkien has just had—it’s almost served as a waypoint for different major events. When I was thirteen, on my birthday, Return of the King came into theaters, and I just remember that being one of those moments where I kind of embraced what I loved about it—the epic scale, the things you are not supposed to get overly excited as a teenager, and I just remember saying, “Screw that.” I am going to be excited about this and it was just this spectacle that I thought was so incredible. It’s really informed a lot of what I do in terms of my clinical work, because I do work in psychology. That’s what I’m studying right now. And I think that one of the things that I encountered a little bit later on with Tolkien was “On Fairy Stories,” and the idea that engaging in fantasy, loving fantasy—being in that mindset of curiosity and openness—is not a children’s thing. That is an innate ability we all have, and I think being a part of psychology has allowed me to just marry those two things that I love so much. I think it’s been really helpful to me and to the other people that I’ve worked with. So, I still read fantasy. Every time I get a break. And I think Tolkien, and his use of language and the way that he told stories, has really informed what I write, what I read. All of it. I am very grateful for having those moments when I was three years old—those initial memories."
105,33,Male,20190409,eng,Oconomowoc,Wisconsin,United States,"I am from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, and I am thirty-three years old. I first encountered Tolkien kind of strangely—it was an adaptation of an adaptation. There was the cartoon The Hobbit in the 1970s, and I did not actually watch that film. I had a mini-record-player from probably Fischer-Price, and there was a picture book of 24 pages. There was voice overs and you got to see these still photos of The Hobbit and got to hear the narration over it. In terms of Tolkien actually, I didn’t encounter him right away, but The Hobbit I encountered—I couldn’t say how young I was; perhaps as little as three simply because I had older siblings. But somewhere between the ages of 6 and 8—I think it might be closer to six than eight—my dad decided to read aloud The Lord of the Rings series to us, including The Hobbit to start us off. It was a bit interesting because the collection actually was my mother’s—not my own, and not his either. And it’s the original Ballantines: you kind of got those goofy covers that are absolutely beautiful with a little bit of gold on the page outlines themselves and just kind of curious sketches. So, my dad read them aloud to all of us as kids. We’re all sitting around with various degrees of enjoyment. Certainly for me as the youngest, I really liked it, but I was a little stuck in what actually was going on. And then thereafter I got to read it myself once I was in junior high or high school. My earliest encounters were to hear it orally, which was fantastic, and then I guess orally as well but with a picture book. Definitely changed things up a bit when the Peter Jackson films came out, to say the least. But it was certainly a different gateway, with the adaptation of the adaptation. I’m a Tolkien fan simply because I’ve enjoyed his works for years, and I like that his works can change with you. I hated the poetry as a kid. Had no interest in it, and then reading it was wanting to get to the action scenes; and now I have some enjoyment of that, which is kind of a lovely thing. In terms of what he’s meant to me, it’s a tough point. I work with students, so I connect with them via Tolkien. At this point I’ve actually gotten into some of the back history reading George MacDonald, Edith Nesbit—reading some of the influencers of him. So, it’s kind of been that flash backwards and then also flash forwards. Just really showing that you can have a great work that even has perhaps a few flaws but is still just incredible. The amount of world building that he’s done—seeing that and how your interdisciplinary pursuits can really make something transformative."
106,25,Male,20190409,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-five. I’m originally from Connecticut—Southington Connecticut. I first encountered Tolkien…my family had the 1978 Ralph Bakshi animated film, just kind of an odd item in our collection; and I remember watching it all the way through several times when I was a kid—I was probably five or six the first time. It scared me a lot, just because of the rotoscope orcs and the Black Riders are still freaky—I still think they’re freakier than Peter Jackson’s orcs. But I also found it very interesting and very beautiful; and once when I was sick, I watched it twice in a day. But it was Peter Jackson that really turned me on to just Tolkien in general with his movies. I came to them late. I never saw them in theaters. Blockbuster had a sale and we got the second and third on VHS. Didn’t see the first one for a long time. As for the books, I never read them themselves. My father always said they were too hard to get through, he found, because he needs exciting prose. So, I kind of was intimidated by them. And I myself when I tried reading them, I was just getting through the appendices, and I was like I can’t do this. So, I listened to the first two novels on tape actually during my commute, my daily commute two years ago. I never got through the third, because my library didn’t have it on tape and they never got it to me, so I started reading it but I never got through The Return of the King. Why am I a Tolkien fan? I’m not a diehard Tolkien fan, I’ll be honest. As I said I never finished reading them; but I am a fantasy fan, from literature to movies to video games, and I can see the influence of Tolkien everywhere. It’s just ubiquitous. Without him I know a lot of high fantasy that I do enjoy just would not be. I’m also a fan of how rich his world is, and how we just keep retelling the same story over and over again, or at least using elements from his stories. Also, what impresses me is sometimes when there’s someone who starts a genre the original works just get so improved upon that when you go back to the original it’s not really as good. It might not be as entertaining. I’m thinking of cyberpunk and Neuromancer. But his is just so good; it’s still unsurpassed in fantasy. I think it’s a big achievement to do that. What Tolkien means to me is just a prime example of how deep you can go in world-building, and how fun and self-fulfilling it can be to get lost in your imagination. But also, if you do it well, how fulfilling it can be for other people, because he built a world and gave it a mythology and history and real languages. It might be cheesy, but Tolkien is a reminder to me that when I write or make music or art that I can actually create anything I want to. "
107,60,Male,20190409,eng,Kent,Washington,United States,"I am sixty. I am originally from Magnolia, Arkansas. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien because the junior high library had a limited number of books and I got up to the ones by authors whose names started with ‘T,’ and read The Hobbit; and I’ve been reading Tolkien ever since. I became a Tolkien fan I think because Tolkien was the first person I had ever come across who felt the same way I did about trees, that trees are not replaceable; they’re individuals. I was quite surprised to find anyone else who had that same attitude and that really drew me to his works. What he’s meant to me over the years—literally reading Tolkien changed my life. It’s the reason why I came to Milwaukee. They had Tolkien manuscripts in Milwaukee and they didn’t at any other college that offered a graduate program in the country. I’m one of two people I know of who moved to Milwaukee entirely to get access to the Tolkien manuscripts. My wife I met through a Tolkien-related book club. The best man at our wedding was related to it. So, it’s been a big part of my life. I’ve been really fortunate to be able to work with the manuscripts so much. And I guess that’s about it. "
108,46,Female,20190411,eng,Sheridan,Wyomin,United States,"I live in Wyoming. As a little girl in rural Montana, when I was in the second grade, the librarian kept steering me towards books. I loved to read, and she would steer me towards books about ponies living on islands in South Carolina. I would read them out of a sense of duty, but I wanted to read things that were more interesting. My parents had a friend staying with us that winter, twelve miles out of town, a young man in his twenties, and it never occurred to him, I don’t think, that maybe The Hobbit was a book that would be kind of difficult for a second grader to read. He loaned me his copy of The Hobbit and I loved it. When I finished reading it, he told me there are these other books and they’re even more magical. They are—when those characters are hungry, you’ll be hungry; when they’re scared, when they’re tired, you’ll feel the same, so you’re really going to need to read those books. It never occurred to me that our library might have those books. When I was in the fourth grade, when we went to the big city to get our back to school shopping done, I found The Lord of the Rings on a bookshelf, in a bookstore, and I thought, “I have to have these.” But I was going into the fourth grade. I had my birthday money, and it wasn’t much. I could afford the first book. So, I read The Fellowship of the Ring, and then I waited until I went back to school shopping the next year, and got The Two Towers; so you can imagine the cliffhanger between The Two Towers and The Return of the King right before the sixth grade. Then I went on and I read the Silmarillion and so on, and it just didn’t occur to me until I was probably in middle school that actually the library had had those books all along because they just seemed so different from any book that I had read. So that’s kind of how I encountered J.R.R. Tolkien. Why I became a fan is his characterization, the turns of phrases that he uses were-are so great. I’ve reread the books every year since then, pretty much. Every time I reread them, I find some little nugget that is a little bit different, a little more special, that I hadn’t noticed before. He’s also meant a lot to me. I was a bibliophile anyway. I would have been anyway. But in the second grade I learned about context clues and story structure and all kinds of things very intuitively just by reading those books. I’ve shared them with my siblings and with my children—both of my daughters love The Lord of the Rings too. I read the books out loud to my sisters when they were little. They have said that when they read certain passages in the books, they hear them in my voice. So, that’s kind of a cool thing about Tolkien for me. I chose Marquette because he left his books to Marquette, and then I never went and looked at any of his papers when they were in the archives there. My husband teases me about it today."
109,31,Female,20190411,eng,Jarfalla,,Sweden,"I am thirty-one years old, and I am from Stockholm, Sweden. I first came into contact with the works of Tolkien when I was fourteen. It was in connection to the movies coming out. I was a little bit of a pretentious teen, and I wanted to read the books before I saw the movies. I ended up reading all the trilogy before even going to see the movie. So, I didn’t see the movie when it was actually in theaters. I fell completely in love with everything Tolkien. Tolkien and his works have meant a great deal to me throughout my life. I came into contact with The Lord of the Rings in a crucial time in my life, and it really helped me develop myself—who I am, what I believe, what’s important to me. It played a big part, actually, in developing my own faith. It’s been a part of my life ever since. More than half my life now has been greatly influenced by the works of Tolkien. Since getting into The Lord of the Rings the first time, I’ve reread them countless times—The Silmarillion and many other works also—and many works of Tolkien that aren’t fiction. I even did a massive project in school because of Tolkien, translating parts of his works. It was something that I think really got me through my last year in school—doing this project. So, Tolkien has meant a great deal to me, and I am very happy to be able to contribute to this collection also. Thank you."
110,31,Male,20190411,eng,Greenfield,Wisconsin,United States,"I am almost thirty-one years old, and I’m originally from Spain, living in Milwaukee for most of those thirty-one years. As far as Tolkien and when I first encountered Tolkien, it was between eighth grade and my freshman year of high school. Some of my friends had been talking about different books that they had read. I decided I’d pick one of those up and read it. I accidentally picked up The Hobbit, thinking it was an entirely different book by an entirely different author. But I’m glad I did, because I was the first one of the group to read it; and I ended up just devouring The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings over maybe a week or two. Life was never the same after. As a kid I always enjoyed reading, but there was something about Tolkien’s writing that I hadn’t found elsewhere. Even though he wrote for children originally and later adults, it was kind of like bridging the gap between the two, and I really enjoyed that style of writing even though it can be a little tedious in his descriptions. It captured me for some reason. Of note, I don’t really like fantasy. It’s just something about his specific writing and his stories that have caught my attention. The level of depth that he goes into. The planning that he’s put into it, and even the wisdom that you gain from reading these. It’s certainly different than anything else I’ve read. After that, I read about him as an author. I’ve been kind of looking into his life and how he came about writing these, how the war impacted him. What I like is his whole world and everything that he’s put together. It’s not just the one set of stories. Ultimately for me one of the main things is not just his sense of adventure but how that fits into everyone’s life. We all have a part to play in an adventure. It’s our life story we’re a part of. Especially as a Catholic. There’s just something about his writing and his background as a Catholic that I think you can’t separate the two. I’m not quite sure what it is, but it’s certainly there and present and that resonates with me. Because of all of that, I’ve tried to share with my family. I have a young daughter and I have been reading to her some of his works since she was a newborn basically. We’ve gone to different exhibits. We have another one on the way, and I’m just looking forward to sharing that with any future children that I have and any friends and keep it going."
111,52,Female,20190411,eng,Sycamore,Illinois,United States,"I am fifty-two years old, and I am from Sycamore, Illinois. I first encountered The Hobbit when I was ten years old. One of my parents’ colleagues, who was an English professor and knew I was an avid reader, suggested the book to me. I read it in one day. Then I dragged my father to the local bookstore to buy The Lord of the Rings. I still have those tattered paperback copies of the books. They’ve been read so many times the bindings are cracked, the pages are falling out. I’m one of the people who bought The Silmarillion as soon as it was published. I was eleven years old at the time. I’ve been enthralled with the characters and the world that Tolkien created. I cared about Bilbo. I cried when Thorin died. His writing is so evocative to me. I could see the Shire in my head, feel the adrenaline spike when the Black Riders were chasing the hobbits. I shared Aragorn’s joy when he took his rightful place as king of Gondor. I shed my own unnumbered tears during The Silmarillion. I felt invested in the characters and the world they inhabited. The Lord of the Rings was a revelation. It read like a novel, but you could feel the weight of history behind it. The Silmarillion fed my need to know more about that history, and my family still jokes that they think I know more about Middle-earth history than U.S. history and they’re probably right. I’m a Tolkien fan because his world and characters are endlessly fascinating to me. I can read the books over and over and particularly with The Silmarillion, I think I find something new every reading—a turn of phrase, a description, a character I had not given much thought to before. I love the way the history weaves through all the books. Reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time after reading The Silmarillion was a revelation. It was almost like reading it for the first time once you know the history. Few books can evoke that excitement and the adrenaline rush of a first reading, but Tolkien does that endlessly. He’s been a constant thread in my life I would say. The books went to college with me. They have traveled through every move with me. I have hardbound copies of all of them now. I re-read them at least once a year. The books are what I read when I need a boost, when I want to cheer myself up, when I want something comforting and familiar. It’s like visiting with old friends. Tolkien’s work has probably become my most treasured hobby. I became a member of the Tolkien Society. I scroll through Tolkien Gateway for fun. I pore through the histories of Middle-earth to learn more about the world. The films, the recent publications, the Morgan Library exhibit—all of that has just strengthened my interest and excitement. The books have always been there for me. The lessons in friendship, support, morality, hubris, unfortunate decisions, moral ambiguity. His characters reflect us all, both the good and the bad. The life lessons have always rung true to me. I found great friends through the fandom. Profoundly significant that my children have grown up with these books and the same love of his world that I have. I’ll never stop being a fan or finding something unique and thought provoking in his work. It’s a precious gift to us.  "
112,31,Female,20190411,eng,Trenton,New Jersey,United States,"I’m thirty-one years old and I live in Trenton, New Jersey. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was fourteen and my best friend suggested very strongly that I let her read me the first chapter of Lord of the Rings; and I had very little interest in it, which was odd because I was already a massive fantasy geek, but I figured, she’s my best friend, whatever. She read me the first chapter and then sent me home very, very unsubtly with the whole book, and I read it and I was like “Oh, this is really fun. Where’s the next one?” She lends me the next one. The Two Towers, of course, ends with the worst cliffhanger in the history of the world, and I stormed over to her house and I was like “Where?! Where is the third one?” And then, because she is still my best friend, she’d already bought me the full set plus The Hobbit for my birthday. So that was that. I was hooked. I was doomed. I am a Tolkien fan because I haven’t really ever before or since encountered a world that complete and that intricate. I love that it started with, like a million and a half languages and no story, that he just built the story around that; that’s just so nerdy, it pleases my heart so much. And I love, just, all of the different branches that the history of Middle-earth takes. It sounds so cliché to say it, but there is literally a story for anybody and everybody in that whole massive, tangled legendarium. You can always find something that will speak directly to you, no matter who you are or where you are in your life, and I think that’s beautiful and really unique and rare. Which is not to say that I haven’t encountered other really fantastic fantasy worlds, but that one is particularly special. One of the most beautiful things about Tolkien, and particularly in Lord of the Rings, of course, but also in the whole thing, what it means is that in and among these, like, grand, epic tales of battles and dragons and literal gods, that he focuses so very much on the small, personal, ordinary things, and ordinary people; and that the stories of Middle-earth are so often the stories of ordinary people finding the greatness in themselves. And I love that. I love that so much. "
113,31,Female,20190412,eng,Giza,,Egypt,"I am thirty-one years old. I am Egyptian, from Giza. How did I first encounter the works of Tolkien? It was really through the movie of Peter Jackson. During a Wednesday, I was coming back from school—I think it’s 2001—and I have seen a poster of the movie taking the whole page of the newspaper; and I said, “Ok, a wizard and a guy with a bow, that must be something like what I grew up with [unclear] and also Robin Hood.” So, I was excited to start digging about this movie, watch it; and then I knew they were a novel, and I obtained the novel about two years after. It was really hard to find, but I start digging through a used bookstore. I found a—what I call it—a red edition, but it’s not… it’s a second printing edition of Tolkien. I was really, really excited because I didn’t have anyone in my family who had heard of him, or even read English. This is how I encountered the master. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Ok, it’s two aspects for me and Tolkien, the first aspect is the personal, because he has persistence. Starting with his rejection at Oxford and keeping on applying, that’s very inspiring to me. And also was his wife. When I remember the priest telling them to be separated until they get married—I don’t remember that whole story, but it’s still another moment of persistence. He kept on doing and following his dreams, and he wrote the trilogy in over a decade, so that’s another persistent moment for him. What he meant to me—he means the world to me because I started studying linguistics because of him, and I am pursuing my masters, and I hope it’s a Tolkien related project. It’s an honor to be one of his fans. Thank you so much."
114,22,Female,20190412,eng,South Bend,Indiana,United States,"I am twenty-two years old, and I am from South Bend, Indiana, in the United States. I first encountered Tolkien when I was twelve years old. I read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and I only read it because my older cousin was reading it and I wanted to be cool like him. The books didn’t make a lasting impression on me honestly. But a year later, when I was thirteen, I remember sitting around the family room with my family and a clip from the Peter Jackson movies came on, and all these faint memories came back to me of what happened in The Lord of the Rings. And I was like, “I have to go back and re-read these.” All I did the next couple of days was read Tolkien, and I have been infatuated with his works ever since. I think the appeal to me—I’ve always loved fantasy; I grew up reading Chronicles of Narnia, the Prydain Chronicles, Redwall—was the sheer reality of Tolkien’s sub-creation. It’s almost Platonic; and for somebody like me who loves fantasy, the sheer realism of his world was appealing. I also grew up reading mythology and epics like Beowulf, and there was something about the high style of Tolkien which kind of mixed the epic style with modern themes and the humanness as with the Hobbits that appealed to me as well. When it comes to what Tolkien means to me, all of my influential life decisions have been affected some way by Tolkien. I majored in English, and that was motivated a lot by my love for The Lord of the Rings. I also did a lot of concentration in medieval studies, also influenced by Tolkien. When it comes to career choice, I work kind of as a Social Justice Warrior, and my commitment to defending the rights of others is influenced by Tolkien’s depiction of virtue. On a personal level, my romantic relationship started from a shared love of Tolkien, and obviously it’s grown since then, but one of the things that keeps this relationship strong is a shared love of Tolkien’s mythos. There’s nothing quite like finding someone who loves Tolkien, not just the Jackson films but has read The Silmarillion, has encountered the whole mythos. It’s like you’re Frodo and Sam in Ithilien encountering Faramir, finding that kindred spirit in the wilderness. Finally, the most influential decision of my life—my cat’s name is “My Precious” after the One Ring. So, yes Tolkien has made a big impact on my life."
115,28,Female,20190412,eng,Allenton,Michigan,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old, and I’m from Michigan. I first encountered Tolkien in sixth grade, when we read The Hobbit. At one point we reenacted the troll scene, where the trolls have captured Bilbo and the Dwarves and are deciding how to eat them, and I was put in charge of writing the scene as a script and narrating the story as other classmates acted it out—so that was fun. And then that Christmas, The Fellowship of the Ring came out in theaters. I wasn’t allowed to go see the movie until I had read all the books. So, of course, by the time I finally made my way through The Lord of the Rings, Fellowship was out of theaters, so I had to borrow the VHS from some friends to watch the movies. My brother got nightmares, but it kind of started us off on our Lord of the Rings fandom. I read the books through high school and re-read the books probably seven or eight times. I kind of finished them and just jumped through it all. Why am I a Tolkien fan? I read them because everybody else was, but it wasn’t until I was reading and re-reading that I really learned to appreciate Tolkien’s just incredible mastery of the language. Every passage is a work of art. What has Tolkien meant to me? Tolkien understands the Long Defeat. This is his own term, right, he coined the term, but all his characters face difficult if not impossible situations. There’s no way that any one of them can succeed on their own. However, with patience, with faith, with grace, they do succeed. And it’s not an untarnished glory. It is not a complete overwhelming success, but they achieve closure, they achieve peace; and in this broken life that is perhaps the closest thing to wholeness we can hope for. Tolkien understands that, and Tolkien is able to explain that and to put that into words. The character Éowyn is one of my favorites because she has to go through that whole process of brokenness and coming to terms with that and coming to healing through that. Tolkien understands that there is some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for, no matter the sacrifice."
116,26,Male,20190412,eng,Dallas ,Texas,United States,"I’m twenty-six years old, and I’m from Dallas, Texas. When I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien I was eight or nine years old, and I’d grown up watching my dad read lots of books, lots of fantasy adventure books. I had read kids ones, and I decided I wanted to take this step and read the adult ones. And so I asked my dad what books I could read of his, and the first books he gave me was The Lord of the Rings. Cracking those pages open, those yellow pages, just opened up a completely new world to me. Shortly thereafter the Peter Jackson movies came out, and I went to see every single one of them—been a die-hard Tolkien fan ever since then. What I love about the stories of Tolkien is that they’re so enchanting. They’re adventure and they also teach you morals, moral principles, life lessons, and you find friends in them. The detail that is put into the characters and their lives, the lands they live in, is just absolutely stunning. It’s hard for me to really comprehend how Tolkien was able to do that, and I’m so grateful that he did. You actually feel a very real depth to the stories as you’re reading through them, like there really is thousands of years of history behind the events that are happening that you’re connecting with. But like I said there’s more to the stories than just that. There is the life lessons learned. I learned to connect with my friends in the book. When I first read through The Hobbit I connected with the dwarves, I absolutely loved them, and you learn to share emotions with them and empathize with them. I remember when I read about Bombur falling in the magical stream and falling asleep and waking to find no food and crying—I cried with him! I absolutely loved these characters, and that is what Tolkien has brought to me through these books. He’s really opened up a way for me to interact with, and really find some moral balance in those relationships as well."
117,44,Male,20190415,eng,Port Washington,Wisconsin,United States,"I am forty-four years old, from Port Washington, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien actually through his animated movies such as The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and that was back when I was twelve—10 to 12 years old. They were always a favorite staple of life. We used to watch them over and over again. But I didn’t actually read a book of his until I was in my late teens—eighteen, twenty years old. The Hobbit: I burned through that in less than a month. The Lord of the Rings: I burned through in two weeks. I could not put it down. And then I’d go over and read it again and read the appendices, and then when I discovered The Silmarillion, that opened up a whole new world and that was in my twenties—my mid-to-late twenties. I suppose you could say the reason why I’m a Tolkien fan is that it speaks to my spirit. I tend to be an old soul and I pretty much have a circle of old souls who are also Tolkien fans. It is, for us, a almost sacred book. How he writes… it’s fantasy at its purest. It is beauty in its simplicity, and to be written by someone who was essentially humble, in and of itself, was something that also spoke as well, because you would think that he would be more like Aragorn, or even Boromir, when actually he was just Samwise. What has it meant to me? Well, considering that I myself am a practicing wizard—because wizardry is a thing, just like witchcraft—you find that it reinforces who you are as a person. As I said, The Silmarillion I consider sacred: it’s like the Bible for anything Tolkien. And it’s good to go in and look back and look at the histories and see how things began, and how they lead up to their end. It has been actually an inspiration and guiding force in how I live my life. Those of my friends can actually say the same. It played a very, very important part in who I was, and who I became, and who I am now, and my outlook on how I go from here."
118,46,Male,20190415,eng,Charlotte,North Carolina,United States,"I am forty-six years old. Originally from Ohio, I live in North Carolina. When did I first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien? I was in fifth grade and I vividly remember coming across this old hardback copy of an oddly titled book. And I thought, “What in the world is a Hobbit?” I took that book—it jumped off the shelf at me—and that was the beginning of a very long love relationship with Middle-earth. I am a Tolkien fan for so many reasons. There are so many things that draw me to his books and to him as a person. The first I would say is his authenticity. With so many fictional worlds that feel simply cobbled together, Tolkien’s feels unearthed. Whole. Beautifully detailed. In large part, it’s because it is so rooted in our world; and its beauty and grandeur and intricate design reflect the way he saw the purpose in the world around him. That’s a gift he’s passed on to us as his readers. Also, my love of language as a language teacher was largely started by enjoying the runes on that old copy of The Hobbit, from the mysterious expressions and names and people and places I found in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. I think of him often when I am speaking Spanish or reading the New Testament in Greek and seeing the beautiful connections between English and languages I don’t even speak. And last, I think of his love for the natural world passed on to his readers. I can’t walk in a park without wondering if the trees have something to say to me or look at a running river without picturing Frodo and Sam crossing the river at the Breaking of the Fellowship. The world feels more alive when looked at through his lens. And then last, what he’s meant to me. I’m going to steal a word from C.S. Lewis: Joy. As a reader of Tolkien, I had a sense that beyond the day-to-day, in the musty pages of an old book, could be found boundless worlds and adventures, and that filled me with an inexpressible joy. Years later that joy, just like Lewis’s and Tolkien’s before him, found its expression in my deeply held Christian faith. And this only deepened my appreciation for him. Both him and his works. He has proven to be a traveling companion and a guide, adding to my faith and my imagination a sense of adventure and wonder beyond mere doctrine. And that is what Professor Tolkien means to me. "
119,34,Male,20190415,eng,Reseda,California,United States,"I’m thirty-four. I’m from Los Angeles, California. I was introduced to Tolkien by the librarian at my middle school when I was in sixth grade. I was a ravenous reader but just couldn’t really find what I connected with. I had just finished the Chronicles of Narnia and loved them, and so she was like, “Well, why don’t you try this,” and handed me Fellowship of the Ring. I took it home. I was like, “A book about jewelry. I don’t know why this is going to be good, but whatever,” and I opened it up and just was transported. It was magic. It was beautiful. It changed my life. I got the rest of the trilogy; devoured those in like, I think, two weeks. Got The Hobbit. Loved that. That sparked a love for riddles in my life. Reading those books changed my life. There’s no other way to say it. It changed my life. I developed a love for the past. I developed a love for mythology, for storytelling, for history, for, just, thoughts in general—and for fantasy. Fantasy has been my favorite subject to read ever since. The Silmarillion is still my favorite book of all time. The Professor has changed how I see the world. It’s changed how I interact with people. It gave me the view that you can’t judge people by appearances, that you need all of the various forms that life takes in order to truly do good in the world, that just because there’s darkness and pain doesn’t mean that there’s not goodness and hope and life; and that the dark times don’t cause us to break, but instead pull us to something bigger. Yeah, he changed my life, and it’s always weird to me how no matter how dark life gets, I can always go back to those books and find hope, find life."
120,29,Male,20190415,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-nine from North Carolina. The first time I encountered a book by Tolkien was The Hobbit. I was waiting for the next Harry Potter book to come out and the librarian gave me the book and said, “You’d really like this.” I remember sitting in the back of the car on the drive home and on the very first page he uses the word “queer.” I knew it was a bad word and I didn’t like it, so I stopped reading and decided I wasn’t going to read the book. Years later when the movies started coming out for The Lord of the Rings, my friends were really excited about them, so I thought I’d give it another try. I got past the first page of The Hobbit and ended up really liking it. His manner of storytelling and describing the world really made it come to life, and I fell in love with it immediately. Then when I started reading The Lord of the Rings, it took me days to get through all the historical footnotes at the beginning of the book. By the time I got through it, I had already come to know the world so well that it was like coming home every time I opened it. Afterwards, I became really interested in writing my own stories and talking with friends about writing. I could always go back and say, “I learned grammar from reading The Lord of the Rings.” His use of punctuation especially—I knew commas better than everyone in my family. Then as time went on, I really came to appreciate how he could construct a world out of words and just make it feel so realistic that I’ve really aspired to reach that in writing my own stories. It’s really been inspirational in so many ways. A few years ago, I read The Silmarillion for the first time. It’s probably one of the hardest books I’ve ever read, and yet it was so musical and lyrical that I can’t wait until I can read it again."
121,65,Male,20190415,eng,Waunakee,Wisconsin,United States,"Sixty-five. Waunakee, Wisconsin. Question one: When did you first encounter the works of Tolkien? Sophomore, high school, 1968. Sister Monica assigned The Hobbit as a class reading, and sought me out afterwards. I must have written a decent paper. She said, “Peter, you should read Lord of the Rings.” And so I did, and the rest is history. Why are you a Tolkien fan? Well, I’m more of a Lord of the Rings fan than just a strict Tolkien fan, because I read The Hobbit once, and Beren and Lúthien once, and Silmarillion twice, and those are—the Hobbit’s easy enough, but the other two were harder to acquire. Anyway, that’s it, I’m more of a Lord of the Rings fan. What has he meant to you? It’s okay to foster my imagination. Holy cats, that guy, he caught my imagination. It’s the first fairy tale I ever came across—any reading ever—that the great things we do in our lives take a long time and aren’t always happy ever after. When I was younger, farming my dad’s farm, I dreamt one night that I was out in the pasture working with the cattle, and I looked to the east; and out of the east comes this black veil, and it covers the whole area in darkness. And I said, “Oh shit, Sauron has invaded.” That’s my statement."
122,21,Male,20190415,eng,Chapel Hill,North Carolina,United States,"I am from Philadelphia. I am around twenty-one years old. I first read The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was around seven or eight, back in 2006. I think I saw the Fellowship of the Ring movie maybe slightly just before or after that. I’m a Tolkien fan because there’s a lot to love about Tolkien as any fan will tell you. I think where he excels is his world-building. There’s never been such an in-depth and thought out world created with its own languages and mythos before his, and I really doubt that there ever will be another one that captures the imagination like his did. So, what he’s meant to me: I think Tolkien’s greatest gift to us was the creation of this family—this community, stray community. Whether it’s historians or literary scholars, or just fans posting on forums online, we’re all bound to the fate of the One Ring. I think it’s rather fitting given how at the start of all this The Hobbit was just a story told to his children to bring his family closer together. And now it’s a story told the world-wide, just to bring the entire world closer together."
123,27,Female,20190418,eng,Salt Lake City ,Utah,United States,"I am twenty-seven years old. I currently reside in Salt Lake City, Utah, after moving there—my dad was in the military; I just lived in different places around the world. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I was a young teen, so probably about fourteen or fifteen. I was immediately a fan because I had never read anything like it. Parents were really strict Catholics, and they were like, “No fantasy!” So, encountering Tolkien was quite something that I had never experienced/read before. I became a fan because I just couldn’t get enough of the world he built. Watching the Jackson films after I’d read the books wasn’t enough. Just wanted to find more. I got into all other types of fantasy, just wasn’t, just wasn’t the same. Kept coming back to Tolkien no matter what I read. What has he meant to me? Wow. That’s a big one. So, I have been a fanfiction writer. I have been a member of different fan communities. I got into my graduate work, first my MA and then my PhD, just because I was interested in coming back to genre works such as Tolkien. What that meant, though, all of that was different ways to return to these stories, return to these characters, and return to this world in a way that I felt like I could participate in them or with them, because unlike most stories I had read, I’m like, “I want to do something with this.” It just has this really powerful and emotional effect. But what that actually means, I feel like I don’t want to even like touch that too much, because then you’re like breaking it down. It’s like the tower by the sea. You can’t do that. Figuring out how it works will kind of take away some of that ephemeral ineffable quality. It’s something that good. You don’t mess with that."
124,32,Male,20190418,eng,Silver Spring,Maryland,United States,"Thirty-two years old. From Maryland. First encounters with Tolkien probably actually some sort of hazy memories of an eight, nine, ten-year-old. I had an older brother and an older sister that were voracious readers, so I still kind of remember those strange Ballantine paperback covers, taped up and everything, just staying up late at night in the bunk bed, reading over the Ring Verse, the leitmotif. And then reading and rereading Tolkien in high school I can recall falling asleep one night and forgetting to put my bookmark in and then trying to return to it the next day and being confused not because I don’t remember where I left off because the whole thing was so familiar to me that it didn’t matter where I start or stop. As a young reader I always preferred books three and five. I had a taste for that heroic Romance. I was like, “Aw man, more of this Frodo and Sam slogging through the marshes. Let’s get back to the heroes, and the horns, and the swords, and stuff.” As I’ve gotten older, I guess I’ve developed more of an appreciation for the interplay between those threads. But Tolkien to me starts, of course, like most of us as a fan, but it’s really also become a job. I had the great luck to study at the University of Maryland and take a Freshman seminar with Dr. Verlyn Flieger, and kind of recognize that this could be more than just a piece of pleasure reading. It set me on this sort of path as a scholar, though I like to think that I’m able to balance that sense of fandom and not necessarily lose that wonder for these stories that I grew up with."
125,31,Female,20190423,eng,West Allis,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-one years old, and I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first encountered Tolkien when I was ten years old. I had a birthday party at my grandpa & grandma’s, and my dad was very excited to give me a gift. So, I was naturally excited as well. When I opened it, I was quite surprised to find an illustrated copy of The Hobbit. But he told me he had read it when he was ten, and it was one of his favorite books. So, I trusted him, and I read it as well. After a few attempts, because there are so many characters, I finally decided to write down all of the characters and whether they were good or bad characters. And I made my way through the entire book and then followed up with Lord of the Rings a few years later. I’m a Tolkien fan because I find the depth of the world is just so rich. I love following along on the maps when they’re going on their adventures, seeing the illustrations with it and imagining a world similar that we live in but so different with all the types of creatures and characters—shape-shifting man-bear, and tree Ents, and Wizards and magic and all of these incredible things in such a world that’s similar to our world that we have. What has he meant to me? I would say his work has formed bonds with people that also are fans of his work. Like I mentioned, my father, being a fan, we went to go see all the movies together when they came out. We still talk about the story, re-read it every few years. Other friends that are fans of the story as well, we get into good humored arguments about the importance of Tom Bombadil to the storyline. It really makes for great bonding."
126,39,Male,20190423,eng,Chicago,Illinois,United States,"I am thirty-nine years old, and I currently live in Chicago, Illinois. How did I first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien? I was in middle school, and I had always been looking in the library. I was always a reader and kind of one of those kids that looked at, you know, “choose your own adventure,” or always some sort of, like, fantasy book. And I had always looked at the Tolkien books, and they were always there. I wasn’t at the point I was going to read a book that was like five hundred pages long. But I knew nothing about it. It’s just the cover had fascinated me. I remember picking up a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and then going to my History class, and it was sitting on my desk, and my teacher, Mr.—oh, man, I can’t remember his name now—He was probably one of my favorite teachers of all time, and he stopped class when he saw that I had the books sitting on my desk. He asked me if I had read The Hobbit yet, and I said, “No.” He sent me out of class, in the middle of class, to go pick up The Hobbit before I had even started reading The Fellowship of the Ring, because he didn’t want that travesty to happen. That was the beginning. For a kid who was always in the backyard, you know, turning sticks into swords or magic wands, and fascinated by magic rings and things like that, it was the perfect match. It was a match made in heaven for me. I immediately connected with Bilbo and Gandalf. Gandalf was probably my favorite just because he was the most magical character out of everybody until I met Tom Bombadil. So that was pretty amazing. And then just went on the journey all the way through to the end of the The Return of the King, and then, in college, The Silmarillion, where I finally got to geek out. I’m a Tolkien fan because it lets me get into a different world, one that I always had in my head, and it made it just that much more elaborate. Tolkien has brought me closer to friends—people that are also fans. As a result of that, one of my best friends, who is a dressmaker, made me a custom Bilbo Baggins costume; and as a result, my nickname is Bilbo Baggins or Wilbo Baggins, because my last name is Willborn. It’s just been, yeah, a wonderful ride being with Tolkien."
127,37,Male,20190424,eng,Cleveland,Ohio,United States,"I am thirty-seven years old. I am originally from Cleveland, Ohio, in the USA, and I currently live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first read The Hobbit when I was in elementary school. I was about eight years old when I checked out one of the Illustrated editions from my local library. It was summer, and I remember reading it every day for about a week until I finished it. After that, reading The Hobbit became a regular summer-time ritual for several years. I read Lord of the Rings in middle-school or early high school; and although I knew The Silmarillion existed, I thought it was mostly poetry, so I didn’t read it. Tolkien’s work shaped my life in ways I only recognize today. I’ve enjoyed fantasy literature and games since I was a child. And while I was quick to say that Tolkien was my favorite author, what I realize now is that most of the non-Tolkien works I enjoyed were inspired by him as well. My love for fantasy also sparked an interest in history enough so that it was one of my majors here at Marquette. Despite my early interest in his work, I don’t think I really grasped why I was such a fan until my late twenties. At that point I was going through a rough patch in my life and returned to reading as a way to help me through it. I started with The Silmarillion, which made me truly realize how rich this world and mythology was that he created. After that I started reading all the Tolkien materials I could get my hands on, including some scholarly analyses and his Letters. With this background in place, I jumped into The Lord of the Rings again. Although I had enjoyed this series before, this time it felt ten times more alive. I remember all sorts of little connections jumping out page after page, and all this intricacy really clicked for me when Merry stabbed the witch king with his barrow blade. That moment is the conclusion of an epic in its own right—the story of a blade that had lain dormant for centuries, been recently found and carried for miles, before being unknowingly used to serve its original purpose. Yet in Middle-earth this story is just one thread in a much larger tapestry. Ultimately this landscape of interconnected stories is why I am a fan. Everything in Middle-earth feels intentional and has its own history. Sometimes that history is factual, and sometimes it is myth or legend; but that mix feels right because that is similar to our own knowledge of our own history. That’s one of the main things that Tolkien has shown me. Fiction doesn’t need to be so creative or original that it severs all ties with our history or culture. In fact, it often works better when it shares roots with those things so that readers can find their way into the work and also connect it back to their own lives. Tolkien has also shown me that someone’s creativity doesn’t need to be funneled into a single discipline to be effective. Tolkien was a philologist, a writer, an illustrator, a painter, a mapmaker, and many more things. Those activities didn’t compete and interfere with his ability to create Middle-earth. Rather, he used all of these abilities to explore Middle-earth in different ways, giving it many facets to cut, polish, and refine, so he could gift us Middle-earth as a perfect gemstone, a Silmaril."
128,22,Male,20190424,eng,Cudahy,Wisconsin,United States,"I am from Cudahy, Wisconsin just on the south side of Milwaukee here. I am twenty-two. I’ll be twenty-three in a month. So, pretty young compared to a lot of friends that I meet that are Tolkien fans. I first encountered Tolkien—I’ll always remember this—it was my sixth grade teacher. I was wrestling, and this was back when sixth grade was still separate from middle-school. So, I stayed after practice one day with him, and I see this book. It was the Allan Lee illustrated version. I naturally have a soft spot for Allan Lee because of that. I’m like “what is this book?” He’s like, “Well, take it home and find out.” So, I did, and then it just kind of snowballed from there. One of the reasons why I’m a Tolkien fan is I like depth. I really enjoy the depth of Tolkien. My field is in natural resources and wildlife and science, so naturally all the depth appeals to me because I’m always asking questions. Contrary to a lot of people, I hate the mystery that he has in some ways. I hate how he doesn’t explain where the Entwives come from. I like the depth—that I can go back every time and rediscover something or look at something in a new way or a new light. What has he meant to me? I would say a lot of it would be in some ways almost a moral compass. If I’m trying to think about a situation, if I’ve got a difficult decision or something, I a lot of times associate a certain character with a certain attribute. So, I think of Sam with courage and steadfastness and loyalty. When I think of something fun, obviously I’m thinking of Pippin, because Pippin’s a bit of a goof ball. And, of course, I always think about Aragorn when it comes to sticking to something; leadership; always following through on a project. A lot of the times it’s always been kind of a good moral compass for me. Also, it’s been an escape for me, to get away from reality for a little bit. Reading has done that a lot for me in general, but Tolkien’s been a way, because it’s so detailed and so in-depth, that I can immerse myself in the world and totally forget about everything around me. I’ve remembered many times with my parents, where I’d be reading and all of a sudden I just ignore a ten-minute conversation, and they think I’m listening the entire time. I’m like, “Oh wait, what? You said something?” Tolkien has been really helpful for me; to stem the tide of reality is a good way to put it. "
129,24,Female ,20190425,eng,Lexington,Kentucky,United States,"I am from Lexington, Kentucky and I am twenty-four years old. I am from a relatively small city in Kentucky. When I was ten years old my teacher read The Hobbit to us every day after recess. We would all be super tired and sometimes even fall asleep, but that was my very first introduction into Tolkien’s work. A couple of years later my parents got us all together to watch the films in one giant, three-day marathon weekend, and that was when I was able to really get into Middle-earth and appreciate its depth. Soon after, I got The Lord of the Rings books and read them straight through, and many times since then. Over the years I’ve built up my own little Tolkien library and I read through it whenever I need to, and I’m always looking to expand it. Tolkien’s work means so much to me, more than I thought a story ever could. The lessons of perseverance and inner strength have stayed with me for so long, and it’s always been a safe place that I can go back to. For me it’s also just important because of the feeling that it gives me. There’s a sense of wonder and adventure that I get from reading those books that I’ve never been able to replicate reading anything else. It’s like reading something that you found instead of something that was written; and when you go through things like The Silmarillion it’s like you’re the one discovering these myths. It’s a fantasy that ends up seeming so real because of the way that he decided to construct the world. I think it seems that way for me because of all the dots that he decided to connect in his work. We learn about characters through the story but we also learn about their heritage and their language and their ancestry, those that came before them. There’s always something more to uncover and Tolkien shows a wealth of it to you, and it makes you realize that there’s even more beyond that. You could keep going forever. Tolkien’s focus on nature also is what stayed with me. Growing up, I didn’t have the appreciation for nature that I do now. I would read through his books and get these images of rolling hills and tall, strong trees and stone fences. And I realized that living in the center of Kentucky, I would then be able to look around and see those same open fields and small roads and forests. Even though it was a different time and place, and a fictional place at that, Tolkien’s world gave me a greater appreciation for my own home and the world around me. "
130,36,Female,20190425,eng,Colorado Springs,Colorado,United States,"I am thirty-six, and in Colorado Springs, Colorado. To start off, I first encountered Tolkien actually right after the first movie came out. I had a vague recollection that I reconnected later, but it was after that, a friend was like “Hey, you should watch this. I think you’ll like it.” And so I got the DVD, watched it, and immediately thought, “Why have I not encountered this before?” So immediately went to—I think it was Borders at the time—bought all three books. I think I read it in like two weeks because I was like “I need to know. I need everything.” And that started, years since obviously, a love of all his works. Read The Hobbit. Read The Silmarillion a few times. Just started there. And then later I remembered the late seventies cartoon, and like the really creepy Gollum; and so I was like “Oh, yes, that was my, I guess, first encounter;” but not one I remembered until after. Why am I a fan? Well, I love fantasy, I love that genre. I’m also a big C. S. Lewis fan, and so later learning about their friendship and how they collaborated—I’m a creative as well. I work in publishing, so I love, just love, how he created his world and how committed he was to it. And I just love the stories. You have themes of love, of friendship, of courage, of good versus evil, just themes we as humans connect well with. What has he meant to me? Again, on the artist side, I was able to go to—in New York they had an exhibition of his works, and so got to see his thought process, some of his drawings. So, just as an artist, as a creative, he’s an inspiration that way. And then just his works have honestly just given hope, whether personal hard times or just around the world you see hard times. Going back to Samwise Gamgee—even Boromir, who made a mistake, but then came back kind of thing—they’re just encouraging and inspiring. And if I need something to watch, they’re always there. So, yeah, that is my Tolkien love.  "
131,29,Male,20190425,eng,Ypsilanti,Michigan,United States," Twenty-nine years old. Ypsilanti, Michigan. I have always known of J. R. R. Tolkien’s works. My parents have been reading him out loud to me since my infancy. I am one of five kids. I am the fourth, so they’ve been reading to my older brothers and I’ve been hearing them from the cradle. Very important family works to us. Why I like them in particular: first and foremost, just have to acknowledge how interesting and engaging the stories are. I think he’s a really good storyteller. I find most of all the characterization of good really compelling. I’m also a big Batman fan and people say the villains are all the most interesting in that universe; but what strikes me most about The Lord of the Rings is that it’s the good guys. Every single one of them are all very interesting, and I feel like there’s almost no other group of characters where I’m rooting for them to do the right thing as much as I am with these ones; and nothing is more heartbreaking than when one of them does the wrong thing. So that’s probably what’s most striking to me about the stories. And then later on, getting into the Silmarillion, just the breadth of awareness and the kind of universal picture that he is able to create was just incredibly profound to me as a teenager. As far as J. R. R. Tolkien himself, I think as I’ve grown older and I’ve gotten married and had kids, I think the thing that has most stuck with me is the stories I hear about his family life, and the fact that this wasn’t a man who was seeking out great fame, or even necessarily pursuing publication. To read Christopher Tolkien say that the Beowulf story was introduced to him when his dad sung the lay that he wrote about Beowulf, the kind of shorter fourteen-verse ballad; and he said that was the first time he encountered Beowulf was hearing his dad sing that after dinner. Stories like that really, really resonate with me. His Catholic faith, which I also share, and his devotion to the Mass and to the Eucharist—all of this stuff is just something where it’s not just stories that I like, but it’s a man who I try to emulate as a Catholic, as a writer, as a family man."
132,25,Male,20190425,eng,San Diego,California,United States,"I am twenty-five, and I am from San Diego, California. I first experienced Tolkien’s work through his films, back when I was a child. I think I was in like sixth grade or so when the original trilogy had come out in movies. I think what captivated me the most about him was that he’s kind of created this entire world with different cultures, different languages, and the whole experience is so immersive that it gives you a life outside of life that you can really explore. I think what it meant to me is that, because I was introduced to it at such a young age, and I was able to later read the books, and later delve further into Silmarillion and the back story, it was a very parallel kind of growing process for me—that as I grew, my understanding of the Tolkien lore also grew simultaneously. So just kind of having this massive repository of information that I can dive into as I grew was, I think, the biggest impact for me."
133,35,Female,20190425,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-five. I’m from a little town in the middle of nowhere in Canada. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was ten. My mom was reading my little brother, who was eight at the time, The Hobbit, and I immediately got just enthralled with the world that was kind of created; and from there went on to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a family. So, for me it’s kind of that throwback to being a child and the magical worlds that were created. Following into adult life it really has just become kind of that idealized childhood, sitting around with family and really being able to share something. The stories are really timeless and, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized how relevant they still are today—the characters that were created, the places that were mentioned, it’s still something that’s totally relatable as an adult. That’s really been for me the biggest factor in why I’m still a fan and why I still think his work is so important today. "
134,39,Male,20190425,eng,Boston,Massachusetts,United States," I’m thirty-nine years old from Boston, Massachusetts. I first discovered J.R.R. Tolkien when I was five years old and my father introduced me to the animated series first, and it absolutely blew my mind. The story and the realism that the story afforded completely captured my imagination and it wasn’t long after that I learned how to read; and not long after that I started to enjoy and learn the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. I wouldn’t say it turned into an all-encompassing love, but it certainly led me into a deeply, deeply passionate relationship with Middle-earth and the works of Tolkien from thereon after. For the past thirty-five years it has been a morally guiding story, and one that has shaped much of my opinions of law and right and wrong and justice and just about every aspect of what character and moral fiber should be. It hit me in a very deep and personal place in my life, and then it’s something that I’ve always looked to in times of trouble or distress. It’s something that almost kind of feels like home. And later on in life, when my children were born, it’s been one of the greatest joys to be able to bring that to them and give them the gift of Tolkien and have them enjoy it just as much. It’s been something truly, truly spectacular. Tolkien to me is something that will always be a part of my life and a part of who I am, and will always be the greatest writer I could perhaps ever consider in the Western canon. "
135,54,Male,20190426,eng,Sussex,Wisconsin,United States,"I will be turning fifty-four next Monday. I am from Sussex, Wisconsin, originally from Toledo, Ohio. I’ve been trying to dwelve on when I first encountered Tolkien, and I believe it was most likely in my junior high time period. I recall distinctly reading it on a yearly basis. First, reading the trilogy and then going back and reading The Hobbit and then realizing that they segued in very nicely. And I had read them so often that by the time I was a junior in high school, me and a friend were able to talk our English teacher into utilizing Lord of the Rings as the year reading, which means we had a free period for the entire year—free time frame—and the only difficulty we had was not giving away secrets of the future reading in spoilers for the fellow students. I became a Tolkien fan because it was a book that was able to be reread. What I noted when I would read it—and even to this day—is I always will find something new that I had not seen before, which was surprising; but it also showed the depth and thought that went behind the writing itself. I am by my nature a historian in terms of both my undergrad, but also my personal interest; and in a way, this is a history--a fictional history, and one could dwelve down the rabbit hole of picking and choosing different items that were historically based. But the reality is that it’s a created fictional universe, but it has a consistent history across the board. Even as you read some of the newer release books edited by his son Christopher, and any differences you can see, that’s the nature of history. He’s meant to me so much, because it is something that I can read on a regular basis that has walking in a forest, walking in the woods. You can flash back and pretend or even imagine you’re a hobbit. It’s something that just is grounding for want of a better term, in terms of being able to read, to know that it’s there, and just know the overall history universe, et cetera, and know that if I’m having, even a day like today, where it’s sunny today it’s going to be snowy tomorrow, that almost in a way summarizes many of the passages in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, where it’s sunny today and tomorrow we’re going to get six inches of snow, and next week it’s going to be sunny and warm again. That’s what The Lord of the Rings and the Middle-earth means to me."
136,24,Female,20190426,eng,Salt Lake City ,Utah,United States,"Twenty-four. I am from Utah. I first discovered Tolkien when I was 13-14, possibly younger than that, when I got The Hobbit for I think a Christmas or birthday present from a cousin. And then got reintroduced when I was about 13-14 when my dad would read to me The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Then I ended up seeing the movies. From that, I basically went to the library and checked out every book I could find that Tolkien had written. So basically since then I’ve loved his work. I will request his books for my birthday. I got The Silmarillion. I have ancestors who served in the world war that Tolkien served in. Due to that, and just my love of fantasy, once I found Tolkien, I kind of fell in love with him and his writings. And whenever I’ve had a bad day, I can go read his books and be like, “Okay, this character’s had ten worse days than I did.” Just due to the fact that the areas that he used I have like ancestors from, so I have that connection. His works mean quite a lot to me."
137,24,Female,20190426,eng,Austin,Texas,United States,"I am twenty-four years old, and I am from Atlantic City, New Jersey. Currently I live in Austin, Texas. I first encountered Tolkien probably back in 2001 when The Fellowship of the Ring movie came out. I was probably six at the time so I had no idea who he was, but I was super interested, super excited by the movie. When I found out there were book versions of it I was, “Oh my gosh. I have to go check that out—go learn some more.” So, I started with The Hobbit and kept going from there. I never stopped. I guess I like Tolkien because I like the way he thinks. I like the way he visualizes things. I know his prose is a little bit controversial in the world of literary analysis, but I enjoy his prose. He uses simple words and interesting syntax to create these fantastic worlds. They’re just so deep and so complex. It just really digs into your imagination and I really, really love that. He plays with a lot of basic themes pretty much like good versus evil, and here’s your hero character and here’s your creepy villain and stuff like that. But, somehow, he makes it very inventive and it just stays kind of timeless. I find his work very fascinating. I find his mind very fascinating. It’s extremely deep yet simple at the same time. It has a timeless quality to it that has lasted all these decades that people still like and people can still tap into. What makes me continue to be a Tolkien fan is that he’s fueled an imagination for a simple person like me—the way he’s created all these rich worlds. He’s constructed his own languages. For someone like me—I didn’t really have a lot of wealth or fascinating/interesting things in my childhood—this was my world of wealth. He’s kept the classic storytelling style alive, and I’ve just really appreciated it. I feel like it has opened up my mind as well and helped me as a writer and an adult."
138,35,Female,20190426,eng,Colorado Springs,Colorado,United States,"Thirty-five years old. In Colorado Springs, Colorado. I first encountered Tolkien kind of haphazardly as a child. My mom would rent movies for us every Friday, and she rented the Seventies cartoon of The Hobbit, and it became a favorite of my sisters and I. Then I figured out, once I was in late elementary school, “Hey, this is a book! Wow! There’s so much more here.” And I was a very avid reader as a child, but never-ever classified myself as a fan of fantasy. In fact, any time fantasy books were one of our options I never really chose them. The affinity I grew for The Hobbit, I don’t know, but he was really my gateway to fantasy. I read that book but didn’t understand that it actually had more to the world until the movies by Peter Jackson came out. I was in high school and at that time we started seeing the previews for Fellowship, and I turned to my sisters and like, “You know that cartoon we love with the ring and that guy in the cave? I think this is connected. Let’s go see it.” And it just completely opened up like a whole new world for us. I remember at the end of Fellowship, I actually stood up in the theater and was angry because it just like left them, you know, in the Emyn Muil before they got to Mordor. I was like, “That’s it? What the heck, I’ve got wait another year for this?” So, I kind of onboarded in a different way to Tolkien; but then once my son was born a few years ago—five years ago—and I was on maternity leave, I was like, “I have all this time. I’ve never read these books, but I love these films and I’ve seen them so much.” And so I read the whole trilogy in like three months. I’ve now gone back to it, so I’m in the middle of Two Towers again right now. And I’ve actually just started The Silmarillion to kind of prepare myself for the Amazon series. Hopefully it’s good. But anyway, Tolkien, what he’s meant to me, is he’s just kind of unlocked that whole world of fantasy. As a student of theology, I learned a lot about C.S. Lewis and Tolkien and their relationship with one another, and I always appreciated how Tolkien wasn’t like overt with his Christian imagery or metaphors. In fact, even after reading it and going through seminary, I still don’t understand a lot of it. And because it’s such a rich puzzle, I really enjoy the depth that he has to the lore and his stories. So, that’s kind of where my fandom came from. He’s kind of my escape, my happy place, when I have a stressful day; and my phrase in my house is, “If we’re not Trilogy-ing at least once a year then we are not doing life right,” whether it’s books or movies. We actually took our son to see all the extended editions of the films, so he loves it too. It’s just been a really rich way for my family to enjoy his legacy."
139,34,Male,20190426,eng,Colorado Springs,Colorado  ,United States,"I am thirty-four, and I’m from Colorado Springs, Colorado. My first encounter with Tolkien, with his works, would’ve definitely been through the major motion pictures of The Lord of the Rings. But I would say in terms of his works and the written works it was probably about seven years ago, through my wife. She is a huge fan of Tolkien and has been since a child and she really got me started in the right place by reading The Hobbit. Just upon doing that it was just kind of this whimsical, magical experience, to kind of be swept in so naturally, so kind of holistically into this world and into this story, and into something that felt so familiar but kind of resonated so much. It was almost like a story that you feel like you’ve heard a lot of times but that kind of felt ancient and embedded into me in a away. It was marvelous. And then, from there, the love just blossomed, and read The Lord of the Rings trilogy and halfway through The Silmarillion—that’s taking me a bit I have to admit. But yeah, just the lore and everything; and it’s been great over the years as media has attached to that through video games and the other movies and things like that. We just really adopted that in. I’ve loved how in the last few years they’ve released a lot of these works, with the collaboration of his son, to kind of finish out some of that writing. That’s all been fantastic. I think all of that has built to my fandom, which has really taken form because I found that Tolkien has the power to transform everyday things into things of legend. He takes ordinary people and seemingly ordinary places, and he gives them strength. He takes extraordinary people and he makes them mythical. He brings into the world a sense of wonder, which I feel like is intrinsic to our existence but that we often have forgotten exists. And I think in that, that fandom to me has just started to mean so much more, because it’s helped me find a sense of center and peace, and it just resonates with me almost on a religious level, where if just feels like, “Man, this speaks to the core of who I am and the ethics that I care about and the world that I want to see created.” That’s what I really love in his writings, is you see that out of his characters. They’re creating a world that is now and now yet; but they work so much and they sacrifice so much, not just for the sake of others but for the sake of making the world beautiful. "
140,28,Male,20190429,eng,Greenville,South Carolina,United States,"Twenty-eight. Greenville, South Carolina. My first experience with the works of Tolkien, I was in fourth grade, and my teacher had referred me to read The Hobbit. I’d never tried to read something that was as challenging and as riveting as the world and the characters that were brought in front of me as I was reading The Hobbit. Harry Potter didn’t stack up. After I read The Hobbit I immediately turned to The Lord of the Rings. I spent my fourth and fifth grade years diving through The Lord of the Rings and really getting to know the characters and the world that Tolkien had created in Middle-earth. It came to be for me a binding point for a lot of my childhood. I grew up in a home that had a lot of difficulty and a lot of troubles, and some of the binding ties of my family were our love for written word. Specifically, the works of Tolkien tied together my father and I very closely. We were always putting together potential trips to go and find places that we thought might look like Mount Doom, or going to the Lonely Mountain. I grew up over in Utah so mountains were plentiful. The characters really spoke to me, and the development of the story really helped to ground me in such a way that I was able to grow and build personally in my moral center, based around a lot of these stories and these characters. Beyond that, moving forward I hope to be able to pass on this love of Tolkien and all of his works to the people that I influence, specifically someday my own children, because I know that the influence that it has had on me has been profound and one that will continue until I die. "
141,62,Female,20190429,eng,West Bend,Wisconsin,United States,"I am sixty-two. I am originally from northern Wisconsin, but I currently live in West Bend. I first encountered The Hobbit actually, my senior year in high school. It was required reading in my creative writing class, and it was one of the very few pieces of reading that I had to do that I actually enjoyed, although I do love to read. And I was hooked, and I had no idea that anything else had been written by him. It’s the only thing I’d ever heard of. I read The Hobbit over and over, and over again, until coming home from college, I was at the bus station in Chicago and somebody standing next to me was reading The Lord of the Rings. I spoke up and asked about it, and found out that it existed, and that became my every year, annual—I had to read it every year. It just was the most calming and exciting thing that I think I’ve ever read. So, one of the reasons I’m a fan is because his books are so real. They just feel like it’s history as opposed to fantasy, even though I love fantasy. And then the movies came out, finally. I saw the animated version, and I was like “They’ve got to be able to do this in real life.” And I waited, and I waited, and I waited and finally it came out. I was at every one of the openings at midnight. My dear husband who’s not a big Tolkien fan—he likes it fine but he’s not a big fan like I am—came with me and sat through the whole movie listening to my “But it’s not… They left out Tom Bombadil!” and “Oh, that’s not the way Aragorn felt about his destiny!” And I just went through all that, but I got used to it. I also watch the extended versions of the movies as often as I can do it. The whole concept is kind of life-changing because it takes you away from where you are; and he’s just the greatest guy ever, and I will be a fan until the day I die. And I push him to everybody that is willing to listen."
142,38,Male,20190429,eng,Norman,Oklahoma,United States,"I’m thirty-eight years old and I’m originally from Norman, Oklahoma. I first encountered the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, honestly, before I could remember. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings up to a point, which I’ll explain in a moment, were some of my bedtime stories when I was a child. That was interspersed with the normal things like Maurice Sendak, and some not-so-normal things like Greco-Roman mythology, weird things like that. But Tolkien always stood out, partially because of the messages in his work, partially because of the prose that he used. I mean, he was a Beowulf scholar, as most all of us know, and there’s just this kind of lilt and flow to his prose, and I firmly believe that people who have had, say, The Hobbit, for example, read to them, or listened to it spoken out loud, have a slightly different take on it, because there is that rolling lilt to it like I was speaking of. As I mentioned, the messages that are in his work, talking about how he really, really saw the kind of post-industrialization of Great Britain happening and watched all of his favorite trees get mowed down, for all intents and purposes; and he didn’t really like that, and he incorporated that with what he saw in the trenches of the Somme and places like that, and we got these fabulous stories out of it. For me, if nothing else—and I was thinking about this last night and this morning before this—one of the greatest hero tales is that of Samwise Gamgee. I mean, who doesn’t want to be that loyal? Who doesn’t want to be that brave and that steadfast, right? These stories have informed my life from a very early age and continue to do so now, and will probably continue to do so throughout the rest of my life. I continue to re-read them on a yearly basis and will probably continue to do so, again, for the rest of my life, because Tolkien is fabulous. I can’t imagine how many other people he’s touched and how long his works will continue to endure. Thank you for this opportunity. "
143,68,Female,20190429,eng,Seattle,Washington,United States,"I am sixty-eight years old, and I currently live in Seattle, Washington. When I first became aware of The Lord of the Rings it was when I was in my young adulthood, something like seventeen to twenty years old, approximately, the late Sixties. I was an undergraduate in Liberal Arts College at Marquette University. I was open to exploring everything. This was the time of the counterculture revolution that included the civil rights marches, anti-Vietnam war protests, and the feminist movement. The Hobbit was the first book I read, and it was so imaginative that it held my fascination. Why am I a fan? I’m a fan because the storyline holds a powerful, timeless message held together by creative, multifaceted characters, language and location, and intrigue. And it gave me some psychic relief to get lost in a fantasy world. I love the riddles by Gollum and how Bilbo upped Gollum with the last riddle. What meaning does it have for me? I recently retired. I was privileged to travel to New Zealand and visited Matamata, the site “Hobbiton” where Peter Jackson and the crew filmed The Hobbit. I saw the movie years ago. Being onsite I felt the enchantment of J. R. R. Tolkien’s story. I reflected on why I was so energized. For me the meaning of the trilogy was about power and how it can help as well as corrupt. I think today’s political turmoil has these same issues. It was also about the Fellowship and friendship—Sam supporting Frodo and Bilbo supporting Aragorn. Of diverse groups of people—the hobbits, the elves, humans, and wizards—and coming home in the end. Our world today could benefit from more Fellowship."
144,80,Male,20190430,eng,Wauwatosa,Wisconsin,United States,"I am eighty years old, and I live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. I first encountered Tolkien’s works fairly late in life. Mistakenly, I thought he was just a children’s writer, and so I had zero interest in him. Then on New Year’s Day, 2002, out of curiosity, I went to see the first of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien movies, The Fellowship of the Ring. I was skeptical, expecting a Disney type of picture. To my amazement, I was blown away. I loved it from start to finish. Never had I seen a fantasy movie so powerful and compelling. I spent much of 2002 enthusiastically reading Tolkien’s books, biography, letters—anything related to him I could lay my hands on. At year’s end, I felt confident enough to set up my own website, jrrtolkienepics.com, and launch my e-zine, Arda Letter. I kept them going for nearly four years before I burned out. I’m a Tolkien fan based on his literary excellence and masterful writing style. The movies are the frosting on the cake in my opinion. A few examples to illustrate my point: His books are rich in colorful details and have many levels of meaning to explore—enough for your lifetime. He has a talent for sustaining a deep-seated sense of fear and terror that keep your goose pimples active. Would you want to spend the night at the Prancing Pony? Readers worldwide love his works because they have the substance readers crave but rarely get. On a personal level, Tolkien gave me something I needed at the time: a meaningful purpose in life, not to mention plenty of excitement. Thank you, Mr. Tolkien for your gift to me. Rest in peace. Before I go, I have some advice for the unborn generations of Tolkien readers. Begin your reading with The Silmarillion, then go to The Hobbit, and finally the masterpiece, Lord of the Rings. Tolkien said The Silmarillion was his most important work, one that sets the stage for all his other writings. The background material on the Elves will deepen your understanding of The Lord of the Rings and answer many of the questions you’re bound to have."
145,44,Female,20190502,eng,Winnsboro,Texas,United States,"I am forty-four years old and I live in East Texas. I remember very specifically the first time I encountered Tolkien. I was a young teenager sitting on the floor of my library, and I found this really interesting title on the bottom shelf. It was Return of the King, and I realized that it was the third one in a trilogy, so I found the first two and I read them, and I have very, very, very specific memories of reading those books for the first time. When I was finished, I went looking for more, and I discovered The Silmarillion, which is actually the piece of his work that took over my heart. When I recently reread Lord of the Rings, I tried to figure out why I don’t love it the same way that all of my friends love it; and I discovered it was because what I love about it is all of the hints of the tales of ages past and those engagement that Lord of the Rings has with the history that you find in The Silmarillion. I can’t talk to my friends about Lord of the Rings without actually referencing the whole history of Middle-earth. So, one of the things that made the biggest impression on me was Elwing; and I don’t know why she was so powerful to me, but she had this determination and this desperation, and she made choices that were difficult, and she did hard things. When I first encountered her, I said, “I want to be like that when I grow up.” Over two decades I’ve tried to figure out why, but I’ve never, never stopped wanting to be like her—at least like the version of her that I have in my head. I’ve admired her determination when she jumped into the sea with the Silmaril. I have admired the love that she must have had with her husband, because he chose to be counted among the Elves even though he wanted to be counted among Men, and he did it because he loved her. Their ending was not a happy ending, even though everybody lived and got to be together; and because of that joy and sorrow and reality that Tolkien puts into all of his characters, my life has totally been changed."
146,23,Female,20190502,eng,Burbach,,Germany,"I am twenty-three years old, and I am from Germany. The first time I read any work of Tolkien was when I was six years old and the movies had just come out, my parents had watched them, and they came home and they talked about them a lot. I just wanted to know what was going on. I was a kid, you know—you know how kids are. So, I realized that we had the books, old German versions of the books, at home; and so six-year-old me took the first book and I just read it at night after I went to bed. I think it took me like a year to get through the first three books, but I loved them, so I just kept reading them. Still I read them every year: Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, and Silmarillion, The Unfinished Tales. It’s just become a tradition of sorts. I love Tolkien and I love his works because they are so relatable. There are so many characters with so many different aspects that I can relate to. We have these obvious hero types like Aragorn or Sam that I related to as a kid, and I wanted to be a hero. That’s nice; but later on I grew up and I realized that the real heroes, the heroes that I want to be, are people like Sam or Éowyn, the quiet heroes, the people who work in the background. Those are the people that are really important in life. I just am amazed by how he managed to build such a huge world. His works helped me through a lot and, you know, every time I feel depressed, or lonely, or scared I just go back to Lord of the Rings and I read that, and it helps me. When I was nervous at the end of university, I was about to write my bachelor’s thesis and I didn’t know what to do with my life next, so I wrote about Lord of the Rings, about the female heroes, the female heroism in Lord of the Rings. That helped me find my courage to sort of take the next step, to move on, and to find my place in life, I guess. And that’s something that I think Tolkien is—he’s one of the few authors who really does that. I mean I have like three authors where I can just dive into the story, and it’s sort of an all-consuming love that I feel for those characters in that world. I think that’s quite unique. It’s quite unique how he managed to touch so many people over the years, and I’m just—I feel very, very honored that I got to know him so young, and that I grew up with him and with the characters he created."
147,32,Female,20190502,eng,Chicago,Illinois,United States,"I am thirty-two years old, and I am from Chicago, Illinois. I first encountered Tolkien’s works when The Fellowship of the Ring movie was coming out, at least in my memory. I remember watching the trailer for that movie and something was clicking with a memory that I hadn’t remembered until that moment, and the whole movie seemed familiar, like I had already watched it. Then I remembered that as a child I watched the animated Hobbit movie a lot. The part with Gollum especially frightened me, but I really enjoyed it immensely. My sister took me to The Fellowship of the Ring movie with some friends; and right after that movie ended, I was obsessed. I went to the local library, and I picked up The Two Towers because I thought, “I already watched the first movie. I know what happens in the first book. I’ll just skip to the second book.” Then by the time I got to Return of the King and they were going back to the Shire I was like, “Wait, what’s going on? I’m confused.” So, I read it out of order, but I did finish the series in about three days. My family did not see me for three days. I just stayed in my room and read. And I just became super obsessed with Tolkien and his world entirely. The world hooked me in probably the most. I loved all the descriptions and his writing style, and it felt like it took me to another place that felt lived in and had a very deep history. It was also the first fantasy series, like actual fantasy series, that I read as an adult. Tolkien’s the reason I started reading other fantasy series. The Wheel of Time is one of the other fantasy series I’m a big fan of. And then I also dabbled in writing for some time because of him. And then what sticks with me most are the life lessons that are present in Lord of the Rings, especially to try to enjoy the simple and calm of life, but also to stand up to evil if you see it in the world, and to not just be like, “Whatever, it will just resolve,” to try to take a stand. So that’s it."
148,34,Female,20190502,eng,San Antonio,Texas,United States,"I am thirty-four years old, and I am from San Antonio, Texas. I first encountered Tolkien from the books on my mother’s shelves. They were originally my uncle’s. I did not read them though until I picked up a book from the library in the sixth grade, and I’ve been rereading them ever since, every single year. Just been having a fun time with that, and one of the reasons I really, really love him and his works is the escapism and the history interwoven throughout the entire stories. Doesn’t matter what book you pick up, you’re going to get a little bit of background about Middle-earth and the history. I actually became a history major through my family’s love of history, and Tolkien just really helps with that. So, that’s the greatest thing; it’s so large in scope, yet very accessible in the stories. And then the community that The Lord of the Rings and that Tolkien himself has built based on any and all his stories is just tremendously huge and very welcoming. I’ve done trivia contests and lost, but people still bought my food because we were just all having so much fun together on these books and these movies. It’s just so much fun, and my husband actually gets to listen to me, in a way, geek out over everything I learn. And there’s always something to learn. That’s what I love the most about his works and that’s really what he means to me. It’s just always constantly learning. And I think since he was a professor he would enjoy that people just are constantly learning still through his books no matter how many times we’ve reread them."
149,30,Female,20190502,eng,Carbonne,,France,"I am thirty years old, and I come from France. I first met Tolkien’s work when I was twelve years old when I saw the trailer for the first Peter Jackson movie. My dad told me there was a book, and since I was an avid reader, I went and bought the paperback—French edition at the time. And then I read like most of the available books in French in the months that followed, and I began reading in English by the age of fourteen because I wanted to read everything that existed. I guess I’ve been a Tolkien fan for all these years because I like the, as many people, the consistency of his world and the amount of imagination that he puts in such a huge—like his life’s work. That’s what I guess I like in it. And then I like fandom and participating into a community. So, this means that Tolkien for me has been a very important influence on my life since I’ve chosen to become an English teacher after reading Tolkien. And it has also led to my choice of research for my master’s degree and for my Ph.D. And most of my leisure time, let’s say, is spent on working with Tolkiendil, which is one of the biggest today French societies about Tolkien in France, so I guess it has sort of determined most of my adult life today."
150,30,Female,20190502,eng,Chicago,Illinois,United States,"I am thirty years old, and I am originally from Chicago, currently living in England. I do not know when I first encountered Tolkien. I was raised on Tolkien by my father who has been a fan since the Seventies, I want to say. I heard the stories. I read The Hobbit as a little kid. He showed me the old Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings. He showed me the Rankin Bass Hobbit, the Rankin Bass Lord of the Rings--well no, The Return of the King. So, it’s been just part of me as long as I can remember. I guess for me the draw initially was the world and the characters, of course, as a little kid; but as I’ve grown older his combination of creativity and scholarship, and the fact that those things are just so wedded in him, has become really important to me because I’m also a scholar myself. I study history, and I am also a creator. I write fiction. I do a lot of artwork, things like that; and having that be so completely integrated in his life has been a huge model and inspiration for me. And it’s been very encouraging for me to have someone who managed to do that with his life. Obviously, he had quite a few perks that I don’t have, like full funding and what-not from Oxford and everything; but it’s still just sort of this inspiration of what you can do when you combine your creative impulses with your scholarly pursuits. On an emotional level, Tolkien’s works have gotten me through some really dark times in my life, some really deep depressions, and his message about hope has always kept me going. There’s that scene where Bilbo climbs up into the trees above Mirkwood and sees the butterflies… Sorry… It’s just that that scene means a lot. And that’s a really—that’s really helped me through. I’m done."
151,37,Female,20190503,eng,Helena,Montana,United States,"I am thirty-seven years old. I am from Helena, Montana. I can hardly remember a time in my life when Tolkien has not been a part of it. I believe my mother first read me The Hobbit when I was eight. It became a bit of a ritual for us. If I was feeling sick or sad, I could always go lay my head in her lap and she would read it to me. She still would do that for me today if I wanted her to. She then introduced me to the next books, The Lord of the Rings, when I was eleven. I remember at the time being annoyed that the new main hobbit was Frodo, not Bilbo, because I loved Bilbo. Nevertheless, Lord of the Rings became my favorite books and I ended up writing my undergraduate thesis on the series, which I titled “Life, Death, and Eucatastrophe: Comedy in The Lord of the Rings.” Even my personal email address is Tolkien-related. As for why I’m a Tolkien fan, I’m an artist, so I love his theory of sub-creation and I think about that whenever I pick up my brush and my paints. It’s really thrilling to have that in mind when I create my art. I also love his allegory Leaf by Niggle for that same reason. I love how Niggle was a painter and how that was such a big part of that story. Lord of the Rings has been my ultimate comfort reading, and the characters that are a part of the stories have been my friends for most of my life, almost thirty years now. His writing to me provides inspiring beauty in a world that sometimes seems to suffer from a distinct lack of it, as well as an overwhelming sense of hope and a richness of depth that can’t be matched hardly anywhere. Not to mention the fact that The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are just great stories I do not get tired of. My perspective on Tolkien has completely changed as I’m going through my very first reading of The Silmarillion. I started it three years ago with the Council of Westmarch, which is the local Montana Smial of the Tolkien Society I’ve been part of since 2011. We’re still not done. We’ve taken our time; but I can say the book has changed my life. It’s one of my desert island books. It’s totally not what I expected it to be. When I started it, I thought I would not understand it. If I did, it would be so technical I would not really enjoy it. I did not expect it to be so overwhelmingly beautiful, tragic. The drama has been just overwhelming, and I think I’ve become slightly unhealthily attached to it. Tolkien has helped me deal with some difficult times in my life, including a major move and a job hunt where I was basically unemployed for four months. And I am grateful to the Professor for creating such an incredible world that I get to be part of a Fellowship with other fans, readers, and artists who have gotten such joy from it."
152,29,Female,20190503,eng,Miami,Florida,United States,"I am twenty-nine. I am from, originally Miami, Florida. I encountered Tolkien when I was around eleven or twelve. It was shortly before the movies came out. My mom had ordered the books for me from her Scholastic catalog. It had Elijah Wood on the cover. And I did not open them before I saw the movies, but the books and movies kind of worked together for me. I do remember looking at a map my uncle had in his study of Middle-earth and being really fascinated by it. I am a fan because… I think it’s not only the world-building, but—I feel like a lot of Tolkien fans say this— it was the sense of the little man against forces greater than themselves I really identified with. There is also a sense of nostalgia in it. I really liked this idea of a world being lost and kind of keeping that memory alive. I always really liked the Elves, the sense of being bigger than human I really liked. What has he meant to me? Well, I am currently a PhD. student in Latin and Greek. I started studying Latin and Greek because I learned that Tolkien had studied Latin and Greek, and I wanted to be just like him. That eventually morphed into its own kind of interest in Latin and Greek itself. Now I’m dissertating because of something I enjoyed when I was eleven. I also got to learn Old Norse along the way, and it really stirred up that interest for me. It made me want to learn to write and that’s the path it led me to today. I also recently got to go visit his grave, which was really meaningful for me to see the actual resting place of the man who inspired my career. It feels deeply personal. "
153,24,Female,20190503,eng,Atlanta,Georgia,United States,"I am twenty-four years old. I’m from Seattle, Washington but giving this interview from Atlanta, Georgia where I am temporarily. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I was really young. My older sister is responsible for this and everything that came afterwards as far as I’m concerned. She’s quite a bit older than me. She read Lord of the Rings out loud to me when I was three. One of my earliest memories is of her and I sitting next to the lake. She read Fellowship of the Ring to me, and our mom was trying to get us in for dinner but we were at the Mines of Moria, so I was begging her not to stop reading. Before I went to kindergarten, I decided that I was going to learn to read because I wanted to read The Lord of the Rings to myself. I’d completely fallen in love with the stories and the world. Everyone was quick to tell me that you can’t read Lord of the Rings when you’re a kindergartner. But I practiced a lot and I read it to myself for the first time when I was nine. I’ve read it every year since then. There are a lot of reasons to be a Tolkien fan. Maybe it’s a little cliché but one of the things that’s always drawn me in is the level of detail, because there’s so many different stories and so much depth. The mythos is just so complete and everything has its own story. The major reason that I love Tolkien so much is just the beauty of the works themselves. They are not just simple stories. There is sadness and loss and heartbreak in stories that are primarily about hope and love and joy. And vice-versa. It’s like this mythological capturing of the human experience and it’s totally unmatched by any other author. Even just calling him “just an author” seems insufficient to really describe what he’s done. As to what he’s meant to me, I think that being exposed to the works of Tolkien when I was so young has had such a big impact on the person that I grew up to be. I think having loved Tolkien for as long as I have, has inspired my imagination. It gave me a much more boundless sense of what’s possible in the world. Tolkien really taught me the power of imagination and how just breathtakingly deep and complex an imaginary world can be, and what imaginary worlds can really do to enhance the world that we live in. I have long struggled with mental health and it’s easy for me to get overwhelmed by the world and start to feel that depth of despair. I really think that Tolkien’s works have pretty much single-handedly saved my mental health, because of that recurring message of love and hope in the face of overwhelming tragedy and darkness, and just how very real that world is to me—much more real than any work of fiction that I’ve ever read."
154,30,Female,20190503,eng,Paris,,France,"I am thirty, and I am from Paris, in France. I first encountered the works of Tolkien at school when I was eleven. One of my teachers told us about The Hobbit, and the magic and wizards, so I thought that was a book I had to read. But before I could read it, only a few weeks later, Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring was released. So, my father took me to the cinema, and I fell in love with The Lord of the Rings; and then I read the books, and that’s how I fell in love with everything. I’m a fan because I love the escapist aspect of it. It’s a three-dimensional world, which is delightful. It’s so easy to feel involved in the stories and in this world. I also like the tragic and epic dimensions of the stories and the characters: their challenges, their failures, and their success. Tolkien appeals to me as an author who is very sensible, and it’s reflected by his characters. I also like the connection to our own tradition in literature and art. It means a lot to me because I spend so many hours reading and studying the history of Middle-earth, it has become a part of my life. Through the characters I discovered who I was because they taught me a lot of things about myself, about human nature, their strength, their capacity for resilience. Taught me and helped me so much through my own struggles. Thanks to Tolkien I also discovered how fascinating languages and the history of languages could be. It introduced me to a literature which I wouldn’t have known, like medieval literature for instance. And I also started to write again thanks to Tolkien because his works, to me, are like very fertile ground on which my imagination can develop and grow. Today I am studying to become a literary translator, and that’s thanks to Tolkien and to what I’ve learned through his books. And that’s it. Thank you. "
155,58,Male,20190503,eng,Dubuque,Iowa,United States,"I am 58 ½ years old, and I am from Dubuque, Iowa. I saw the Rankin Bass version of The Hobbit when I was a freshman at Northern Iowa and later that year my roommate introduced me to the books, which I read voraciously with background music of Kansas, Jethro Tull, Yes, and, of course, Led Zeppelin. Early Kansas always makes me think of the Riders of Rohan; and Yes is distinctly Elvish. In retrospect, I was in a period of deep depression. My father had committed suicide only months before. My mother was ill with MS and institutionalized for a mental breakdown. And as an immature seventeen-year old away from home, I was definitely in escape mode, just as I suspect Tolkien was escaping aspects of his World War One reality. I read and re-read the books several times that year much to the detriment of my grades. The term fan makes me think of the screaming girls from Beatles footage so I’m not that. I’m a deeply devoted student of Tolkien’s work and completed a Master’s thesis at Northern Iowa called “The Matter of the Red Book” that tied Tolkien’s autobiographical framework to the concept of forgiveness. My thesis advisor was Jerry Klinkowitz, a Marquette grad, who did important early work on Kurt Vonnegut Jr.—after Charles Schulz, my first favorite author. As a student of literature, there are few contributions to the canon as important to an author as Christopher Tolkien’s work. The word seminal is thrown around somewhat haphazardly, but without J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings I imagine a world without Game of Thrones or the countless fantasy authors who have created and shared their own secondary worlds. As an undergrad and graduate student, I gained critical skills that have served me my whole life. What Tolkien has given me, though, is the opportunity to share the experience: with my kids when I was temporarily a single dad and we read aloud the books at bedtime; with my community—I gave several talks at our local library in celebration of the Peter Jackson trilogy in honor of Tolkien’s eleventy-first birthday; and in my personal life with friends, colleagues, and people I don’t know at all. I have Stephen Colbert, on record, as a forgiver of Gollum and Boromir, though on the latter point we have yet to discuss whether it was a necessary political act. There are threads of my life that simply would not exist if it were not for my sojourns in Middle-earth; and for that I will remain grateful until the end of my days. "
156,38,Female,20190503,eng,Apple Orchard,Pennsylvania,United States,"I am thirty-eight years old and I am from an apple orchard in Pennsylvania is where I grew up. I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was twelve years old. I had some familiarity with Tolkien’s work before that, but that’s my first significant memory of encountering Tolkien. I’d seen the animated movies. I’d read The Hobbit. But none of those stuck with me until I read The Lord of the Rings. At which point it became my favorite book. I had been an avid reader through childhood, just devouring books. And when I got to that one, I kind of stopped because I had found what I was looking for. I still read but not quite at the pace I did when I was twelve. I started getting involved in fandom when the internet got invented, which, as a thirty-eight-year old, was not when I was a child. As a college student, I would go onto online forums and talk to people about Tolkien’s work, and I really learned a lot about the books; and questions that I’d had got answered through those discussions. I also was on a college campus that had a library, and so I would check out various books of Tolkien scholarship, most of which I was not impressed with. But there was one by Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth, which was very impressive, and I learned so much from reading that. I also read Tolkien’s letters and discovered that he would not have been terribly impressed with an American engineering student as I was at the time. But at the same time, I started to understand what he had created and why it was so amazing to step into his world. I was somebody who loves starlight and loves trees. Obviously, so was he; but he was able to give works to that in a way that I personally at the age of eighteen could not. I was able to rediscover the things that I loved about the world through his world. I read The Silmarillion when I was in high school. I didn’t like it the first time, mostly because it wasn’t The Lord of the Rings. But upon re-reading it became much more interesting. That’s currently my favorite of Tolkien’s works. I am involved with The Silmarillion film project currently, where I help Signum University figure out how you would adapt The Silmarillion to a TV show if you wanted to do that and have the rights, which obviously they do not. I spend a lot of time with friends who I met through Tolkien’s work— so, people who also like to discuss it, people who go to conventions. I go to “A Long Expected Party” in Kentucky where we take over an old Shaker village for the weekend and dress in costumes and drink mead and, in general, immerse ourselves in what it means to live in the world that Tolkien wrote about. That’s my experience. Thanks."
157,22,Female,20190503,eng,North Potomac,Maryland,United States,"I am twenty-two years old, and I am from North Potomac, Maryland. I have been a life-long fan of Tolkien, not necessarily by choice. Growing up I was read Tolkien’s stories, most specifically The Hobbit, by my mom. And we had maps and books and little figurines of Bilbo all over the house, so I think I was introduced to it before I started reading it; but I first read Lord of the Rings in the summer before I entered middle school, and I’ve reread stories since then. I think the reason I’m such a fan of Tolkien is because of how he treats his characters. He treats all of them like he’s meeting them for the first time, and that sort of lets you grow and love the characters with him. He treats them with depth and respect, and I feel like every single one of his characters has a slow, complete arc that represents something, and it allows you to grow closer to them, and it’s not all just ideals. It’s sort of like real people and complex characters, but all of it makes sense, all of it sort of falls into place. He has meant a lot to me in my academic career as well. I took a lot of religious studies class in college, and I also am very passionately interested in folklore and mythology. I think he was one of the first examples of taking mythology and folklore, and all of these magical, mystical stories and taking them seriously. In all of his works he has this great representation of the cultural importance and significance of things like magic and fantasy that it’s so easy to not take seriously; but he approaches it with respect and he still is able to include the serious aspects of it with still that like child-like joy and wonder that fantasy really inspires, I think, in all of us. So that’s why I think Tolkien means so much to me, and I think that’s why he means so much to everyone that reads his books."
158,55,Female,20190503,eng,North Potomac,Maryland,United States,"I am originally from Garden City in New York, currently from North Potomac, Maryland. I say where I am from originally because I first encountered J.R.R. Tolkien in—oh, I forgot to say I was fifty-five years old. I probably didn’t. I’m fifty-five. I first encountered J.R.R. Tolkien’s works in ninth grade. My ninth grade teacher, Mr. Robertson, made a deal with me that if I would stop reading books under the table during class, he would let me into his private collection of books off to the side, collected during thirty-five years of teaching. And the first thing he loaned me was The Lord of the Rings, and I had not—I think I had heard of The Hobbit back in like fourth grade, but I’d never read it. I read it in one weekend. This was the most incredible thing I had ever read; I had never read any fantasy before. This was the first exposure to fantasy was J.R.R. Tolkien. I think that I immediately became a fan because it was the first book that I actually read that I cried at the end. I was happy. I was sad. I really felt a connection to the book. Up until then I had been reading Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys; and all of a sudden there was this new world. I stayed a fan, reading the book—by the time I had graduated from high school I had read the book thirty-three times. I was keeping hash marks in the front of the book. Since then I’ve read it at least once a year, so I’m up to somewhere in eighty or ninety times having read the book, the trilogy and The Hobbit. But I think what kept me in love with it was the amount of world building, the fact there was always something more there. There were backstories; there were legends. And because of Tolkien himself I became more interested in narrative poetry. I like to memorize poems. I’ve read The Oxford Book of Narrative Poetry. I memorized “Horatius at the Bridge.” I memorized other things. And I learned about the Oxford English Dictionary--I own a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary all multiple volumes of it—because of his love of language. So, he influenced me in so many other ways: a love of language, a love of poetry, wanting to learn more about different people. Loved all the different cultures. I’m an anthropologist; I’m an archeologist. Was an anthropology major. Loved the fact there were more than once race in the world. So, I’ve been a life-long fan of Tolkien and think I’ve passed that on to my children, as you will see very shortly. But thank you."
159,33,Female,20190503,eng,York,Pennsylvania,United States,"I am thirty-three years old, and I am from York, Pennsylvania. I started reading Tolkien when I was eleven. It was on the suggestion of a friend. I started very avidly reading it. I read it long before the movies came out, probably five or six years before the movies came out. He really got me into the world of fantasy and reading. Shortly after I read Tolkien, I then got into C.S. Lewis, and then I moved to J.K. Rowling, and I really started to read at that point. Before, I wasn’t really interested in reading, but Tolkien really got me into reading. He gave me a passion in life. I absolutely love Lord of the Rings. I now go to fairy festivals and Renaissance Faires. There isn’t much in my life that doesn’t have to do with Tolkien. I actually met the man who is now my fiancé because we met over a love of elves and swords, and he looks like an elf. He looks like Legolas from Lord of the Rings. That was what drew my interest to him. We actually went to a Tolkien convention together. We are having a Lord of the Rings wedding. Our whole apartment is done in Tolkien. So, he means a lot to us. I will go to England someday to see his grave, and probably sob over it. I’ll bring him some flowers. I have several—I think five or six now—Tolkien tattoos. I am starting to learn Elvish. I’m just completely engrossed in his world. He’s also made me love hiking. I love to hike. I love to talk to the trees. Do they talk back? Maybe, but, you know, that’s up for interpretation. But yeah, Tolkien’s completely encompassed my whole life."
160,49,Female,20190504,eng,De Pere,Wisconsin,United States,"I am forty-nine years old and I live in De Pere, Wisconsin. I discovered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien around the age of eleven when I stumbled upon a copy of The Hobbit in my school library. It was unlike any other fiction I had read until that point. Of course, reading The Hobbit lead me to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I actually still have all four paperback copies of those books that I bought in the 1980’s so I could re-read them again and again and not have to keep checking them out of the library. You could say I rediscovered Tolkien just about every time I reread a book, because a new phrase or a new description of a scene would just jump out to me even more each time I read it. It just kind of enhanced my appreciation for his writing. I’m a Tolkien fan because the themes to his stories are timeless: Good versus Evil; a seemingly insurmountable task or quest; loyalty of friends; and the resistance of temptation. These stories are set in such a fantastical world that he described in incredible detail, even creating new languages such as Elvish and Entish. I love the variety of creatures he weaved through all of his stories, whether it be elves, orcs, ents, giant spiders; and, of course, the irrepressible hobbits. To me Tolkien has meant the power of great writing. That The Hobbit continues to draw new fans in this age of instant gratification from our electronic devices I think is a true testament to the appeal of that story. My two kids are both typical teenagers. They’ve re-read the book and re-watched Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations with me, and I never read those books to them when they were children. They simply discovered them on my book shelf. And they became as entranced with them as I did when I was their age. Finally, I would add that Tolkien also symbolizes a bond between my children and I. He symbolizes our shared love of his creativity, his talent, and his imagination."
161,29,Male,20190504,eng,Canal Winchester,Ohio,United States,"I am twenty-nine years old, and I am from Canal Winchester, Ohio. I first encountered Tolkien and his works in eighth grade. It was actually November—I know that specifically because that’s when I started to record the books that I’ve read, from middle-school even until now. My dad was in the hospital at that time and I was reading a lot of books. Tolkien just kind of popped in there. It was recommended by a friend in school. I would read books at my desk under other textbooks at school. My teacher, multiple times, had to pull The Hobbit away from me and called me “Hobbit child” because I liked his works so much. I’m a Tolkien fan for about four reasons. It’s the quest. It’s just the best quest story that I have come across. There’s a clear goal, and I like that. Tolkien distinguishes specifically against good and evil. It’s not even that; it’s that he embellishes each one. He heavily emphasizes what is good and gives these different attributes. It’s the language that the good and the evil uses, and it’s the things they wear. It’s where they’re located. It’s the sights and smells and the different things, like where they’re at. I really enjoy that. Also, the villains. I love Tolkien’s villains. I love Sauron, Saruman. The Mouth of Sauron I love. The Witch-King. I love Morgoth, Melkor. I have a row of Funko Pops at my desk in the library, and they’re all of the villains. There’s only like one—there’s like Galadriel that’s in the midst of them. Also, I like Tolkien’s backstory. So, all of the appendices and The Silmarillion that I came across when I was in middle school. I had no idea that Sauron had a boss or that there was anyone before him. And so I liked that. Tolkien’s meant to me a way to escape, especially when I was a kid. My dad was in the hospital. We were going every day, and that really helped me go into another world. I like also that he and his worlds are the archetype that I measure all other fantasy by. His story is just an epic story that I like. And then the last thing is that Tolkien helped me explore other literature. So, I branched out into a higher epic fantasy and stuff like that. He’s really impacted my life like that and I really appreciate what he’s done. "
162,31,Male,20190504,eng,Salt Lake City ,Utah,United States,"I am thirty-one years old. I am from Salt Lake City, Utah. I first encountered Tolkien in a library when I was in third grade. There was no real books. I lived in a very rural part in Indiana and really one of the only things that stuck out to me was this book called The Hobbit. As soon as I had read the first page it just—it was maybe a few nights before it was finished; I was about ten years old. From there I didn’t even realize there was an extra three parts, much less there was a beginning. We didn’t have those at the actual library—so when I actually found out about those, I was just enthralled. It was a thing where I immediately took my parents to go buy me the books; it was an immediate gift that I wanted. From there, after I had read the books, I became so enthralled, but then I found out that there was going to be a film made. And then I realized that, obviously once the films came out it was one of the biggest landmarks in all of cinema, and I think that what drove me towards the entirety of it all was that it really just taught me to use my imagination. I had really never embraced my imagination before Tolkien. I had really never even had one. I was very shy, very, very, very collected person. But then it branched out and it taught me to be free with your thoughts. He taught me to really embrace what it is that makes you want to believe in things, things that are obviously non-fiction, that are different. In regards to what he actually means to me, it’s almost impossible to put into words because I’ve read the books so many times and I’ve watched the films so many times. And then obviously once I got, I would say, mature enough to read The Silmarillion, that took me to a place where I realized that there is something outside of the rest of the world. You can live on a page; you can live through a set of words. For the most part, people don’t usually have that. Most people go through life and they don’t really understand what it’s like to just live outside of what their daily life is. But to just open up the cover and to realize that you can be in a different place, that you can be in a different world, and you can live in it—that’s the best thing that Tolkien does with his writing I believe, is that he allows you to live inside of a page. And the fact that he inspired so many other great authors. J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin are all people who were influenced by him, and then they created these landmarks. So to see where it all began, and to be a part of where it all began, that’s what’s one of the most important parts of my life is that I was introduced to Tolkien at a very young age, and I was able to learn to use my imagination because of that man, and I will always be thankful for that."
163,48,Male,20190504,eng,San Francisco,California,United States,"I am forty-eight years old, and I live in San Francisco, and I’ve been in California for most of my life. I first encountered Tolkien when I saw The Hobbit as done by Rankin Bass in animation on end of 1977. I got the tie-in adaptation of the book as well as the complete vinyl soundtrack of the production. Became a very assiduous fan of that. A few years later is when I first read Lord of the Rings, and after that I was gone; I’ve been set ever since. Been a huge fan just along the way. Ebbs and flows, but pretty much—you don’t want to know how many books I’ve got at this point. Why am I a fan? A real sense of place, I think, is a key thing. I don’t want to say it’s the key thing; but as opposed to anonymous landscapes—places where descriptions are like so it could be anywhere, but anywhere can be nowhere—there’s a sense of concreteness; there’s a sense of depth and place, that the characters are not moving through anonymous space. They have an awareness of their surroundings. And this is obviously not everything that goes into a creative narrative, but you do get a sense, at his best, that the narratives of Middle-earth were real. There’s a real sense of ‘this could have been’ through this one viewpoint. Even his shorter narratives, to a large degree, show that one way or another, even if they’re more figurative or things like that. But in the best of Middle-earth stories, you’re there. You’re breathing that air; you’re on those slopes, and you are seeing or participating in something bigger and wider. And what he has meant to me over this time, I could mention a number of things. Certainly it opened doors to a wide variety of, first initially, fantasy literature, but then imaginative literature in many different ways, and I think I’ve never let that go, and I hope that sort of eats into my continual interest in such stories, especially as people react against Tolkien, and sort of find new avenues and new ways to explore the imaginative field. I attended the 1992 centenary conference on Tolkien that was hosted by the Tolkien Society and the Mythopoeic Society in Keble College, Oxford. Had a chance to meet people like Priscilla Tolkien, Rayner Unwin. Saw Christopher Tolkien speak. So, you know, I have my fan moments quite clearly. From the adaptations by Peter Jackson up into the present day, this year—just this last month, I’ve started with two younger compatriots a podcast on Tolkien called “By the Bywater” and opened an exploration of his life’s work and impact, for lack of a better term. There’s the biopic about to come out; I’ll be seeing that sometime soon. There’s so much more out there. It’s one of those things that I am continually surprised at how, even if I step away for a while, I always come back. That can be everything from the films to the new adaptations that are coming up, to whatever else may happen. Most of the archives have been published at this point from Tolkien’s work, but who knows what may yet surface, and I’ll be intrigued to see where things go from there."
164,28,Female,20190506,eng,Burke,Virginia,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old. I’m originally from San Francisco, California, but I live just outside of Washington DC in Burke, Virginia. I encountered the works of Tolkien when I was ten years old. I was taken to see the Peter Jackson films, but I didn’t know anything about Tolkien prior to that; and I fell in love with him immediately. Then for Christmas that year, which was like a week later, I was gifted the box set of the trilogy. I started reading them immediately, and it was funny because I think I got to halfway through The Two Towers and I stopped. I actually didn’t end up finishing them until college, but by then I was like a confirmed fan.  Loved them, loved the movies. I guess why I’m a Tolkien fan—it’s a lot of reasons, but I would say the story, the world. The characters are so evocative and so amazing. I love the characters of Sam and Éowyn the best. They’re my favorite characters in the whole world. I love that it’s stimulating on multiple levels. It’s intellectually stimulating. It’s emotionally stimulating. I was an English major in undergrad and so I loved just reading in general and books, and I loved that his works just combine all of these elements of wonderful writing and genealogy and history and all this stuff. On a more personal level I would say that reading his books and watching films that are based off of his work has been there for me in really tough times. They have gotten me through some really tough times in my life, just thinking of like, “If Frodo could get the Ring to Mount Doom, I can do this,” which is kind of silly, but it has really helped me. Even just recently I got a tattoo on my wrist that says, “I am no man,” which is great. I would say, in general, what Tolkien has meant to me: Well, he’s brought me a lot of joy in my life, a lot of connection with people who also love his works. Me and my partner both love the movies and so we have an annual re-watch that is just wonderful, and I look forward to every year. I also listen to this podcast that is called “The Unexpected Podcast,” and that community has been really great. So just in general, joy and connection and I would say wonder are the things I have gotten out of it. "
165,65,Male,20190506,eng,Ankeny,Iowa,United States,"I am sixty-five years old. I am from Ankeny, Iowa. I first encountered Tolkien in the mid Seventies. My brother had read The Hobbit and suggested I read it. I started it three times before I got started and actually finished the book. Strangely enough, the first two times I read it, I found it a little boring. But like many novels or stories, it takes a little bit to get into; and once you’re hooked, you can’t put it down. Thereafter I read not only The Hobbit but The Lord of the Rings yearly for probably fifteen years. I still pick it up occasionally. The movies make it a little consumable in a different way—later in life when life is a little more hectic; but I’ll still read it until my dying days. Why am I a fan? Well it’s an epic sized story, and I like epic sized stories because life is an epic. It mirrors our world in a lot of ways. There are a plethora of characters of various sizes and shapes and intentions and motivations and different actions, different skills. It’s very much like the world we live in. It’s a story of good versus evil in a very clear way, which I believe is playing itself out in our world. And good prevails, but it prevails at a cost. Innocent people are hurt. There is a requirement of teamwork and perseverance and persistence, and hope when all hope is almost lost. Hope in something greater like, I believe, hope in the God that created us. We see the impact of others on our lives and we see, in the end, good prevailing, and I guess a happy resolution in many senses, although there has been loss; and there is sorrow. And there is an eternal world waiting for those major players as I believe there is for us as human beings. So, I love what Tolkien has done to create a world that we might call a fantasy world, but it very much parallels the real world that we live in."
166,31,Female,20190506,eng,,Massachusetts,United States,"I am thirty-one years old, and I am from Worcester, Massachusetts. My first encounter with Tolkien’s work was with the animated Lord of the Rings films when I was a child. My dad also had these really lovely early editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which I read when I was about eight, so the story pulled me in from such a young age. From then I knew with his stories you just get a bit of everything. There’s something in there for everyone, and he presents it in such a way that it shapes you as a person. So, for me, because I was exposed to it from such a young age, my views on friendship, love, loyalty, they all came from being exposed to his work. It’s really hard for me to imagine who I would be as a person if I hadn’t had that influence in my life. In many ways I almost feel like I’m more than just a fan of his. I feel almost indebted to him because his books served as a huge emotional support for me throughout my life. When the first film came out in 2001, I was fourteen, and I was going through a really hard time. I was struggling with an extremely painful physical handicap that was affecting my day-to-day life. My mom had just been diagnosed with cancer. I was the new kid at school. It was a lot at once. So, when the film came out it sort of brought me back to the books and I saw them in this new light, and I could really connect them to my own experiences. I really empathized with Frodo: the isolation he felt, the physical and mental burden of the Ring. In a strange way that sort of connection made me feel much less alone with my own struggles that I was going through. I go back to these films and these books every year and every single time they mean as much to me as they did then. People look at me and they think I’m just a massive fangirl, but it feels like so much more than that to me. I really struggle to put into words just how much Tolkien has meant to me, how much Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have meant to me. I guess I’d say they meant the world really, and they always will."
167,36,Female,20190506,eng,Southwestern,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-six years old, and I am from southwestern Wisconsin. Yes, I did grow up on a dairy farm. And the first encounter with Tolkien was in middle school when our seventh grade class read The Hobbit, but also did the film—the animated film—at the same time. And so that was a little bit of a trip right there; and actually a little side note—a few years ago when I was going through my belongings, I actually found the book that I was supposed to return to the teacher after we read the book in class, so I had that book for a couple decades now and I forgot to return it. That was a little bit of a mistake. I ended up passing it on to one of my nieces to just pass on that work. She was around middle school at that time, so it was about time that she would read/get started at Tolkien as well. And living out in the middle of nowhere, and living on a dairy farm, internet, the worldwide web, wasn’t really getting to rural areas yet, so it was a very slow connection; but libraries had Tolkien books and it itched a scratch that I’d been looking to itch for a very long time in terms of historical fantasy world building—just the depth and the detail that Tolkien went through to build out the entire world that he created was something that I have now never encountered before when I first encountered it; and still to this day I haven’t seen something that has scratched that itch that I sometimes get when looking for fantasy and other stories. What has he meant for me? Well, first the fun parts: He is actually the reason why I am into power metal. There is a power metal band called One Guardian, and they made a concept album called Nightfall in Middle-earth; and way back in the day when I was trying to download songs from Napster, which was totally very slow on rural broadband—rural internet, I did manage to download a few of their shorter songs, and I got hooked because, “Oh, it’s about Tolkien, but it’s really good music as well,” so that got me into being a metalhead. The second more serious way that Tolkien has brought meaning into my life is how he wrote Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings. Now, many people would say that Frodo is the protagonist of Lord of the Rings. I see, and a lot of other people see, and I think Tolkien as well saw Samwise as the protagonist. And Samwise’s loyalty to Frodo, making sure that Frodo’s [inaudible] is passed through, and the way that he does it with just leading through serving has given me a role model for servant leadership in my time and work in the community and professional work."
168,35,Female,20190506,eng,,New York,United States,"Thirty-five. New York. My first encounter with Tolkien was around age ten or eleven at our local public library. So in a sense this is as much a paean to libraries as it is to Tolkien, which seems fitting. I had passed by a reading group and normally I didn’t pay any mind—I wasn’t part of the reading group and so with the self-absorption of a ten-year-old I never paid attention to what they were reading together. That day for some reason I overheard—maybe it was a name of a forest or it was Goldberry or something that stuck out like a rare gem or an odd scientific term—and it caught my attention, and I found myself lingering in the back of the room until the group read was over and then I tremulously approached the librarian at that time and asked what they had been reading. And it was, in fact, Fellowship of the Ring. I asked if I could join the group, and I was a little underage, but not in terms of my confidence. They were already pretty far enough in the book where they didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to join them, but if I waited patiently until the end of the summer, I could join then along with The Two Towers. So, my first introduction really was both simultaneously a communal and then a very solitary one, because I had to catch up on Fellowship on my own, self-directed. And that really has borne out as an adolescent, as an adult, as a Tolkienite now. Still the joy of one is really limned by the effort involved in the other, that when I need to find solace or support or beauty in Tolkien, and I do that on my own, there is a space for contemplation in those words as a solitary reader; and then at the same time the community itself is an entirely different reading experience. No matter how many times I return to it, in whatever mood, whatever reference work I pride myself on having drawn upon beforehand, Tolkien’s work to me is always best experienced on both of those planes. And to me that’s also what makes it so significant and so rich, that something that’s so erudite and draws upon so many recondite sources that really are not accessible to the contemporary reader, at the same time can be the most accessible environment for such a diverse community. And I think that that is what makes Tolkien continually rich and relevant and able to not just encompass but absorb and then transform with every new interpretation. And that’s why I love Tolkien."
169,36,Male,20190513,eng,Buena Park,California,United States,"I am thirty-six years old and Buena Park, California is my place of origin. My first memory encountering J.R.R. Tolkien was as a young child, probably around eight or nine. I remember wandering the volumes of stories at my local library and coming across the illustrated version of The Hobbit. I remember it being the first novel of its size that I read. I was drawn to the full-page illustrations and very quickly read of Bilbo’s journey through Middle-earth. Even at a young age I was drawn to the magic of Tolkien’s creation. Tolkien inspires me to be great, to be a man of virtue. He helps me to realize that there is so much more to this world and this life than the naked eye can see. As a faithful Catholic, I believe that the spirit of God inspired the work of Tolkien’s hand through his many joyous and sorrowful experiences in life. I believe that his faithfulness to God and others speaks through his works—a magic, a spirituality, a truth that permeates through his many characters. One of my most beloved lines from his stories is, “You don’t really suppose, do you,” Gandalf tells Bilbo, “that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck?” Whenever I need a reminder of God’s grace in my life, I open up the Red Book and restore my inspiration towards the search for truth and the courage to be virtuous as I make my personal journey towards the Grey Havens. This is why Tolkien is important to me, and he will be important to my offspring. He will always be an extraordinary figure leading me closer to my family, friends, and all I come in contact with. But most especially, God."
170,24,Female,20190513,eng,Greenville,Illinois,United States,"I am twenty-four years old and I am originally from Greenville, Illinois. So, I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, I think I was three or four years old. My father read them out loud to me, voices included. From a pretty young age I’ve had a lot of nostalgia tied up into those works. And then being around while Peter Jackson was putting them on screen kind of made it feel all the more real, and it really did transcend I think just story book pages, to seeing it represented and then carrying that with me as I’ve grown. I’ve always had this connection with the works. And so that kind of goes why into I think I am a Tolkien fan. It’s because these works have meant so much to me. It’s been a means of connection and just a shared joy that my father and I have. The works are important to my family; we actually have a screening of the extended versions of the movies every Christmastime. So, it’s something we return to every single year. It’s not something that is just there in my past; it’s something that is always there with me. I think part of why it’s meant so much is because Tolkien’s works do deal a lot with joy and simplicity, and I think that those things are very important and accessible to everyone; and everyone has their own interpretation of what those things mean and why they’re important. Kind of all that nostalgia and familial love and sense of home and peace and comfort kind of meets in the center for me and how I perceive him."
171,28,Female,20190513,eng,Atlanta,Georgia,United States,"I am twenty-eight, and I am from Atlanta, Georgia, but I’ve moved a lot, and I am currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh. I first encountered the works of Tolkien—well actually I suppose The Hobbit--in middle school. Around middle school was when the films were coming out—the original trilogy—and so it was an interesting recirculation in the fandom via that medium. And then it provided a feedback loop, because then I went back and I read the tome, right, The Lord of the Rings. It’s just stunning, and I replicated whole pages-long passages on Facebook, and people are like, “This book is just so dry, and it takes so long, and it’s so boring, and we just talked about, like, a king cresting a hillock for like a hundred pages.” And I’m like, “I know, it’s beautiful.” And then that kind of evolved over time such that I then started working with Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories,” which is his lecture in the Thirties that was published in the Sixties. And I do a lot of my work with queer faerie—f-a-e-r-i-e—space-time. So that’s slightly more of his esoteric work, and it’s bridging Tolkien Studies, which is fairly established, but with contemporary queer studies, which is not quite where that tends to go. I’m also recently intrigued by how Tolkien is getting recirculated with Game of Thrones, particularly the back-cover jackets talk about Martin as the American Tolkien and elevating a whole genre to fine literature, and I just want to cry, because all of that is nonsense. It was elevated far prior to Martin; and if anything, Martin is bringing it down. So, I think it’s really fascinating in the way that it both gripped this tween-age audience with the films, with Legolas-Orlando Bloom, but also still has such a longevity with scholars, and really solidified fantasy and conferences. It was able to continue being recirculated and even just within the small lecture “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien almost contradicts himself. He gets swept up in the magic and enchantment of everything he’s saying, and it just provides endless opportunities for love and study."
172,28,Male,20190513,eng,Fairfax,Virginia,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old and I am from Fairfax, Virginia originally. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was about eleven or twelve years old. My parents actually gave them to me because I was having trouble sleeping, as a method for an audio book that I could listen to when I was going to sleep at night. I devoured them, both in audio form and then read them. And then I saw the movies a little bit later on. I actually developed from Tolkien a love of history and have taken that and basically built it into my career. I work for the National Archives now in no small part because of the works of Tolkien. But he means a little bit more to me than that. He means family. Because it wasn’t just my parents who were interested in this. My aunt on one side of my family and both of my grandmothers love his work. My aunt, who was in seminary in the Seventies I believe, was simply told, “If you knew the Bible as well as you knew the works of Tolkien maybe your grades would be a little bit better.” To me personally he has also showed kind of an early blueprint—because I came across these works when I was maybe eleven-twelve-thirteen, going into early adolescence—a blueprint for masculinity that didn’t involve a lot of being a braggart. It showed sort of a more tender side. You were allowed to care as a man and be strong at the same time. You didn’t have to hide your feelings. And I was able to discuss his works with my entire family. He has meant so much to me in that I have also been able to pass this on. I am married now and have a niece who is now eleven or twelve, and I just showed her the extended editions myself. I have been showing her them, taking the time with them. It’s really allowed me to kind of tap into, and be proud of, I guess what you might call a nerdier side of myself and share that with friends and family. Outside of my apartment with my wife we have the “Speak friend and enter” as a door mat. A lot of my initial love of all things fantasy come from this series."
173,28,Female,20190513,eng,Ithaca,New York,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old, and I am from Ithaca, New York. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien—I had heard of The Lord of the Rings before, but I remember that what prompted me to read it was when my older sister saw the trailer for the Fellowship movie, and was really excited since she had read the books. I was only ten at the time, but I was curious what she was so excited about. I had asked her if I could borrow her copies of the books and started reading, though I can’t remember if I started with The Fellowship or The Hobbit. After that it became a real obsession. I became a Tolkien fan because, as an introverted child, I was constantly off in my own imagination, and Tolkien’s books created a whole world for me to inhabit. The magic, the intricacies, the characters of Middle-earth felt personal and close to when I read the books. It was one of the first series I really fell in love with, and the pull of that world is always there for me. Plus, it was just fun in so many ways. I used to watch and re-watch the movies and write down dialogue. I tried unsuccessfully to learn Elvish writing for a while. I used to draw the dresses that Éowyn wore because she was my favorite. There were just so many ways that I could participate, and geeking out with others over it was just such a fun time. The significance of Tolkien in my life has really come through the worlds that he created. As a kid that became part of my identity, but one I felt uncomfortable owning. It helps me feel comfortable being a nerd. Lord of the Rings was different than other fandoms because it was Literature too, and later on when Harry Potter came into my life, it still couldn’t supplant the deeply rooted Lord of the Rings passion; and I still wore a replica One Ring around my neck for all of eighth grade. Plus, it was hard for me to make friends since I was a quiet kid, but I made friends through Lord of the Rings. Even as I get older, and I dwell less in my imagination than I used to, Tolkien’s books still help me make connections with other people. Every place I have ever worked at least one of my coworkers is also a fan. When I meet these people, I feel an instantaneous comradery. It feels like this person understands me and can get a glimpse of that part of me which is still a little kid devouring Tolkien books over and over. Revisiting Lord of the Rings, in particular, helps me access that little kid part of me too. It takes me back to those days when I got pulled into this other world full of enchantment, and hope, and good and evil. Ultimately, I have Tolkien to thank for my sense of identity, a way to make friends, and that place to go where magic still happens and insurmountable odds can still be upended."
174,28,Female,20190513,eng,Brooklyn,New York,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old. I am from Florida, but I live in New York. I had no interaction whatsoever with Tolkien until I was probably just on the edge of eleven, because in 2001, that’s when the movies were about to come out. I hadn’t heard the names, didn’t know anything about the book, but I remember going to Sam’s Club with my dad, walking through the book aisle, and he picked up the movie tie-in edition, because he had heard about the movie and he knew about the book, so he wanted to get it and read it. It meant something because we were—he’s a pastor and I’m the eldest of four kids, so we didn’t really spend a lot of money on extra stuff. “Oh! Dad’s buying a book. Oh! It must be good!” As this little ten, almost 11, year old, I remember standing in Sam’s Club and reading the back and going, “That sounds allegorical. I wonder if it is.” Because I knew C.S. Lewis and, being a pastor’s kid, you’re taught to pick up on those sorts of things. So, in my head it was, “Dad thinks the book is going to be good. It’s got to be good. I’ve got to read it. I need to read it.” He was mid-book when my mom went out and bought The Hobbit for him, and at that point I was still pounding away, “I want to read the book!” They let me read The Hobbit. My mom didn’t want to let me read Lord of the Rings. “PG-13 movie. You’re eleven. You’re not allowed to read this.” My dad overruled her and let me read it. The Christmas break when I was—I was eleven at that point—I sat down and read the entire book, cover to cover. Appendices. Whole nine yards. And my reward was: I get to go see the movie. It’s my first PG-13 movie. It’s me and my dad; we get to go. I tried to leave to go to the bathroom during the Watcher in the Water scene because I knew it was going to freak me out. But it became our thing. Every time a new movie came out, it was me and my dad. We’d go to the movie theater. All the other kids got to stay home. My mom stayed home. It was just the two of us, and we did it the whole time up through The Hobbit movies, which I prefer not to talk about. But, for me, Tolkien is always—it’s me and my dad. It’s just something that’s always been a part of my life since I was ten. It’s been great."
175,35,Female,20190513,eng,Sarajevo,,Bosnia,"I am from Sarajevo, Bosnia, and I am thirty-five years old. I first encountered Tolkien when I was eleven years old. I was a refugee in Germany, from Bosnia, and my father spent money that we really couldn’t afford to buy me the Tolkien trilogy; and he lied to my mother about how much it cost. I devoured it. I read the whole thing within twenty days or less. I basically didn’t sleep. I just ate the book up. It was just so wonderful. Not having a lot of friends, and moving around a lot, and being a refugee kid, it really—it changed a lot of things for me to kind of have that other world to go into. It built confidence for me, and it was very helpful overall. So, I guess what Tolkien means to me and why I’m a fan, is that it really helped me at a very difficult time in my life. I’m still a huge fan. I’ve watched all the movies. I’ve read all the books, including the new ones, and the late releases and everything; and The Silmarillion, of course. My car’s license plate is “Melkor,” just because he’s a cool guy in a horrible way. So, I guess it just means a lot to me and it’s always been a support in my life. I read the trilogy either in German or in English once every two years, just to kind of bring me back to where I’ve been and what I’ve been through. It’s been a constant through my life. "
176,26,Male,20190514,eng,Viola,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-six years old, and I am from Viola, Wisconsin. I first encountered Tolkien when I was seven or eight years old, so it would have been 1999 or 2000. And so, they had just started making announcements about the movies that were coming out, and my mom had read The Hobbit when she was a child and had a very old copy of it, and so she gave me her copy of The Hobbit. I actually still have that today. It’s basically falling apart; but once I started reading that, I was off and reading Lord of the Rings and basically anything Tolkien that I could get my hands on. I’d say that I’m a Tolkien fan ultimately because what drew me in was the grand story that was so rich in detail, and history, and languages. I mean it’s a history in and of itself that—I hadn’t encountered anything like that beyond real-life history. So, I was hooked on the books because of all that detail; however, I don’t think I truly became a Tolkien fan, as far as the man himself, until in high school, my junior year. For a college prep class, we had to pick a topic and write a twenty-page paper and then give a forty-minute presentation on that paper. I chose Tolkien. Before that he was just the author that I loved, and loved all of his stories, but now I learned about his life: his time spent in World War One; with the Inklings; the grand romance that he had; and then also his incredible faith in God, and all of that that was so important to him. What his works have meant for me, first were kind of an escape in one way from this world to Middle-earth, and yet also the fundamental truths of this world were still present in that story. And the fact that, as a Christian myself, that there is evil in this world, and it always comes back eventually, but good keeps pushing it back as well, and I think he did a good job of personifying or illustrating that struggle that every person has against evil within themselves, and yet the good or the Grace of Christ triumphs yet. And even though he didn’t like allegory, you can still pull some of those truths out of his works."
177,58,Female,20190516,eng,Long Beach,California,United States,"I am fifty-eight, and I am from Long Beach, California. I have loved Tolkien since I was a young teenager or preteen, first encountered at—right here on Long Beach—at Walter B. Hill Junior High School. And a lot of us were reading the books at about the same time. Michael and James, both of whom I am still friends with more than forty years later, and a few others, all read the books around about the same time and talked about them constantly, and talked about nothing else, pretty much. And James, who’s like a very eminent Buddhist now, back then was super keen, like a trivia master, and we would sort of tease him, you know, like by asking him like really out there questions about how long does lembas last, or what was the color of Gimli’s cloak—and he would always know. You could like test him on the tiniest thing. And so, just to sort of give an idea how this book in the mid-1970s in California was absolutely required reading for every teenager in the thick mass market paperbacks with the Ace ones, we all had them; and we all read them; and we all loved them. So, why am I a Tolkien fan? I didn’t learn for a long, long time that he himself had lived in the shadow of Mordor, I felt. He had been in the First World War and had lost like most of his friends in the war, and he had left his fiancé to fight and didn’t think he was coming back. And so he lived in a time when it looked like the world was really going to end. And he had this book that showed how we could live through something like that together. And I think it’s more relevant than ever because, you know, even in the Seventies we had nuclear catastrophe, we had the Cold War, we had environmental apocalypse, people were talking about all these things, and he showed a way to kind of acknowledge the darkness and to transcend it. And I think we need that still. Everybody born since then has lived under the same shadow. And despite the book’s weaknesses—I think it has at least an incredulous view of monarchism, for example—there’s a self-evident truth in the story of Middle-earth that so long as it’s possible to conceive and imagine the overthrow of evil, as long as that’s possible, it could happen, and maybe it must happen."
178,28,Female,20190516,eng,Woodridge,Illinois,United States,"I am twenty-eight and I live in the Chicago suburbs. My relationship with Tolkien started when I was born, because my dad took one look at my wrinkly face and declared, “She’s a hobbit!” I have no idea why he said this. In 1999 I was nine years old. My dad would read aloud to me a lot, and that year he decided it was high time for Lord of the Rings. I was completely blown away by the series, especially by my dad’s reading of it. He did different voices for every character. I still think that my dad’s version of Treebeard is superior to the film version. I don’t remember the first time he read me The Hobbit. I think I may have been too young to even remember. It just feels like that story has always been in my brain. And I watched the Rankin & Bass cartoon version of The Hobbit at an early age. So I’m not sure if that came first or the book. Nineteen ninety-nine was the perfect time for my dad to read me The Lord of the Rings, because then the movies started coming out in 2001, and I was totally hooked. I saw The Fellowship in theaters three times, Two Towers twice, and Return of the King five times. I have my complaints about the films, but they really showed me the scope and the scale of the world that Tolkien had created. They have their own magic for me. My initial dive into Tolkien fandom mostly comprised of reading and writing a lot of slash fan fiction. I have no shame about that whatsoever. Later, after I had read the series a few times, I did a re-read in college where I jotted down my thoughts and commentary as I read and then compiled these into a series of blog posts. I also have a half-sleeve tattoo of Bag End, so I can be identified as a Tolkien fan pretty immediately if I’m wearing short sleeves. I would say that I am a fan of Tolkien for two main reasons: One is that I’m in love with the world that Tolkien created; and two, Lord of the Rings makes me think of my family. All of us are Tolkien nerds in varying capacities, and I feel like I come from a family of hobbits. We’re homebodies but we’re brave and resilient. Tolkien’s writing has a really nostalgic hold over me. It transports me to a fully formed world. No matter how many times I read them, there are still sections that trigger full body goosebumps. And because I associate Middle-earth so strongly with my own family, reading the books really feels like home."
179,43,Male,20190516,eng,Billings,Montana,United States,"I am forty-three years old, and I live in Billings, Montana. My first exposure to Tolkien, probably like many people from my generation, was through the Rankin Bass Hobbit animated film from 1977. I was really into it. I had the big, abbreviated LP I used to listen to over and over and over. One of my earliest memories is from when I was three years old; I had locked myself in the bathroom, and my mother and my sister had no idea what I was doing. Was I drowning? What was I doing? I was pulling the hair out of the hairbrush and scotch taping it to the tops of my feet so that I could be a hobbit, which they discovered when they finally got into the bathroom. And you know, my love for Tolkien lasted all through elementary school and high school. In elementary school, about fourth or fifth grade I read The Lord of the Rings after having read The Hobbit; was even more hooked, obviously. Some of my friends were into it a little bit; they had liked, you know, the Bakshi film, but they seemed to not appreciate it in a way that I wanted them to, in the same way I did. Of course, I discovered later that many people appreciated Tolkien in the same way I did. But it spoke to me on a subconscious—a very deep—level that’s hard to put into words really, as most people can attest, I’m sure. I think it spoke to me on an almost spiritual level. Tolkien took obviously what he felt to be true, spiritually, and kind of made it visible, and I think that spoke to me on some level. Also, the sense of antiquity spoke to me. I’m a historian, so that love has lasted through my life as well, but that really, that really spoke to me on a deep level. Then in high school I kind of got into the MERP, the roleplaying, a little bit. Of course, when the movies came out everybody seemed to be into it, and it was easier to share your love for Tolkien. But my love for Tolkien certainly did not abate when the movies were done. And in 2007, I founded the Council of Westmarch, which is Montana’s Smial of the Tolkien Society, and we have regular meetings, and we get pretty deep with our discussion, and we have all kinds of celebratory events and public events as well, and that’s kind of where I’m at right now. We have a very active group, and I’m able to share my love for Tolkien with others and see others discover it for the first time, which is amazing, particularly in The Silmarillion, which we’re in right now. To see the lights go on and make the connections is part of the fun for me. So, yeah, that’s my story in a nutshell."
180,50,Male,20190516,eng,Aliso Viejo,California,United States,"I am fifty years old, and I am in southern California. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien—I believe I was ten years old, it might have been a little bit earlier, a little bit later—when my mother got me a copy of The Hobbit. It was the Rankin and Bass illustrated edition softback. And, of course, they didn’t include anything in the back about, hey, other works by J.R.R. Tolkien, so I didn’t know anything about The Lord of the Rings probably for about another three or four years. I loved The Hobbit, but it didn’t become all engrossing the way The Lord of the Rings did when I encountered it as a fourteen-year-old. I ended up reading that probably every year for the next God-knows-how-many-years. Probably until now with the podcast where I just don’t have time to read the entire work every year. I ended up reading The Silmarilian when I was, I believe, nineteen or twenty, and ever since then I’ve just been reading as much as I can. Why am I a fan? I love things that are real. I love things that are grounded. I love things that have depth to them. So many fan universes are super, super wide and super, super shallow; and there’s something about Tolkien’s creation that rings true, that has that inner consistency of reality as he would say in “On Fairy Stories.” And I think that’s why I am such a devoted fan. It’s such a rich work—a rich set of works—that all ties together. Just absolutely wonderful stuff. And, of course, I’m a fan now in large part because of the podcast. We have been running that for a little over three years, and it’s been just a privilege to be part of the community. That’s actually probably another reason why I’m still a fan: the community is so great that’s built up around Tolkien. What has Tolkien meant to me? On a personal level, man, I sure wish I could have met him. He strikes me as such a, obviously an incredibly intelligent man, but a wise man, a man that just really… got it. He got what things are about, and he has a way with words that no other author I’ve encountered has ever since. He’s opened my eyes in so many ways to so many things outside of simply literary fiction—outside of fantasy, outside of the things that he’s created. So, I think of Tolkien’s work and I think of him when I see certain things in nature or when I’m having conversations with friends. So, he’s meant a great deal to me. In a way, my life is different now because of his works, and in fact, one of our children is named after Elanor, E-L-A-N-O-R, spelled correctly in the book. And so, certainly he’s meant a lot to me and a lot to our family. I’m just glad to have been able to be a part of this project and I’m excited to see where it goes. I’m so thrilled, and thank you again for letting me be a part."
181,60,Female,20190516,eng,Athens,,Greece,"I am from Greece, from Athens. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien in the summer of 1979. I forgot to mention I am sixty years old. I was twenty at the time and had already read as many sci-fi and fantasy novels as I could find. That was not an easy task in Greece at the time. Very few books were translated into Greek, and finding an original edition was both rare and expensive. A good friend found by chance in one of the few foreign language bookshops, a one tome paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings complete with appendices, and she thought I might like it, because it had swords, and wizards, and maps, and was thick as a brick. So, my first contact with the work of Tolkien was in the original English. I spent my few vacation days reading constantly. At first, I found it somewhat childish, but the language and the descriptions intrigued me. And then I was in Bree. The story got deeper and darker, and I fell head-over-heels in love. As soon as I finished, I reread it, and then went on to read all the appendices. I just could not get enough of this magnificent story and the exceptional writing. I tried to find out what else had this superb author written. On a trip abroad, I found The Hobbit, and then had to wait until The Silmarillion was available. Since then I have collected every work by Tolkien, and I have been rereading The Lord of the Rings almost every year. I am a Tolkien fan because the professor has enchanted me and keeps me captive in his silken web of intricate, beautiful, melodic language, amazingly created world, and perfect characters. After forty years of reading his works, I am still amazed at the depth of the history, the philosophy, the morals, and the scope of his world. He has also given me a new scope for my own life, because I met other people who are also fans of Professor Tolkien, and in 2001 we founded the Greek Tolkien Society. We thus came in contact with the international Tolkien community."
182,21,Male,20190516,eng,Staunton,Virginia,United States,"I am age twenty-one, and I am from Staunton, Virginia in the United States. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I was a child. The first encounter that I had with his works was the animated adaptions of The Hobbit directed by Rankin & Bass respectively. I remember being completely drawn into the story the moment Gandalf greets Bilbo in Hobbiton. That is where my love for all things Lord of the Rings started. As I grew older, I saw the trilogy directed by Peter Jackson and then read the books. My love for fantasy had already been kindled years before I was introduced to Tolkien, but his works deepened my understanding and appreciation of fantasy as an artistic genre. I am a Tolkien fan because of his masterful storytelling. A few days before this interview I’d finished reading The Silmarillion. I was blown away by his world building and style of prose. As many readers would agree, The SIlmarillion is not an easy read, due in part to Tolkien’s heavy use of his own language in describing locations throughout the world, and the many characters that appear in the novel. Despite this, Tolkien is able to make the world jump out of the pages into something tangible, something believable. That is a very difficult thing to do in fantasy, yet Tolkien is able to achieve this with an ease and grace that is unmatched. Tolkien took everything I loved about fantasy—epic tales of knights, dragons, princes and princesses—and created a world unlike any other that I had known. Even though these tropes form the base of his storytelling, none of his stories are derivative and all are entirely unique. His storytelling had a tremendous impact on not only the fantasy genre but on the literary and artistic world as well. I am a Tolkien fan because of the way he is able to turn the struggles and triumphs of the human spirit into a fantasy epic that mirrors our own world. Tolkien has meant adventure, friendship, struggles and triumphs. His storytelling forces you to look at your own choices and decisions through the lens of fantasy. Would I have the courage to throw the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom like Frodo? Or would my pride not allow me to destroy it like Isildur? In Tolkien’s world, even the best of men are not immune to corruption and self-aggrandizement. Just like in our world. The struggles that the characters face, whether they be elf, hobbit, man, or even twisted versions of ourselves like Gollum are very human struggles that we face every day. Tolkien’s work shows that the power of friendship and selflessness can conquer even the most powerful evil and that sometimes even the most unexpected adventures can have extraordinary results. "
183,29,Male,20190516,eng,Shumway,Illinois,United States,"I am twenty-nine years old. I am from Shumway, Illinois. The first question is when did you first encounter the works of Professor Tolkien? I first encountered them in my senior year of high school. I needed to read for English class, and I thought, “Well, now is the time to read The Hobbit, after reading all of The Chronicles of Narnia throughout my childhood.” I quickly moved on to The Lord of the Rings after that, and completed all those, and fell in love. And, of course, moved on to The Silmarillion and have been collecting other works since then. Most recent collection, of course, was The Fall of Gondolin, which seems to be the last one that we are going to probably get from Christopher Tolkien. So, I’m happy I’m able to participate in that with everybody, of course, but sad to see it end. The reason I became a Tolkien fan—why I’m a Tolkien fan—is I latched onto the stories because I grew up with a love for history, which did include medieval Europe and of course tales of knights, Robin Hood, and all of the mythology that may go along with that: St. George and the Dragon. And just seeing how he laid out everything in this world with such depth and such good world building, it made me feel like I was reading this alternative medieval-era history and it really brought it home for me, I guess, from everything I had ever done as a kid. It was something my imagination, I guess, definitely could latch onto the idea that these fantastic mythical beings were suffering the same impulses, fears, and moments of heroism that I potentially could. Professor Tolkien’s Christian symbolism also came through. He might have not intended it, but it was definitely present for me, especially in The Lord of the Rings, I’d say, and in the beginning of The Silmarillion. And then finally, what has Professor Tolkien’s work meant to me? I discovered his stuff, started reading it, at a time when my dad’s health was deteriorating. In a way it was an escape for me, but as it’s gone on, it’s become a bit more kind of showing different elements of humanity I think that are present in everybody, not just in the tenets of Western Civilization that Tolkien was focused on with his study of language and literature. Beyond that, of course, the basis of all fantasy stories, which I have grown to love over time, and hopefully am able to continue in building my own world."
184,45,Female,20190521,eng,Colorado Springs,Colorado,United States,"I am forty-five. I am from the Air Force, but if have to give a location: Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States of America. I first encountered Tolkien via the animated version of The Hobbit as a child before I read any of the stories, and I can still sing all of the songs from them. But I jumped on reading them pretty quickly once I discovered that my parents had them. I think I encountered even a parody version at home, Bored of the Rings, before I read Lord of the Rings, so I didn’t get any of the jokes until I finally read the source as a kid. I am a fan because I really admire Tolkien’s world building. I really appreciate the need for escape into story and hope that devastation may be overcome. I also like the little guy. The sidekick: Sam Gamgee is the real hero of the Epic in my book. Tolkien reminds me that one of the best weapons in the face of adversity and tragedy is imagination. I think of this story coming out of the trenches; and as an artist, it helps me remember that great art comes sometimes from the greatest need for it. As a girl, on a personal note, I always wished there were more women in the stories; but I think those are stories that have yet to be told. On a really local note, from Milwaukee, one of my favorite things to surprise out-of-town visitors with is the fact that I live in the city with—is it the most substantial collection of Tolkien manuscripts in the world, I think? It’s really amazing. One of my greatest early memories of moving to Milwaukee, although I’m not from here, was visiting Special Collections in the old Marquette library, just going down, down, down and actually being able to hold a folder with the ring poem in my hand. I tell that story often. I love it; and storytelling is the real focus and the real key here, isn’t it? Many thanks."
185,46,Male,20190521,eng,Urbana,Illinois,United States,"I am forty-six years old, and I am from Urbana, Illinois. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was a young child in my mom’s baby brother’s room—my uncle was about nine years older than me, and he had one of the 1970s editions of The Hobbit and Giles of Ham and like everything of Tolkien’s. I got my volume of The Hobbit and the three books of The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 1984 when they were released as a boxed edition, and I know that because I also got a boxed set of Dune the year the movie came out. So ’85, I was in eighth grade, I read The Hobbit. I had seen the Rankin Bass movies and the Ralph Bakshi movies when I was a kid. I read The Hobbit; The Hobbit was easy. Loved it. I dived into The Fellowship of the Ring and I was baffled. I turned every page, but none of it stuck with me. Then I made it halfway into the second book, The Two Towers, and I said, “I can’t do this. This is over my head.” Fast-forward eighteen years or so, and I see the Peter Jackson movies—the first Peter Jackson movie—and suddenly, the plot is laid out for me crystal clear, and I’m like, “Ok, now it’s time to go back and take on the language.” And so I read the entire trilogy in the single volume like a page-turner this time. It wasn’t hard to read; it was brilliant. And I went on to read The Silmarillion at a friend’s suggestion, where it blew my mind: the entirety of The Lord of the Rings was reduced into a page and a half at the end of The Silmarillion. But what I liked the most—in the appendices when Tolkien talks about how the book itself was kind of a translation from the original languages: the Elvish, the Dwarven. That was what was super brilliant to me was the ability to invent not only a believable world with multiple races in it, but that it’s based on languages you invented, based on real languages that you’ve researched. It blew my mind. Yeah, that was it. I haven’t read it since, although it is on my to-read pile. But yeah, I really dig Tolkien because of his world building, his fun with language, and the fact that it is the only book I have ever had to see the movie first to then read the book."
186,22,Female,20190523,eng,Philadelphia,Pennsylvania,United States,"I am twenty-two, and I am from the Philadelphia area. I first encountered Tolkien in the sixth grade. I had to read The Hobbit for my English class and I hated it. Everybody in my class hated it. We thought it was super boring. It was very dense. But then in eighth grade I had a friend who was really into The Lord of the Rings, and so it was on Netflix streaming at the time, the first movie, and so I decided to give it a try, and I just fell in love. I saw The Fellowship. I thought that it was the best movie I had ever seen. So, in short order, I got all the rest of the DVDs from my friends, and then I read all the books in about three weeks, I think. Oh, I was very obsessed. And why am I a fan? I’m just a sucker for high fantasy. It’s a really compelling story to me. I really love the world building and the characters. I think on a deeper level, I really like that Tolkien’s writings have a sort of faith in humanity, and this ongoing message that there is hope, and that things will be okay eventually. And then what has he meant to me? Well the big one is that I just graduated from undergrad with a degree in medieval studies, partially because I really like Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s a medievalist and that was kind of my first introduction to medieval adjacent stuff, and I really just thought it was super interesting. I don’t know; it just, like, spoke to me. It’s also just like an incredible experience, like fan experience, community experience. Last year I was abroad for a year in France and I ended up going to a viewing, a marathon of all three extended movies, and it was incredible. There were so many people there. They were all like yelling at the film. I was sitting next to a guy and his dad, and the guy had gone to the same marathon a month earlier, and then wanted to go with his dad. I was like, “That’s great.” That’s pretty much all I have to say."
187,30,Female,20190523,eng,Clinton,New York,United States,"I am thirty years old, and I am from the US. I live in central New York. I honestly can’t remember my first encounter with Tolkien, because I can’t remember it not being a part of my life. My parents read from The Hobbit to me when I was very small; and soon after I learned to read, I started at least trying to read The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings and so on and so forth. My parents also had a copy of the BBC radio adaptation on cassette tape, the one from the Eighties, and I grew up listening to that as well. And then I think the movies really did cement my Tolkien fannishness. I was, I think, thirteen when Fellowship came out. And so the movies were a big part of my teenage years as well as the books. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Well, I’ve always loved languages. I am a Classics professor actually, so in some ways it was very natural for me to love it. I think the combination of the richness of the world he created with the attention to detail in his writing, his prose, and the way he invoked something out of a lost time, I think, was kind of irresistible to me. But, above all, I’d also say the depth of his sympathy, his belief in the importance of compassion, both between characters and in the way he approaches his characters. One of the things I most admire in a writer is the ability to convey fairly the perspective of somebody that they fundamentally disagree with, the ability to portray them with dignity and worth even in cases where they believe the character is wrong or misguided. I see that in the way Tolkien writes Denethor, for example, and then dialogues like the one between Aragorn and Éowyn, or Finrod and Andreth in the Athrabeth as well. What has he meant to me? Well, I’ve probably given you some idea, but I would say that—the main thing I’d say is that Tolkien and his works are more than just literary pleasures for me. They really embody something of the way I’d like to live my life. When I interact with other people, when I teach my students, even when I analyze a text and approach the characters and author, I try to bring to the encounter something of the understanding and the love that he enshrines in his work. I’d say that my appreciation for Tolkien really grew up and changed with me. I love going back again and again and every time I become newly conscious of something in his work and even in myself that I hadn’t quite realized before."
188,21,Female,20190523,eng,Oberlin Park,Kansas,United States,"I am twenty-one years old, and I am from Oberlin Park, Kansas. I first encountered Tolkien when I was five or six years old, which I realize may be considered a bit young for a child to be exposed to some of those serious topics—sometimes gore in his stories—but my parents were pretty firm believers in the ideology that dragons exist in fairytales to prove to children they can be slain. So, I started off with the Fellowship and obviously I understood very little. To me it was just an epic tale, a game for my sisters and I to play in the backyard with wooden swords and fake capes; and that perspective and understanding had to evolve as I evolved over time. Then as I grew older, I exposed myself to The Hobbit, which I love, and eventually I moved on to his other tales. Recently, in my college courses I’ve been exposed to kind of the rabbit hole of his translated works such as Beowulf and the death of Arthur. I’m a fan of Tolkien’s works because ever since modernism and postmodernism kind of tore apart any traces of romanticism to the ground—perhaps ironically—it’s very difficult to find fiction that preaches true hope and the values of love and of honor and moral conviction. I believe in the purity that I think somehow miraculously the Great War led Tolkien to believe in. To me Tolkien has always been, for as long as I can remember, a place of escapism. But then as I matured, he became also a place of moral guidance and solace. I think a lot of my beliefs were made concrete by his works in my own imagination and as I grew and found myself more and more surrounded by people who seemed to want to excuse themselves from the moral responsibility that I believe we have. Tolkien’s stories became a place for me to go as a kind of promise that what I held to be true was so. And honestly, also to seek God, perhaps in a world that looks a little less like my own. And then as far as my literary admiration for his works, where to begin? He’s inspired me to press my own writing into more complex realms and to challenge myself to make every word count in a rhythmic, beautiful, pleasing way to the reader. He’s taught me the importance of making each and every character stand for something, and I believe that has definitely played into my day to day life as well. But most of all, I think Tolkien stands for a perhaps diminishing philosophy that what we do with ourselves has meaning; and that really does make all the difference. "
189,25,Female,20190523,eng,Pompton Plains,New Jersey,United States,"Twenty-five years old and from New Jersey. So, I think compared to most other Tolkien fans I know, I encountered Tolkien late in life. I was twenty-one. A good friend of mine sat me down to watch all of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, because she didn’t want to watch the Battle of the Five Armies by herself in the theater. After watching the movies I dove right into the books. Reading everything, Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, all that stuff in like two months. Less than a year later, I was enrolled in a Tolkien mythology course in college, and I had gotten my first tattoo, which was Tolkien related—the Cirth runes that Gandalf carves into Bilbo’s door, so the dwarves know which hobbit hole is his. My sister actually got a matching tattoo as well, because we really bonded over our enjoyment of The Hobbit; and we love that we can share the same bit of nerdery, because our interests don’t always overlap. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Like I said I could ramble forever. Two major points. The first is just how rich of a world that exists in his books and there are countless examples; but I always think of how when Aragorn mentions the story of Beren and Lúthien in Lord of the Rings you’re not just left to wonder who they are. You can go into The Silmarillion and you can read their story; you know who they are; you know what they did. And foreknowing that, you have this much deeper understanding and appreciation of Aragorn and Arwen’s love in their story. I think the second reason is the big reason for me and that’s how his stories show us—show me—how kindness, perseverance, and I think most importantly, the power of love can overcome even the greatest of evils. It’s so easy to get discouraged the way the world is, that it’s so easy to just harden your heart and look away from the horrible things because sometimes it’s what you have to do. But reading Tolkien’s work kind of shores my resolve and gives me hope. It really reminds of the transformative power of being tender and compassionate. And that when we are faced with great evil that we should do something about it. Tolkien and his books have obviously meant so much to me. I love being a part of the fandom. I’ve met so many great people and it’s just been such a wonderful thing in my life. "
190,25,Male,20190523,eng,Churchville,Pennsylvania,United States,"I’m twenty-five years old from Churchville, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was in elementary school. I started reading them initially when I was in fifth grade. And I read The Hobbit and I read like The Lord of the Rings; and then they just kind of got a little bit overwhelming for me, and I actually had to stop and didn’t really pick them up. I was also a child in the Harry Potter years too, so the Harry Potter books were coming out. Those were also a very dedicated commitment. I very recently started picking them up, picking those books back up again like within the last few years, in part inspired by a friend, a friend who is a huge Tolkien fan and reads them yearly. So, I began to listen to them in the car. I listened to them via audio books and just became enthralled by them anew in a different context. Certainly that was great. I think the most important thing why I like them is because they’re just a great story. They’re just by far the best stories I’ve heard in quite some time. And they’re timeless. They resonate with values that are just embedded into the culture that are important. In each and every single situation, I find myself now that having read the main trilogy and The Hobbit and working my way through The Silmarillion, reading through all those books, there’s just so many situations that you can find similarities in daily life. I also enjoy them because my mom was the person who gave them to me. My mom was the person who gave me the books when I was a kid. Certainly, she really enjoyed reading them. When reading those, certainly reminiscing some of the good times that I had with her, because she passed a few years ago. Reading through those and reminiscing about those times really inspires me a lot. "
191,21,Female,20190523,eng,,,Singapore,"I am twenty-one years old, and I am originally from Singapore. My story starts at the age of six. My mother showed my sister and I the film of The Fellowship of the Ring and, while I liked the battles, and the characters, and the fantasy, what really ensnared me was the music, which for me captured the mythic, yet intensely human, nature of the stories that I was experiencing. And so, it really drew me into wanting to read the books a year later and learn more about this amazing world that my eyes had been opened to. And that’s something that now, knowing what I do about the Legendarium, and the Great Music, and everything, makes it almost poetic for me. I love Tolkien because he made me want to have adventures; to accept that your time is finite and you can and should choose how you’ll live your story; to value joy over vain ambition; to do the right thing, even if it’s the difficult thing; to challenge your own hubris; to find your courage and valor; and in your own small way try and make a difference in this world that’s often spiraling out of control, no matter how powerless you feel. He wove deep, tragic, beautiful, magical and resonant themes into his work that asked questions of our nature as people, and of the nature of the world that we live in, that soar above it, and yet are completely rooted in it. And so, like, as a human, and as a musician, and as a writer, he’s inspired me on emotional, creative, and intellectual levels. In many ways his work has really made my life, bringing me so many opportunities for festivity, and growth, and comfort. I used to motivate myself to run, something I usually never did, because I said, “If Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli can do it for forty-five leagues, then I can do it for one mile.” And when I was ten, the Lord of the Rings Symphony came to Singapore, and I sang in it, and it really drove home how much Middle-earth and this fantastic world had come to mean to me. His work motivated me to write a proper academic paper for the first time in my life, to present at Tolkien 2019, and his stories had me doing madcap budget cosplays with my best friend at the last minute, that ended up somehow winning us tickets to the local premiere of The Hobbit on a school night, which remains one of the best and craziest things we’ve ever done. Because, really, for me, my love for Tolkien is as much about his work as it is the fandom and the adventures, and openness, and the wholesome feelings that come with it. Because when I moved abroad and I lived alone for the first time, Tolkien helped connect me with other people. I found an online community, The Silmarillion Writer’s Guild, that remains my haven when things get hard. We spin meta- and fanfiction together, and share memes, and knowledge, and debate lore, and trade ideas, collaborate on projects, and challenge and support one another, and all thanks to what the Professor has given us. And when I joined the Tolkien Society in 2017, I made more incredible friends. We spend long weekends together in Oxford every year, having a riot, and making memories, and singing elvish hymns in acapella. And, in Spain, there’s another group of us that talk about our favorite characters, and relive moments that moved us, and eat, drink, and be merry, which is what Tolkien would have wanted. So, he essentially helped me find my family, and has brought meaning, and comfort, and magic into my life in more ways than I can count, or frankly, even adequately express."
192,36,Male,20190524,eng,Janesville,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-six years old, and I am originally from Janesville, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was probably five or six, something like that, with The Hobbit cartoon movie. And all I really remember from that was that Gollum scared me senseless: nightmares, can’t go in the basement—that kind of thing. But I first read Tolkien in freshman year of high school. My high school had one of those assigned reading outside of class programs; and I had seen on the sheet that if you read The Lord of the Rings, all three volumes, that was all you had to read the whole year. And I liked reading, so I said, “Ok, I’ll read these three books and that will be that.” I don’t know how much I got out of it, but I enjoyed them at that stage. But that set me up for a lifelong love. I’m a Tolkien fan for two reasons. First, after World War One, and proceeding through the twentieth century, so many artists—literary artists, of course, included—were getting away from high style, and thinking that high style in the Western scene was just old and tired, if not just bad, and conservative, and ugly, and these things. Tolkien didn’t care about that. He did high style and he didn’t give into that pressure to not do high style; and I love that, because he did it really well. The other thing—because I have to keep it short—is his main themes are hope and death; and what more do we want in Literature? And the fact that he does it so poignantly, and he hits it every time, I love that about him. What he has meant to me I don’t really think about this on a day to day basis but—here’s my spoiler for the anonymity thing—what I do every day, both professionally and personally, it comes directly from him. When I was in northern California studying Hindustani classical music, I was in a library and I was looking for something else, but I came across Tolkien’s name on a spine, so I opened it up, and it was his scholarly edition of the fights at Finnsburg, the Finnsburg Fragment, which is an Old English poem related to Beowulf. And I saw that language, and said, “I’ve got to know what this is,” and it was the days before you just went and Googled everything; so I went to college; I took Old English classes; I went to graduate school for Old English, and now I teach Old English at Marquette, and I love it. I think Old English is the best, and Tolkien taught me that."
193,33,Male,20190524,eng,,Georgia,United States,"I am from the United States, grew up in Georgia. When I first encountered the works of Tolkien, I was twelve years old. I am now thirty-three years old, so when I first came across these works it was a very formative period of my life. I was in middle school and I was starting to read more complex works, basically anything I could get my hands on. I discovered a book called The Hobbit that was on my teacher’s bookshelf and without any sort of prompting—I think it was just the cover of it seemed very interesting to me. I had no idea what to expect. And I tore through the story in probably two or three days. That was the first time that I had ever been exposed to what we might call the fantasy genre. Finishing that, I was consumed with more. I went to the library and asked the librarian if there was like any other works like this, and she asked me if I had heard of The Lord of the Rings, because that was the same author. And it blew my mind; she comes out with this tome. The copy that we had was actually a red leather-bound edition. Even before I realized like what the significance of that was, it was kind of a magical experience for me. I spent the next few weeks just devouring the books, and it was the first time I realized that worlds like that could be created through works of fiction. Since that time, that has been something that I have shared with many of the friends that I developed at that time, as I went through high school, as I went into college. And even the idea of like these alternate, maybe not alternate histories, but alternative histories, led me to become a, eventually, a history major. It’s what I decided to study because I loved it so much. I think that Tolkien and the community around their fandom has—I don’t know—has just been very interesting, welcoming, and I’ve met some of the most important people in my life through that. So, I’m very happy to say that it’s impacted my life in a very positive way."
194,21,Female,20190524,eng,Kansas City,Kansas,United States,"I am twenty-one years old, and I am from Kansas City, Kansas. I was only three years old when the movies first came out, so I was exposed to them at a very young age. My family watches them all the time. It’s always been a part of my life; and when I got old enough, I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I re-read them every couple of years or so. I am a Tolkien fan because the characters have started to come to feel like lifelong friends. They’ve always been a part of my life. I love how he treats nature, how it all takes place out with a wild adventure wandering around; the trees have their own magic to them. I love the fantasy and the adventure, and how he created an entirely different world that I can always return to and go on the adventure all over again with them. And I really love the idea that someone so small, like Frodo, could travel across Middle-earth with just a couple people and Sam; but he saved all of Middle-earth just by doing so. I think that’s wonderful. I’m not sure if any words will convey how much Tolkien has meant to me. They’ve been a very consistent source of comfort in my life. He’s gotten me through so many things like my depression. And it always means something a little bit different every time I go back to it, but there’s always this reminder of hope and friendship even when things seem their darkest; and the Fellowship and Middle-earth will always be there when I need them."
195,32,Male,20190524,eng,Washington DC,,United States,"I am thirty-two years old, and I am from the Washington D.C. area. The first thing I wanted to share is about my first memories of encountering the works of Tolkien. I remember that my mother took me to see a stage play of The Hobbit. She was always on the lookout for things that would interest me, peak my imagination. She knew that I was into sci-fi and fantasy, or whatever the equivalents were for a little kid; and so, she took me to see a children’s stage play of The Hobbit, on stage at Glen Echo Park, in Maryland. The thing I remember about it is sitting cross-legged on the floor to watch this little play, and I remember Gollum being played by a woman wearing a snorkel mask and flippers on her feet. I must have been seven, or less, and I think the thing I took away from that is—I knew that that was a children’s play, but the way that they had staged it and set it up, it was both lighthearted and creepy. The scene really conveyed that Gollum was really intending to eat Bilbo, and that was sort of like a new window compared to the rest of the childhood literature and media that I would have consumed, that there really is darkness back there, and that’s a glimmer of something that was enticing. That kind of like brings me to the next question about why I’m a Tolkien fan. So, after that play, I guess I must have talked about it a lot, and my mom bought me the series of The Hobbit plus the trilogy. I read The Hobbit, but I was still too young to make it through the trilogy. I remember putting down Fellowship because it got boring, and not revisiting it again until I was a teenager. But that thing about the glimmer of something dark in the background, you know, twenty years later, now that I am thirty-two, and have spent time in Tolkien’s notes and things like Lost Tales and Unfinished Tales, I’ve been learning about his own view of how fantasy literature works, and how it’s important in fantasy literature that you don’t give the reader the whole story; you give them glimmers of what is probably a much larger, and deeper, and darker story than they can possibly imagine. And I think that’s something that I picked up on in that play at Glen Echo Park, that creepy Gollum had more creepy background than I was even seeing in this play. And I think that’s what hooks me about fantasy. It’s like you put down the book and you’re still imagining what else could be. And it lets us fill in the myth for ourselves. We walk around and do our lives, and get on the bus to go to work and everything, and we’re still imagining the world that Tolkien started for us in the text, and we take that with us, and draw our own fantasies in our mind. I think that that was a continuous thread for me, and I appreciate this time to have this interview."
196,28,Female,20190525,eng,Emporia,Kansas,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old, and I currently live in Emporia, Kansas. I first encountered Tolkien in 1999 when I was eight years old. I was being homeschooled and the curriculum that we were using at the time assigned a lot of children’s books, including books for the parent-teacher to read aloud. My mom started reading The Hobbit to me, and it wasn’t quite like anything I’d ever come across before, and I loved it. The next year, when I was nine, she read the entirety of The Lord of the Rings out loud to me, because she correctly guessed that I would love it even more. My parents got into Tolkien themselves around the 1970s, so I am a second-generation fan. And a while after that I read The Silmarillion independently and just kept going. As to why I loved these books so much: First of all, it’s a great story. There are all these different elements being brought together. There’s adventure, suspense, tragedy, comedy, romance, horror; and so many very deep themes. There’s fear, and courage, and hope, and victory, and loss. These books are about hobbits and dwarves and elves, but they really deal with the fundamentals of the human experience. And, of course, another thing that I loved was the world building. Middle-earth is a masterpiece of imagination. It’s a world that has thousands of years of history, and that shows the marks of that history. Finally, to put it simply, Tolkien was just a good writer. His style does have occasional quirks that you have to tolerate, but his prose and his verse both are a pleasure to read. Thinking of what Tolkien has meant to me, I think it’s difficult to overstate the positive influence that these books have had on my intellectual development. Lord of the Rings was really my introduction to adult literature, to serious poetry, to etymology and the history of the English language, and to the idea of language as art. So, I was taking all that with me through my preteen and teenage years and continuing those explorations. Now in my late twenties, I have an undergraduate degree in classical languages. I’m a poet, a literary translator, and a professional archivist; and it’s open to question whether I’d be in this place if I’d never encountered Tolkien, so I’ll always be grateful to him for helping to put me on this path."
197,31,Female,20190525,eng,Madison,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-one years old, and I am from Madison, Wisconsin. I first encountered Tolkien when I was about ten years old, I believe, in 1998. I read The Hobbit and then from there I moved on through The Lord of the Rings, I think in 1999 through 2000, so I was about eleven and twelve. And then Fellowship of the Ring came out shortly after in 2001, and I just couldn’t get enough. From The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings, I remember going to hide from my mom so she couldn’t find me, so that I could keep reading and find out what happened. I didn’t want to go to sleep. I think I saw Fellowship of the Ring about twelve times in theaters, so I was just very, very, very into the stories. I am a Tolkien fan because of just the richness of the world that he created, and just the sheer amount of detail and care he took in just creating and crafting the world. It was just so special, and so close to history, which I absolutely also loved; but there’s just a different quality to it that I just couldn’t get enough of. I just love the way he wrote, the way he described things. He just took his time, you know, you could picture everything very clearly. I loved how careful he was; it was very clear that he was careful about the way he chose his words. I was very into vocabulary, so just learning new vocabulary as I read and recognizing words that I already knew and just loving the way that he just purposefully used them was really special to me. And I just loved all the characters. I loved that there was always something else to discover, and to read, and to look at. I would read the encyclopedias; I would look at the maps; there was always more and I just loved the background, and that you could just really dig into all of that. Tolkien has just meant so much to me. I just so admire his care and dedication to making something that felt genuinely real. Without him, I don’t think I would have become a writer, definitely not a medievalist. His writings and stories made just such an impression on me that I wanted to create my own story someday, and I’m working to write my own books, and I’ve also made lifelong friends through our shared love of Tolkien, and I will just forever be grateful for that."
198,27,Female,20190525,eng,Springfield,Missouri,United States,"I am from Springfield, Missouri, and I’ve been a Tolkien fan most of my life. My first memory of Tolkien’s works was when I was four years old. My brother, first one, had just been born, by luck on September 22nd no less. But the birth was traumatic and left him with cerebral palsy. In those days, as he fought for his life, my first memory is my dad reading The Hobbit. It had been the 25th Ballantine anniversary box set that a friend had given him. And I was spellbound, even at my age. Six years or so later, after I had seen The Fellowship of the Ring with my family in theaters, my dad gave me permission, seeing I was old enough or mature enough, to read the books if I was interested. Much as I was, I had trouble focusing: so many words, so little pictures. But he came up with the idea of letting me try the audio books. I didn’t grasp much but there was something that even my age, there was a magic that can be felt. With the poetry, with the song, with the characters—as Rob Inglis narrated. I became a fan then. And while I credit the movies for igniting my passion for Middle-earth, for giving me those visual cues that I had longed so much to find in the stories and help imagine and feed that imagination, I ultimately credit my dad and those paperback copies that he read in those hospital waiting rooms. Tolkien has meant a lot to me, a lot of things over time…chiefly escapism. I’ve dealt with my own health trials—chronic pain in the form of fibromyalgia—and carried the burdens of depression and anxiety that sometimes flare up. But as I’ve grown older, in my twenty-seven years—not old enough quite yet to be a mature hobbit—I carry the tradition of reading the books every year. I find more than that, more than escapism. I find an encouragement for my Faith. Tolkien may have a detested allegory, and I can see his point of view. But I still cannot help see the themes of providence, not overt or loud, but woven in the details and making use of even the most ordinary characters, like Butterbur, when needed for our heroes. This element of providence, especially if you read The Silmarillion, is just woven so beautifully throughout all of his work. Tolkien did say, to paraphrase, that his Middle-earth works were unconsciously Catholic in writing and origin. While I’m not Catholic, I’m a Christian. I find it to be more relatable emotionally than allegory. But more than that, the idea of finding beauty in everyday, the importance of Fellowship with friends, and the notion of greater designs going on behind the curtains, that’s what keeps me coming back and finding something new within every page. "
199,38,Male,20190715,eng,Aarhus,,Denmark,"I am thirty-eight years old and I am calling from Aarhus, Denmark. I’ve been a fan, if you can say that—supporter of Tolkien—since late youth I’d say, but of course my relationship with him goes back to early childhood. I remember listening to The Hobbit from the back seat of my parents’ car on an audiobook on the way to France, on a long drive—something like that. When I read The Lord of the Rings in my teenage years, it was prior to the Hollywood movies of course, and it was a very big eye-opener, especially after having dealt with fantasy genres, science fiction, and Dungeons & Dragons, and stuff like that for fourteen years. This was really on a whole ‘nother level. I’ve been very happy about having Tolkien in my life ever since. And I found a better half who, to some degree, also shares the same fascination, though not to the extent where she is also a member of the Tolkien Society or anything like that; but she did give me a membership birthday present. I’ve amassed a ridiculous book collection and all those kinds of things normal Tolkienists do. If I should put some words to what exactly it is in Tolkien’s work that is appealing to me, or why it’s important to me, it’s of course not only the stories; they’re perfect escapism in the sense that you can immerse yourself into them completely like the secondary world he talked about. And there’s, of course, also the academic and social aspect of engaging with other Tolkien fans about absolutely ridiculous details about everything and all that. But in a more specific way, I’ve also been able to use the secondary world creatively and—spiritually is maybe a big word—but there’s a lot of things in it that really make sense. I’ve worked as a musician as well, and referencing Tolkien, or at least using some of the same aesthetics, is very rewarding. So it’s still with me, and it will probably be until the end of time. And I’m ok with the Hollywood movies and the Amazon series, but let’s see how it pans out in the end."
200,26,Male,20190525,eng,Oconomowoc,Wisconsin,United States,"I’m twenty-six years old. I’m from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, in the USA of course. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien as a toddler most likely. It was as long ago as I can remember, because I had some older siblings. My father was in the habit of reading all of us Tolkien as bedtime stories. And he’d use it like as a campfire story that he’d bring out to camping trips and all that. Introduced to it very young. It’s difficult to say why I’m a Tolkien fan because I have a hard time remembering what my interests were before I became obsessed with Tolkien. I had already been exposed to the stories, and then when I was eight or nine years old, my father told me that a movie was being made about The Fellowship of the Ring. He invited me to see it, and I had never seen a PG-13 movie at that point in my life. Before actually seeing the movie, in anticipation of seeing it, I started reading The Hobbit book on my own: and then when I was nine years old, that’s when I went and saw Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring in theaters. For some reason it excited me profoundly. It was a fairytale, but it wasn’t laughable. It was real. It was scary. It was awesome. Then between the premieres of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, I finished reading The Hobbit. I read the rest of the trilogy, and I’ve read all those books many times since then. I’ve read The Silmarillion twice through. It seems like Peter Jackson’s film was the catalyst that drove me to obsession, but I’ve always identified as a fan of the literature first and foremost. Whatever it was that I liked in the trilogy films that Peter Jackson made, was there because it was derived from quality source material; and Tolkien’s world has this remarkable authenticity to it. I’m no longer obsessed with Middle-earth, but I haven’t been any more passionate about anything else in my life since then. Maybe not even as passionate. So, that sums it up."
201,59,Female,20190525,eng,Bridgeport,Connecticut,United States,"I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and I am fifty-nine years old. We got introduced to Tolkien through our dad. He began when we were six years old by reading us the Narnia Chronicles. He read the entire set of Chronicles to my brother and sister and me three times at least. And then he started with The Hobbit, at which point we were probably seven or eight. I remember him starting with The Lord of the Rings when we were ten; and I fell deeply in love, even more deeply perhaps than with Lewis. Still love both those gentlemen. We began reading then on our own, after Dad finished going through it once. I began reading Tolkien at ten, and read him every year then throughout my teens, and frequently afterwards. I would say that he’s had a huge influence on me in terms of, well, basically I am an aspiring novelist, and both of my first two novels are deliberate tributes to Tolkien, and specifically to The Hobbit. They’re very different stories from that, but they are tributes. But what matters even more, I think, is his spiritual impact on me. I say sometimes that Tolkien is one of several people who encouraged me to remain a Christian through all my doubts and struggles, and specifically to remain in the Catholic Church. The other people are Lewis, of course, Madeleine L’Engle; although she would be shocked and horrified, Ursula Le Guin; Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, the Pax Christi Community, and the Liberation Theologians—all of these people have greatly influenced my spirituality. But what I learned from Tolkien specifically is how we can be vehicles of grace for each other, how we can be vehicles of mercy for each other. What I learned is that compassion just matters so much; grace matters so much; mercy matters so much; hobbits matter so much. It’s the hobbits, through acts of mercy, who save the world, and that just impacted me hugely. Thank you so much for letting me participate in this muster. That’s it for me."
202,18,Female,20190525,eng,Oconomowoc,Wisconsin,United States,"I am eighteen years old, and I am from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. I think I was first exposed to Tolkien’s works and stuff as most kids were. My father read The Hobbit aloud to my sisters and I when I was probably about seven years old, and I think I fell in love with the genre of Fantasy because of that. It’s such a timeless story that I can go back and read it now and still get that same sense of wonder that I had back then. I mean it was just—it was awesome. When I was about twelve, then, The Hobbit films were coming out; and, you know, I was twelve, I loved them. And so then, when I read The Lord of the Rings after that, I already had this investment in the idea of Middle-earth, and I kind of read them with more excitement and reverence because of that, and I thought that it was just the best. I went on to read some of, I guess, his more obscure stuff, too. I read The Silmarillion, Beren and Lúthien, Fall of King Arthur, and just wanted to get a sense of the extent of the world he created. I’m a fan for countless reasons. I just adore the world and the characters he created. They persevere with grace while facing challenges, and I think that’s really motivational. And Fantasy is kind of intended as escapism, so whenever the world around me feels rougher, I can just open those pages and find myself somewhere that’s a lot more beautiful. The films, too, I think are important to acknowledge. I know that they weren’t made in collaboration with Tolkien; but they were mainly inspired by his books, so when I’m talking about being a fan, I think you have to acknowledge that. Just the care and devotion put into them really shows how dedicated people are to his work, and it’s nice. The fan base and community has also been a reason, you know, online and in real life is awesome. And his dedication to language and education to a student is really compelling. He’s meant a lot to me, and I really wish I could tell him that. He’s been a role model and an inspiration, I think, in like the greatest sense. His life, separate from what he wrote, also is just incredible. He lived like a capital ‘R’ Romantic life, you know, in the sense of the word, with being an orphan, and in the war and everything, is just really inspirational on its own. I guess even my Faith, I would say, a little bit, is influenced by him. The miracles and eucatastrophes at the dark points of his books and stuff, really shows that no matter what you believe, someone is out there and got your back. I could probably talk about this for hours, so three minutes is not nearly enough time to explain how much I love it, but here we are."
203,38,Female,20190530,eng,,,Japan,"I am thirty-eight years old, and I am from Japan, and my first book by Professor Tolkien was The Hobbit, translated by Teiji Seta into Japanese: Hobitto no Boken. That was when I was ten years old in 1990s, and a few years later I read The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. They were my best books in my life. When Peter Jackson made The Lord of the Rings movies, I was an undergraduate student. I got to know there are many, many Tolkien fans not only in Japan but all over the world, through the internet. I was very excited in the Japanese Tolkien fandom. And through Tolkien fans and experts, I learned many things including all of the English words, and the cultures, and also European myths, like Beowulf, Kalevala, Edda, and so on. He gave me a broader perspective through the world, and the world, through his fairy stories. It has shaped me. It got me through my bad times, and also brought many good, important things to my life. I visited Oxford, Birmingham, Warwick, his house where he spent his life, and the many places in New Zealand, including the movie set. Yeah, that’s all."
204,14,Female,20190530,eng,Chenequa,Wisconsin,United States,This interview is restricted until 2023 because the fan was only fourteen years old on the date of the interview. 
205,26,Male,20190530,eng,Victorville,California,United States," I am twenty-six years old, and I am originally from Victorville, California. When did I first encounter Tolkien? I think like a lot of people I first came across a Tolkien book on my parents’ bookshelf when I was a kid. I remember it had sort of these hazy paintings of Middle-earth on the outside and it looked kind of cool. So, I had watched it for a while, sort of a beaten, old paperback; and one day I decided to take it off the shelf, flip through it, see what it is, and very quickly realized I was on an adventure. This was going to be something I remembered, repeated, passed on, gave out, and sort of very rapidly realized that it wasn’t just another book on the shelf. As for why I became a fan, or what pulled me in, I think for me it was the—kind of the depth of everything, the richness. It didn’t feel like reading another novel, and there was no cliffhangers, or twists to pull you in, or gimmicky type things. It felt like you were reading a story that had been recorded by someone who had been there, which, you know, there’s monsters, and magic, and all of that, but it’s—you almost could move past that; you could feel the work he put into it, the depth of the story, and any throw-away name or character had generations of history written about it. Even if you never read it, it felt like it was there; and it was something I had never experienced at that point, and I don’t think I have to the same degree since. And even as a relatively small child, I knew that that was special. Still, even now, if I crack open one of those books every so often, he pulls you in pretty rapidly, and you feel the same thing. I think for me, what that kind of meant was—the big part of it was that—literature like that is out there. It’s out there to find. Every book can be that special; every page can be that different. There’s people putting that kind of work and effort into the writing, so it’s always worth opening a book. But also, more specific to him, just the characters are so interesting and so strong that they can teach lessons and show you how to possibly think through or react to real world situations. And I thought even then, and now, that that was pretty cool. And that’s it for me."
206,32,Male,20190530,eng,Green Bay,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-two, and I currently live in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I first encountered Tolkien’s work when I had first started middle school. I was maybe an underperforming student, and I was a great reader, but wasn’t placed very well because I had a hard time keeping attention in class. I remember seeing an old Ballantine Books cover, the one with Bilbo and Gollum in the back, and by our current standards it’s maybe not the greatest piece of fantasy art; but it caught my eye, and I told the teacher I had to read it. There was a big stack of them for a class assignment for somebody else, and she challenged me; she said, “No, you can’t—you’re not good enough to read that right now.” I just knew I had to. So, I took one off the stack when she wasn’t looking and brought it home, and I finished it over the night. I couldn’t stop. It just really spoke to me at that time in my life about really a young person taking control of things and seeing their own end through, and having responsibility, and taking responsibility for that. Then as I started to delve into Tolkien’s works more, I just fell in love with his language more than anything else; and some would maybe call it esoteric—right, it’s not the friendliest language, for young readers especially, especially in The Lord of the Rings—but there was just something about the way he took the time to word things that was maybe not brief, but really encapsulated the whole spirit of what he was trying to talk about: descriptions of orcs, and down to trees and things. And ever since then I’ve been bitten; I’m obsessed. I’m at reading Tolkien weekly, or I’m following pages on Facebook, or playing games. I’m really excited, because now that my daughter is old enough, we’re reading The Hobbit together at night. So, yeah, that’s it."
207,28,Female,20190531,eng,Eldersburg,Maryland,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old, and I am from Eldersburg, Maryland. I was fortunate enough to have a truly memorable first experience with Tolkien’s works. My fourth grade teacher, Mr. Samuels, used to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to his class every year, except he didn’t so much read the stories as relive them with us, complete with pictorial timelines made from old Alan Lee calendars that stretched around the walls of our classroom, and battle schematics that were drawn on the whiteboard. So, this was before the Peter Jackson movies came out, so it made the stories incredibly vivid and accessible. And who couldn’t love Tolkien after an introduction like that? I’m a Tolkien fan, simply put, because Tolkien is the master fantasy writer. Every time I revisit The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, I’m floored by his absolute command of his universe. Tolkien knew every detail of his peoples, their languages, histories, geographies, myths, and what have you. And as a historian, I’m amazed by the sheer ingenuity it took to create at that level of detail. So, what Tolkien has meant to me—I think I’ve read The Lord of the Rings close to a dozen times now, and the one thing I’m constantly chewing over when I finish them is the scale of it. Not the world building, per se, but the juxtaposition of the weightiness of the story, the literal world-ending stakes of it all, and the ordinariness of its main heroes in Frodo and Sam. It’s like a pretty common trope in fantasy to have the ordinary hero discover that she’s an extraordinary person, but with Frodo and Sam, and Merry and Pippin as well, it’s their very ordinariness that makes them able to do things that the more classic heroes like Gandalf and Aragorn aren’t able to do. There’s a strength and a dignity in that sort of quiet, everyday courage that sort of speaks to my own life and how I relate to other people."
208,62,Male,20190531,eng,Wisconsin Rapids,Wisconsin,United States,"Age sixty-two. I am from Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. I first encountered Tolkien in college. I can’t recall whether it was my first year or second year; but there was a small group of friends in college, where we were all studying biology together, that one of my friends introduced me to The Hobbit. I had never read it before, and looked at it, going, “I’m not so sure if I’d be interested in that.” Long before I was done with The Hobbit it’s like, “Where is there more of this? There needs to be more.” And, thus, dived into The Lord of the Rings as well at that time, going, “There still has got to be more.” Fortunately, it was not that long afterwards that The Silmarillion came out. It was then that I realized that there was an entire body of work here that just really hadn’t even been touched on when you look back and reflect on The Hobbit itself. I still remember reading the preface to The Hobbit where Tolkien mentioned or brought up that when he finished with The Hobbit his fans were clamoring for more information about hobbits. And all I was thinking of—“That’s all well and good, but what about Gandalf? Where did he come from? What is the White Council? Who is the Necromancer, and what’s going on here?” Because there definitely was more material here than what was being shared in just the simple book The Hobbit. It’s only been since that time that I’ve realized that The Hobbit was always intended to be a child’s tale, and those darker elements were not really meant for that type of audience. Tolkien definitely introduced me into a whole realm of literature related to science-fiction or fantasy. At that point it just has taken off so much in the world in general, that there’s so much information, there are so many films and books of that same genre. It’s been a very interesting, intelligent way to spend some time escaping from the real world, where the brick houses are being built up, and there’s actually a land out there that’s more interesting."
209,49,Female,20190531,eng,Burlington,Vermont,United States,"I am forty-nine, and I am from Burlington, Vermont. I first encountered Tolkien in the late Seventies, when I was eight or nine, when my father read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings aloud to me and my younger brother. I went on to read The Lord of the Rings on my own many times. I vividly remember the boxed set of trade paperbacks that was the family copy of the saga. What made me a fan? I was a really wild kid who loved to climb trees and explore in the woods near my Vermont home. Tolkien’s appreciation of nature appealed to me immensely, especially the Ents, and the forests of Rivendell and Lothlórien. The idea of living in a Mallorn tree was really exciting to me when I was young. I also loved his humor. The hobbits are often funny, and Gandalf scolding hobbits is even funnier. Many of the other characters, even Gollum, have an understated wit that provides a great counterbalance to the more lofty dialogue and serious subject matter. Éowyn was also important to me as a girl looking for representation in tales of adventure. Some criticize Tolkien for not including more female characters in his stories, but I never felt that way, and I still don’t, even though I consider myself a radical feminist and have read and appreciated many woman-centered fantasies since I first encountered Tolkien. To paraphrase Shakespeare, Tolkien’s women, though they be but few, are fierce, and I never felt that my life as a girl was disregarded or unvalued in his work. The opposite in fact. Something I didn’t consciously realize when I was younger, but can recognize now, is that the length and rhythm of The Lord of the Rings feels like the perfect shape of a story to really suck me in and make me feel as if something has happened, both in the narrative and in my own mind and heart as I read it. It’s long, it’s lumpy, it has a lot of highs and lows. It’s a real journey. Tolkien’s ecological awareness, his love of language, his distrust of the power-hungry, and his long view of history all resonate deeply with me. It’s hard to know how much of that is influence and how much of it is agreement since I was introduced to his work when I was so young. But regardless, I feel we are fellow travelers in many ways. And each time I’ve reread The Lord of the Rings, I’ve found more to appreciate. There’s no way I could have understood, when I was younger, how nuanced and sympathetic his depictions of depression and PTSD are, but I can now. I find his depiction of loss, both personal and cultural, more true and more emotionally resonant with each reread. The Fellowship succeed in their task, but some die, some are hurt, and all are changed over the course of the story. Some psychological wounds, like those suffered by Frodo, cannot be made better. Some beautiful things fade and disappear. It’s so much more true than an uncomplicated happy ending."
210,32,Female,20190531,eng,Eugene,Oregon,United States,"I currently live in Eugene, Oregon, but I am originally from Wisconsin; and I am thirty-two. I actually don’t remember when I first read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. I’m pretty sure I was younger than eleven, because I remember when I first read Harry Potter I was the same age as Harry, and he was eleven. My guess is I was nine or ten when I first read it. My dad introduced it to me, and it’s obviously meant a lot to me, as I’m sitting here crying about it. When it really comes down to it, it’s really not only meant a love of reading and learning, but it’s also meant a relationship with my dad through the books. We’re constantly talking about it. We’re constantly joking about it. We’re currently both here, sitting, wearing Lord of the Rings t-shirts. And we’re always giving each other new book ideas that are in the line with sci-fi and the high fantasy. He’ll give me suggestions on books that he’s read. I’ll give him suggestions, and it’s really just instilled that love of reading throughout my life, which I think has really affected not only my scholarly pursuits, but just everything I do in general. The books in general have really grown with me. When I first read them, it was a lot of like, oh, this really cool fantasy tale, good versus evil, and now it’s kind of—as I’ve grown up, the layers have gotten deeper and deeper. It’s not just a tale of sword fighting and all of that stuff. But it’s also moved into the depths of human nature and things being not necessarily black and white as you grow up. And then the stuff with taking care of the environment, and being with your friends, and working with your family and your friends toward a common goal together."
211,30,Female,20190601,eng,Rochester,New York,United States,"I am thirty years old, from Rochester, New York. My father actually introduced me to Middle-earth. Since neither of my siblings wanted to visit, I think he secretly thought of me as his last, best hope to enjoy it with him. So, one night many, many years ago, they became my bedtime stories, and so I was just captivated from page one. Sometimes when he was too tired to read very much at all, he’d say something like, “Oh, once upon a time there was a story. The end.” No. That would not—that would not go. Then, so, of course, I’d laugh and tell him he was wrong, and he’d laugh, and even if we only got through half a chapter, even though he already knew the endings, he loved the stories as much as I did as a child hearing them for the first time. We read The Hobbit, and then the full trilogy, and then--I don’t think we read The Silmarillion. So, I discovered that he had The Once and Future King, so we then moved to Camelot, but I’ve never gotten over falling asleep and starting to dream of the battles, the Elves, the Ents, and of course the barrels that my dad’s voice showed me, and I don’t ever want to. Why am I a fan? What like—why am I not a fan? There’s everything in Middle-earth that you could want, from romance to horror. The books taught me to love books; they taught me to love words. They transport me away and they’ve helped me through some of my worst depressive episodes, of course. I’ve meditated using the image of holding the phial of Galadriel; I’ve been using that as just protection and confidence, and that’s brought me calmness when my anxiety seems to be overwhelming me. I ask if Sam and Frodo would give up, and of course they never would, so they’re just some of my oldest friends. Of course, my oldest crush is Aragorn, and so far none of my relationships have even come close to striving in his footsteps, but we’re still looking. And then there’s the female hero Éowyn, just teaching a young girl that it doesn’t matter if you’re not a man, you can still defeat this huge monstrosity, and save the day basically. So, it’s meant a bond with my dad that no one else has: not my mom, because she doesn’t like the books, not a ton of his family, and neither of my siblings have it either. It means being at bars trying a new beer and saying, “It comes in pints? I’m getting one.” Then just nerding out with my friends, making fun, movie marathons; and then, of course, it means never having been afraid to show my emotions when I’m passionate about something."
212,61,Male,20190601,eng,Billings,Montana,United States,"I am now sixty-one years old, in Montana, but when I first met Tolkien I was a fifteen-year-old farm kid from south-central Minnesota. I wouldn’t call myself a Tolkien fan so much as a Tolkien advocate, specifically of the values woven through his books. The difference between good and evil in Middle-earth is the difference between service and selfishness. When Frodo says he will take the Ring to the fire, though he doesn’t know the way; when Gandalf stands against the Balrog; when Sam takes the Ring from his seemingly dead master; and when Aragorn leads a remnant army against the Black Gates, each does so in the service of the common good at great cost, and each takes responsibility for the protection of that good. No one was ever accused of acting responsibly for pleasing himself. Responsibility turns on sacrifice. It’s the value that makes all human communities work, from marriage, to companies, to nations and worlds. I learned that from Tolkien, and I try to live it out myself in all my communities. And every year I am more convinced of the truth of Tolkien’s assertion that responsibility is goodness. Great literature is less of a mirror of life than it is a map of life. I believe that in the end, each of us in our life arc becomes one of Tolkien’s characters. My name is Derek Grimmell, and I am Sam."
213,51,Male,20190601,eng,New York,New York,United States,"Fifty-one years old. I am originally from New York City, and I’m currently living in Louisiana, in Shreveport, in military service. When did I encounter the works of Tolkien? As a young grade-schooler in the late Seventies, I found a copy of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in paperback form from my brother’s bookcase, and I went through it. I didn’t realize at the time that it was going to become an important part of my life, but it sure did. I went from there through—got into a habit of reading it every year. Eventually went to The Silmarillion, and then found more of his works. So, that’s how I got introduced. Why am I a fan of Tolkien? I think I’d have to say that no other author has stayed with me through all of my adult life like Tolkien has. I think it’s the themes that he expresses: things like the end does not justify the means—that’s clearly written—the willingness to make decisions for the greater good, irrespective of personal wellbeing; doing the right thing, and that’s something that applies to a grade-schooler learning what morals are, onto in my current job, where I find myself having to make decisions that affect people. What else has it meant to me? I’d say it’s also been a bonding thing for me and my wife. We’ve listened to the Rob Ingliss books on tape, unabridged, many times. We’ve traveled to Tolkien-themed areas like Sarhole Mill, in Birmingham. We’ve been to New Zealand and found places, so it’s something I can share with my wife on road trips, and it’s just a wonderful thing. Most recently we went to the Morgan Library and saw the exhibit there. So, it’s been important to me throughout my entire life."
214,37,Male,20190603,eng,Savannah,Georgia,United States,"Age thirty-seven, from Savannah, Georgia. I encountered Tolkien at an earlier age—ten or eleven. I was in the fifth grade, needed to do a book report on a book, and the teacher specifically had wrote out a bunch of the stuff that I had already been reading at the time, like no Nancy Drew or Hardy Boy-type stuff. She wanted like a real novel, I think is what it was. So I was kind of at a loss, and my mom gave me—she’s like, “Well, try this,” and handed me her paperback copy of The Hobbit that she had when, I guess, the first version came out in the U.S.—first paperback came out in the U.S.—in the Sixties. I read it and fell in love with it immediately. I had a hard time with some of his—the different names and stuff was always a struggle, but powered through it, loved it. Built a Lego diorama of Smaug attacking the Lonely Mountain. Did pretty good on the book report, and then she let me know that there was more, and I wanted to read it, and she felt that it was a little above my reading level at the time, so we read it together that summer. I’ve loved it since then. It really kind of—I read a lot anyways at the time, but that definitely got me into sci-fi and fantasy genre-type stuff. I’ve read it—I’ve read Tolkien multiple times, like all the way through. I mean, I think I was probably in the short group of individuals who started Silmarillion as a teen and finished it on the first whack. I’ve gone through and recently I—after the movies came out—I had not read it for a very long time. Listened to the audio books recently, and it just amazed me how richer the story is being read aloud. It was completely awesome. I’ve loved it for multiple reads through and it’s meant a lot to me. I’ve had a lot of personal tribulations the last couple years, and going back, and listening to it, and reading it gave me a place to turn to that was safe and meant a lot to me, and—I mean—Tolkien—I forgot how—like there was a time I forgot how much it meant to me. But, I mean, heck, I’ve got the tengwar tattooed on my arm of “Not all those who wander are lost,” and “All that is gold does not glitter.” So, that’s where I’m at."
215,29,Male,20190603,eng,Christiansburg,Virginia,United States,"I am from Christiansburg, Virginia, currently, and I am twenty-nine years old. The first time I encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien was when I was about four years old, when my father read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to my brother and I. From that time on I was always enamored with his stories. After I learned how to read, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were the first big books that I read. I have since returned to these and Tolkien’s other works continuously throughout the last twenty years. I will also be reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings to my children when they are old enough, just as my father once did. I think one of the big reasons I am a Tolkien fan is J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary genius, imagination, life of virtue, and his worldview sparked and inspired my own imagination, and formed some of my own worldview as a young child all the way into my adulthood. I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that specifically The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings are unequivocally some of my favorite literary works and always will be. As a bibliophile, a student of theology and philosophy, words ultimately fail to express just how much J.R.R. Tolkien’s works have meant to me in my life. J.R.R. Tolkien’s meant a whole lot to me, and my whole life. I think he was much of the reason, as a child, that I always wanted to go on adventures and do something meaningful with my life. How that has looked has changed over the years as I have grown and matured, but it has brought me all over the world through military service, through combat, through jungles and deserts, atop mountains and glaciers, and into service to others right here in my home. His work has helped inspire me to look outside of myself to see where God is calling me, whether that be as a father and a husband, who loves without counting the costs, as a missionary or soldier in a distant land, or as a medical student and future physician, which is my current situation. His work has helped me remember that through life, for most of us, may not be so grand as the adventures and quests of the heroes of Middle-earth, still yet, it has infinite meaning and our actions do indeed ripple throughout eternity. His work also enkindled in me a love for things that are true, good, and beautiful, things that are becoming rare in today’s world. Finally, J.R.R. Tolkien, the man, has deeply inspired my spiritual life, helped lead me through life-changing conversion in becoming Catholic, and continues to inspire and challenge the way that I perceive the world around me as I grow older. His words resonate more and more true for me, and I am very thankful for J.R.R. Tolkien."
216,42,Female,20190603,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am forty-two years old. I was born in Berlin, Germany, and I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of Tolkien in sixth grade when I was assigned to read The Hobbit, and I’ve been a fan ever since, but when I moved to Los Angeles, California, for a graphic design position, I was twenty-three, and I was hoping to work for Industrial Light and Magic, and around the same time Marvel’s X-Men—the movies—were coming out, and Lord of the Rings movies were coming out in the theaters. When the trailer would come out, the whole computer lab I worked with would gather around one computer to watch. That’s when I grew a greater interest in the characters of Tolkien’s Elves, and lands, and relationships. A few years later, my brother-in-law gave me the gift of The Silmarillion, because I really wanted to know the history of the Elves. Before I knew it, I was looking into reading Sindarin and Quenya, and even found myself on a MUSH called Elendor. I played an Elf. Now I play an Elvish building game called Elvenar. When I found out two years ago that I got a brain tumor, and my then-fiancé left me, I was sick and alone, and afraid I wouldn’t wake up after my craniotomy. So, I became entranced with The Honest Guy’s Middle-earth Guided Imageries based on Tolkien’s stories, to push myself through the depression. And I listened to the movie music, and I still do. I was allowed to keep a photo of Thranduil in my ICU as inspiration after my craniotomy. And I woke up. In October, I was fortunate to meet the actor Lee Pace, who portrayed Thranduil, at a Comic-Con. I’m reminded that both through The Silmarillion and certain characters that there are still protectors in the world, seen and unseen. My love for his work woke me up from the first craniotomy in 2017, and I will have radiation for a second brain tumor, but I am counting on Tolkien’s influence to get me through the hardship, too. So, when I have felt most alone, his work reminds me that I am in fact not. I am reminded there is still good in the world, and that sometimes when I can’t do something really difficult, and no one can, I am reminded I can actually do it, and I get back up on my feet."
217,29,Female,20190603,eng,Loveland,Colorado,United States,"I am twenty-nine years old, and I’m from Colorado, U.S. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was twenty-two, I think. My friend introduced me to The Hobbit and was horrified when she found out I had never read Tolkien, so she insisted I read the book; and, of course, that was in 2012-2013, so The Hobbit movies were all coming out. Then she had me watch those as well, and it just really intrigued me enough to make me want to read the rest of The Lord of the Rings. That was kind of my introduction to Tolkien. As to why I’m a fan, I don’t know, the words are just beautiful and describe so well the many emotions that I think most humans feel throughout their lifetime and sometimes don’t have the words to put to it or don’t know how to say it, and he does that for us. That struggle of good versus evil and the ability to overcome darkness just by the small acts of good, is something that I just love. That’s kind of why Tolkien has resonated so much with me. Then, as to what he has meant for me personally—when I was first introduced to The Lord of the Rings I was going through a pretty rough patch in my personal life. It was just that triumph, like I’d said earlier, of good versus evil, and the power to keep going. And I think the thing that stuck out to me the most in his books, the quote, was where Gandalf talks about nobody wants this to come to them, right? Nobody wants the Ring to have come to them, but it has come to him and so all you can decide now is what to do with the time that is given to you. That was such a profound impact on me, that I don’t necessarily get to choose what happens in life always, but I can choose how I respond to it. I would say he’s helped me through depression, and that’s what has made the biggest impact for me."
218,65,Male,20190606,eng,Webster,New York,United States,"I live in Webster, New York. I am sixty-five years old. How I was introduced to Tolkien: my oldest brother’s wife, Corinne, gave me a copy of The Hobbit when I was about twelve. I’m the youngest of ten children, so I had a special bond with her. She was actually the one to teach me how to tie my shoes when I was four years old. It took me a while to get into it, but once the band got caught by the trolls, I was hooked. I couldn’t wait to get home and read the next chapter, or half, to find out what happened next. Then for Christmas and subsequent birthdays etc., I got the whole trilogy and read through that. My personal opinion is that the movie of The Hobbit is a travesty, meant to gather cash from gullible fans. So why am I a fan? Well, you have to love to read, to love epic adventure stories. You have to appreciate the context of the time Tolkien wrote the series, when Nazi Germany was ascendant and the world was dark. And the research that went into every aspect of the series just amazes me. The creation of languages from whole cloth is amazing. Maps and the creation of Middle-earth, linguistics, engineering, science, the work brings all of those together. And the triumph of good over evil, and the perilous margin that Gondor and the Elves had to work with, the heroism of the little people, and the terror of Sauron. I’ve probably read through the series over a hundred times start to finish. I was alone a lot of the time as a teenager, so the work kept me sane and focused. What does the series mean to me? The series is the analogy of life, of ever striving to become better, to succeed in the face of overwhelming odds. I had tried to pass on my love of the work to our two older children, but finally hit gold with our youngest; and this became our bedtime reading, and took several years to finish, as she was young—maybe nine when we started—and we could only read a few pages at a time before she fell asleep. It gave us the special bond we have today. It is one of the finest works of fiction I have ever had the delight to read."
219,59,Male,20190606,eng,New York,New York,United States,"I am fifty-nine years old. I grew up in New York City, and live just outside it. I first encountered Tolkien when I was eleven. I found the old Bantam paperbacks on a mass market spinner rack outside of a store on the Jersey Shore, where we were spending the summer. I bought the first one, took it home and read it, and then went back and got the second, and got to the end of the second, and got to “Frodo was alive but taken by the enemy,” and jumped on my bike, went back to the store, and got the book because I couldn’t wait to hear what happened next. That was the first Tolkien I had read, and it’s just kind of gone from there. I’ve read pretty much everything at this point. Why do I like him? Because I think there’s something about the worldview, the way he sees the universe as working, appeals to me. That there is some kind of balance and morality to it all. I don’t know whether it’s true, but it’s appealing. That’s a lot of what I see in his writings. They’re also great fun. As far as what it’s meant to me, I was a little kid who would read anything that had to do with mythology, or King Arthur, or anything like that. When I came across this, it was like precisely the sort of thing I was looking for. From it, I’ve been introduced to medieval literature; I was encouraged to study languages, which I was always interested in anyway. Many years later, I taught myself Old English, and I’ve read Beowulf in Old English a couple of times. I’ve worked on Old Norse too, and all these other things. It’s just a constant source of inspiration and companionship, and horizons that keep receding before you, as well as, nowadays, in the time of the age of the internet, I’ve met people from all around the world whom I never would have met otherwise, and become friends with many of them. In some way, it makes the world smaller, in a good way. There’s so many ways nowadays that the world seems smaller in a bad way."
220,38,Female,20190606,eng,Coventry,Rhode Island,United States,"I am from Massachusetts. I live in Rhode Island now. I am thirty-eight years old. I discovered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien in the mid-Eighties. My dad, who was a widower, brought home the Rankin Bass Hobbit, and I got hooked on that. Then I found his copies of The Lord of the Rings and my mother’s copy of The Silmarillion. I tried to read those, managed to get through The Lord of the Rings, but not The Silmarillion. I was a teenager. What they’ve meant to me—they are a comfort to me; they are what I go for when I can’t think of anything else I want to read. They’ve just meant so much to me. I managed to go to England and study at Oxford for my master’s thesis because I wanted to read more about Tolkien. I’ve read most of Christopher Tolkien’s works; I’ve watched all of the movies. I am—we’ll say a mild obsession. I don’t speak Elvish or anything. I can’t even read Elvish, so…. But they have meant a lot to me and been a comfort to me in my life when things are at the lowest points."
221,53,Male,20190606,eng,San Diego,California,United States,"I am fifty-three. I grew up in Alabama, but I currently live in California. Like most people my age, I first encountered Tolkien through the old Rankin Bass Hobbit cartoon. I honestly don’t remember the first time I read The Hobbit. I just asked my mom earlier today. She doesn’t remember. She just knows that I always seem to have Tolkien in my hands. I first read The Lord of the Rings in the seventh grade. I probably read it every two months throughout the seventh grade and high school. It has meant the world to me. It opened up vistas; it taught me how to read, really how to understand a world that had been created. I devoured the appendices; I devoured the poetry. I started seeing this cover at people’s houses with his name, and then I realized it was The Silmarillion. Oh, there’s more! And I got it, and I read it in like the tenth grade. That instantly became my favorite. He has been a part of my life for forty years. The way it’s most affected me, strangely, is I have a sort of weird mix of Victorian and Medieval mannerisms and manners. I’m an extraordinarily polite person. I can’t imagine offending people. Part of it from my raising in the South, but also a lot of it because I’m pretty much a hobbit and it’s just not done. I am a hobbit: I eat mushrooms religiously. It’s also affected me in that other fantasy is just always kind of shallow now. People try and put some depth in, but they haven’t invested the decades of work that is required for that sort of thing. You can tell when you’re reading a constructed language that they’re just making up words and putting them in there. They don’t make sense; they don’t have the right sound; they don’t have the right roots and everything. In a way Tolkien ruined me for fantasy fiction, but I’m perfectly happy. I can look over here, I have two shelffuls of Tolkien and Tolkien-related stuff, and I just started collecting it. It’s been a lot of fun getting into the academic side of Tolkien now—a whole new journey to go on. Thank you."
222,24,Female,20190606,eng,Nanning,,China,"I am twenty-four years old, and I am from Nanning, a small city in China. I think the first time that I know Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings was in 2004. At that time I was ten years old, I suppose, and at that time The Return of the King was on air in China, and I have never seen the previous film before, neither have my parents, but I don’t know why—it just happened—my parents accidently took me to the cinema and we watched this film together. Then, after that, this movie, and Tolkien, and his book had some meaning on my life. But I didn’t start reading his book at that time. I think it must be almost eight years later, when I enter the university and have more free time, I started to read his books that I have never read before. And Tolkien, I think he’s also—we met in other situations as well in the university because I also minor in English, so we have some textbooks and dictionary. It was written or edited by him if I remember correctly. I think it’s the ‘W’ part of the dictionary was edited by him. So, I encountered him a lot of time in my life after that. As for the stories, and what I love about him, I think firstly is the story that he’s written. It’s fascinating, and his characters Legolas, Aragorn—Aragorn is my favorite—and Elf stories, they are all fascinating and heartbreaking to many extent, and the value he tried to convey in stories: the kindness and the power that ordinary people can have. The value of friendship, especially The Fellowship of the Rings. And last, I want to say is that I think what he means to me is that we are like the servant of the great fire. We are generations of readers all followed by one another. I think we have truly gone there and back again. That’s all."
223,43,Female,20190613,eng,Los Angeles,California,United States,"I am forty-three years old, and I am from Los Angeles, California. I was in eighth grade when my youngest sister read The Hobbit, loved it, and shared it with me. My first and memorable memories of it are of my sister reciting the riddles and acting out “mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey if it don’t look like mutton again tomorrow.” It seemed like a fun, cool, and clever book I had to read too, and so I did. Why I’m a Tolkien fan after that was, well, in The Two Towers when Faramir is trying to convince Frodo that following Gollum into Cirith Ungol is not wise, Frodo asks him, “Then what would you have me do?” This is the same question I hear in many of Tolkien’s works including his non-Middle-earth works like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl. It’s a question that shows me a person who wants to do what is right, and feels he cannot do it alone, but needs the guidance of a wiser person—ultimately, however, as Aragorn wisely tells Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring, “The hero alone must make the hard choices and decisions.” What I love about Tolkien’s heroes is that facing and overcoming their worst trials means being their best, good, noble, and moral selves. Tolkien’s works ask me to do likewise. This is one reason why I am a fan of Tolkien. Bilbo’s quest, Frodo’s quest, et cetera, are quests in our own lives and my life. What has Tolkien meant to me? Tolkien’s influence in my life has predominantly been to treasure the simple things in life, because ultimately they are the most important, the most beautiful, and the most rewarding. As an auntie, this means to me to be happy playing with my six-year-old niece and eight-month-old nephews, who are twins, and singing the same song over and over again because it brings them joy. It is about enjoying cleaning up their messes that might often land on me and seeing them learn to talk or do multiplication. Tolkien recognized we become less hobbit-like when we become adults, and, by featuring Bilbo and Frodo, Tolkien reminds me to be more good and more happy with the family and life around me."
224,43,Male,20190613,eng,New Orleans,Louisiana,United States,"Forty-three years old. I am originally from New Orleans, Louisiana. I feel like Tolkien’s works were always there for me, just sort of hovering on the edge of my awareness. Even when I was growing up as a kid in the 1980s, I remember seeing TV commercials for Rankin and Bass’s The Hobbit on VHS. I just didn’t know what it was. I remember hearing Middle-earth and thinking it meant something underground—like in the middle of the earth. I didn’t actually read the books until 1991. I was fifteen, and I heard the story that I think we’ve all heard really, about how some college professor named Tolkien wrote, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” on an empty page of a student’s exam paper he was grading. And I just thought that was the coolest way to start writing a story; I was just really impressed by that. So, I went to the mall bookstore, and I bought a box set of all four Ballantine paperbacks of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I jumped right in from the famous sentence at the beginning and read them all, went straight on into The Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales, and I don’t feel like I ever really left Middle-earth after that. The reason I’m a Tolkien fan is—I’ve been a fan of mythology for as long as I can remember, and Tolkien’s work feels to me more like delving into a collection of myths than it does like reading a fantasy book. Yet it’s so much a part of our own world, because, well, at its heart Middle-earth is our own world. When I look up into the sky and I see the evening star, I can think of the myth of Eärendil. Or when I see a gnarly old tree I can think of the Ents or Old Man Willow. And so I just feel a connection to the stories in Tolkien’s legendarium that I just don’t get with other stories, even stories that I’m a big fan of. I also love language, and I have loved it for almost as long as I can remember, but reading Tolkien opened my eyes to a new way to look at language because it is so important to his work. I’m just fascinated by the close relationship between storytelling and the words we use to tell stories. That’s something I learned from Tolkien, and it’s become a part of the way my mind works that I think helps me reengage with his work in a deeper way. As for what Tolkien means to me: well, reading Tolkien as a teenager changed my life. It became more than just a sense of identity as a fan; I get that from lots of other stories. I think Tolkien’s work became a part of me; his ideas about language and myth became a part of me. That’s something I want to share with others. I don’t think there are a whole lot of mythologies around these days that we can participate in as an entire culture, but Tolkien’s mythology is one that we can all share because it’s of our world and beyond it. These are the stories that I want to tell my children and pass on to the next generation. On a personal level, Tolkien’s work has had an immense impact on my life and who I am today because now I’m actually co-hosting a podcast about Tolkien’s work, and I’m lucky enough to be able to share these stories with others and participate in a conversation with Tolkien readers all over the world, which is a great feeling."
225,28,Male,20190613,eng,Boston,Massachusetts,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old. I am originally from Boston, Massachusetts, but I’ve kind of lived all over the place. I first found out about Tolkien when I was about nine years old. My sister was in seventh grade; she would have been about twelve, so that works, and she had a summer reading assignment to read The Hobbit, and fantasy wasn’t really her bag, so she said, “Here, read this and tell me what happens.” So, at that point I read it because I did whatever she told me to, and really just fell in love at that moment. And after kind of reading The Hobbit and, like I said, falling in love with that story, I moved on to Lord of the Rings, and then tried to read The Silmarillion and failed, and tried again later and got it, but… That was kind of how I first came to know him. That was the summer before the first Peter Jackson movie came out, so it was good timing on my part. I would say I’m originally a fan of Tolkien because of the adventure in his stories, right, as a nine-year-old kid: the traveling, the fighting, the friendship, all of that. It’s an exciting story. But as I’ve gotten a little older I’ve been able to explore his writings more deeply, and more of his own life, and I realized I could experience my life kind of more richly through his works. I found that I was able to experience my Catholic faith in a new way because of his works, in ways that I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to do otherwise, just because it was a different lens to look through. Also, reading Lord of the Rings and all the history behind that helped me decide to study history, and now I’m a history teacher, so really it all goes back to that. I think that leads into what Tolkien has meant to me. Like I said, I grew up in Boston, moved to Indiana, and now I live in Texas, not very the same places, but Tolkien’s been there the whole time. His books have really done two things for me: they’ve been a great model on how to be a person, but most importantly they’ve been a source of hope and kind of respite from the world, if you will. What Tolkien has meant to me has just been really that sense of hope and sanctuary from anything that might trouble you."
226,36,Male,20190613,eng,Appomattox,Virginia,United States,"I am thirty-six, and I live in Appomattox, Virginia. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and entered his world, through the works of the Peter Jackson films. The movies were released when I was in college, and sometime between films two and three I had the chance to watch the first two. I was hooked, and by the time I saw The Return of the King in the theater I had already read The Lord of the Rings. Soon after, I read The Hobbit, and took The Silmarillion on vacation with me that summer. The timing was providential since I was exposed to his ideas and thoughts as I was developing my own self-understanding and perspective on the world. The reason I’m a Tolkien fan: once I read Tolkien’s stories, I found them to be incredible in their narrative arc and was pulled into his world. I still am and discover new elements of the stories with each rereading that makes me love them more. His characters are three dimensional. His fiction has an inner consistency that many creative realities, or sub-creations lack, and his stories allow me to escape and rest for a time in a world where good triumphs over evil, and hope endures even in the face of despair. What has Tolkien meant to me? J.R.R. Tolkien is, simply put, my favorite author, and The Lord of the Rings is the tale of his that I constantly return to, usually about once a year. His writings, the wisdom of his characters, and his own personal story have all been an encouragement and an inspiration to me. I’m also a person of Christian faith, though a Protestant instead of a Catholic like Tolkien. And I find his stories contain a moral and spiritual perspective on the world that enriches my own communion with God and challenges me to be more committed in living out my faith. His work gives me language and concepts to help me understand God, the world, and myself. I still rely on some of his conceptual language, like eucatastrophe, and excerpts from his work, such as the wisdom of Gandalf on the nature of evil, and our responsibility in the face of it, to understand and communicate deep truths in my own life and faith."
227,33,Female,20190614,eng,Kansas City,Missouri,United States,"I am thirty-three years old, and I live in Kansas City, Missouri. I first became familiar with Tolkien at the age of about seven when I read The Hobbit for the first time, and I really loved it, just the story in general; and then I really wanted to find out if there was more of it, so then I, of course, found out about The Lord of the Rings a couple years later. I started reading The Lord of the Rings when I was about ten, and it took me a couple years to finish it because of my age. After that, in high school, I found out about The Silmarillion, so it’s kind of a wormhole really—or a rabbit-hole I should say—of unending stuff to read. I just kind of went on from there, got very interested in that; and because of my age, of course, the live action adaptations came out when I was in high school, so all of a sudden it kind of went from something that really not a lot of people my age had read to suddenly everyone knew the story. So, it was a really easy way to kind of connect with people, because so many people became really familiar with the story almost overnight, because the movies were just such a hit. Because of that, Tolkien has a lot of meaning for me in terms of friendship and fellowship—I mean those themes in the book are important, but then also in terms of the friends that I connected with because of the movies and the books. Also, I run the Kansas City chapter of the Tolkien Society, so I became interested in sort of reigniting my passion in Tolkien later in life. A few years ago, I was like, “You know, I wonder if there’s a chapter of the Tolkien Society nearby?” and of course there wasn’t. The closest one was in Colorado, and then the next closest one was in Tennessee. I just thought, “Well, I wonder what work goes into that?” It turns out you can just start your own chapter if you’re a member. So, I did. I founded the chapter, and these people that have joined the Tolkien Society of Kansas City have become really close friends of mine. We’ve also started working with charities. I do lectures now on Tolkien at local libraries. In fact, I have one coming up in a couple weeks at the library. So, I mean, it’s had an enormous impact on me, and a lot of it has to do with the themes, especially with how dark things have been politically in the past several years, and social media overtaking everything, I really find a lot of goodness and a great essence that is in Tolkien that I enjoy—just sort of his escapism, to get away from everything. It’s one of the reasons why Game of Thrones doesn’t really appeal to me, because I don’t like escaping from one kind of grim world into another grim world. That’s something that I really enjoy is the theme of like eucatastrophe, and just fellowship, and friendship, and all that. So that’s kind of what Tolkien has meant to me."
228,31,Male,20190615,eng,Savannah,Georgia,United States,"Thirty-one, from Savannah, Georgia. I was introduced to Tolkien by the Jackson films. I think I saw Fellowship in the theater four, five times. I just fell in love with it. I was thirteen. Visualizations of the world were just so beautiful I just wanted to jump into the screen. I know some people don’t like some of the things that Jackson did with the films, but I’m eternally grateful because he brought Tolkien to a whole new generation, to a massive public market that wouldn’t have ever developed th love for Tolkien’s world that is now shared amongst so many people. I hate to say it, but without the Jackson films, to me Tolkien would have just been some assigned reading in elementary school, that I might have enjoyed, but resented because we were forced to read it. I’m a Tolkien fan because he developed, or as he might say revealed, a world that is so rich and deep that it draws you in with its realness. There are endless applications to your own life. As he said, Faerie has more application than history because it has no time or place, it’s not bound, and it transcends all to reveal a truer meaning. I got to see the Tolkien exhibit at the Morgan Library in New York City, and that was a true privilege. One real strong takeaway that I have from that exhibit was that this world was one hundred percent real to Tolkien, and it totally consumed him. He knew what everything looked like. He painted pictures I didn’t even know existed of things like Dunharrow and Barad-dûr. All the detail he put in the maps, the textual runes, the languages, etymology, the history; it was totally real to him. I ultimately think that the richness and beauty of his secondary world is what keeps people coming back, including me. What has he meant to me? Tolkien has opened a whole new world to me that I can escape to. His word ‘escape’ to, just for the sake of escaping, or to give situations that provoke thoughts that help me sort out my own problems. Particularly, for me, strong messages of hope penetrate to my core. I’m so grateful for that. He’s also created an entire worldwide community centered around the shared experiences of Arda. There are hundreds of people at the Long Expected Party that I went to in New York City; and it’s just a great time of fellowship to be around people that share your experience and your love. I would love to go to a Moot one day or go to Oxford and see the sites. Thank you J.R.R. Tolkien and thank you Marquette."
229,48,Male,20190615,eng,Portland,Oregon,United States,"I am forty-eight years old. I am currently from the States—Portland, Oregon—but I am originally from Russia, by way of Israel. I’ve encountered Tolkien when I was eleven years old in Israel. The Hobbit was introduced to me by a librarian in a mobile library that would have visited every other week, I believe. I read The Hobbit when I was eleven, and I read The Lord of the Rings when I was twelve, both in Hebrew, in the original Hebrew translation. Why am I a fan? The fandom and the significance are very tightly intertwined. One element of it, for the usual reasons: I’ve been shown a world that I resonated with very much on a personal-emotional level, maybe inexplicable, what-have-you; but as a preteen, as an early teen, and as an adult I probably read the book on average once a year. There have been several three-four years here and there that I didn’t, but then I made it up, I believe. So it was that the story, the ability to be in a place that I resonated with very much so—kind of the typical reasons. Then the more interesting, the more significant, thing kicked in. I was five when I moved from Russia to Israel; I was eleven-twelve when I read Tolkien; and I was fifteen when I moved to the States. By the time that I had moved to the States—they teach English in Israel from the fourth grade—I had an aptitude for it, so I was reasonably conversant, and I had visited the States two years before I left; but when I purchased the book in English, because I realized that I had never read the appendices in Hebrew, so that was a whole new world for me, I was reading the book at the time, I closed it and decided to start reading it in English because why not? Why would I read it in Hebrew? Then I became very scared because I realized that I was lacking the emotional connection with the language, whereas I was feeling it all in Hebrew, in English it was just words, even if I understood each and every word. Then what I understood when I arrived in the States was that English will not come naturally on an emotional level. And what I did, I used the world of Tolkien—I used The Lord of the Rings—to read it in English and infuse it with the emotional content that I had gained in the Hebrew. It allowed me to connect with the American zeitgeist. That’s why."
230,33,Male,20190615,eng,Baltimore,Maryland,United States,"I am thirty-three years old, and I live near Baltimore, Maryland. I first encountered Tolkien reading The Hobbit in grade school. I’ll be honest, as a child wasn’t a huge fan. Kind of moved a little slow, but I had to read it twice for two different classes. I read Lord of the Rings when the movies came out. The movies came out and my mom was like, “Well, you’re definitely going to have to read at least The Fellowship before you go see it.” So, I read it, and was very surprised when Boromir died at the end of the movie. I was like, “What? That never happened.” But I read it, and then after I saw the movie, because I had finished it just in time for the movie, I quickly devoured the other two. It was amazing, and I just kind of kept going back to it. I ended up reading The Silmarillion, oh, probably in college. Probably took me about three tries to get through it. I keep coming back to it because there’s just so much in The Lord of the Rings; every time I read it there’s just more that I pick up, small subtleties with character interactions or things that I noticed that I didn’t notice before, because I’m older and I have more life experience, maybe circumstances have changed, things like that. So always coming back to it. Always more to see. A friend of mine is also a bit of a Tolkien nerd and he just told me he gives me that crown of being the local Tolkien nerd. I’ve been listening to The Prancing Pony Podcast, which is how I heard about this, and they’ve been really kind of opening my eyes to a lot of this stuff, too. It’s been really interesting to learn more about Tolkien himself as well. I went and saw the gallery in New York, at the Morgan Library, and it was amazing seeing so much of his original work. I never knew how much of an artist he was. All of the reproductions don’t have the punch and clarity that the original artwork has. I just am continuing to read it and will be continuing to read it, and I’m looking forward to getting in more to some of his other works like “Monsters and the Critics.” Just got that, so I’m looking forward to reading that."
231,48,Male,20190615,eng,Woodbridge,Virginia,United States,"I am forty-eight years old, and I live in Woodbridge, Virginia. I first encountered Tolkien’s work when I was eight years old, in 1979, and the first exposure was when I read the illustrated companion to the Rankin Bass animated version of The Hobbit. Although I didn’t actually see the cartoon itself until many years later. That was my first exposure; that was my first visual impression. I went on to read The Hobbit that same year. The next year, the Rankin Bass Return of the King animated version came out on TV and I watched that, and I went on to read The Lord of the Rings itself. At nine years old I can’t say I caught everything. Then I probably read The Silmarillion in middle school, or in high school. That was also when I encountered some of the first examples of Tolkien scholarship, started to read some of his shorter work. Then, probably when I was in college, I encountered The Book of Lost Tales, edited by Christopher Tolkien. That was a revelation because The Silmarillion had seemed more like a summary or an outline of a story and then The Book of Lost Tales, that had all the detail and color that I felt like I had been missing. After that, Tolkien kind of took the back seat to other authors and other genres for many years, but I kept all of his works that I’d acquired, and then just a few years ago I started reading again, especially since a lot of new work had been published like his Story of Kullervo, and Fall of Arthur, and The Fall of Gondolin. I read all that, started reading more Tolkien, more scholarship. Up until that point I wouldn’t have called myself a Tolkien fan, per se, but I realized one day that if there was one author whose work I really knew the body of, that was Tolkien. It was just last year I became aware of the larger online Tolkien community. I uncovered Corey Olson’s Tolkien Professor podcast. He mentioned Professor Verlyn Flieger. I found an interview with her on the Prancing Pony Podcast, and I started listening to that. So, I became aware of the bigger community. In terms of what Tolkien means to me, thinking about the authors of my childhood not that long ago, I realized Tolkien doesn’t really fall into that category because he’s one of a handful of authors I started reading as a child, but I kept reading all the way into adulthood. I was really interested in his creation of a fictional world. I’ve encountered many worlds created by people since, but his was one of the first, and that probably sparked my interest in other peoples’ worlds as well. And those worlds continue to evolve, and it will be interesting to see where people take them next."
232,50,Male,20190624,eng,Hooksett,New Hampshire,United States,"I am currently fifty years old. I’ll be fifty-one in about a week and a half. I am originally from New York City, but now I reside in New Hampshire, USA. I first encountered Tolkien—I was twelve, just about going on thirteen, and I was kind of having some trouble in school. I was having some trouble adjusting to preteen—becoming a teenager—and was really just kind of confused about life and what I wanted to do. I remember it was towards the end of the school year, maybe like May-ish, and my seventh grade teacher handed me The Hobbit, and just said, “I think you might like this.” That’s all he said. I took the book. One of the things that I loved was I loved to read. I really didn’t read too much fantasy or fiction really. I was more of a non-fiction reader. But I opened The Hobbit and, I must admit, the first chapter or so I wasn’t necessarily captivated. It took me maybe into chapter two-chapter three where I really started to really get drawn into the story. I think I must have read that in, oh, I would say a week, maybe a little more than a week, but probably about a week. I just devoured it. Next thing I know I was talking to my teacher and he said, “You know, there’s also called The Lord of the Rings,” and I had heard of it; I even remember my mom mentioning it kind of in passing, but it never really stuck. And then I picked up The Fellowship of the Ring, and that was just an amazing journey. From there, again, I think I must have finished Fellowship, and Two Towers, and Return of the King, maybe in about three to four weeks. I just read all the time. I just filled my time—my spare time that I had—with doing that. Tolkien’s works mean a lot to me. For me, as an educator, and for someone who also pursued a doctorate, I think just the depth of the works. And something that inspires me to keep going. And students are always fascinated by the fact that it took the Professor twelve years to write Lord of the Rings. So that’s been my journey with the Professor, and I can’t get enough."
233,35,Male,20190624,eng,Barry's Bay,,Canada,"I am thirty-five years old and live in Barry’s Bay, Ontario, Canada. I was homeschooled, and my mom would always read books to us on our lunch breaks. Eventually, we came to Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and I have to say, at first glance, I wasn’t all that impressed. I had been raised on Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series, and in approaching The Hobbit, I was looking for the same kind of direct symbolism that Lewis uses in his series. But The Hobbit felt more opaque. In particular, I was kind of hoping Gandalf would be more of a Christ figure, like Aslan. And judged by that standard, he felt too gruff and off-putting at times, and was limited in his powers. Fortunately though, when I heard the first Peter Jackson movie was coming out during my first year of university, I decided to read Lord of the Rings, so I could be ready for the film. Reading Lord of the Rings did indeed give me some of the kinds of symbolism I had looked for in The Hobbit, but more than this it changed my taste for symbolism, and I came to appreciate the subtlety of Tolkien’s approach. About this time too, I encountered “Leaf by Niggle,” and the way Tolkien explains his art there, an eccentric search for a particular form only fully realized in heaven, but realized only imperfectly here on earth, further illustrated Tolkien’s work for me. As a professor of literature with a specialization in Old English literature, I am a fan of Tolkien because of the way he used creative writing as a way of bringing aspects of his life into conversation with each other. As academics, the question of how our scholarly work might relate to other parts of our lives, such as faith and creative writing, is often a bit of a conundrum, and Tolkien, through both his formal academic work and his legendarium, gives us an innovative model of what this might look like. With regard to what Tolkien has meant to me, I could make some very concrete claims, including the saving of my academic career.  While I was on the academic job market, and having very little luck finding a position, I was hired by Signum University, an online university founded by Corey Olsen for the study of Tolkien and the other Inklings. Here I was able to spend a couple of years teaching Old English, and eventually even Elvish philology, until I could find a permanent teaching position. But to end on a more personal note, I think the thing that I keep with me from Lord of the Rings, and that I continue to discover as I explore more and more of Tolkien’s legendarium, is the way Tolkien captures so well the experience of sorrow itself being somehow a part of joy. Eucatastrophe: joy poignant as grief. This in particular resonates with my experiences of obsessive-compulsive disorder as a child and depression in adulthood. For me, straight-up joy without sorrow has never been a possibility. It’s always been mingled with a kind of sadness and frustration. Where some models of happiness and joy focus on the elimination of, indeed often the suppression of, sadness, Tolkien lets us know that it’s ok for joy and sadness to mingle. We don’t have to eliminate sadness in order to experience joy. For those like me the permission to let sadness and joy mingle without having to choose between one or the other is an immense and freeing gift."
234,49,Male,20190624,eng,Guelph,,Canada,"I am forty-nine years old, and I live in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. I was somewhere around ten or twelve years old, I’m guessing, when I first encountered Lord of the Rings and Middle-earth. My dad was an avid reader, and there was always paperbacks laying around the house, lots of Tom Clancy spy novels; but the one that really caught my attention was The Hobbit. It was an edition with Smaug on the cover, and I loved medieval knights, castles, those types of things, but there was something different about the book, and the key two things, one were the runes, which were fun to translate, but the second was the map and the maps. That really, really caught my attention and just told me there was something different here, something different about the novel. And I was hooked. And I just continue to be hooked. I think I’ve been a fan right from the start—from that time going forward—and it’s never really wavered, and actually it grows and it continues to grow. I think it was the maps that really drew me in, and it was—it was something different. It was like it was a history. And there was nothing in the story just to be in the story. Everything had a meaning, everything had a connection, right from the First Age, right to the Third Age. The characters—they’re deep, and it feels like I know them, like they’re my friends, per se. The Lord of the Rings and the other books, they’re not just well written novels, there’s something more to it. It’s hard to explain, but something personal about it. It’s like I belong to something. The other works outside of the legendarium are just as inviting. It’s hard to say what it’s meant to me, but it just feels real. It’s a passion, and it continues to be a passion from rereading the books yearly, to collecting fandom, to talking to people online, things like the archives that we’re doing now. It’s a community. And it—it just is. It’s just part of my life."
235,69,Female,20190627,eng,Seattle,Washington,United States,"I am sixty-nine years old and I grew up in Pennsylvania, but now I live in Seattle, Washington. My first encounter with Tolkien occurred in 1968. A high school classmate of mine lent me his paperback copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings because he thought I would like them. I loved them and passed them to my mother, who also read and loved them. There are so many reasons to be a fan of Tolkien’s stories, from imaginative characters and exciting drama to the richness and depth of the history; there’s horror, humor, poetry and songs, drawings and maps, excellent writing, and wonderful landscape descriptions. I appreciate Tolkien’s values: honor, duty, cooperation, fellowship, sacrifice, generosity, feminism, conservation, environmentalism. I’m an avid gardener and I especially love Tolkien’s reverence for the natural world: His forests and Ents, plants and gardens. I’m happy going into Middle-earth and I’m sad when I have to leave. To me, Tolkien has meant community and travel. Because of my love of Tolkien I have made connections, online and in person, with other fans across the US and in other countries. As Tolkien Society members, my husband and I have attended Oxenmoots and Tolkien conferences in the UK, Canada, and the US, including an excellent one at Marquette. I’ve met Tolkien-related authors, artists, and actors and visited Tolkien-related sites. Tolkien has meant comfort. Reading Tolkien has gotten me through tough times. I go into Middle-earth for a while and come back refreshed and ready to face whatever I must. Tolkien has meant art and education. Reading Tolkien has led me to read other authors who wrote about his life, like Carpenter and Garth, and those who wrote about his work, like Flieger and Shippey, and has led me to listen to podcasts like Professor Corey’s and The Prancing Pony. I have attended Tolkien art shows and bought art based on Tolkien’s works. And Tolkien has meant sharing with my family. My mother has reread The Lord of the Rings almost every year since we began in 1968. Lately her eyesight is not so good and she was delighted recently when I sent her a set of CDs so she could listen to The Lord of the Rings. My husband, my siblings, my children, and my nieces have read Tolkien. My older grandchildren will be nine and six this summer, and our plan is to read The Hobbit together."
236,38,Female,20190627,eng,San Francisco,California,United States,"I am thirty-eight years old and I am from the Bronx, New York, although I currently live in San Francisco, California. I first encountered The Lord of the Rings in high school. I had liked C.S. Lewis when I was growing up, and I think somebody just said, “Oh, well, you know, you should read Lord of the Rings. If you like Lewis, you’ll like Tolkien.” I’m not sure if that’s actually true. They’re very different authors in a lot of ways, but it actually is what lead me to Tolkien, so I’m glad that they did recommend it. I am a Tolkien fan for many reasons, and I think that those reasons have changed as my relationship with the stories have developed. At first, I was a fan just because it’s such a great story. The characters are so complete and complex. The descriptions of Middle-earth are beautiful and rich and full, and the storyline—everything just kind of immediately drew me into the story. Now, as I’ve been rereading the books over a couple of decades, I guess I feel drawn to the ideas that Tolkien seemed to hold dear: the idea of eucatastrophe, of the unexpected good that can happen, or the idea of good that can come from even bad or evil things. Like one of my favorite quotes is in The Silmarillion that says, “No theme may be played that does not have its source in me,” meaning Ilúvatar, “for devising things more wonderful.” That just has a lot of meaning to me, and I think that there’s a lot of hope that comes from those ideas. Also, the descriptions of friendship and fellowship, and those friendships bringing out the best in people in Middle-earth, the ideas of like the best of their honor, their duty, their bravery. When I read Tolkien, he doesn’t shy away from bad or evil in the world occurring, but he always reminds us that evil is not all there is. He brings to the forefront the best that the worlds, or Middle-earth, has to offer. In regards to what Tolkien means to me, I guess I just also wanted to say that he reminds me about how we can connect with people with different backgrounds. Obviously, I’m not English. I am of Puerto Rican descent. I’m a woman. I’m a New Yorker. There’s really not a lot in common between us; but regardless of how we might identify, I still strongly empathize with his worldview, and I carry that with me in interacting with others. Finally, I think that Tolkien’s work kind of inspires me to work towards doing what I can to enable small eucatastrophies in my own world and in my own life, to try to be as honorable as Faramir, or as brave as Éowyn, and to do what is best with the time given to me."
237,24,Male,20190629,eng,Portland,Oregon,United States,"I am twenty-four. I am from a small town outside of Portland, Oregon. I’m in the northwest. When did I first encounter Tolkien? The books were always in my parents’ house. Wasn’t much of a reader when I was a kid. I finally saw the Peter Jackson movies when I was a young teenager and that opened up the floodgates. It created a passion that has lasted for years. I know you talked about podcasts—the Prancing Pony podcast, An Unexpected Podcast—those have been huge in my getting further into this world and really realizing all the beauty that’s in it. What he means to me is a lot. How do I want to say this… Life has been hard in certain situations recently, and I have this sort of joking mantra that is “if Frodo and Sam can do it, I can do it.” That’s a joke, but in the same sense it’s very true. He created a story where two seemingly unimportant people did something that was truly extraordinary. And for people who need little bits of inspiration, or need confidence to do something, I think this work is invaluable. You realize that you really can do anything. And then, I guess the reason why I love him so much is language and prose style. Him having been an assistant on the English Oxford Dictionary and him being a philologist, he’s far more than just an author, and I think that comes through in his work. You think of characters like Beorn who are only around for maybe a chapter and a half in all of the Hobbit entirety. There’s like five different versions of that character’s name, just him trying to figure that out; and it shows a level of care that I don’t think a lot of fantasy authors have the time or experience to create a world and use language like he did. I guess I’ll leave it there."
238,38,Female,20190629,eng,Anderson,Indiana,United States,"I am thirty-eight, and I am from Anderson, Indiana. I first encountered Tolkien in the early Nineties when I was around eleven or twelve years old. My aunt had given me her 1970s Ballantine paperback copies of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but I didn’t really enjoy reading fiction for fun at that time. So, honestly, they sat on my shelf for a couple of years. Then one day, in the summer of ’94 or ’95 when I was very depressed, I skeptically picked up The Hobbit, and within the first couple of pages I was utterly taken in, completely enthralled, and just totally in love with this world and with Tolkien’s voice. But it was honestly The Lord of the Rings that truly made me a Tolkien fan. I was very careful to read it slowly, because I didn’t want it to end. And because of that pace, and because I started Fellowship in the early Fall of that year, I ended up kind of traveling in time with Frodo through the seasons as they were taking place simultaneously in the Midwest and in Middle-earth. That combined with Tolkien’s prose and his storytelling meant, to me, the journey was absolutely real. Of course, the journey did end eventually, and perfectly I thought with this overwhelming evil being ultimately overcome not by force, but because of a string of choices built on compassion, and pity, and hope. And I was moved by that in a way I have never been by any story ever since. I’ve read so much more about Middle-earth since then: The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, even History of Middle-earth, but to me The Lord of the Rings is the capstone of the whole legendarium. In fact, my favorite piece from the Maker of Middle-earth Exhibit that was at the Morgan Library in New York was the title page from Lord of the Rings where the previous title The Magic Ring was crossed out and The Lord of the Rings was written bellow it. To me, I don’t know if it is, but to me that’s the moment where the sequel to The Hobbit became something so much more. When I ran out of Tolkien’s fiction to read, I started reading biographies about him. Then I started reading his letters, because if there wasn’t much more to learn about Middle-earth I wanted to know about the mind that made Middle-earth. I identified really strongly with his struggles as a creator and I think as a perfectionist, and also with this incredible mix of melancholy, but also joy and hope that I saw in him. It’s a really strange thing to say about myths that are so much about death, but Tolkien’s creation is one of the most beautiful and hopeful things I’ve ever encountered. Tolkien is where I’ve gone for solace, where I’ve gone for meaning in the face of terrible things. It’s a vision of a world quite literally built, on some basic level, on music, and music that’s building to some perfect chord somewhere far off in the future. And, as Gandalf says, “That’s an encouraging thought.”"
239,30,Male,20190629,eng,Hastings,Minnesota,United States,"I am thirty years old and I am from the Twin Cities in Minnesota. I encountered Tolkien probably about in middle school, but I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t really get into him as I should have. It was kind of one of those things where—I just didn’t get him the first time that I tried reading Fellowship. And then the movies came out and I kind of reencountered him when I was in college and grad school, and that’s really, really when it started to hit me that there’s more to this than I originally thought. I got the Robert Inglis audio recordings of everything and I just zoomed through all of that in the summertime, and now I’m going through my like second or third reread right now of The Lord of the Rings. What turned me on to him most, once I sort of rediscovered him, was just the amount of symbolism that’s in there and how much thought he put into the world building, and the languages, and everything. I’m not a language learner myself, though I would like to be, but just the amount of work and care that he put into a secondary world was never something that I had ever experienced from any other narrative fiction writer, and that was really cool to see and immerse myself in the narrative. In letter 142 Tolkien talks about how The Lord of the Rings was unconsciously a fundamentally religious and Catholic work at first, but then in the rewrite he made it more explicitly so, and he took out as much reference explicitly so that it could get deeper and deeper. For me, what he’s meant over the course of like the last ten years-ish is just the—it felt like an eclectic grandfather almost, who has introduced me to all of these new experiences, and just ideas, and works and stuff like that. I mean I discovered Beowulf through him. I discovered a love of poetry through him, a love of Old English and Old Norse, and the Kalevala, and all of these other stories. I learned about Ursula LeGuin through Tolkien and other recordings and those kind of things. It was just a whole world has been opened for me, basically, because of discovering Tolkien and all these different things. Now, looking back on it, I don’t know why I didn’t get into him earlier, but it’s just one of those things where I can’t imagine not having him in my life anymore. "
240,62,Female,20190708,eng,Whippany,New Jersey,United States,"I am sixty-three years old, and I am from Whippany, New Jersey. I was first introduced to The Lord of the Rings through some friends, and we went to go see the movie The Lord of the Rings. When it ended at Helm’s Deep I was like, “Wait, what happened?” It was totally unacceptable, so I ran out to the store and I bought the three-volume book—it was in a slip cover—and I started to read the book. That took me a year, to read the book. There were so many names, and so many multiple names for the same persons, that I kept rereading and having to go back and forth with it. So, it took me quite a while to get through it the first time, but when I closed the book after the final chapter it was like, “Oh gosh, I can’t do this. I can’t leave Middle-earth.” So, I started to read again. I started reading the book a second time, but this time I went out and got the Guide to Middle Earth and Master of Middle-earth, and I read those first, so it was a little bit easier getting through the book the second time. That kind of started my love for the story is that it was an epic story. It’s an epic adventure, and it’s fantasy. That’s why I really love Tolkien, because I’m a fan of fantasy. The reason I really love the stories is because it’s a story of friendship, loyalty, love, courage, duty, compassion, besides being an epic adventure. It’s a story of unsurmountable goals that the people have set for themselves. They seem to be unattainable except for the fact that they have this sense of loyalty, and love, and compassion, and duty toward each other and toward that final goal. That’s what kind of got me into loving this whole world that Tolkien built. After that I just started to read—I think after that I read—Unfinished Tales, The Book of Lost Tales—Books One and Two—I read them, and then eventually I read The Silmarillion. Of course, that one took me a long time to read, so I read that one multiple times. But mostly after that, it was kind of a reread every year. I think I’ve read The Lord of the Rings every year for the past how-many-years-I-started-reading-the-books, at least once. I’ve tried to bring that love of that story to my students in school. I’ve read to them and donated The Hobbit to the library. "
241,27,Female,20190408,eng,Perth,,Australia,"I am twenty-seven, and I am originally from Perth, Australia. I was first introduced to the works of Tolkien by my grandfather who read The Hobbit to me when I was nine or ten. And as I got older, I got into The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and all of the extended works and his letters. Tolkien really shaped the way that I think about literature and the way I think about world-building, and everything that I just learned from working through his works actually prompted me to get my B.A. in English and then eventually study English literature for my Masters. It’s also really shaped the way that I read other books. I love fantasy and science fiction mostly because I was introduced to Tolkien at such a young age and it shaped the way that I think about how characters and the worlds are built in novels and in stories. Yeah, I think that’s all."
242,28,Male,20191030,per,Tehran,,Iran,"I'm twenty-eight years old from Iran. I think the first time I encountered Tolkien's works, was in a very old bookstore in Ahvaz, where I was born. The book I got back then was the Hobbit. I still reread the Hobbit every year, every spring almost. After I finish reading the Harry Potter books, the book I love to read is the Hobbit. I still think this book remains my most enjoyable experience of a quest. This has caused me to become a fan of Tolkien, or more of a Tolkien-enthusiast. Most of my time in middle-school I read anything from him I could get my hands on, almost obsessively. It got me interested in reading about myths, specially the Nordic mythology; it got me to start translating. I could say, in a way, that my encounter with Tolkien's work has changed my life's route. My interest in translating, my interest in myths, which shape to high degree who I am today, it all goes back to that first time seeing the Hobbit in that very old bookstore. I have read those first books so many times, that all their bindings are separated now. So, I don't have any of those books anymore, through which I got to know Tolkien. But I have collected various editions from different years. This was the impact Tolkien had on my life, and the main reason why I am a fan of his. And no matter how many years go by, I will keep rereading the Hobbit."
243,54,Female,20190718,eng,Lansing,Kansas,United States,"I am fifty-four years old and I am from Lansing, Kansas. I first encountered Tolkien probably around the age of ten or eleven. I was reading a very advanced level for my age, and I had read through all of Laura Ingalls Wilder and anything else I could get my hands on. I don’t actually know who gave me the books, but I started reading them, and I started with The Lord of the Rings, not with The Hobbit. Actually, The Hobbit is my least favorite work of his. I read through all of The Lord of the Rings and, as soon as I could get my hands on it, when it was published in ’78 or ’77, The Silmarillion. I tackled that probably when I was twelve or thirteen. That one was a little tougher, but it stuck with me and I loved everything about it. I just found myself rereading those four editions that I had at the time, because there were the Ballantine paperbacks. I reread them every year or so, and I still do that. In fact, I’m rereading Fellowship right now with the club I’m in, the Society here in Kansas City.  Now I’m discovering The History of Middle-earth, reading all the Unfinished Tales, and The Lost Tales, and his letters, his biography, anything I can get my hands on. Eventually I’ll tackle the Beowulf translation, but that’s on my TBR. I keep coming back to him because he’s all the best there is about myth, and legend, and epic fantasy. There’s always an element of hope. So much of what gets published now is just grim, and dark, and gritty; and he can be very grim, but there was always an element of hope. That’s why I keep coming back to him."
244,35,Male,20190722,eng,North Baltimore,Ohio,United States,"I am from North Baltimore, Ohio, age thirty-five. I was first introduced to J.R.R. Tolkien by my step-dad, who showed me the 1970s animated Hobbit, and knowing that I was into books, after I said how much I liked it, he goes, “Well, you know there’s a book.” And, well, it just kind of took off from there. I was about eight or nine at the time. It was 1991-ish. Made it through The Hobbit; by the time I was in junior high I had completed The Lord of the Rings and started dabbling in The Silmarillion. Didn’t get finished until probably about my sophomore year of high school. By that point I was a raging Tolkien addict. I’ve been slowly trying to work my way through every work out there, and it’s a little tricky trying to track all that down. But what makes me a Tolkien fan is the fact that Tolkien’s world building and storytelling just goes so masterfully together that it’s inseparable in my mind in terms of fantasy. Also, unlike a lot of other fantasy writers, you don’t have an elongated storyline that just feels forced. You get almost episodes throughout the entire time. You have The Hobbit; you have The Lord of the Rings, but then you have The Silmarillion, and it’s all its own thing, and all the other side tales, if you will.  He doesn’t lower himself to the more base tropes that fantasy authors use. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the time he was doing the writing and the era he grew up in; but at the same time, as a minister, I find it rather comforting knowing that if someone sees Lord of the Rings on my bookshelf, no one’s really going to get offended by it. What it’s always meant to me is it was just a place to escape. His works on—I think it was “On Faerie Stories”—regarding escapism, it really explains how that works. It’ll always just kind of be there for me for that escape, and just rereading it throughout my seventeenth time through on Lord of the Rings, I’m really feeling that I’m going home to a more comfortable area to be in. It’s just that little bit of peace that I need every now and then when things are going crazy."
245,32,Female,20190802,eng,,,South Korea,"I am thirty-two, and I am from South Korea. I first encountered J.R.R. Tolkien I think it was about twenty years ago. My dad went on a business trip and he bought these best seller books that he got from the airport. It was basically The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He also had bought this comic book version of The Hobbit with the collection. He actually bought it for my brother to read, because he was in into all these RPG games, but my brother hated reading, so it was just on the bookshelf for a while. Then I picked up the comic book, and I just started reading it. I wish I knew why I liked it, but I just started reading it; and as a young child I actually thought it was a real story that had happened. So I was always like thinking about, “Oh my God, these hobbits, where are they? Are they real?” I was really fascinated by it. I tried to read The Lord of the Rings right after I finished reading the comic book version of it, but I actually failed. It was kind of too difficult for me at that time. So I just kept rereading the comic book version of it. Then I think it was about two years later I picked up The Lord of the Rings, I was really bored, and for some reason it was much easier to read. I just kind of went through it, even the parts I found really boring of the first chapter that I couldn’t go through. I just eased my way through it. And—I don’t know—I was just so into it. I was obsessed with The Lord of the Rings at that point. I actually started finding—because my brother, since he played a lot of RPG games, and I also played with him—I started noticing all the small references from The Lord of the Rings, like there was a lot of Mithrils and things like that. I started noticing the influences of Tolkien. And so every time I told people that The Lord of the Rings was my favorite book they kind of were like, “But it’s fantasy.” I got really upset about it, so I was like, “I’m going to prove to these people that it’s very important,” and so I pursued English Literature as an undergrad. Then I pursued my Master’s degree, and then I wrote my thesis about Tolkien. All the professors said don’t do it, but I did it. Then I applied to a Ph.D. program and wrote my writing sample on Tolkien, and I got accepted. Now I’m in the States. I got the opportunity to come to the Tolkien Archive, and I’m still working on Tolkien."
246,63,Male,20190808,eng,Sheffield,,England,"I am sixty-three years old and I am from Sheffield in England. I first came across Tolkien actually in the classroom, because my fourth form class was also the middle school library at my grammar school. The big, yellow, one volume paperback appeared. I put my name on the list, and it was about ten or twelve weeks before I got a chance to read it. I took it home and I spent the entire Saturday reading it. I read the whole thing in about sixteen hours. And then I read it again, and then had to give it back because my time for loan had finished. I pretty much became obsessed with the story. Obviously, I read it really quickly, and really probably fairly superficially; and I was about thirteen—twelve or thirteen at the time—so not really a great literary analysis, but I just loved the story. Everything about it was just perfect. I read a lot. I read a lot then. I read a lot now. I’ve got about three or four thousand books in my collection at home, and I still read Tolkien pretty much all the time. Not every day, but fairly frequently. And all the other works as well, now. Obviously at that time they were not available, because it was long, long before any of them were published. Honestly, everything about the story in The Lord of the Rings—I actually read The Hobbit after The Lord of the Rings because, I don’t know, I just did; that’s how it worked out. Not long after, I think I had the most expensive Christmas present of my life, relatively speaking. I got the three-volume hardback edition. My grandparents were absolutely astounded when I asked for a book. That was unusual. Each volume cost one pound, nineteen shillings, and six pence, and they were like, “That’s six pounds for a Christmas present.” They were astonished. Still got it. Still read it. Even latterly, with the films, I was still quite impressed, although that was not as good as the written word. It’s just been a story that has stayed with me ever since I first read it. It’s difficult to explain why. Why that story and not something by Ray Bradbury, or somebody else. I have no idea, but it’s just the story that I love. One of the things that Tolkien did for me was he got me into archery, which I’ve been doing for so many years now. I don’t think I’d have started archery if I hadn’t read The Lord of the Rings. And it’s also got me into blacksmithing, because I wanted to make my own sword, which I haven’t done quite yet, but I’m still learning the blacksmithing. It turns out it’s not actually all that difficult once you’ve got a source of heat and an anvil, or an anvil shaped object even. It doesn’t have to be a proper anvil. I’ve been doing that for quite a few years, and one day I’ll get my own sword, although I have actually got a sword that I’ve bought the blades and made the fittings, and the scabbards, and such-like. I made my own bow. I’ve made lots of leatherwork, partly because I’m left-handed and you can’t buy left-handed stuff. I’ve put leather carvings—I have the white tree of Gondor on my quiver and on things like that. I don’t think I ever would have taken those things up if it had not been for Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings."
247,31,Male,20190808,eng,Rustington,,England,"I am thirty-one and I am from Sussex in the UK. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien in 2001. It was in the run-up to the films. I was thirteen at the time, and I saw an advert—a trailer—for The Fellowship of the Ring and I thought, “This is quite interesting.” I decided to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and was immediately captivated. I was immediately captivated by, in particular, Ian McKellen’s performance as Gandalf. I thought that was fantastic. Being able to see how he had interpreted the character and how Peter Jackson had crafted the world with his own vision of what Tolkien had produced. For me that was quite special. But also being able, at the same time, to be discovering Tolkien’s works almost in tandem myself and deciding in my own head how Middle-earth should look. Then it was really funny because actually I then realized I had encountered Tolkien much earlier in my life; so I had at a library, when I was probably about six or seven, encountered the David T. Wenzel graphic novel version of The Hobbit, which at the time I didn’t like. I didn’t like the graphic novel version, so potentially if it hadn’t been for David T. Wenzel I may have encountered Tolkien a bit earlier than when the films came out. But the films were the spark. As beautiful as they were, it was Tolkien’s stories that were the thing that captivated me. What I think is really impressive about Tolkien for me is the breadth of characters. He has so many characters, and I know lots of people who will sort of say that they struggle to remember all the names, but actually I think what he does really impressively is he’s able to capture the various elements of the human condition in all the different characters. You see different characters who each have their own kind of archetype of the human condition. I think actually that, for me, I think it’s really special because you can look at Faramir, you can look at Gandalf, you can look at Frodo, you look at Aragorn, or even looking at some of his more minor works, like looking at Niggle and Parish in Leaf by Niggle. You think actually it’s not just about these beautiful surroundings, it is actually about these characters, and how they fit in, and how they represent humanity. What this meant for me, one of the interesting things, is I’ve become the chair of the Tolkien Society now, so I have quite a heavy involvement in Tolkien fandom. I know most of the Tolkien scholars, and so in a funny way I’ve become a little bit detached from Tolkien directly because it’s more organizational. I try to make a good effort every year to reread through—actually The Silmarillion is my favorite, and it always reminds me of just what a great author he is."
248,28,Female,20190808,eng,Seoul,,South Korea,"I am from Seoul, South Korea. I am twenty-eight years old. I first read Lord of the Rings in Korean I think in like the year 2000, or in 1999. Back then I didn’t speak English, so I’m a post-Jackson Tolkien fan. I don’t think I actually really liked the first movie as a ten-year-old; it was pretty scary. So, I read it in Korean, and I have a funny story to tell about it. When I was ten, I went to California, and I stayed there for two years. When I arrived in California, I still didn’t speak much English. I could read children’s books, and I had only two Korean books that I could read, and they were Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, translated in Korean, and if I wanted to read anything that is readable all I had to read was The Two Towers. When you have only two books that you can read for a while before I learned English you get pretty close to it. I’m sure my dad did it on purpose, because he was the one who bought the three-volume set. That was how I got close to Lord of the Rings. Then I had my teenage years and during that time I didn’t read too many fantasies. I think I got back to it after university because by then my brother was a fan, so he was buying books. I started reading Silmarillion, and the Unfinished Tales, and the other Legendarium. I’m a Tolkien fan because it does have a lot of personal history, like the time that I had in the States. It’s also a connection to my dad. He’s a fan. And to me it means a connection to people that I don’t understand and a people that I would not otherwise meet."
249,62,Male,20190808,eng,Norsborg,,Sweden,"I am from Sweden, generally known as Beregond in these contexts. I was born in 1957, so you can calculate from that. The story of how I first encountered Tolkien is, of course, a nice story. I think it was when I was nine years old. I have some conflicting evidence that it was when I was ten, but I will go with that I was nine years old. My whole family, we were invited to a friend of my father’s, who had rented a manor building out in the country with a park—a wonderful place. We had a whole day there. Wandered around, and then dinner, and after dinner all the grown-ups were having coffee and talking about very boring things. I didn’t know what to do, so I went out from that room and found the library and looked to see if there was anything to read. I saw these three volumes of the Swedish translation of The Lord of the Rings. For some reason I took out the middle one and started to read a little in the beginning, and then kind of skipped a few pages. But in the second chapter or so I was absolutely stuck; so late in the evening when everyone was going home, I just wouldn’t let go of this book. So, it came home with me. Later the owner got it back. At first, I had it for some while. Then, this was in springtime, then in summer one of my uncles said, “I heard that you read this book and that you liked it very much. And I understand that it is part of a set of three, so I can buy you one of the remaining ones. So, which one do you want? The first or the third?” “Oh, I need the third! I must know what happens to Frodo!” I eventually read the first one last. Since then, things Tolkienian have shaped my life in every way. Everything that I do, I think, has some kind of connection with Tolkien, or I invent one.  And I do sometimes write about Tolkien myself, although I have done that all too little. I’ve been too lazy. "
250,49,Male,20190808,eng,,,Bermuda,"I am forty-nine years old. I am originally from Scotland, but I know live in Bermuda. I first encountered Tolkien—I saw The Hobbit being read on Jackanory in the UK with Bernard Cribbins and I think it was John Denham and somebody else doing the voices, and it really captured my imagination. Then I found a copy of the book. The first thing that grabbed me about the book was the artwork. It was the Tolkien picture of Smaug being shot above Lake-town. So I read that and loved it, and then my parents gave me—showed me the next book and that, also the artwork on the cover grabbed me because it was by Pauline Baynes and I loved the artwork she did for Narnia. So, I read Lord of the Rings, or tried to read it, when I was probably about twelve, and I got stuck at the “Shadow of the Past” chapter because I couldn’t figure out who Sméagol and Déagol were, couldn’t keep it straight. But I tried it again a couple years later and read it. I do remember flipping half-way through it and just reading the bit where Sam throws himself against the door under Cirith Ungol and Frodo’s been taken by the Enemy.  I had no idea who the Enemy was, but it just sounded so thrilling, so different from anything I’d read before. And the map-work, the maps. The map in The Hobbit was a small part of the map in The Lord of the Rings, and I saw the map in The Lord of the Rings, and it blew me away that there was more of this world to read about and explore. I guess I’m a Tolkien fan now because I just love the works. They’ve been in my life for so long. They’re part of my life. The writing itself has everything in it. It’s got beauty, it’s got ugliness, it’s got love, it’s got hatred, it’s got honor, it’s got honesty. I’m getting emotional just talking about it. But it’s also been a doorway to lasting friendships around the world. There are people I’ve been friends with now for thirty years because of The Lord of the Rings. I’ve traveled the world and I’ve visited countries to meet other people who have a Tolkien connection, and we’ve instantly made a deep connection because of our love of Tolkien. Increasingly it’s becoming more widespread now. It’s becoming more mainstream. Tolkien is becoming more accepted—inverted comas—and I think that’s a great thing because of all those qualities that the writing captures, encapsulates. So that’s me in a nutshell. I will always be a fan of Tolkien no matter what else comes along. Now, it’s more than just the literary works, obviously it’s the films themselves; there’s a lot of fan work, a lot of academic work, and I think it’s becoming increasingly obvious that he is, as Thomas Shippey says, “the author of the century” to me."
251,65,Male,20190808,eng,Cincinnati,Ohio,United States,"I am sixty-five years old. I am from Cincinnati, Ohio in the United States. I first encountered Tolkien in either late grade school or early high school, reading Lord of the Rings, but then I forgot I had read them, and I really didn’t reencounter them until the movies. So when the movies came out, my interest peaked again. Went to the basement and rooted through books and found out I had a set of Lord of the Rings there. Got my interest going. So I’m really driven by—the movies got my interest going again. I’m a collector. I’m a hunter. That’s what I really enjoy about Tolkien is I started getting into searching for anything Tolkien. Reading all the books over and over again, I found them very intriguing. But I think collecting is what drove it to me. I also started attending Tolkien events, many in the UK, and met a lot of wonderful people which made my interest even greater. So I’ve come to the UK for many, many events, and met a lot of great people who, again, drove my interest: fellow collectors, some from academics, things of that nature. So, just a wonderful group of people that I’ve met through the Tolkien Society and things of that nature. I’ve always been a history and geography buff, so looking at Middle-earth and trying to trace the geography and the mountains, and the streams, and so on, really are what makes me very interested in it. I love the maps. I collect a huge collection of maps on Middle-earth, particularly maps for The Silmarillion. I have a little more interest in that. Probably my biggest passion is art, and I really started with collecting Tolkien calendars because of the artwork. And I have over four hundred and fifty Tolkien calendars. So, artwork is really one of my passions. Artwork on the covers of books is also my passion. So Tolkien, what he means to me is he’s introduced me to a wonderful group of people that I enjoy very much. That’s why I’m here today, coming to see friends, fellowship, things of that nature. I just enjoy being around people that are fans of Tolkien, as I am. I look forward to many more years of Tolkien fandom."
252,56,Male,20190808,eng,Liverpool,,England,"I am from Liverpool on Mersyside, but I now live in the countryside, and one of the reasons for that, I think, is because of my encounters with J.R.R. Tolkien. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was a child. I was about six, seven years old. And when my parents would go out to see some theater or something, my uncle would look after me and my younger brother. We’d go round to my grandparents’ house and stay there. He would often have a girlfriend—my brother’s younger than me and would often sleep—but in order to keep me amused he would give me something to read. I was a voracious reader from when I was four years old. He would put his high tech, hi-fi stereo headphones on my head in order to keep me quiet. I think it was Ummagumma by Pink Floyd and The Lord of the Rings came together in my mind. I listened to the “Hundred Voices of a Pict in a Cave.” It was my introduction to The Lord of the Rings as well, being that I read just the first part of it, I read the preface of it, “Concerning Hobbits,” and so on. It was a big tome. It was the first single volume, Pauline Baynes illustrated set. I read that at first, but he wanted to keep the book because he was reading it himself, so I went to the school library and got the only title I could find in there, which was The Hobbit, which I then read. By the time I had finished that, I moved straight on to The Lord of the Rings. I just wanted to find out more and more about this amazing world that I’d encountered. I’ve always been a fan of history and, like Tolkien, of history real or feigned. Both things moved hand-in-hand. So, I started to read a lot of history and pretend history, and Tolkien really helped me develop my interest in historical studies. And rather than study literature I studied history but realized that Tolkien’s history was as rich as the history that I was reading. So, I think, in a way, Tolkien has been a companion and guide through my development of a career as a historian and later as a teacher of history. I don’t think, coming from a working-class northern background, I would have really wanted to go to university if it hadn’t been for Tolkien. I don’t think I would have continued in studies for as long as I have in Tolkien. And through Tolkien, I’ve met this amazing world of people with similar interests, but from diverse backgrounds, who I’ve entertained a friendship with for over thirty years. Yeah, I’ll always be a Tolkien fan."
253,53,Female,20190808,eng,Nashville,Tennessee,United States,"I am from Nashville, Tennessee, in the US, and my first encounter with Tolkien was as a baby in my crib. My parents actually got the illegal Ace editions of the paperbacks and were reading them around the time that I was born and an infant in the crib. So I definitely had an impression of Tolkien from very early on, and always loved fairy stories, and fantasy, and that kind of stuff, but I never could get through Lord of the Rings. I kind of got stuck in the middle of Fellowship when I was younger. But when I heard the movies were coming out, I had said, “Oh, I gotta read these.” So I read them, and it just took me down a rabbit-hole that I haven’t come out of yet. I’ve read The Silmarillion. I’ve read Unfinished Tales. I’ve read a lot of critical literature on Tolkien as well, and given talks on him, and I love the world that he created. It’s just so expansive and inclusive, and just—you’re always finding something new in his work. Even if you’ve read it, or listened to it on CD or tape or whatever, you always find something new. I listened to the CDs. I’m actually listening right now, and I just keep picking up little things, little touches of language, or descriptions, or hints that I didn’t pick up the first twenty or thirty times that I heard or listened to it. I’m passionate about Tolkien because he just really captures a magic that is really missing in our world—that appreciation for nature, but also just the magic of the ordinary, and also the goodness that is inherent in all of us. It really pulls a lot of that out. I am Catholic as well, so I really identify with his themes of Grace and Mercy, which I think we need more of in our world today. For me, as far as what it means for me is it just embodies a lot of what I try to be as a person: to be kind, to be faithful to my promises, to be just a good person. It has allowed me to develop a circle of friends that I never would have had otherwise. For that I am always going to be grateful. "
254,33,Male,20190808,eng,,,Iran,"I am thirty-three years old and I am from Iran. I first encountered Tolkien at sixteen, that’s seventeen years ago, and now seventeen years later I can say with confidence my life can be divided to before I learned about Tolkien and after I learned about Tolkien. I’m a Tolkien fan because ever since my childhood I was always fascinated by all tales, and myth, and legends, and to see a modern rendition of most of the things I had loved in Nordic mythology, in Germanic mythology, it just fascinated me and stayed with me. What Tolkien has meant for me, it has been so much. It had shaped my social life for a long, long time, because Tolkien fans do not really merge with non-Tolkien fans, so finding a group of people who shared the interest in Tolkien’s work was a really big help. Tolkien, not only his work but also the community I had made around me—I had found around me—it helped me get through some really tough times: depression and everything, a failed study of engineering, which I did not have the guts to give up. But in the end, after it was done, I started learning German, and later studying German. After a few years I moved to Germany. I had actually given up the dream of studying medieval literature, Tolkien, and all that stuff when I came to Germany; but in Germany I met some really amazing people, professors who encouraged me to keep on working on medieval literature and Tolkien. Finally I wrote my Master’s thesis on Tolkien. I had translated The Children of Hurin from English to Persian and published it in Iran, so I wrote also my Thesis on Tolkien and The Children of Hurin, and the medieval German literature. Applying for the Tolkien 2019 conference, I got to be the first Iranian ever to present my paper in a Tolkien Society conference. That’s how far I’ve come so far. We’ll see how further it goes."
255,51,Male,20190808,eng,Cologne,,Germany,"I am fifty-one years of age and I was born in Cologne, and I have lived in Germany for all my life. I first encountered Tolkien as a kid when I was given The Hobbit as a gift. I remember it fondly. In my teens I read The Lord of the Rings because in the Eighties my parents bought it—it was all the rage at the time, in Germany at least—and I was rather unimpressed. I was more into what you could call hardcore science fiction like Asimov, Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and devoured all of this material. Then, later in my life, the Peter Jackson films hit the cinema, and I bought the extended edition with the six DVDs per film or so, and I watched all the documentary material. That reminded me of the fact that, despite a career of twenty years of computer science and IT, I had originally had a classical education, and that I had learned Latin, and Greek, and even ancient Hebrew once. So I reread The Lord of the Rings first, then The Silmarillion, then The Hobbit, all in English, and I was instantly hooked. Then I got some Tom Shippey and then some Verlyn Flieger, and I must now have about ten shelf meters or so of Tolkien and secondary literature. I reactivated my Latin. The Greek needs a little bit more work I fear, but I’ve done a little bit of Old English. So all of these themes, specifically philology, are of tremendous interest to me. I keep rereading Tolkien because I think that, despite his deep roots in philology, he also is very interesting from a philosophical and moral point of view. He’s exceptional in making a point about moral questions. I have also reread a bit of Western philosophy and stuff on these things, and I keep returning to Tolkien to find my own stand on different views on good and evil, Boethius or Manichaeus, and all that stuff. So, as you can see, I took a really deep dive from a strictly IT nerd into the world of languages and humanities, and I feel a much more balanced and a much more happy person in a way."
256,43,Male,20190808,eng,London,,England,"I am forty-three years old and I live in London. I first encountered Tolkien’s works through the animated film made by Ralph Bakshi. It was the mid-1980s, I was eight or nine years old, and I was captivated by the worlds revealed in the film. I desperately wanted to know how the story ended. There didn’t seem to be a sequel film, so I went to my school library and looked for the books. I was told by the librarian that the books were too advanced for someone of my age, but I fortunately disregarded that advice and read them anyway, and I loved the books even more than I loved the films. So, I came to Lord of the Rings first, and then after that I went on to read The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, which I definitely did struggle with at that age, and then everything else that I could lay my hands on: works by Tolkien, but also works about Tolkien. I even got myself a glossary of Elvish and tried to learn what I could of Quenya and Sindarin. When I was in my mid-teens, I started to write a novel of my own, which I called The Children of Iluvatar, and that postulated a post-apocalyptic world in which the only literature to survive was the works of Tolkien. They, people who lived in that world, believed that the works of Tolkien were their true history, and they based their society and culture around that. I very much enjoyed playing with that world, but I didn’t really have a story to tell, so that sort of petered out. Tolkien continued to inspire me to the extent that it guided my choice of university degree—I studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic languages, literature, and history—but at that point my life sort of moved away from Tolkien. I had other interests. I continued to enjoy Tolkien; I very much enjoyed the films; I continued to read books as they came out, but it was no longer such a strong part of my life. Then, just under two years ago, I was really feeling that I was working too much and not having enough balance in my life, and I came to try to reignite some of my old interests. That’s when I came across the Tolkien Society, which amazingly I hadn’t come across up to that point. And so I joined the Tolkien Society and I’ve come to my first Tolkien Society event at Tolkien 2019 in Birmingham. "
257,54,Male,20190808,eng,Los Angeles,California,United States,"I am fifty-four years old. I am from Los Angeles, California, currently living and working in Europe. When I first encountered J.R.R. Tolkien I was a young man. I was at the time an only son in Los Angeles and being an only child you have to find things to keep you occupied. I was a very advanced reader at a very young age—about ten years old—and I always go to the thrift shop, the Salvation Army store downtown, and just spend hours leafing through their books. I came upon The Fellowship of the Ring and was reading the back, and it just spiked my interest. I started reading that, which lead me into the next two books, and then to The Hobbit. I just was absorbed in it. I read the books three or four times in a row, and I just fell in love with them at that time. At about the same time the Ralph Bakshi movie came out, which I really kind of took that—me and my buddies at that time kind of talked about and had a good idea of the world and what we call the Legendarium. In fact, my friends and I, at school in junior high, we would develop murals for the history teacher with scenes from The Hobbit in the classroom. So, that was very good. The reason why I’m a Tolkien fan is the comprehensiveness of it. At that time in the Seventies there wasn’t a lot of things that had a universe. I mean everything kind of derived from Tolkien later on: The Sword of Shannara and then the Dune series. By that time, I had become a full-fledged fan of Tolkien. What it has meant to me is—as a young man you have noble characters, great heroes, a world view that is kind of cut and dry and very firm. You had great warriors, great tales. That kind of inspires you what you want to do in life. As an older man now, it almost is a solace, almost like a retreat, or a safe port to retreat into from a very confusing world. I work in the area of national security, which is very messy with a lot of ins and outs, and very confusing, so this is kind of a safe port for me as I’m an older person."
258,66,Female,20190808,eng,St. Charles,Missouri,United States,"I am sixty-six years old and I am from St. Charles, Missouri. I first heard about J.R.R. Tolkien when I was a teenager. The friend of one of my younger sisters—who was just a nuisance, I didn’t really care for her—but she is in the house babbling, “There’s a new book and it’s got little people called hobbits and a ring and evil!” She’s trying to get me interested in reading it. It sounded so stupid; and it came from her, so I rejected it out of hand. That was the first I had heard of it. Then we fast forward a couple of years. I’m in medical school and dirt poor and I’m in a bookstore, a used bookstore, looking for something I could afford to read. It didn’t matter to me what. And I see these three books, The Lord of the Rings, all set up and they were only a quarter, which was in my budget. Now, I can’t remember if that rung a bell about hobbits and a ring. I think it did after I got into it. But it looked like decent literature. So, I take it home and begin to read it, and I just was trapped immediately—I’m tired and exhausted, but I’m reading late into the night because the story just goes on and enfolds. This is happening and that is happening. I just loved it. It’s like I never put it down. It became a habit that every fall I would start to read the trilogy before I went to bed. It would take about three months to read, a little bit at a time. Every time I read it, I got comfort and familiarity. But here’s the thing: always, every time I read it, something new struck me. I get a little older and I begin to understand the nuances of the language and how beautiful it was. Then we have the films, the great romance of it. What has it meant in my life? Well I just can’t imagine my life without it. There would be a big Tolkien shaped hole if I didn’t have this for escape and beauty. I can’t really point to any one character or any one scene or any one book. But it gave me another world to live in. It just meant so much to be a part of something, something else, something bigger, something beautiful."
259,67,Male,20190808,eng,Dingwall,,Scotland,"I am sixty-seven, mostly Irish; but for the last thirty years I’ve lived in Northern Scotland. So, fairly international there. I started reading The Lord of the Rings in the late Sixties, early Seventies. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it. So, I gave up fast. A year or two later in university, I heard other people talking about it. “That doesn’t sound like what I read.” I went back and read it and I was totally hooked, and I have really no reason for why I didn’t like it the first time because it was totally for me. I’ve always liked science fiction and fantasy kind of things; and here was a decent three-decker novel you could get your teeth into. It might have gone nowhere, but it was fantastic. The sense of history behind every character and what they say. That of course comes up in other stories and other genres; but then I discovered he had actually written all of this stuff, in the appendices to the book or in other books. So, the sense of history was real. I loved the poetry and song; and as the years have gone on, I have heard various people that have written music for them. Sometimes I knew the tune because it’s an old one. Sometimes I liked Donald Swann’s music. I liked Stephen Oliver’s music for the BBC radio adaptation of it. It meant that when I read it to my wife—this was before my wife, but she still married me—and a couple of my children, it meant that I could actually sing the songs while reading them as well, which rubbed it into me. It was one of the things that told me I liked reading poetry aloud to others where usually I read poetry quietly to myself. What effects has it had? It got me interested in older forms of English, starting to read Chaucer or Beowulf, by no means fluently. Chaucer okay. And again declaiming it, I can hear myself and others hear me; and it sounds much better than just reading it quietly to myself. The environmental imagery—I had read Rachel Carson. Now that I’m older, I’m retired, I had worked for twenty years with an environmental protection agency in Scotland. And again, constantly reminded me because of the world that I was in. I loved the cleverness of the verse forms. This is all for me. I like it. I’m still there."
260,31,Male,20190808,eng,Mullingar,,Ireland,"I am thirty-one, and I am from Ireland. I first encountered Tolkien—I must have been twelve or thirteen. I think it was the summer of 2001 and the trailer for the Peter Jackson Fellowship of the Ring film came out. I had not read a lot of fantasy at that stage, but I was a huge Legend of Zelda fan. So, I saw this trailer and thought, “Wow! They’re not making a Zelda film but this looks like the best possible substitute.” Shortly after that, my mam bought me a copy of Fellowship. I read it I think in about two weeks. Then I requested the other two and she said, “Well, I’ll get those for Christmas.” So, I had to wait a little while. Christmas—got Two Towers, Return of the King and devoured them. Got The Hobbit, got The Silmarillion in the next couple of months and just loved it. I then went and I read over the next couple of years the entire History of Middle-earth series, Unfinished Tales, like anything I could get my hands on. What I really loved about Tolkien was the history, the world building. History was my passion. I went on to do History and English in college. Those two things kind of fit together in Tolkien. So, for me, something like the appendices for Lord of the Rings, or at least Appendix A, was as interesting and as valuable as the actual narrative itself. I loved reading about the First Age and Second Age and seeing this kind of depth of time. I really love world building and so Tolkien changed my life. I did my degree in English and then I went straight into a PhD. because I was young and didn’t know what I was doing. But I did my PhD. on creation in Tolkien’s work, so I got to study him in depth for four years. Wrote a 300-page book on him, and it was amazing. I think what might tell you the quality that Tolkien is I didn’t burn out on him. I had read this now for over a decade, read things multiple times, read tons of scholarship. And I kept coming back. There was this richness, this vista to explore that kept going. Oh Man, I wish there was just more, but I’m so happy to have what we have. "
261,32,Female,20190808,eng,,Rhode Island,United States,"I am originally from Rhode Island but I live now in Ireland, and I am thirty-two. I first encountered Tolkien because my father was a really big fan. He read it as a young man. My first exposure was the Rankin Bass Hobbit. We watched that kind of ad infinitum as kids. I hadn’t read any of the books yet until high school where I had a really excellent English teacher, and we were actually told we had to read them in school. So, freshman year we read The Hobbit, and then next year was Fellowship, Two Towers, and The Return of the King. And that actually all coincided with when the movies were coming out. So, it was really, really exciting because you’d have it as summer reading and then actually—I was only in the second graduating class of my high school, so we were quite small—and we were able to, my English teacher organized that we all went to the movie theaters and saw the films as a class; and it was just amazing because then we would go back to class and talk about the differences between the books, the implications of the differences and things like that. I got the love of it from my dad, and then it was kind of nurtured by my high school English teacher; and even continued; my dad hunted down an old—I used to play piano, and he hunted down an old book of sheet music from the Rankin Bass Hobbit. So, I used to play the songs. I’m sure my mother was like, “What’s going on?” But I loved Tolkien because he was so meticulous about all the details of Middle-earth; then just coupled with all these generations of the artwork and kind of the metadata and everything else. It really does feel like another world that you can just step right into it. It’s almost impossible to get bored. I guess what Tolkien’s meant to me is a connection with my dad. My dad passed away when I was eighteen; and so it’s always something that I think of, the two of them kind of together, especially I think because I was experiencing it between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, you know kind of formative years, especially with all the films and talking about it in school. The morality that’s present there helped form what I thought about the world and what I thought of other people and kind of formed me as a person."
262,64,Female,20190808,eng,Birmingham,,England,"I am sixty-four and I am from Birmingham, England. I first encountered the works of Tolkien at the age of about ten to eleven when a class teacher read The Hobbit. Smaug terrified me. My first real sense of fear in literature was Bilbo going down that tunnel for the first time, not knowing whether the dragon was there, whether it was going to be awake. I can’t remember any other book that produced anything like the sensation I got at that time. Then a year later, at my new school, I would pass the old Birmingham Library with its beautiful wood paneled circular reading room where the hard-back copies of Lord of the Rings were on display. So, I borrowed one, devoured it, then the second, and the third. That’s me, a life-long Tolkien fan. I think why and what it means to me are interconnected. I can’t separate those questions. I would say I found my home in Middle-earth. I was born in England; I sound English, but I identify as Irish. The Birmingham of my growing up, the IRA were active in Northern Ireland, so it wasn’t a good place to be Irish. But also I loved the west of Ireland with an intensity that can only be matched by Middle-earth. Suddenly I had somewhere I could belong, truly belong. To me, he writes books for life. It’s doing what’s right and deep down we all know what is the right thing to do. We may not know how to do it. We may not know how or can we. I find I get courage. There’s just something for everybody; you don’t have to be religious, and I think you can offer consolation to people as well. I always think of the star peeking through the cloud reek over Mordor. I live in the Shire now, and I am very active. I’ve taken part in Tolkien reenactments. We’ve provided free Tolkien weekends, and I volunteer at Sarehole Mill. My home is always open to international Tolkien visitors, and I’m more than happy to take people around, and I will never stop talking about Tolkien to a receptive ear and to introduce new fans."
263,30,Female,20190808,eng,Halle,,Germany,"I am thirty years old, and I am from Halle (Salle) in Germany. My first encounter with Tolkien was when I was twelve years old. I was introduced to Tolkien actually by my sister who was a big Tolkien fan, and I was very much into fantasy already; but she had mentioned to me Lord of the Rings and said, “Oooh, there’s going to be a film about that soon and you should read it!” And of course I wanted to read the books before I actually went to see the film. So, I did that and from then it just simply took off. I read The Silmarillion afterwards. I read The Hobbit afterwards. This is how I actually came to encounter Tolkien and from then on it’s been a passion of mine, and it’s still ongoing and it will in the future. Well, being a Tolkien fan, I think for me the most important aspects are that Tolkien has created a kind of cosmos—a story cosmos—that has an unparalleled depth to it. There are different people with their own languages, their own sense of architecture, their own myths. There is a creation myth to his story world, and I’ve never seen anything like that in any other fantasy author. This is probably the major reason why I’m a Tolkien fan. The other thing that is important for me is that it’s never-ending for me. I can always read into new things into the story. You can always discover new aspects which you haven’t thought about before. I think this is why Tolkien continues to fascinate me and why rereading Tolkien is always a pleasure to me. What has he meant to me? Well, growing up in German academia, I always knew after my studies that I wanted to do a PhD. and I really wanted to do it on Tolkien. In German academia this is still sometimes sneered upon—Tolkien is not among those great literary authors who you should study. But I just knew that if I were to dedicate so much time to a PhD. project it would have to be something I am passionate about. And luckily I found a supervisor, and Tolkien has been with me from the age of twelve really, through my school days, through my university days. And with my PhD. I got a new angle on Tolkien’s works, and I’m very glad that he’s been my fellow along the way and that I am still able to read and discover his works."
264,26,Female,20190808,eng,Dresden,,Germany,"I am twenty-six, and I am from Germany. I think the first time I actually encountered Tolkien’s works was through the movies but not actually the movie itself. I think it was in 2001 when The Fellowship of the Ring came out, and I felt like I don’t want to be a part of this hype just because everybody does it. I want to know the work before I actually see it. I also normally read the book first because I want to see the world with my eyes and what I imagine. So, I said no to the films and I started to read The Lord of the Rings—in German of course. I think I was ten, eleven at the time, and it was a bit difficult because you had all those descriptions, and I’m not really visual with lengths and whatnot. So, it was a bit like, “Okay, yeah, I get it. It’s very far away.” But I really loved the way he incorporated the trees and made them sort of human-like, because I am from the Thuringian Forest. We have a lot of trees and green and I’ve always loved that, so that was perfect for me. The first time I read it, I just made it to maybe half of it, and then I had to stop because I didn’t really feel like I could go on. And then in 2003 when the third film came out, I actually watched that in the cinemas before I could finish the book. And It made me start again because now I had more visuals. I could really imagine the landscape and all. That made it a bit easier to go into this. So, I did that, and I loved the story. I loved the friendship part of that. I think you have a lot of timeless motives in there. You can really see it because we all have encountered friendship and love and whatnot; and I have encountered the trees, but there’s a lot of things in it for everybody I think. Then I saw the pictures by Alan Lee, and it made it even more lively and made it real for me. So, I did more. I also loved the way he invented his own languages, and it got me into linguistics, and I’ve got actually a Master’s degree in Linguistics, and I am currently working at a university and it’s probably because of Tolkien. Yeah, he means a lot to me."
265,59,Female,20190809,eng,Moscow,,Russia,"Russia. Fifty-nine years old. I first encountered these works of J.R.R. Tolkien in 1993. It was that period in my life because I became aware that all my life is ruined. I had no work, no profession, and no plans for future. I was laying ill with fever, and I was reading The Lord of the Rings for two days; and when I finished my book and recovered from my fever, I understand that now all will change. It changed really. Why I am a Tolkien fan? I don’t know if I am a Tolkien fan, but it is my life. It is the everlasting fund of the strange, to be myself, to live as I want."
266,63,Female,20190809,eng,Settlingstones,,England,"I am sixty-three, and I live in Northumberland in a little hamlet called Settlingstones, which is delightful. I first encountered Tolkien on a reading list—The Hobbit—when I was probably about ten or eleven and hated it. I had read the fairy stories: The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, Brown Fairy Book, all of those, and absolutely adored them; but reading a full-length book about hobbits and elves and goblins was just a turnoff. I was just the wrong age. So, that actually put me off Tolkien. And then in the mid-Seventies there was a resurgence of interest; and people kept telling me “you’ll love it, you’ll love it.” So, I read The Lord of the Rings and that was it. I was completely immersed in the world, and I can remember reading Two Towers and Return of the King and getting to the end of the part and being so wanting to know what happened to Gimli and Legolas that “Oh, we’re going to read about Frodo and Sam now,” but realizing that was the way the narrative had been constructed. And so, I fell in love with the world of Tolkien. I remember when I was recently married, I was expecting our first child, and the 1981 BBC adaptation came out and I can remember listening to that over and over again. So, there’s no surprise that my son is a passionate Lord of the Rings person as well—not quite as passionate as his mother, but you can’t follow your mother. Then it was sort of like a hiatus, the rest of life coming on. But now as I approach retirement, what I am looking forward to is going back and actually maybe learning Quenya, which I promised myself I would do; reading some of the longer books; getting into the history of Middle-earth, which, when you are leading a busy life and you’ve got a career, you don’t have the time for. What I think I love about Tolkien is the enrichment of the ordinary, that Frodo and Sam are just ordinary. But he finds within each person the capacity to be extraordinary, and I think that is a rather beautiful message to give to people, particularly when we live in a very difficult world. And his concept of eucatastrophe, when I came across that—it’s that all of us have dark and difficult times in our lives, and he doesn’t remotely minimize that, and he doesn’t offer platitudes. It’s to say, “Keep going, keep going, keep going” in the hope that at some point that eucatastrophic moment will happen. It may not be our moment but we in our way would have contributed to it. And I think that is such a profound message of hope in a dark world."
267,39,Male,20190809,eng,Exeter,,England,"I am thirty-nine years old and I live in Exeter, in Devon, in the United Kingdom. I first encountered Tolkien when I was at primary school, so I would have been eight or nine, maybe ten years old, and The Hobbit was in my primary school book club, so I remember very clearly sitting and filling in the paper forms—it was paper forms back in those days—and saying I wanted one copy of this book, and it was duly delivered a few weeks later and my teacher gave it to me. It was summer and beautiful, and I remember sitting outside, on the school field, reading this book when everyone else running was around doing primary school games around me. My original copy of The Hobbit I still have, and it still has grass stains on it, though mostly faded now. I really enjoyed it. I thought, “What’s next? What happens next in Middle-earth?” I went and pestered my mum, and she took me into town; we went to the bookshop and bought Lord of the Rings. For somebody who was about nine or ten, it was a single volume, giant, weighty tome. I remember, according to my mum, that she ran into my headmistress of my school at the time. They were sitting there as I was carrying this big book proudly to the till, saying, “He’ll never read it. He’ll never read it.” But I duly did, and I’ve been a Tolkien fan ever since. It took me a little bit longer to get onto The Silmarillion. The different tone and style there made it more challenging to get into, especially as a fairly young child. But as I’ve grown up, I’ve expanded my repertoire: Unfinished Tales, History of Middle-earth. Why am I a Tolkien fan? I think there’s something about the works of Tolkien which call to me, that resonate. There’s a sense of fellowship, of doing what needs to be done, fighting for the side of good; there’s always a little bit of escapism, I think, in fantasy. Part of the thing I really like about Tolkien is the sense of enjoyment—I mean since I joined the Tolkien Society, the sense of fellowship which you read about in the books has become evident in the physical world, if you’ll take it that way. So, I think he’s meant a great deal; obviously I read other authors and like other things, but there’s always some sort of nostalgia, and I will go back and open The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit; and at that point I will retreat into my nostalgic thing and rediscover them all over again. "
268,28,Male,20190809,eng,Oxford,,England,"I’m twenty-eight, and I’m living in Oxford. I first encountered J.R.R. Tolkien’s works—I think I was about five when I first ran across one of his, and it was the Father Christmas Letters; my aunt gave me a first edition, like really nice big pictures, so I think I fell in love with him as an illustrator before I even could properly read him. I remember devouring those and going, “What’s the next one?” And then of course I was directed towards The Hobbit. I think I first read that when I was about seven or eight. Loved it. Devoured it. Heard the audio books several bazillion times. And then I tried The Lord of the Rings and couldn’t get beyond the second chapter because it was just too big for me back then. So, I just forgot about Tolkien for about three years, and then the films brought me back to it. I watched The Fellowship of the Ring; I was like, “Hold on. I remember this. This was that gigantic book I put down three years ago and couldn’t handle,” and I was like, “Why did I ever not read this?” I went back to it. Read it. And just devoured the whole of The Lord of the Rings in a couple of weeks flat. I have just never really seen prose as beautiful and fluent as his in almost any other authors work. Honestly, looking at the three works I’ve mentioned so far, not to mention The Silmarillion, which I eventually got into about three years later, I’ve never seen an author with such command of so many different styles of prose, not to mention, of course, the most beautifully detailed fictional world I have ever known. He’s meant a lot to me actually because I, through my love of his Elvish languages, decided to start studying them for a bit of fun and discovered the Ardalambion website; and then through its Quenya and Sindarin lessons, I learned a few basic linguistic principles, and ended up studying linguistics at university, got an M.A. in it, and managed to get a second degree studying fairy tales. I’m studying linguistics in education and ended up doing an M.A. on certain fairytale variations, which I would never have gotten into if not for Tolkien. He’s meant so much to me since his world view has shaped mine in far too many ways to put into three minutes. "
269,27,Male,20190809,eng,Steinbach,,Germany,"I’m twenty-seven years old and from Germany. Like many people I suppose, I was introduced to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien by the films. I heard something about it on the radio and had no idea what it was. Then a few weeks later, a friend of mine in primary school won tickets to the movie in a drive-in cinema; and he took me along and his sister came as well, and she took her boyfriend, I think, along. Drive-in cinemas—they’re not a thing anymore obviously. Totally other worldly experience, and I was hooked right away. It must have been 2001, I suppose, in winter because I remember reading the books, all three of them, Lord of the Rings, the next year on summer holiday—I still have the sand in them; and my brother went off to see the World Cup, Germany played in the finals, but I couldn’t be bothered. I just read the books and was quite captured by it. I must have been talking about it quite a lot because on my next birthday two friends gave me a copy of The Hobbit, so I had two copies of The Hobbit. I only read one of them, of course. Then I sort of lost track, I think. The movies they kept coming, and I started getting into those tabletop miniatures and doing a bit of that, but I lost track a bit. Then I was abroad in South Africa for a year, in grade eleven, and in a second-hand bookshop on a day off I stumbled across a copy of Return of the King and one of the History of Middle-earth books. I bought that, not knowing what the second was and being completely overwhelmed and thinking, “Oh wow, what’s going on here?” That’s when it really started sort of launching me into it again. I had read The Silmarillion in school, a friend lent it to me, but never really got into it. But then afterwards I reread The Silmarillion and started understanding what’s behind it, and I got into all the other things that he wrote, even the smaller stories. Up until this day it’s Leaf by Niggle that’s sort of resonates with me most; it’s the starting paragraph where he says “kind-hearted man” in a way and that’s something very touching, I think. If one day on my tombstone there could be something like that engraved, I think that would be a sign of a life well-lived. That’s what Tolkien means to me. He says so much about human nature and life, and what it means, and what it can mean. I think its brilliant and beautiful."
270,32,Male,20190809,eng,Kragujevac,,Serbia,"I am thirty-two years old and I come from Serbia. The first time I read Tolkien’s works was when I was ten or eleven years old, which means 1996 or 1997. Soon after that, the films were announced. I remember the excitement about it. I got it from the public library at first, and it was maybe four or five years later that I bought my first books. As for what Tolkien has meant to me: Reading Tolkien’s works gave me a sense of going into another world, some sort of feeling of transcendence. The strongest proof for me that this was another world, in which I lived while I worked, was the feeling of loss when I finished reading. I was actually very moved with the very last sentences of the work, and I felt like I really am leaving the world, or they are leaving me in a way. I think he has managed to create a very convincing narrative, which feels real. Later, when I became Tolkien scholar, myself, and wrote about his academic articles as well, I realized this was actually one of his purposes when writing: to create a secondary world in which we can move and live and which we can believe to be real while we are there. I would like to add that, actually, I am not very easily moved by anything, to be honest. But his works always move me."
271,31,Female,20190809,eng,Belgrade,,Serbia,"I’m from Serbia, and I’m thirty-one years old. I first encountered Tolkien when I was, "
272,34,Female,20190809,eng,Birmingham,,England,"I was born in a country which doesn’t exist anymore, Soviet Union. I grew up in France, so I’m Russian-French, and I’m thirty-four years old. When did I first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien? I was about nine and my mom bought me the books of Tolkien. It was the first post-Soviet translation that I got, and I immediately fell in love with it. I think Hobbit was available before, but I didn’t engage with it; I didn’t have a chance to engage with it. I read The Lord of the Rings books and was absolutely in love with the depth of the world; and of course, it was nothing like I had seen before, not that at nine one has seen much. I pestered my parents to get The Silmarillion. I was in love with The Silmarillion. I had all of the charts and maps, and all of the trees of Elves. At that point, I think, I was almost more knowledgeable than I am now. That was my first encounter in the Russian-speaking world. And then the films—they were French-speaking for me, because I was living in France. At that point I decided that that’s enough of other languages and I progressed in my understanding of English sufficiently to be able to read Tolkien in the original language. So, my Tolkien is different linguistically between Russian, French, and the English—the original version. I’m a Tolkien fan since, yes, nine year old. Never stopped being a Tolkien fan. I’m of course a fan of the characters, but so much more with the world. It’s really the linguistic world and the world, the Arda on its own, the Middle-earth. There are the universes from other fandoms absolutely, but that’s not quite the same. It means a lot to me as fandom, and fandom is composed of the original work sources, but also of people. I have found that Tolkien fandom is one of the most welcoming and accepting. That’s also why Tolkien means so much to me, because I have managed to make good friends."
273,26,Male,20190809,eng,,,Greece,"I’m twenty-six years old and I come from Greece. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I was ten. First of all, I had heard a few songs from Blind Guardian, who have a lot of songs on J.R.R. Tolkien. That made me really interested to dive into the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Why am I a Tolkien fan? That’s hard. Or easy, I’m not sure. Well, I love history; I love archaeology; I love epic in general and fantasy so much. I consider him the father of fantasy in a way--modern fantasy. To be honest, it’s what I want to do as well, so I’m basically spending most of my time on Tolkien, except my university time. He’s meant many things. He’s been a professor, a friend, a father I would say. I find many different things when I read his books: I find advice; I find meanings to things that I thought were blank or empty I would say. When you have a bad day you can turn to someone; you can turn to the book; you can turn to a thought of a hero saying something; you can turn to Tolkien himself sometimes, reading his sayings, his works. That just makes you feel peaceful in a way. He taught me what I think: what’s light, what’s dark, what’s gray. Many people say that it’s only black and white with Tolkien, but I think there are many heroes in between. And this I like because inside the universe of fantasy you can see some pieces of reality too. I love the films; I love the music that comes from Tolkien; I love the books. I love every part and every aspect about him. I hope people keep reading, writing, listening to him. It’s an amazing experience and I want to keep it alive for as long as possible."
274,27,Male,20190809,eng,Liskeard,,England,"I am twenty-seven and I come from Cornwall. I first encountered Tolkien, I believe, when I was five. My parents bought the BBC Hobbit adaption, which included the narrator, and there was almost a kind of interview-esque nature between him and Bilbo. There was music. There were sound effects. It was an incredible thing, and I remember wearing the cassettes out, they were just used so much. The first and most important memory that I think will stay with me for the rest of my life is listening to the part where Bilbo was actually listening to the dwarves’ song. He’s staring into the fire, and it’s that moment of awakening of the Tookish genes in him, that sense of adventure. At that time, I sat, I think, in my mum’s arms with a blanket. We had our open fire going as well, so as Bilbo was actually feeling a kind of awakening, at the same time I felt my own awakening of sorts. I felt some sort of connection with Bilbo and the text within those seconds. Since then it’s spawned about twenty-two years of incredible fandom, a voracious yearning to learn as much as I can about him. Middle-earth really is a country in which you can kind of escape. I remember having a debate of sorts with my dad recently where he said, “Any work you can get absorbed in it and taken away from the world. You can do that with The Lord of the Rings.” Well technically, I’m going to be technical here, and say actually you’re wrong because it’s not the reader so to speak. Actually, there’s an act of sub-creation x, y, and z, so I was getting all academic on him, which was good fun. The fandom has never left me. Everyone, all of my friends, know me to be the Tolkien obsessed one, and I think considering I’m just about to finish a Master’s, which is half a Ph.D., I think I can at least confirm that I am now a Tolkien scholar of sorts. So, that’s been a dream for a very long time. As to why am I a fan, I think my previous comments kind of summarize. Actually, there’s a kind of spiritual connection I feel between it all, which is incredible. What has he meant to me? He’s meant everything. He’s built my life."
275,65,Female,20190809,eng,Bechtelsville,Pennsylvania,United States,"Sixty-five years old, from Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania, which is outside of Philadelphia. I originally encountered J.R.R. Tolkien when I was about twelve years old. The books had just come out in the U.S. in paperback, so we teenagers could afford them. I first encountered the bootleg Ace edition, and then went and bought the Ballantine editions because I did believe in supporting living authors as the Prologue said. I joined the Tolkien Society USA in 1968. That’s now the Mythopoeic society which I continue to be a member of. I joined the Tolkien Society UK in 2005 as a result of their 2005 conference. They were very welcoming to a Yank, and the rest is history. I’m having a great time with the UK Society. I’ve been a Tolkien fan for so long because the books really speak to me. Not just The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings but his other writings as well. I’m one of those people that actually does read The Silmarillion every year. I don’t think there are many of us, but I love it, as well as Farmer Giles of Ham and Leaf by Niggle and his other works. I identify with some of the characters and of course over the years that has changed. Now maybe I identify with some of the older characters than I did when I was young. Tolkien also caused me to try my hand at writing, and I wrote some really awful stuff, which would now I guess be called fan fiction, but we didn’t have those terms back in the Seventies. But more importantly for me, I’m a musician, specifically a harpist, and the harp is very important in The Lord of the Rings. Some of my first compositions from my first CD have been based on The Lord of the Rings, have been based on Elves, because harp is really good for Elves and things like that. Tolkien has really changed my life. I really have studied a lot of things that I wouldn’t have studied if it weren’t for that piece of literature. I’ve also gotten into acting and filmmaking as a result of fan films for The Lord of the Rings. So, it’s really had an effect on my whole life, and I thank the Professor every year on his birthday, and sometimes in between, for making my life better. I hope that through all the media these days, a lot more people will come to the books and maybe we can make the world a better place."
276,52,Female,20190809,eng,Canberra,,Australia,"I’m from Canberra, in Australia. I’m fifty-two years old. My first encounter with Tolkien was the Saul Zaentz/Ralph Bakshi movie, I think about ’78 or ’79; I’m not sure. We were on our summer holiday on the coast in Queensland, and it just rained and rained and rained for weeks. We were so desperate in the rain, sitting in our little caravan, my mum took us into town and we went to the movies and ended up seeing the cartoon movie, which I think I enjoyed but I didn’t really understand it or what it was and probably completely forgot about it. Then I think we visited a friend and they had a book from that movie, which I loved, and I traced out all the pictures from the book. In year seven at high school, so I would have been twelve or thirteen, for some reason I got the impression that I should read The Lord of the Rings, because I loved reading, I loved English; and it wasn’t in the library. Someone had borrowed it. But there was this book called The Silmarillion, so I borrowed that one, and I think I got a little way through the Ainulindale and it was just terrible and I gave up completely. But when the Lord of the Rings came back into the library, I actually read it. I think I ended up reading it at nighttime under the sheets in my bed with a torch instead of going to sleep. And I just read it and read it and read it and just fell in love with it. Then in that same year in school we had to read The Hobbit for English class. Well, I’d already read it; I’d already read The Lord of the Rings; I’d read The Silmarillion; I’d read everything I could find. So, when we had to write a little essay about The Hobbit, I chucked in all this stuff about The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and everything else I’d read. So, yeah, I just fell in love with the books. I don’t why I’m a fan. It’s just so beautiful, the English is so beautiful. I ended up studying linguistics. The characters, the environments, the stories, the values and the dilemmas and the strength of the characters is just gorgeous. I’ve collected books and posters; and the movies are great, but they’re quite separate from the books. I’ve just carried it with me. I’ve loved it for the last forty years. It’s great being here just sharing that love with a whole bunch of other people. "
277,39,Non-Binary,20190809,eng,Inverkeithing,,Scotland,"I am thirty-nine years old and I live in Scotland. The Hobbit was the first book that I can recall reading, age six. Apparently I loved it so much that my parents nicknamed me Bilbo Baggins. I first read Lord of the Rings at about thirteen years old. For some reason I started with The Two Towers. I think it was because my library’s copy of Fellowship happened to be checked out at the time. It actually worked surprisingly well to just be thrown into the action and then go back later on to read Fellowship. I then rapidly went on to read The Silmarillion, and from there the History of Middle-earth series, Tolkien’s other works, books about Tolkien, works that inspired Tolkien, and anything else Tolkien related I could get my hands on. Life got busy in my twenties, and I went quite a few years without rereading anything, though the messages of his stories were always in the back of my mind. Then in 2015, as I was recovering from depression, I picked up The Silmarillion and fell in love all over again. I’m a fan of Tolkien, first of all, because of the messages of hope and joy in his works. His characters go through some very dark times and hard places, just as I have, but hope is always there, and joy pierces through. His concept of eucatastrophe and the way in which he calls forth in the reader “joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief,” is in my opinion unmatched by any other author. His works have had a great impact on my grasp of morality, justice, and ethics. I think his words about right and wrong, and about mercy and pity, are just as relevant now as when he wrote them. And as we see what I believe Tolkien would agree with me as the rise evil, as in fascism and racism, it’s ever more clear that the shadow takes another shape and grows again, and that it is my duty specifically to uproot evil in the fields I know, so that those who live after me have clean earth to till. I think Tolkien’s work has absolutely, without question, saved my life in quite a literal sense. When things got very hard, and life seemed impossible, I used to sing Sam’s song in the Tower of Cirith Ungol to myself: “Above all shadows rides the Sun/ and Stars forever dwell:/ I will not say the Day is done,/ nor bid the stars farewell.” Just that little bit of defiance in the face of despair made it possible for me to carry on, just as it did for Sam. And now that I’ve come through sorrow to find joy, his work provides me with constant excitement and inspiration. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it in some way or another, and I’m forever discovering new aspects, and new corners, around which may wait a new road or a secret gate to be delighted by."
278,53,Female,20190809,eng,North Dalton,,England,"I am fifty-three and I live in East Yorkshire, in the UK. I was a missionary kid, and I was brought up in West Africa, and we had no television. So I grew up on books, really. Mostly C.S. Lewis, because that was an authorized text in my family because of the allegory with Christianity and so on and so forth. I read them over and over and over again, and I think probably that at some point lead me on to Tolkien and The Hobbit, I suspect, when I was about maybe nine or ten. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t—I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t immersed, I suppose, in that sort of fantasy world. It was a really big part of my childhood, I would say. Then I grew up, and I came back to this country, and went through my teens and early twenties, and I think I forgot about Tolkien. I got involved in other things and went to college and university, and all those things, and I think that for a while it wasn’t important. And then Peter Jackson’s films came out, and they hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember when Fellowship came out in the cinemas I went four times. Four times, one after the other. I just couldn’t believe that I had forgotten about this stuff. Now I know in this world that there is ambivalence about these films, but I think what I would say, for me, is that I think there’s more than one way to love Tolkien, and I think the film has brought a lot of new interest into Tolkien; but, for me, it’s kind of brought me back to Tolkien. For me they are significant however one might feel about them with relation to the original text, both of which I love. So, I think that might well answer actually all those questions. I suppose why I’m a Tolkien fan—just because I think he addresses so many themes that are fundamental to the human condition: loss, and grief, and courage, and friendship; and very few people can get through life without one or all of those things being significant to them. I think it’s a writing that will always be relevant."
279,71,Female,20190809,eng,Seattle,Washington,United States,"Seventy-one years old. I’m from Seattle, Washington. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when a bunch of my friends and I read The Fellowship of the Ring aloud in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the winter of 1971 and ’72, in front of a large fire with great cups of tea. It was a wonderful way to first hear that story and to share it with good friends, and from there we continued to share that kind of fellowship around Tolkien. I think mostly I’m a Tolkien fan not so much for Tolkien, but for the Inklings, as they’re called, for Lewis, and Tolkien, and Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams, and for me especially Dorothy L. Sayers, who was kind of marginal, on the side, with them, but in the same mode in terms of her thinking, and especially around theology. I happen to be a Lutheran pastor, and so theology is important for me, and what I’ve learned from them has been a great source of richness, and treasure, and learning over all these years. I think what Tolkien has meant to me is just around that connection with all those people, and then seeing those same kinds of connections with my own friends and my own communities, and in sharing kind of the joy of just words and literature, and all those things that are part of what J.R.R. Tolkien did. Then, I’ve especially enjoyed it in terms of my husband, who’s a gigantic Tolkien fan. So, we share this library in our study that has all those specific titles in it and have really enjoyed all of that. I think that Tolkien provides a great sense of community, and richness, and learning, and continued background information on where we all came from and how we all connect."
280,82,Male,20190809,eng,Seattle,Washington,United States,"I am eighty-two years old and I am from Seattle, Washington. I first encountered Tolkien as a new engineer in Seattle, Washington, working for the Boeing Company. I was intrigued by the storyline. Then I read The Hobbit after the trilogy and began to realize that there was a little bit more to this sequence of books and began collecting books. Didn’t read them. Picked up The Silmarillion. Didn’t read it. As time went on, I married Nancy, and she had her own stories, I began to delve into it a little bit more because she had a small collection of books as well. So, the collection grew. But basically, I think why I’m a Tolkien fan is that it’s a created world that has a fascinating history, of course in parallel with how we as Christians envision our created world, and it was amazing to me that someone could put that type of a story together, and create, as we call it, a whole legendarium of people, places, plants, animals, everything like that, and a culture. So, you begin to study some of those details, and you get sucked in. In that context, Tolkien has meant a lot to me because it allows me to put our—shall we say the real world, as opposed to the created world, secondary world—in a context. It gives you a reference point, a touchstone, so that you can examine what you believe and how you fit into a greater world. Then, lastly, but maybe even more importantly, I came upon the books that represent the atlases and the guides to Tolkien, and the maps have been fantastically helpful. It allows you to picture what’s going on."
281,65,Female,20190809,eng,The Hague,,Netherlands,"I am sixty-five years old and I am from the Netherlands. The Hague to be precise. I first encountered Tolkien when my friend, my fellow classmate, had the books as a present for her birthday and she was so enthusiastic about them that she started to tell me the story. At some point I thought, “I don’t want this.” I took all my savings and I went to the bookshop, and I bought the books themselves because I didn’t want to be told the story. This is something very special, and I want to experience it firsthand and not because someone tells it to me. I read the books, not in one sitting, but it was very close. Then I took a slight revenge by telling my friend some of the happenings in The Return of the King, because she hadn’t got that far yet. But then she told me, “No, I don’t want to know this.” It was fantastic. I was bought and sold. I’m a bit of a fantasist myself. I was always fantasizing; I was always basing my fantasies on things I read, and which worked out well, and I enlarged the stories. There was no story yet that worked so well for me as Tolkien’s works. My inner landscape didn’t triple, but I think it multiplied tenfold or something. I couldn’t help telling other people about it, making the same mistake as my friend, but I think she had the same experience. I kept reading them. I don’t know how often. First in Dutch only, and then later in English, of course. At some point, I founded a Tolkien Society of the Netherlands, Unquendor, together with another fan. That is—I think it’s twenty-eight years ago now, and it’s still going strong. I’m very happy it continued all the time."
282,53,Male,20190809,eng,Brighton,,England,"I am fifty-three and I come from the Brighton area in Sussex, England. I first encountered the works of Tolkien at school. As a twelve-year-old we had The Hobbit to read as a class exercise with reading around the room. That was quite interesting as people worked their way around the room, working the book, reading aloud. It was very immersive. Unfortunately, family reasons meant I didn’t attend school for several weeks and so I missed the rest of it, and one thing or another meant I didn’t actually think about it again until I was sixteen, waiting to do my exams or have my holiday after exams. My sister had this amazingly interesting looking set of books. They were different colors, they were paperback, but they all had a similar title, and a design on the front of a ring, and some strange lettering. So, I asked her what that was and could I read it because I liked reading. I had a tendency to go down to the library with several other peoples’ library cards to borrow lots of books and read. She said, “This is The Lord of the Rings, but you need to read The Hobbit first.” So I went, “Ok.” She had a copy of The Hobbit. The copy she had of The Lord of the Rings was lent from a friend, but she had a copy of The Hobbit of her own. So I read The Hobbit. Ok. Vaguely remembered it actually from school. It was quite fun, but I couldn’t start The Lord of the Rings until she’d finished it. She was still partway through Fellowship of the Ring, and being older than me, she had a summer job. So, as she had a summer job and wasn’t in the house, I took the opportunity to start reading The Lord of the Rings and it was amazing. And I read, and I read, and I passed her bookmark, carefully leaving it where it was, and I carried on. When she came home from work, the book was back where it was. She doesn’t know that I was reading behind, around, and now ahead of her. I moved on into the next book, and then the last book, and I was just swept away by this amazing story, and I’ve been a fan ever since. I went to the library immediately, and got myself a copy out of the library, and read that again. Then I sort of put it down and said, “I’d like a copy of this for my birthday.” I’ve kind of picked up the collecting bug because you keep seeing all these beautiful images on the covers, or they’re in these nice slip cases—Pauline Baynes with her beautiful artwork, the gateway. I found out from a copy of Journeys of Frodo by Barbara Strachey there was a Tolkien Society. So I wrote off and joined. I’ve been a fan and a member all that time since I was sixteen to fifty-three. I even volunteer now for the Tolkien Society because it’s so much fun. You get to meet so many weird, interesting people from all around the world, whether it’s face-to-face in life at an event, or just socially, of an evening, or online through the various Facebook-message board groups, things like that. It’s just so much fun sharing these stories, finding out more information, finding out about the other stories."
283,60,Female,20190809,eng,Riverside,California,United States,"I am sixty-ish. When did I first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, was when I was a teenager, in the late 1960’s. I read The Hobbit, and I had a girlfriend, Patty, and the two of us would walk around and do our Gollum imitations to each other. We kind of had a little in, because I don’t think everyone else had read it at the time. I lived in Frankfurt, Germany. I was a military brat. I just loved the fantasy. So, why am I a Tolkien fan? I’m a Tolkien fan because I love Anglo-Saxon literature, and I love the ancient. The older the literature the better I like it. I love the classics. I love The Iliad, but I especially love Beowulf and the Old English poems, and Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon. So, what I love is where Tolkien’s works touch the old works. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on that and rewrote it for a book; it’s Anglo-Saxon Community in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. What I love is where the two things meet, seeing how he used Beowulf, for instance, and took lines of it, and put it in Rohan, and, to use Tom Shippey’s words, it’s kind of Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxons. I love Rohan, it’s probably my favorite part in Tolkien’s work. So, it’s not his life, or that type of thing, that really gets to me. It’s where those works touch the old. What has he meant to me? Tolkien means a lot. In the sense of where some people call him the father of fantasies, fantasy was certainly around before his time, but he brought something to fantasy. He dipped into the cauldron, as he calls it, and pulls out all these lovely, old things in older works, and takes them, and then re-forms them. That’s his sub-creation, as he calls it. To me it’s just lovely, and he set the example for so many others to do the same. The others who succeed are the ones that dip into that same type of cauldron, not the ones that dip into his cauldron necessarily, but into the other works—the older works—Arthur, Beowulf, The Wanderer, The Seafarer. There is the love and there is the passion."
284,28,Female,20190809,eng,London,,England,"I am twenty-eight now and I am from Germany originally, but I’ve lived in the UK for eight or seven years now. I started reading The Hobbit when I was six or so, just after I started reading, but I didn’t know what a hobbit was. I asked my parents and they said I had to imagine it, which I thought was a bit ridiculous, and I didn’t see the point of reading books about things that don’t exist, so I gave up on reading that. But then a couple of years later my dad starts reading The Lord of the Rings to me, which I hadn’t quite realized had anything to do with that stupid book about things that don’t exist. I actually really enjoyed it, and got really into it, and he wasn’t spending enough time reading to me, so I had to read it by myself, and spend several hours a day reading to get through it. I absolutely loved it. Then I started reading The Silmarillion and the other works around it. I don’t quite know what appealed to me so much about it, but I just loved kind of delving into that world, and how complex it was, and how much there was to learn and to find out. I did originally read it in German, but then some works, some of the additional literature wasn’t translated at the time, or maybe still isn’t. I’m not sure. So, I actually went and read really complicated books in English when I was really young. Didn’t understand much; learned a lot of English from it. Then in 2005 I came to Birmingham for the big event that they had then and met people from the German Tolkien Society and a lot of people who are here today as well. I was fourteen at the time, so that’s exactly half my life ago, which is why this event is quite nicely timed for me. Because I love Tolkien so much my parents and I came to the UK on holiday quite regularly because I wanted to see Oxford and all the Tolkien-relevant places. I decided I wanted to study in the UK, preferably at Oxford. I originally wanted to do linguistics because of Tolkien. I ended up applying for Oxford Uni, and a few other unis as well. Oxford rejected me; everyone else accepted me. So, I ended up in the UK, and now I’ve been living here for quite a few years, and wouldn’t have ended up here, I think, if it wasn’t for Tolkien. That’s had a huge impact on my life, and I’ve met a lot of people through it who are very close friends, and are huge, important influences on my life."
285,19,Female,20190809,eng,Birmingham,,England,"I am nineteen and I am from Birmingham in England, the United Kingdom. I first encountered my first Tolkien work when I was studying abroad in Hong Kong as a part of my school curriculum in grade seven, under the Canadian system, where The Hobbit was actually a set text in the school. That was around in 2012 I believe, around the advent of The Hobbit movies, so it coincided really well with new Tolkien media being put out to the public. I kind of found myself swept up in all of that, enjoying what we were doing at school as well as exploring online and the communities that were presented online, and the opportunities that came with that. I guess that kind of leads me into why I’m a Tolkien fan in the first place. I find that, especially in online Tolkien circles, there’s a great sense of community no matter where you are in the world and how those experiences are transmitted through an online medium so there’s no real sense of disconnection even though you’re literally thousands, or maybe hundreds, of miles apart. In addition to being a Tolkien fan, he’s also meant quite a lot to me over the years in that in reading the books I’ve found myself thinking about the themes time and time again of light and hope, but also denouement and the other themes that might be presented in the work, such as Frodo’s actual failure to complete his journey, which to someone who might not be too familiar with Tolkien’s work, or fantasy as a genre as something that can be explored and deconstructed, to be quite shocking, as one would think that, “Oh, the hero must succeed.” I found comfort somehow in Frodo’s failure. Following from that I kind of delved into the realm of exploring Tolkien’s other works and his posthumous works, such as The Silmarillion and Histories of Middle-earth. I found in there way more possibilities of interpretation that I didn’t think were possible, since I was immersed so much in the movie culture and the culture surrounding Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit as the movies were present. However, in The Silmarillion I found there to be a greater possibility of interpretation, and exploration of diversity in different cultures, which I didn’t think was possible. I found that to be one of the most attractive things about the fandom as a whole."
286,24,Female,20190809,eng,Aylesbury,,England,"I am twenty-four and I am originally from Russia, but I have grown up in the UK, where I moved when I was seven. I first encountered Tolkien around the age of eight, maybe, when the films were coming out. My mother, who was an avid Tolkien fan herself, took me to see Fellowship at the cinema, and I was hooked immediately. I read The Lord of the Rings between The Fellowship and Two Towers, and then Silmarillion between Two Towers and Return of the King, and I did get through it in one go. I probably have not understood half of it, but that’s one of those achievements that I keep close to my heart. Throughout school, fantasy wasn’t really recognized as a literary genre, or a worthwhile pursuit in my environment, so I was very much on my own in loving Tolkien. I was an introverted kid with lots of extracurricular activities and not a lot of time to socialize or play, therefore books were really my salvation, as I imagine they have been for many Tolkien fans. I was content to stay in that world, reading, writing fan fiction, doodling on the margins of other books symbols that reminded me of Tolkien or his characters. I slowly expanded into Tolkien’s other works, The Hobbit, oddly enough, being the very last one I read, even after the shorter prose. Of course, it still left a lasting impression in my heart. I didn’t join the Tolkien Society until I was about twenty. I first heard of the Society at the 2013 Oxford Tolkien Spring School, hosted by the University of Oxford. It was a wonderful academic collection, but I was slightly intimidated, so I waited four years to actually join the Society. A year into my membership, I was invited to join the committee as education secretary, a role that I continue to this day. It has given me so many wonderful opportunities, from meeting new people and expanding my horizons to getting academic work published and organizing conferences. So, I owe not just a profound sensitivity to the world and all manners of existence and all walks of life to Tolkien, but also more applicable skills, like academic integrity, like publication, like being a decent presenter."
287,67,Female,20190809,eng,Merton,,England,"Merton, Oxfordshire. Sixty-seven. I first encountered Tolkien when I found The Hobbit in the school library, age nine, which I loved. I then found The Lord of the Rings in the public library, the first two volumes, when I think I was about eleven or twelve, and adored them, but was left with this cliffhanger, and I haunted the library for the next year, looking for the third volume. Finally found it in the older children’s section, fifteen to sixteen, and I was still twelve at the time. But no matter, I read it. I was totally hooked. It was constantly out of the library on my cards. Then I said to my grandfather, who asked me what I wanted for Christmas, “I want The Lord of the Rings.” There was only hardbacks at that time, and he said, “Do you realize it costs a guinea a volume? Will you read it enough?” I’m still reading those volumes fifty-five years later. Tolkien has meant so much to me in my life. I encountered the Tolkien Society when I was twenty-five. I went to a science fiction day at Imperial College, London, and encountered Jessica Yates, who’s here today, who told me—joined me—I joined the Tolkien Society there and then. Since then, Tolkien has made so many differences. All my close friends belong to the Tolkien Society. I met my husband through the Tolkien Society, who is also a fan. We have both been active in the Tolkien society. I’ve been secretary twice, six years each time. He was the treasurer for five years, and I took over for him. I’ve done five years now. As I say, our close friends are Tolkien. We do a lot of Tolkien events. I’ve been to forty-two consecutive Oxenmoots. I’ve been to most of the AGMs in these forty-two, coming up forty-three years. It’s just been absolutely amazing. And I still read the books. They’re still my favorite books after all these years. One of the most defining points of my life was deciding, yes, I’ll go to that one-day convention, because I had no idea the Tolkien Society existed."
288,56,Male,20190809,eng,Amsterdam,,Netherlands,"I am fifty-six years old and I am from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when at my twelfth birthday the hired help in my parents’ household gave me The Hobbit in the Dutch translation, which is my mother tongue. I read it with much interest and amusement, but I don’t recollect anything else of the impression it made in me at the time. But it was apparently enough so that, when later that year moving to secondary school, I avidly read The Fellowship in Dutch translation with my best friend in class. But we didn’t get hold of the other two volumes, partly because of the usual problem that libraries class The Hobbit as a children’s book and The Lord of the Rings as an adult book. So I spent my time on Richard Adams and books like that until, at the age of sixteen, by that time regularly having holidays in England, I found the works of Tolkien in an English paperback bookshop. I start reading everything in English, and I’ve never stopped. At first I bought everything in paperback. When I saw The Letters in hardback, I thought, “Well, this is such a specialist thing it will probably not appear in paperback, so let’s buy it,” spending about three times as much on a book as I had ever done before. Little did I know how great Tolkien fandom was, and would still grow! I’ve avidly bought and read Tolkien’s books, secondary publications about Tolkien, and everything I could find, becoming active in Tolkien fandom in 1999 through the Tolkien Society, Unquendor, in the Netherlands, and then through the Tolkien Society, and never looked back. But I turned back to the Dutch translations only because of becoming active in the Dutch Tolkien Society. I’m a Tolkien fan because every time you turn to Tolkien’s works you discover a new level of depth in them. And what he has meant to me is that I am spending a lot of my life about Tolkien’s works and about Tolkien fandom. I could not now imagine how I would spend that great part of my life otherwise."
289,32,Male,20190809,eng,Rio de Janeiro,,Brazil,"I am thirty-two years old, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. My first encounter with Professor Tolkien’s work was twelve years old, when I started reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as a gift from my parents. Since then everything changed in my life because Tolkien was my teenage author and also my adult years author. I began studying Celtic and medieval history because of its influence. After that I started to go to meetings and discovered new people and a Tolkien community in Brazil. I think Professor Tolkien’s works meant to me more than just good literature or being inspiration for my profession as an academic, but also the inspiration for my everyday life. The values, and how I treat people, how I treat my friends, and also how I deal with my emotions. I’m going to marry next year, and I met my fiancé on a reading group of Tolkien in Rio. So, all the time I realize what Tolkien did to my life I think it’s far more than just literature. It’s something like—it’s part of my life—my personal Lord of the Rings in my life. It changed everything: the way I am, my profession, even my love life. I’m a Tolkien fan because his literature says something that I can’t reproduce, says something far more deep in my heart, in my thoughts. Since then, I can’t imagine, actually, my entire life without it, because everything is connected: my profession, my affection, my everyday life. I need to say a great thank you for Tolkien’s works because it’s part of my identity now."
290,47,Female,20190810,eng,Cambridge,,England,"I am forty-seven years old and I live in Cambridge, in the UK. I first encountered the works of Tolkien through the cover of the single volume, yellow, Pauline Baynes illustrated edition, which sat on my father’s bookshelf. I was far too young to read it; I would look at the pictures, and tell myself stories, and wonder about this strange book. Still thinking now of that cover, it sort of hints to me of marvels, and wonders, and scary things. Then later my dad would sort of tell me stories from it. I can’t really remember reading Lord of the Rings for the first time. Tolkien was always present. Very distinctly I remember sitting with my father listening to the Brian Sibley adaptation in ’80-’81, a moment we would gather on the sundown. I’m the youngest of six, so getting my father’s attention was a marvelous thing. So, really I don’t remember reading Tolkien; I remember Tolkien being present. I always feel myself as a fan. Suddenly my father died when I was twelve and nobody wanted the Tolkien books, so I very quickly got them; and then, like many teenagers, I think I immersed myself in this world. I had The Middle-earth Quiz Book and we didn’t have many ways to entertain ourselves in the 1980s. No internet. So, I would do the Tolkien Quiz Book—obviously I wasn’t going to go clubbing or anything. Good God, that would have been dreadful. So, Tolkien Quiz Book. The radio play was rebroadcast in thirteen episodes. Nowhere near as good. I recorded it off the radio onto C60 cassette, and had that, and played it, and played it, and played it, and loved it. Tolkien was a real comfort there. I think a book written by a man who had experienced early loss of a parent was tremendously comforting for me. I found real succor and understanding. It’s hard when a parent dies at that age. Everyone is baffled and bewildered, so you need a way to process that bereavement, and Tolkien, who got me, said this didn’t he, “The subject is death and mortality.” So, I found it a tremendous conciliation. Then I started writing fan fiction. The films came out, I started writing fan fiction. I’m a novelist now, science fiction novelist, have been for many years. But the fan fiction has given me a community of friends, a chance to write not for work, but for sheer pleasure, to be poetic, and joy. I’m here meeting a fan fiction friend for the first time. We’ve known each other for years. It’s hard to think what life would have been like without this book: consolation, succor, joy, entertainment, fellowship. I come back to it as the years pass, read more, understand more, delight more. It’s been the most significant book in my life."
291,33,Female,20190810,eng,,,Israel,"I am currently from Switzerland. I just moved there, and I’m originally from Israel. I come from a very small Arab village. I am thirty-three years old. I first encountered Tolkien at the age of ten. I loved old Arab lore stories about demons, and I was looking for something deeper because they were all very shallow, unfortunately. My dad has a Master’s degree in Literature, and I went to his library and I started looking at the shelves when I saw The Hobbit, and it just yelled at me or something. It called for me. I took it and I read it all at once. I didn’t even have a break. I fell in love with the story, and I have to thank him so much for teaching me English since I was three years old to be able to read the story, because otherwise I wouldn’t have, because the Arabic translation came out very late and it was horrible after trying to read it. So, that was my first encounter. Why am I a Tolkien fan? I’m a Tolkien fan because The Hobbit was a sort of—not just The Hobbit—all of the books were a sort of an escapism for me because I lived in a very conservative religious community and I was an atheist in the closet until the age of twenty-five. This was a way to run away from the world and think about a world that I love, I feel safe at, and that teaches people about a lot of things about good, evil, friendships, getting over obstacles. I had a lot of those as a child, because I had a really rough childhood with the whole religion and just it was kind of abusive because they are very, very conservative there, and if you just talk a little bit outside—just criticize the religion a little bit—you would be beaten down there. Tolkien was—I can’t even imagine to explain what he meant for me. He was kind of a guide towards that there is good in life, and you can get there, and he was right."
292,38,Female,20190810,eng,Jerusalem,,Israel,"I am thirty-eight years old. I am from Jerusalem, Israel. I’d like to talk about when did I first encounter Tolkien’s works. You could say that it was in the background forever, ever since I was a kid. I used to see my dad read the books, and they’ve always kind of enticed me. The big red-black eye on the cover. I knew that when he reads those he cannot be interrupted for anything, no matter what. Then time passed, and then when I was eight I’d read The Hobbit in the Hebrew translation. I didn’t know English back then. And this is it. This is what got me in. I’ll sort of combine ‘why am I a Tolkien fan’ and ‘what does he mean to me, his works.’ When I got into his works—when I got into his world—it felt instantly like home, but it was a magical home, a different home. It’s something not like what I see around me, what I experience. It’s a home where beauty is cherished in such a profound way, and where sorrow and happiness are combined. It’s just a place that I’ve been feeling at home with ever since I got into it. I know that it’s an imaginary world, but for me it exists on a very real level, somewhere in a place that I can’t make out, but somewhere in my heart, I guess. I just keep being amazed at how much Tolkien connects people and how much this scholar who was set in England managed to do something so universal that gets to so many people, who are very different from him. And, well, I just feel that it’s a world that I don’t want to leave. It’s a world that I want to keep seeing and following—and all the incredible messages that he puts out."
293,57,Female,20190810,eng,Ann Arbor,Michigan,United States,"I am fifty-seven and I am from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I first encountered J.R.R.—well I almost didn’t get there. I decided I should, as a teenager, read fantasy fiction, so I started out with C.S. Lewis, and I didn’t love it. It felt too obvious. I just didn’t connect to it. But then I went in my parents’ library and I found Tolkien, and I’m like, “Ok, I should probably try that one.” Probably in a page and a half I was completely hooked. I could smell the grass. I could hear the leaves. I could feel the mist. I was completely immersed in the world. It was a very tactile experience for me, reading Tolkien. I’m a designer; I teach design. I’m a very visual person and I just—I saw Tolkien’s world in my head, and that’s been really an important thing to me, as a designer and a visual person. I’m a Tolkien fan because he represents hope, and I know that’s sort of cliche, but more than that, he represents change and being able to change. You can work for what you believe in, and you might get there, but it might not look like what you thought it was going to be. And that’s ok. And you still won, I guess. Just sort of flexibility and fighting for what you believe in, I think that’s an important part of Tolkien. I’ve read Tolkien through hard times in my life. I’ve picked up books when I’ve just needed to escape. I’ve read Tolkien in good times of my life, when I wanted to be joyful. It became very important to me when I had my son. Then I felt like I needed to pass that on, and he is now a member of my smial. So that’s really nice. But I think he’s meant—it’s hard to put into words what he’s meant. I think I’ll read him forever, and I think that he’s an important part of my life that is a constant, I guess. It’s sort of a constant, so no matter where I am in life, he’ll be there with me. Also, in my last thirty seconds, as an artist, his artwork is profound. The first time I saw The Hobbit cover, I was absolutely blown away. I couldn’t believe that this man who wrote these works could also paint and illustrate the way he painted and illustrated. So he’s more than just a writer. He’s an artist that has spoken to me throughout my life."
294,23,Female,20190810,eng,Prague,,Czech Republic,"I am twenty-three, and I am from Czech Republic, so sorry for my English. I first encountered Tolkien when I was about ten years old and my mother gave me the book of Hobbit, which I think she regrets now. It was the Czech edition—the first Czech edition—with really strange illustrations from Mr. Salamoun. I don’t know what the Professor would think about that, but it had a lot of snails inside. It was really strange. I think I am one of the few people from my generation who actually didn’t encounter the movies until they were older. So I wasn’t influenced by them, even when I was reading Lord of the Rings, which I am really proud of. That was my first encounter. I think I became a Tolkien fan after I read Silmarillion for the second time, because the first time was just difficult. I became a fan because I never read a story that would be so wholly encompassing: the images, the story, the symbolism. It was just a whole new world. It was such a big whole, and I had the feeling that it’s all real and it’s just outside of my touch. And what it means to me, I think it’s a way of life because I really live with the stories, and I need a story in my life. It’s a necessary part of my life to have some stories I could tell myself. This story is just everywhere above and below, and it’s so strange I just never got out of this story, which didn’t happen with another story."
295,39,Female,20190810,eng,,,Canada,"I am thirty-nine. I am from Switzerland via Canada. I was about ten or eleven when I first was introduced to the works of Tolkien. My parents had a copy of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings at home. I think it was a used copy even then. And I read it every year, at least, since then. So that’s going on thirty-something years. In the beginning it was only The Lord of the Rings, but later, in high school, I sort of branched out. It was nerve-wracking a bit before the internet because I would go into the bookstore and I’d see copies of The History of Middle-earth and I’m like “What is this? Where do I start?” Finally, I sort of figured out, ok, start with the Book of Lost Tales, and then from there it became a complete sort of linguistic-poetic fascination. One of the main reasons I was a fan after reading The Lord of the Rings and some of the other books was because of how complete it was. You’d read other fantasy and it was kind of—you know the language development wasn’t there, or some of the other world building was missing. With Tolkien’s works, I find you get a whole, and it’s complete, and everything interlinks, and that was one of the main reasons I always really, really enjoyed reading them. I tried translating them a few times for my family back when I was Turkish, and then that’s also when you really get into finding how intricate the language is, and how some of the words are very old fashioned and some of them are very modern, so then you have to kind of achieve that balance."
296,27,Female,20190810,eng,Stourbridge,,England,"I am twenty-seven years old, and I am from a town called Stourbridge, which is in the West Midlands area of the United Kingdom. I first heard about Tolkien when—I think it was the first film—before the first film came out in the cinema. My mum took me to see that with my brother and after that came out it started airing on TV, so I would just keep turning that on every time it came on. A few years later Middle-earth Festival came about, and I applied to be a volunteer. Through that I met a lot of fellow Tolkien fans, because at home I am the only Tolkien fan, so I don’t get to talk about Tolkien with my family. So that gave me the opportunity to meet and speak with other Tolkien fans and befriend them as well. One thing that I do is I kind of write fan fiction on Twitter. It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s kind of like you tweet as normal, but you tweet as a character, so it can be anywhere between one to like ten tweets. I have met a lot of people through that. I’ve actually met one girl in person through that. So, Tolkien in a way has given me lots of friends and lots of networking—people to kind of network with and go to lots of Middle-earth themed events as well. I am also a bit of a collector. I have quite a few Tolkien books, which takes up at least one shelf in my bookcase. I’ve got a dedicated shelf on my bookcase for Tolkien books. Although I did start with the films, I came into the books a little bit later on when I was seventeen, I believe. I got a book set for my seventeenth birthday, and from there I’ve just kind of collected books. I am also a Tauriel cosplayer. I’m still learning skills, so it’s not perfect, but I would eventually like to join a professional costuming group with that. It’s just a matter of getting it to a good standard for that."
297,29,Female,20190810,eng,Bayersoien,,Germany,"I am from Germany. I am twenty-nine years old, next to thirty next month. I’ve been absorbed into Tolkien for quite a while now. It all started with a map. I was with my cousin visiting his father, my uncle, and they were both at the same time reading a bunch of really weird looking green books, and they were bent over a table, over a map, and one was saying, “Oh, I’ve just crossed this space here, and we’re now on the boat, and I’m really curious what’s coming next.” And my uncle said, “Oh, oh, you’re there. Oh, that’s interesting. I’m already here with Gimli, and—Oh, I shouldn’t say this. Ah, ah, you’ll get there eventually.” And I thought “Gimli, Anduin, what are they talking about? What’s this?” And I got really intrigued. Those books were reserved because they were currently reading them. In the meantime the movies came out, the Peter Jackson movies of The Lord of the Rings, and they didn’t interest me at all, really. I didn’t even know that those movies were those books that they were talking about earlier, and I just didn’t like that everyone just liked it so much. It was such a boom. I was a teenager and I didn’t really like stuff that everyone liked. So I did not go to the cinema. Next year, the second movie was already out; it was winter, and we were at my grandparents’ for Christmas. My grandfather, who had read the books, got the first movie, as a DVD, as a present, so we decided as a family to watch it. My fingernails, they looked even more horrible than those of Frodo in the movies because I was just so absorbed into that story. So the next day we went into the cinema and watched the second movie, and then finally I started to read the books. Many years later, I moved from Portugal, where I grew up, to Germany, and I found out that there is a German Tolkien Society of all things. I thought, wow, there’s a lot more people dealing with this and finding this cool. So I joined and ever since it’s been a blast. I’ve written my Master’s degree in history on Tolkien’s Great War experiences. I’m releasing a book together with Janet Brennan Croft from the U.S. I’m the commissioner for international guests and affairs of the German Tolkien Society. I’m on a podcast on Tolkien. I met my partner through Tolkien. So, it’s really been a blast, and Tolkien has given me really a lot, which I’m really grateful. And I think this project is just amazing to keep all of that together."
298,23,Male,20190810,eng,Appleton,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-three years old, from Appleton, Wisconsin, in the United States. I don’t know for sure what my first encounter with Tolkien’s works was, because it was so early that I can’t remember exactly. I remember my dad had a ratty, old copy of the first authorized American paperback edition, the Ballantine books with those weird cover illustrations, and I have a very vivid memory of him reading those to me around the same time that the films came out. I’m pretty sure he also read The Hobbit to me before then, so this would be when I was about, I don’t know, five years old, something like that. It’s all very far back in my memory and something that doesn’t have a definite starting point for me. I would say that I’m a Tolkien fan because—it’s a difficult question for me to answer. In a way, I wouldn’t even use the word ‘fan.’ That doesn’t seem quite right to me, just because of the connotations of that word. There’s a Tolkien quote where he sort of makes fun of fanism, and clubism, and cultism, and these sorts of attitudes. I take that to heart a little bit just in the sense of—for me it’s not so much being a Tolkien fan as being someone, I don’t know what the right word would be, but being a Tolkien explorer, or an investigator, or appreciator. Tolkien, to me, means the world in a way, because he’s been this huge portal into all these other areas of inquiry: reading, reading Beowulf, traveling to the United Kingdom, pursuing a degree in publishing, reading dozens more books than I ever would have if I never met Tolkien. He forms this huge part of my identity or my reason for doing what I do. There’s a spiritual core to it all that means that I don’t know where it will end up or what the end of the adventure is."
299,55,Female,20190810,eng,York,,England,"I am fifty-five years old and I come from England. More precisely, I was born in Leicestershire, moved to Norfolk when I was four, where I was brought up, but I’ve lived the last twenty-seven years in North Yorkshire. I first came across Tolkien at primary school in Norfolk, at the age of ten, in 1974. We had one of the books that were open for us all to read: a copy of The Hobbit. And it was very popular. We all, in the class, a lot of people read it, and it sort of became my turn. There was a class joke going around, because one of the boys had the surname Bezik and everyone thought it was very funny because we had beeswax in Beorn’s hall, so he got nicknamed ‘Beeswax’ for a while. But yes, I read it and loved it, really loved it. One of the things I particularly liked was that, unlike in other children’s books, Tolkien realized that you can have the sun and the moon in the sky at the same time, which I was very impressed by. Really loved it, and really, yes, I can remember driving around in the car and when I saw the trees going over the road I’d say to my parents, “Oh, this is like Mirkwood.” But I took very seriously what I was told, that The Lord of the Rings I should wait until I was older. What got me into that was Brian Sibley’s wonderful Radio 4 series, which came on at just the right time when I was seventeen, and it was a friend who alerted me to it. I’d seen the Radio Times and thought, oh, well that looks interesting, but when this friend sort of played it to me—got me to listen to it—I was hooked, and that was it. Read the books from the school library, bought the full set of books for my eighteenth birthday and joined the Tolkien Society in 1982. So I’ve got me thirty-three year membership badge. It’s been an absolutely crucial part of my life ever since. One of the things in particular that it has developed in me is singing, because again, it was something I did when I was younger, but it was through my involvement with Tolkien, and things I was doing with the Cambridge Tolkien Society, that got me into singing, which is a major part of my life now. Loads of friends; Tolkien Society’s been absolutely brilliant. There are people here I’ve known for decades. The whole thing, the whole ethos of it. Quite why, I don’t know, I’ve always liked epic anyway. I’ve always been interested in Romans and Greeks, and Tom Shippey was saying the other day that he thought Tolkien was the new Homer. I love epic, so that may be part of it. My father used to tell me a lot of legendary tales as well, and I love the Greek myths. But anyway, I think I’ll wrap up now, but that’s it in a nutshell. "
300,36,Male,20190810,eng,Horten,,Norway,"I come from Horten, in Norway. I first encountered The Lord of the Rings in 1992 when I visited the home of a childhood friend. I saw the book in the shelf in his house, and I thought, wow, that’s a large book. It looks exciting, and I started looking through it and it caught my interest, mainly because of the contents—the little I gleamed from browsing it—but also the length impressed me because it was over one thousand pages. It was, without doubt, over double the length of any book I read up until then. So, what I did was the following summer I borrowed it at the library, and during the summer I read it. It took me about two months. Since then Tolkien has been a coming and going interest for me. One of the reasons for that is, I think, the depth of his world, which is unlike almost anything else I’ve encountered, literary or filmatic. I go back from time to time and I still find new and exciting things in this world. So, he has been for me like the returning point, or the focal point, of my fantasy encounters in various media."
301,22,Male,20190810,eng,Durham,,England,"I am twenty-two and I am from Durham, United Kingdom. So, I first encountered Tolkien when I was about four years old. My aunt gave me the VCR of The Fellowship of the Ring in very early 2002 and I fell in love with it. I managed to listen to the audiobook of The Hobbit from the library for a trip to Cornwall not too long after that, followed by Brian Sibley’s radio play, which meant that by the time I actually somehow got into the cinema at age six, in 2003, to watch Return of the King, I was very disappointed about the lack of the Scouring of the Shire. For me Tolkien has been entwined with pretty much my earliest memories. I’ve been in love with Tolkien ever since. I’ve been doing things from memorizing every Trivial Pursuit answer for the Lord of the Rings Film Trivial Pursuit. I struggle to remember the ages I read most of the books. The Hobbit, at least, was a very early age. Tolkien helped get me into lots of other fantasy. For some reason, I got bored during my GCSEs, so I took Dimitra Fimi’s online course, and that kind of got me more interested in Tolkien as an academic subject, admittedly more as a side project to my computer science and my main stuff. So that’s a little bit of the history of Tolkien and me. Why am I a Tolkien fan? One of the things I love most is just the lore and the background and the history. As a kid I’ve always kind of loved history and just learning more about things like that, and then just having this wealth of information to the point that Middle-earth is almost more real than the history of—we probably have more on the history of Middle-earth than we have the histories of some of the relatively new countries at this point. I just love the depth of knowledge that there is. Then on top of loving Tolkien and being a Tolkien fan for that sense, ever since I’ve got involved with the Tolkien Society that has just helped cement staying as a fan just because, for me, I go to Oxenmoot every year, not just for the talks, but because at this point the people feel like family. One of the reasons that I was so adamant to say yes when I was asked to help organize the Tolkien 2019 event was that, to me, it was like, “Oh, you’ve got to do committee meetings sort of like every month.” It’s like, “Oh, great! I get to spend more time with my friends which I’ve made through the TS.” What Tolkien means to me now is that my entire life revolves around it, almost despite having a completely separate subject. I’m now managing to intertwine that by doing digital humanities projects."
302,59,Female,20190810,eng,Birmingham,,England,"I am a Scottish lady who lives in Birmingham, and I am fifty-nine, about to be sixty. I first encountered Tolkien in the late Seventies. My husband at the time got a book out of the library. That’s what we did. Every week we got books out of the library, and he came home with this Fellowship of the Ring book. And he raved about it so much I thought, well, I want to read something else by this author. So, I went and got another book that he’d written called The Two Towers, and I started to read that. After a couple of pages I realized it was probably a sequel. But he read so slowly that I read The Two Towers and The Return of the King before I got my hands on The Fellowship of the Ring. So I read them completely out of sequence the first time round. And I was instantly enchanted. I then was introduced to the Tolkien Society, and over the last almost thirty years I’ve been member, committee member, and most recently I’m a trustee now of the Tolkien Society, something I’m immensely proud of. Why am I a Tolkien fan? I think that is the most individual question and the great strength of Tolkien, because what he brings to me he won’t bring to anybody else. When I first read it in a difficult patch in my life, he answered questions, he brought me comfort. And then he took me on an intellectual quest. Now I’m going deeper into that and exploring. But at the same time, when things are rough, I can still go back to him and get comfort. The introduction to the Tolkien Society brought me friendship, brought me immense fellowship, and that’s a gift I can’t ever underestimate. Some of us were asked to do a talk at the EGM about the Tolkien Society, and our involvement with it, and I kind of got a bit emotional with what I wrote, and said that what Tolkien has meant to me, and the Tolkien Society has meant to me, is love. I’ve made friendships that have endured all these years. But I’ve been thinking about it since and he took me on an intellectual journey. The person I was in the late Seventies would never have attempted an open university degree, and I now have an open university degree. So Tolkien to me means love, friendship, and he’s enhanced the journey I’ve made through my life."
303,32,Male,20190810,eng,Broadstairs,,England,"I am thirty-two, and I am from Broadstairs in Kent. When did I first encounter the works of Tolkien? At school, about aged eight, my teacher liked The Hobbit, and she introduced us to the book and showed it to the class, and she gave it to one of the girls, who was really good at reading, to read and then tell the rest of us what she thought of it. She really hated it, so it put me off reading it for a long time. Then, when I was older, I thought I’d give it another go, and I really enjoyed it. So that was the start, and then I only came back to Tolkien a lot later when the Peter Jackson movies came out, and then I read The Lord of the Rings, but only after the first film. Why am I a Tolkien fan? I am a big fan of any make-believe world, and I think that his world is the most amazing world that somebody could create imaginary-wise. It’s so full, so detailed. It’s beautiful, and perfect, and sad. It’s the best imaginary world I can imagine. I just don’t think anyone could ever make a better one, so I think I’ll stick with him. What has he meant to me? A lot actually. A huge amount. I think that the stories make me really think about our lives now, in this world, and how they could translate into what’s good, what’s bad, and why people make decisions that they do, and what drives them to do it. I think it’s very insightful. Whenever I go into a bookshop the first books I always find or look for are under ‘T.’ I’m always looking for Tolkien or anything new about Tolkien because I always want more. I feel never satisfied like with other works like Game of Thrones or His Dark Materials. I’ve read a lot about them, and there’s a point where I feel I’ve had enough, whereas with J.R.R. Tolkien there’s always more to explore. I think with the Tolkien society, that’s the best way to do that."
304,42,Male,20190810,eng,London,,England,"I am forty-two, and I am from London. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I was about nine or ten. That was when I read The Hobbit. And then my parents took me to see a play of The Hobbit, and then a few years later I read The Lord of the Rings. This would be when I was about twelve or thirteen. That really got me into reading that a lot. I then read The Silmarillion a few years later. Then when I went to university, at about the age of nineteen, I got involved with the local Tolkien Society and the Cambridge Tolkien Society. After that, I found the National Tolkien Society in the UK, and for about five years I was heavily involved with organizing events and also some of the big events when you have people coming from around the world to meet and give talks. I’m a Tolkien fan primarily because of his works and the story, but also the connection that they give between people, and also the academic side of the responses to his work is something that I have a fascination with, an interest; and I have occasionally written a few academic papers myself. Not too many. What Tolkien means to me is, you hear people say things like fellowship a lot, which it does mean that to me. It’s also a personal thing on a personal level, being able to connect to what he has written and the way other people feel about what he has written, and seeing the response of people in artworks, and in written form, and all the music and singing. There’s a lot there for people to respond to. And there’s an endless world, it seems, to explore sometimes."
305,34,Female,20190810,eng,Sudbury,,England,"I am thirty-four years old and I currently live in Sudbury, Ashbourne, Derbyshire, in the UK. I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was about four or five. I read The Hobbit with my dad, and that’s pretty much how I learned to read is, as a bedtime story, he’d do the reading and I’d pick out the words that I could. Then the more we got through, the more words I was reading and he was kind of catching the ones that I couldn’t say. It meant that my infant school teachers had a whale of a time with my spelling book because I was terrible at spelling, but I’d come in and go, “How do I spell ‘hobbit?’ I want that in my book.” And they’d be like, “That’s not a real word.” There were other books like Alan Gardner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and me coming into infant school at five or six and asking for ‘Brisingamen’ in my spelling book went down brilliantly. I suppose that’s why I’m a Tolkien fan is that it was very immediate to me. It was part of everyday life. As a child we’d go running around looking for hobbits in the woods nearby. My dad regularly would say ‘Glorfindel’ for no apparent reason, but it was still good. It was just escapism as well as being immediate, so, particularly when I was older and I read Lord of the Rings and I had quite a few of the art books, is that I’d sit there and sometimes just get lost in one of the illustrations, or get lost in a passage of the text just getting to read particularly about the landscapes. It’s like that approach into Rivendell was just something that has been an inspiration. I’ve been to Switzerland and stood there and thought, wow, this is Rivendell. It’s been a comfort and it’s been something that has engaged me as well to get into things like history, draw, make friends, challenge myself to do new things like come here. Tolkien’s meant a lot to me and it’s a pleasure to record this. "
306,59,Female,20190810,eng,Crossville,Tennessee,United States,"I am fifty-nine, from Crossville, Tennessee, in the U.S. I first encountered Tolkien when I was in college. There was a young man that I admired, and he had the nickname of ‘Hobbit.’ So, I asked him, why Hobbit? What is a hobbit? And so he looked at me in disbelief because I didn’t know, and then he proceeded to show me the book and his feet. I was entranced, with the book that is, and asked my parents for the four volumes for Christmas. They gave me the boxed Ballantine paperbacks, and they regretted that because I literally disappeared for four days while reading. I was only seen for meals. And since that initial immersion, I’ve expanded my Tolkien reading and developed an appreciation of the breadth and depth of his knowledge that he brought to his writing, his illustrations, and his maps. But being a Tolkien fan means more to me than just the reading of his works. It means being part of a community of people who appreciate Tolkien and his gifts to us. I love coming together with people in person, in spirit, or online. We toast the Professor on his birthday in January. We promote Tolkien in the Reading Day in March, and I’ve even hosted a Birthday Toast in honor of Bilbo and Frodo in September, complete with seedcake. As a fan of Tolkien I’ve made some life-long friends, who are also travel companions. We share admiration for Tolkien and the movies and his scholarship. Together we’ve traveled to New Zealand, to Oxford, and to see the Marquette Archives. So, all-in-all, Tolkien has meant so much to me in so many different ways. Intellectually because of developing an interest and appreciation for philology and mythology of the North; English Literature; scholarship on Tolkien; the friendships that I’ve already mentioned, lifelong; and even the online and remote friendships through the Tolkien Society. Reading particular authors, and illustrators, and even the radio play and movie makers: Hammond and Scull, John Rateliff, Douglas Anderson, Humphrey Carpenter, John Garth, Alan Lee, John Howe, Brian Sibley, Peter Jackson, and particularly I greatly appreciate Christopher Tolkien and Tom Shippey. The movies gave me an appreciation of Middle-earth as New Zealand, and I most particularly appreciate Tolkien, the man, because I’ve seen him through his family album; I’ve seen the Father Christmas Letters; I’ve seen Roverandum and Mr. Bliss. Tolkien was clearly a caring man and father. He’s so much more to him in addition to his writing and scholarship. And he gave me names for my pets."
307,55,Female,20190811,eng,,,United States,"I am fifty-five years old. I grew up in the United States. When did I first encounter Tolkien? My father, when I was five years old, started reading me The Hobbit, and I was just fascinated. He did the voice of Smeagol during “Riddles in the Dark,” and until this day the voice of Smeagol is still my father’s voice; and of course, all the pronunciations that he did are also his pronunciations. And you can’t correct me—that’s how it’s pronounced. And then, later in my life, I read The Lord of the Rings, but he also read it with me, and I also have the Treebeard voice from my father. My whole family was into Tolkien; all of his books—The Silmarillion. I lost count at seventeen of how many times I’ve read the series, and that was when I was about twenty-five, so I don’t know how many times I’ve read it now. My uncle had nicknames for his children that were Bilbo and Frodo, and so we knew them in the summer vacations as Bilbo and Frodo. Later on they were their own names, but as a child that was fascinating. Why am I a Tolkien fan? I am very creative. I have an imagination. Nothing was ever real in my life. I just played right into that. And as I’ve grown older, I’ve tried to put my stuff on paper, and I’ve always tried to emulate Tolkien because he was so intricate, so much history. The world was so real that sometimes I think that when I pass away that’s where I’m going, is Middle-earth. I don’t think I’m going to go to the Promised Land of the Elves, but I would be very happy to go to Middle-earth. So, that’s what it means to me. It’s given me also an escape if things were going not so well. I can’t emphasize how important he’s been to my life—and his books, and the amount of escape, and freedom to talk about imaginary worlds as real, which, some people, that’s not allowed, but if you’re talking about Tolkien, it’s very allowed. Thank you."
308,43,Female,20190819,eng,Austin,Texas,United States,"I am forty-three years old. I am from Austin, Texas. I first technically encountered Tolkien while I was still in my mother’s womb. Up until two weeks before I was born, I was supposed to be named Arwen, and then she found the name Whitney from a little girl in a bathroom and, alas, I lost the name Arwen forever. But that’s okay; it planted itself permanently on my psyche. Mom read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to my brothers and I when we were very small, and it created a lifelong love of fantasy, tabletop gaming, and immersive environments since as long as I can remember. I’m a fan of Tolkien and all of his works because I like the depth of creation that he made for his world. It’s the only literary and fantasy world that I’ve ever existed in that I felt like every sentence that was happening in the book had volumes of history behind it. So, you could read something like “The Cats of Queen Beruthiel” and you’re like, “I bet he knew who that was. I’m gonna go look that up. I need to find out who that is.” Sometimes, he did write something about it, other times, absolutely nothing. It’s been my entire life’s work to figure out whose broach Tom Bombadil brought out from the Wight’s lair in the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, to figure out who that was. Tolkien has meant the world to me. His work impacted everything that I do in my life, everything I have ever done with myself as an entertainment professional. I started working at Renaissance Faires when I was seventeen years old in part because I wanted to have something that connected with that idea of fantasy. I started as a Fairy and later fulfilled my childhood dream of being an Elf. And I’ve worked in entertainment ever since then. His work has set the tone for my entire life and I’m very pleased to not only be a part of this but to be a part of his continuing fandom."
309,73,Female,20190819,eng,Ann Arbor,Michigan,United States,"I am seventy-three years old, and I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I first read The Lord of the Rings in 1967 when they came out in paperback. My dad bought Return of the King for my mother and I, thinking we’d like it. We very quickly realized we needed two other books to read first, which we got. We read them together over my college Christmas break. She would read them during the day. I would read them at night, curled up in a big comfy chair eating her raisin-filled cookies, which I fancied as lembas. I have read them every Christmas since. Many readings. I am not really a fantasy fan. I’m a philosophy major. I taught philosophy. To me, Tolkien’s works were philosophical literature or spiritual epic, not fantasy. I admire his writer’s techniques. I love the way he can draw a picture with words, very much like Robert Louis Stevenson, another favorite author. He can make a picture but still leave a few blank spaces for your imagination. So, when I read Tolkien’s fiction, I’m having fun. He’s full of literary and philosophical, mythological iconography. There’s puzzles. There’s mysteries. He can write about the lyrical beauty of the countryside, followed right up with the brutality of warfare. He’s a literary master in his ability to illuminate and to resonate with the reader. His works speak to me at a very deep level of Christian thought that transcends organized religion. It addresses the pan-human ethical questions of right and wrong action in the face of adversity, self-sacrifice on behalf of a greater good for humanity. These are things that draw on all the great plot systems. I draw from Tolkien what I call “supportive inspiration” from the struggles of his characters—how they apply their situations; how I can apply them to my life. His works would be the books I would be stranded on a desert island with. My cats are named Merry and Pippin, and I have many lifelong friends that I met on the IMDb Tolkien boards. I am athene-5. Thank you. "
310,26,Male,20190819,eng,Utrecht,,Netherlands,"I am twenty-six years old. I am from Utrecht, in the Netherlands, and the first time I have encountered Tolkien was actually before I could even read. My father used to read me bedtime stories from a small book. The only story I can remember is Farmer Giles of Ham; but, supposedly, according to my mother, he also read parts of The Hobbit to me—the more child-friendly parts—but I don’t really remember that. Then, a few years later, he gave me The Hobbit and I started reading that. I had a bit of a tough time even getting through it because it wasn’t really a hard book—for most kids my age it probably was, I was around eight years old, I think—but it was mostly just the motivation, because I always thought from the stories that he told me the hobbits were kind of lame, and I didn’t really identify with them. But he managed to push me on, and I continued and I fell in love with it after the cave troll part. Then, a few years later, he got me started on Lord of the Rings. I went through that as well. This was around the time that Harry Potter was a big rage in my country, I think. Again, I’m not really sure because it’s so long ago. But yeah that’s kind of how I got into Tolkien. Actually, recently, I have only started reading the English translations, and it’s like reading the whole story again. What makes Tolkien special for me is the connection it has to my father. He died a couple years ago. He had a pretty long time that he was sick, so I don’t really remember the times that he was very healthy; but discussing Lord of the Rings at the dinner table and all that, that was a big—a happy moment for me. And every time I read it, I get back to that, and that makes it important for me."
311,24,Female,20190819,eng,Brookfield,,Wisconsin,"I am twenty-four, and I am originally from Brookfield, Wisconsin. I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien when I was in middle school. I had just finished reading Harry Potter and my middle school teacher kind of recommended that I start it with The Hobbit and that’s really where it started. I initially became a fan I think just because I loved the characters and I found a personal relationship with many of them, specifically Bilbo Baggins. I really just related to him a lot. And then as I read The Lord of the Rings, I related to Pippin a lot. My friends actually nicknamed me that in college because of how much I was sort of like him. As I’ve gone on, though, he’s meant a lot to me in three very specific ways: in my relationships with my friends; in my relationships with my students; and in my relationship with my faith. I’m a middle-school teacher, and I teach The Hobbit in sixth grade. I used to teach it in fifth and sixth when I taught fifth and sixth together, but now I just teach middle school. So, I’m bringing back now that I am in my third year of teaching. I use it to talk both about Catholicism and our relationship with that to young people, because I feel like that’s a great place to start and since that book was initially intended for young people, that it is a good place to get them to start thinking about those and tackling those bigger questions. In my faith life, some of my earliest images of Jesus that I really remember, like distinctly, were Gandalf and Aragorn. I prayed with those images of Christ all the way through college; and when I began learning Ignatian spirituality at Creighton, that was where I started, was with the image of Aragorn. Then, in my personal life, one of my first conversations that I remember having with my fiancee was about the world building of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. We had a two-hour conversation in the business college, and we just sat there, and we talked for hours. I knew that if this person shared my passion that we were going to make a pretty awesome couple. We actually compare ourselves to Sam and Rosie. And it led to the relationship of servant leadership that we feel that we embody together. I just have found that that was a wonderful place to have our relationship."
312,29,Female,20190820,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-nine years old and I am a recent transplant to Milwaukee. I can first credit my dear mother with introducing me to Tolkien’s works through The Hobbit. I have to confess, I did not want to read it. My first reaction was, “Hobbit? What’s a hobbit? That sounds dumb.” She never tires of bringing that up and laughing at me about it. So, I had the book; I didn’t touch it for a while. Then my mom picked up a dramatized version of The Hobbit on audiobook. It was cassette tapes—it tells you how long ago that was—and sort of forced us to listen to it. She just played it in the car, and my sister and I didn’t have a choice. Well, joke’s on me, I enjoyed it. I got really into it. Of course I didn’t admit that at first because I was a preteen, very cool. Didn’t want to admit my mom was right. I kind of like to think that Tolkien and I have a little something in common. My mother and Tolkien’s mother both homeschooled us for a period of time, and introduced us to a love of languages and good stories, in my case that would be Tolkien’s Legendarium. Fast-forward a couple of years, my dad was in the Air Force, and he was stationed overseas for a year. That was a stressful time for my mom and sister and I, so one thing we did to kind of keep our minds off things was my mom acquired the Lord of the Rings audiobooks, the full-length, unabridged, just to kind of take our minds off it. We listened to those on our drive to church, which was about a two hour round trip. That was the closest WELS Lutheran church to us. And we all got really into it, even to the point where we’d get home and just sit in the driveway and keep listening because we couldn’t stand to shut it off. So, we all got really into it. About this time, I saved all my gift money for about a year to get a grey cloak, and an Elven broach, and a matching ring because I wanted to be a member of the Fellowship. Fast-forward a little bit to college, towards the end of my college experience, I was dealing with some personal turmoil and tragedy, and a heavy course load. Around that same time, I was working on my senior thesis for my English major, using Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves. Right before my thesis was due, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey came out, like literally the night before it was due. I made the questionable decision to go see it, the midnight showing, in spite of my deadline, and it actually gave me the joy and energy to finally finish it. For much of my life, Tolkien’s provided the sense of beauty, adventure, escapism, fellowship, and kind of nicely tying in with my Christian faith. So, to Tolkien, I would say: Elen sila lumenn’ omentielvo. A star shines on the hour of our meeting."
313,26,Male,20190823,eng,Salt Lake City ,Utah,United States,"I am twenty-six years old, from Salt Lake City, Utah. My dad first read The Hobbit to me when I was very young, but my first memorable experience of Lord of the Rings was by seeing The Fellowship of the Ring in theaters, at age seven. In fact, I loved the movie so much that immediately afterwards I read the entire trilogy before The Two Towers came out. Soon after, that became a Christmas Day tradition with my family, to go see The Two Towers, The Return of the King in theaters, as a present to me. As a kid, I loved the books for the adventures and the heroics, and as an adult I still do. It’s still the same awesome adventure and heroics, but there’s so much more. In fact, I recently took a class on college, Lord of the Rings on Page and Screen, and it was my favorite class ever. I’ve never before realized just how complete the world of Tolkien was: its history, its lore, the characters are just so connected and interwoven. I almost feel spoiled for fantasy. In fact, when people ask me what kind of books I like to read, I’ll say, “Oh, I love fantasy!” which translates to, “I love reading The Lord of the Rings and a small handful of other books.” In terms of what Tolkien really means to me in a deeper meaning, I love his messages on hope and true courage. One of the motifs is hope without guarantees, which, as you might expect, is fighting against the darkness and battling evil, hopeful for victory, but not always knowing what’s going to come. I’ve seen that that’s really important in the quote unquote ‘real world’ as well. There aren’t any Aragorns, the long-lost King of Gondor; but, just like him, we can hope for better a future. We can battle darkness no matter the odds that are in front of us. We’re more like Samwise Gamgee, a hobbit from Bagshot Row, where all we can do is try our best to hold what’s dear to us, and we can rise above our stations to really combat evil. That’s what I’ve really come to take from Tolkien is that we can all be courageous in our own way; and I think in a world such as we live in today, it’s especially important to show courage, and to really hope for a better tomorrow. Thank you."
314,26,Male,20190824,eng,St. Michael,Minnesota,United States,"I am twenty-six years old, and I am from a smallish German farming town—St. Michael, Minnesota. I think, as it’s becoming more and more popular as time goes on, I think I’m one of the first generations that was first introduced to Tolkien through the movies. I was nine years old when the first one came out. My father was a huge fan of the books from his childhood, both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. He kind of did a pre-screening of the movie to see if it wouldn’t be too scary for a nine year old. He deemed it okay, and I just remember being just enthralled in the story and the cinematography. Peter Jackson was phenomenal in those movies. Couldn’t wait for the next years for the other two installments to come out, and then when I was at a time when I could actually sit down with a huge book and just dive into it, I did. Even fell more in love with the world, with the characters. Why I am a fan is that you can just go back into it whenever you want to. I’m never not in a mood to read Tolkien, which isn’t the case in a lot of other books that I’ve read, even though they’re good books. Why I keep going back to it is, there’s a sense of familiarity with the characters. Frodo and Sam—you’ve gone on this journey with them, and his writing style, it’s like you’re right there, going along with them on this whole journey. You get to know them and you are happy when they’re happy. You’re sad when they’re sad, and I think it’s just a huge testament to his writing style that he is able to write in a way that his readers are totally captivated and have a huge interest in the characters that he writes. One last thing that I kind of share with Tolkien, I share his Catholic world view. For three years of my life I was a Franciscan Friar. So, in my times of meditation, after Bible scripture, the things I meditated on most was words from Tolkien’s works. Ainulindale from The Silmarillion is just beautiful prose and just beautiful creation narrative. It’s just a huge depth of beauty to just keep going back into and you never get bored of it. "
315,33,Male,20190824,eng,Shreveport,Louisiana,United States,"I am actually about to turn thirty-four in September, and I am from the Shreveport, Louisiana area. I first encountered Tolkien’s works, I guess indirectly, through the Rankin Bass Hobbit and Return of the King movies when I was a kid. I couldn’t even tell you how young I was it’s so long ago. The first thing I read was probably The Hobbit, but I can’t really promise that. The first thing that I remember distinctly reading was The Lord of the Rings itself, and that was, oddly enough, the first time I read it, I was so young that I didn’t realize it was a trilogy that you were supposed to read in order, picked up The Two Towers first, and quickly put it down because it was like, it doesn’t make any sense. When I finally picked it up again and reread it the right way, my mind was just kind of blown. Ever since then, I’ve just been collecting more and more stuff about Tolkien or by Tolkien. I’ve read pretty much everything he ever wrote that was published for general consumption and pretty much all of Christopher Tolkien’s work since then. It just amazes me how deep the guy’s thought was. I mean, if you really dig into what he knew that went into his work, it’s amazing how he brings all these different things together and ties them into a really nice package. For instance, not too long ago, the book that came out, The Tale of Kullervo, which kind of gives you a background into how he derived the Turin Turambar story in The Silmarillion. You can see where he got the germ of the story, but at the same time you realize that he did so much to it and developed it so much. It’s just that richness, I think, that keeps me coming back. There’s always something new to discover. There’s always more to find. Like every time I read The Lord of the Rings, I’ll read a passage and something will stand out that didn’t stand out in a way that it did before, and I’ll be like, “Well, that’s an interesting point that I never thought of.” So, you can never really plumb the whole depths of what’s there, so that’s a lot of what really keeps me coming back and why I’m a fan. As far as what he means to me, that’s kind of a hard one to put into really short term words, but he’s—I’m not Catholic, but I am Christian, so a lot of the theming that he puts into the stories, and the way he treats stories that are not, per se, Christian, but are nevertheless very Christian themed, it really means a lot to me that he’s able to do a lot of that without being overt. You read C.S. Lewis and it’s kind of obvious what he’s doing with the allegory, whereas Tolkien, of course, didn’t like allegory and he was really good at avoiding it, and yet you can still see, if you look below the surface, what’s there. And so I think what he means to me is that you can do really great art that isn’t beat-you-over-the-head and it still works."
316,27,Non-Binary,20190827,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-seven years old, and I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first discovered Tolkien in the summer of 2006. My younger sister had actually watched Fellowship of the Ring, and she told me, “Hey I think you would like this, you’re a big fantasy fan.” So, I watched it and I automatically fell in love. I watched the rest of the trilogy and then I went for my mom’s old copies of the books and I was hardcore into everything Tolkien ever since then. I think a big part of the reason why it drew me in so much was because I was going through a difficult time. My mom had recently passed away. I was getting bullied at school. Reading fantasy and being able to escape to a different place kind of helped me get through some really, really difficult years. I also loved reading about different kinds of heroes we have, like Legolas and Aragorn and Gimli, who are your traditional warriors; and then we also have hobbits who do amazing things even though they basically just want to be home not doing those amazing things. I loved the history and the detail of the setting. I wrote my Bachelor’s thesis on The Hobbit. I taught a class on The Hobbit when I was teaching college comp and I’ve always just been super fascinated by its cultural impact. I think what Tolkien means to me is best described by a Galadriel quote: He is a light to me in dark places when all other lights have gone out. Reading the books, watching the films, interacting with fans, meant a lot to me. It gave me and my oldest cousin who is now one of my close friends a connection because we were cut from the same cloth, but we never really connected until we both found out that we love Lord of the Rings. And I told her, I was like, “Hey Arianna, I read the books.” And she said, “Oh, I read them too. I loved them.” Just kind of the themes in Tolkien’s works: like the care for the environment, the care for others, are things that are just really interesting and important, I think. "
317,43,Female,20190905,eng,Dayton,Ohio,United States,"I am forty-three years old and I am from Dayton, Ohio. I first encountered Tolkien when I was five years old. My father read me The Hobbit every night. Every night we would read one chapter, and I remember that I got so excited by the story that about halfway through, I had to know how the story was going to end—I had to know if he was going to make it home okay—so I read the last page of the book, and then I felt so guilty that I did that that I told my dad. He got so bowed out that I had read the last page that he didn’t want to finish reading it to me, so I promised him that I would not remember what happened on that last page, and that when he read if for me the first time it would be a surprise. What’s kind of funny about that is that, now, when I read, oftentimes I don’t remember what happens at the end of the book, so I have to reread it again to kind of get to the end. It’s kind of funny how it almost embedded itself into my reading habits from that very first book. Tolkien was probably the first book that I got really excited about and something that I wanted to read again. I’ve read The Hobbit, thirty, forty times. I’ve read Lord of the Rings probably fifty or a hundred times. It’s just something that I revisit over, and over, and over, again. The thing that I love about Lord of the Rings is that it actually effected what I do for a living. I went to school and became a medievalist—let’s be honest, in large part because of Tolkien, because I knew that he was an Old English scholar, and Old English was a little too much for me, so we kind of settled into the middle ground. I actually had a theory for a while that Tolkien did actually take a lot of influence from Middle English texts as well as the Old English, but the medievalists that I were arguing with would often argue against me about that. It was something that carried me through to college. Then, when I became an archivist, a lot of it was because of a lot of those stories and the things that Sam and Frodo did—the whole idea that we had archiving and storytelling within the story, for me, made it so beautiful, and it made it a circular tale. So when I finish it, I immediately want to start over at the beginning of the tale again. It’s a beautiful example of the hero’s journey at its finest, like the paragon of what a true hero’s journey looks like and the idea that heroes are not who they appear to be, and you may be tiny, but you can still be significant. That has resonated with me my whole life. I don’t think it will ever go away. I will continue to reread it well into my old age, and I will get something new every time I read it. "
318,28,Female,20190906,eng,Perrysburg,Ohio,United States,"I am twenty-eight years old, from Perrysburg, Ohio, in the United States. I first encountered Tolkien’s works when I was in junior high school. My older sister had started reading The Fellowship of the Ring; and my twin sister had—I don’t even know why—she’d started reading The Silmarillion. I think it was for a book report or something. They started telling me about how great these books were, how fantastical they were. I was kind of jealous, because they were both reading them for classes, and I was in different classes, so I wasn’t reading them. So, one of my best friends at the time actually got me the original trilogy of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, and I started reading them and absolutely fell in love. Not only were these books completely different than anything I had ever read before up to that point, but they seemed to fit me as a person. For a lack of a better term, there was no smuttiness involved. There were great characters. The prose was amazing. There’s bits of poetry and song interspersed throughout the stories, and I could hear those songs in my head because I’m actually like a composer, a music person. It became this escape realm for me to read those books; and then, of course, when the movies came out, my sisters and I bonded over everything: the books, the movies and just found this sense of togetherness. That’s actually become what Tolkien means to me personally and to us as a family: It’s one of the series of books or popular culture that we can all enjoy together. It’s even become a source of artistic inspiration for all of us. My older sister, she studied to be an animator, and a lot of her stories were based on mythical, fantastical realms similar to Tolkien’s Middle-earth. His illustrations and drawings were part of the inspiration for a geek couture fashion piece I did this summer. I was able to get my whole family involved in that piece as well. For us, and for me personally, Tolkien brought a sense of togetherness to my family and gave us something wonderful and fantastical to escape from the modern world with."
319,25,Female,20190907,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am twenty-five years old, and I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first encountered Tolkien when I was younger; my parents actually introduced me to The Hobbit—really great place to start with reading, and it was just really great to see this new world. It was really cool because it was something that my grandfather and my father were both into, and it was a great way to connect with them. So, that was really fun as a kid. That actually spiraled into me studying history, because I loved the history that he created with Middle-earth and with The Silmarillion. That kind of spiraled into my love for Tolkien and for history. I just really love the whole collection of works that he’s put together, because not only was that a way for me to bond with my grandparents and with my parents and create a generational connection; but it was also a great way for me to experience falling in love with my husband, because he’s also a Tolkien fan and he’s from England. So, we went to Tolkien’s childhood home and we went to Sarehole Mill and to Birmingham and Oxford. That was a really amazing experience to actually see his world through his eyes as well as seeing what inspired him to create Middle-earth. It’s just really meant a lot to me because it’s not only just been this fictional book, but it’s also been what’s inspired me for my career and created connections with my family. So, it’s been a really, really great experience."
320,26,Female,20190909,eng,Kent,Ohio,United States,"I am twenty-six years old and I am from Kent, Ohio, in the middle of nowhere. I first was introduced to Tolkien when I was very young. My dad started reading The Hobbit to me before I could even remember; but, by the second or third time around, I remember. And then we went into The Lord of the Rings and just repeated until I was in middle school. Then I started reading it on my own and ever since, I’ve been re-reading it. I actually just finished The Silmarillion for the first time all the way through last year, and I feel like I’ve just rediscovered him all over again, as an adult in a new phase of life, and it just hits different every time you read it. I guess that’s why I am a fan of Tolkien is that you read it and it just is completely different every time. The more I investigate him, the more I get into the world, the more I feel like I am discovering it for myself. That you are on an adventure with him, which is wonderful. There’s so much more than just The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and his other works. There’s characters that he took notes about, the letters that he wrote to describe what he was thinking and the process behind the story. It’s an experience of finding out more about the world that I never really thought there was behind this—like, I never thought I’d still be reading Tolkien when I was twenty-six years old kind of a thing. But more than ever, I’m listening to podcasts and reading the back stories more than ever. It just means so much to me and I just can’t believe that he left so much for us to discover, and that he’s taken us on an adventure with him. Some of my favorite parts, though, as I was thinking through what he means to me, is that, if anything, I identify as a poet; and I do believe that he’s the one who introduced me to how wonderful language is. My earliest memories of him were the songs and the poems that he put in his works and that I kind of skimmed through in middle school but really mean the most to me. That he was able to use language so perfectly showed me that I could communicate things and memories and places and even experiences—people. It’s like a puzzle that you put together, these words that were just so brilliant and beautiful and abundant and that people can really take and put visually into their heads. Really, overall, he means to me that he introduced me to language and to adore my imagination, which has gotten me so far through life."
321,29,Female,20190912,eng,,,France,"I am twenty-nine years old, and I am from France. I don’t remember exactly when I encountered Tolkien because I don’t remember who offered me The Lord of the Rings, but I think I was about eleven. I am a fan because I am in awe of the world he has created and of his genius. Every part I read is logical and linked to another part of the story. Every character’s name has been thoroughly thought upon. I love fantasy, but none of the authors since Tolkien have been remotely close to being able to replicate his genius. When I was a teenager, it was hard for me to accept that such a world didn’t exist. The beauty of it is astounding. I don’t even have words for it. It is an embodiment of every human feeling. You have loves through the plea of Luthien before Mandos. You have griefs through the fate of Arwen. You have madness through the invasion of Ar-Pharazon in Valinor. You have sadness for a world that is lost forever. All of this is conveyed through great craftsmanship and poetry. He has meant such a great deal to me. Truly, he has allowed me to survive. Since very little, I have found the ugliness of this world to be nearly unbearable. Tolkien has allowed me to escape to his world and have a respite. It is always a relief for me to read about the great deeds of Men and Elves; but also sadness because I will never know this world. He has also allowed me to discover fantasy, which is a genre that we in France, we never study at school and is quite frowned upon. I can enjoy reading a classic book, but this feeling is very far from the pleasure I have when reading fantasy, and Tolkien in particular. I am no longer part of this world when I do this, when I read it."
322,46,Male,20190919,eng,Oshawa,,Canada,"I am forty-six years old, and I’m from Oshawa, Ontario, which is near Toronto. When did I first encounter the works of J.R.R. Tolkien? It was in 1985 and we studied The Hobbit in grade eight English class. It was something I had to read for school, but I loved it immediately. Right after finishing The Hobbit, I got into Lord of the Rings and then The Silmarillion and then some of the other ones after that. I loved it immediately. Why am I a fan of Tolkien? What do I love about it? Really, it’s just something about the beauty; that’s what really impressed me—the beauty. So, the characters, the landscapes, the languages. I love the languages. I love the landscapes. They are places that are so real. It’s like somewhere you really want to be there. You want to go there. So, I’m just really drawn to it. What has it meant to me? Two things really: a lifetime of enjoyment of the books. The Silmarillion is my favorite. I started it when I was twelve years old and finished when I turned thirteen in the middle of it. I just love it. It was just pure joy—slowly reading, looking at the maps, at the family trees. But when I reread it, it’s just restful for the mind. I just love that. The book it really means something to me. It’s like my mind was meant for The Silmarillion to fit there. What really means something to me is that Tolkien being a Catholic was a big part of my decision to return to the Catholic faith in my late teens. I was pretty lukewarm, didn’t really practice up to that point in my life. I just had such respect for Tolkien—what he wrote, reading his letters, like his opinions, his view of the world. I just had so much respect for the guy and it was one of the things that made me think, “You know what? If it’s good enough for him then I should take this seriously.” For me, it just has a really important connection to my life and also to my faith. "
323,35,Male,20190921,eng,Frederick,Maryland,United States,"I am thirty-five years of age, and I’m originally from Frederick, Maryland. I remember my father reading me The Hobbit when I was in probably first or second grades, so probably in 1991 or 1992. I was immediately entranced by a book with goblins, trolls, dwarves, and a dragon, but I think I would have been too scared to enjoy it without the good humor of Bilbo or the wisdom of Gandalf. My father loved that I loved Tolkien and tried to continue on right away to The Fellowship of the Ring. But I was just too young to stay with it yet. So, my father wisely—and I hope I have the same wisdom with my children—let it rest there so I could discover The Lord of the Rings for myself later. I picked Fellowship back up probably when I was in fifth grade, so in 1994 or 1995. The books moved me in a way that no other books had and got me thinking in ways that probably only the Narnia books had before then, although the Tolkien legendarium is a much deeper sea to swim in than Narnia is. I have a distinct memory of being so torn in two, like Sam, at the end when the Ringbearers go into the West that I went downstairs to the piano to try to compose something fitting for the way I felt. I couldn’t come anywhere close. From then until now, I’ve read whatever Tolkien I could lay my hands on. First, I added in The Silmarillion, then Unfinished Tales, then some of Christopher Tolkien’s history series. Of course, I would reread The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings many times mixed in as well. In my adult years I have read more of the Christopher Tolkien edited works and loved every one. My appreciation has grown in a more scholarly direction there, because I love learning about Tolkien’s writing process and the history of his works almost as much as I love the stories themselves. Now, with anything that I haven’t read, like his Letters or The Fall of Gondolin or Leaf by Niggle, it’s more about savoring the anticipation of when I do finally read them. Tolkien has taught me so much, and I need to stress that my faith as a Christian is much stronger because of his writing. I went to Wheaton College, so I’ve been to the Wade Center and seen his writing desk and some first editions. Tolkien teaches me to be a Christian with every part of who I am: the way I love, the way I read stories, and the way I think. The biggest lesson, I think, from all of Tolkien’s writings that I’ve learned is to do what is right every single time, no matter what, and to leave the results up to God. He says all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that’s given us. It’s never about the greater good and cutting corners. He’s also taught me so much about the nature of story and that is proving very important as I am a teacher of middle school students, trying to inspire a lifelong love of reading; and as I am the editor for my wife’s burgeoning fantasy children’s novel. Tolkien and Lewis both opened me up to Chesterton and the rest of the Inklings. Without these great Christian writers and their modern descendants like Rowling, I can categorically say, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Someday, in Valinor, I’ll meet them all and tell them what they have meant to me. And Tolkien will be the first whose hand I will shake."
324,41,Male,20190921,eng,Vancouver,,Canada,"I am originally from Frampton, Ontario, Canada and I live in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada now. I first discovered Tolkien when I was a kid. I think that I had been given a copy of the companion book of the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings film when I was young. But I don’t think I really read it at the time. It was a few years later that I really started to develop an interest in the books. I grew up going camping vacations every summer and one year in particular, my mom started telling my brother and sister and I about The Lord of the Rings one time when we were in the woods, which is really a great place for imagination and for kids. Her and my dad had both read the book back in the Sixties and Seventies, and I think the story is from my mom, she read it during an illness in the hospital and she never forgot it. So then when we were born and we got old enough, she started telling us about the hobbits and the Shire and the Black Riders and all the rest. I eventually read the books myself when I was about twelve, and I was hooked. In terms of why I am a fan, it’s kind of a complicated answer, I think, because a lot of Tolkien fans could probably talk for hours on this. I think for me, Tolkien is a great world builder. He’s the best world builder that I’ve ever come across. When I read the books as a child, I had a feeling that I wanted to live in Middle-earth. There is a sense of reality to those books. You get the feeling of being drawn into a deeper history beyond the main events that the books describe. I think that allows for what Tolkien called secondary belief as opposed to the suspension of disbelief which we usually expect from Fantasy. Even when I read The Silmarillion later on, which is a bit darker, I was still drawn to its power and its seeming truth. So, that’s why I think Tolkien the author and Tolkien the man mean so much to me: it’s that feeling that you get of truth that I mentioned. When I was younger it was mostly about the narrative; it was the characters and the stories and the plot and so on. But later I used Tolkien as a lens to view mythology, history, even theology and philosophy; and eventually from there, interest in the man himself. I was fortunate enough to visit Oxford earlier this year and see several of the places where he lived. I even hung out in his old pub on his birthday, which was also my birthday, which is a great experience. I even visited his grave, which I found to be a very profound experience. But ultimately I always come back to the books. I try to read the canon a couple times a year, or a couple times every couple years and I continue to get a lot of meaning and enjoyment from them. "
325,43,Male,20190923,eng,Wicklow,,Ireland,"I am forty-three years old. I was born in South Africa but moved around a lot as a child so the northwest of Ireland is really home from when I was young. I first got in touch with Tolkien’s works when I was very young, almost as far back as I can remember. My mother started reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to me at five, and I started over for myself from six. The main reason I started over for myself is I made her stop when they reached Shelob’s Lair. I wasn’t particularly keen on going on like that, but book had caught me so I picked up for myself and started from the very beginning, from The Hobbit and all the way through The Lord of the Rings. It took more than a year to read the first time, so I was well over seven by the time I finished. When she was reading it to me, we were traveling a lot around Europe, back and forth across Europe to various countries because we moved from country to country. So, I made a huge emotional connection with The Lord of the Rings. I reread it again and again my whole childhood. By the time I was in my early twenties I think I had worked it out that I had read it over fifty times. It was a culmination of things. It’s the Estel, it’s the idea that no matter how dark things get, there is always hope. And things were rough when I was young—everyone has things going on with their family and as a kid I just found it so reassuring that this particular fantasy word brought that idea that things can get better. They are not guaranteed to get better but it’s not a vain hope. It’s a real Estel. One of the things that’s always resonated with me as well is that when I was a kid I found happy fairy stories a bit shallow. It’s a fairy tale though it’s sad as are all the tales of Middle-earth and yet it may lift your hearts—that quote from Aragorn on Weathertop. That is something that really kind of got to me when I was a kid. It’s like yeah, these stories, the Middle-earth stories, there is always something in them that’s hard and sad but at the same time the story picks you up. Coming forward to the modern time, my daughter’s middle name, her father name, is Eowyn. I love the idea that there is a whole generation, again and again, repeated generations are getting these ideas and these really uplifting feelings and concepts. Hopefully, they’re learning that we don’t have to fix the world for our kids. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. "
326,35,Male,20190926,eng,Wytheville,Virginia,United States,"I’m from Wytheville, Virginia. I’m thirty-five years old. I first encountered Tolkien’s works as a child when I watched the 1977 Hobbit movie. I don’t remember my exact age but I was in elementary school. I wasn’t initially enticed by his works until after The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy came out. After the movies, which I watched repeatedly and still do, I then had to read The Lord of the Rings books. And from there my obsession just grew. Back in 2015, I spent a lot of time in the hospital due to Crohn’s disease. During that time, his works allowed me to escape my situation and gave me a place that I could go to that wasn’t pain, needles, medicine, doctors, nurses. Basically, I was free in Middle-earth even though I was bound to this hospital bed. That’s ultimately the reason why I’m such a fan of his works. I wouldn’t have been able to have that experience without his existence. Tolkien through his writings gave me kind of what my heart desired—a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue, an adventure to live. I am now a husband and father of three children and knowing more about who Tolkien was as a man inspires me even more today. I quite idolize him now honestly. I want to love my wife and my kids like he loved Edith and his children. I want to have deep meaningful friendships like he had. I want to pursue my passions with the same vigor and dedication that he had. I wish in all the world that I could thank him personally. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do that, but I have a lot to owe to him. Thanks for this opportunity to share."
327,40,Male,20191003,eng,Arlington,Virginia,United States,"I am forty years old and I live in Arlington, Virginia, which is right near Washington, D.C. I’m a composer, photographer, and video producer in Arlington, Virginia, and I first encountered the works of Tolkien when I was ten or eleven years old. My dad let me start reading his copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, but I didn’t make it very far. I came back to The Lord of the Rings eventually some time in high school or maybe in college. I was never what you might call a “super fan” but I enjoyed the book and reread each volume as the Peter Jackson films were released. In the last few years, I had started exploring other Tolkien work and I’ve read The Silmarillion and some of his other writing. Then almost three years ago, I had been listening to a Harry Potter podcast and wanted to get into something that was a little bit deeper. So, I went looking for Tolkien or Lord of the Rings related podcasts, and I found Corey Olsen’s “Exploring The Lord of the Rings“ class. Inspired by some of the discussions in class, I started setting some of the songs to music I composed and recorded them. I’ve done some traditional chorale in song settings but also set Sam Gamgee’s poem “Troll Sat Alone” to a three-part bluegrass harmony, which was lots of fun both to write and record. Also, I’ve taken a few photos that I feel like could be pictures of different parts of Middle-earth. My experiences as a photographer and a composer get to the heart of why I’m a Tolkien fan. He created this amazing world with so much detail, but in many ways it’s just the outlines, and there are so many parts of the picture still to be filled in by other artists and creators. As he said, his work would leave scope for other minds and hands wielding paint and music and drama. As one of those sets of other minds and hands, I’m very much in debt for the paths he suggested where I can chase my own creativity. I’m also inspired by the feedback loop between his created world and what he would call our primary world. Even living in a city there are so many natural things that bring me joy and inspiration. In my music and other artwork, I try to share my life experience and my experience of the world with others. When I read Tolkien, it feels like he’s doing that, too. He’s sharing his love of languages and nature and the complications of the human spirit and encouraging others to do the same."
328,55,Male,20191003,eng,Montery,California,United States,"I am fifty-five years old. I am from Monterey, California. I encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien in 1973—the end of 1973. I was in fourth grade. I was given The Hobbit by a friend of mine to read, and I quickly just fell in love with the whole world. Shortly after finishing the Hobbit, I immediately wanted to know if there was anything else by this author. Of course, my friend had the next book, The Fellowship of the Ring, so I went right into The Lord of the Rings and read The Fellowship, consumed that as quickly as possible. Went right into The Two Towers. I can remember having a gap between The Two Towers and reading The Return of the King, which just drove me nuts until I could get my hands on the book. I was waiting for my friend, who was some distance from me at that time to get that book from him. And I could remember that it was a frustrating month not being able to get to the end of the series there, or I should say the work—I know it’s not a series. What Tolkien has meant to me? I can tell you personally there it started a life of reading for me when I was in fourth grade, going to fifth grade there also; and really just gave me a love of reading. Of course, I started off with fantasy and then science fiction. I went from Tolkien right into other authors of fantasy. Ursula K. LeGuin was one of them. Just dove right into A Wizard of Earthsea. But I just loved the fantasy thing. Tolkien helped me have that desire to read. And I look back and say that’s one of the great gifts that he gave to me in my life. It went from there to biographies to histories, and I now have my own personal library of all kinds of works just because of him. It’s meant everything in my life. I am a huge fan to this day. I heard about you through the Prancing Pony podcast. To this day I study; my kids tell me I know more about Middle-earth and Tolkien than anybody. I tell them I am really just a piker compared to so many people out there. But I love his works, his life; his body of works has changed my life for the better. Everything that I am really—mentally, intellectually—really comes back to my love of Tolkien. Thank you."
329,48,Male,20191004,eng,Rockford,Illinois,United States,"I am forty-eight years old, originally from Rockford, Illinois, and live here in the Wisconsin area, in the Milwaukee area. My experience with Tolkien. I am the youngest of eight children, and my father used to read to the children at bedtime when we were younger. I can’t really say if he read Tolkien at all, but I know one of his favorite things to read was C.S. Lewis, the Narnia books. I think that instilled this kind of love of fantasy very early on. Certainly, I can remember even in elementary school reading The Hobbit and really liking this immersive world. Another important event I think along this journey in elementary school was my older brother Matthew—his godfather gave to him this boxed game called Dungeons & Dragons; and he wanted some people to play with; and maybe his friends weren’t interested in playing with him, but his little brothers were. Again, kind of this going into this whole fantasy world. And at that point it was a fun distraction as much as I think any other fairy tale. But revisiting Tolkien again, I think I probably read Lord of the Rings in high school, getting more into it. Was quite avid with reading science fiction and fantasy at that time. But I think even really at that point, Tolkien to me was another writer in the genre. But revisiting it, I remember in college, that’s at the point where I really started to get into this depth and learned that there was more to Tolkien than really these two books. Learned about The Silmarillion—it was sort of this monolithic thing that was supposed to be very challenging; but going into it and reading it for the first time after reading The Lord of the Rings again, I started to see just what a fully developed world this is. And repeated themes going across really drew me into just this love of this constructed mythology, but a mythology that was thoroughly thought out and consistent throughout the whole piece, and this whole world building aspect of it. Even since that, I have been drawn to other world builders—M.A.R. Barker for example—who had a very well-developed world but not much of an author really, and others; and it’s really this way to go and explore a whole other world."
330,39,Female,20191007,eng,Scarborough,,Canada,"I’m thirty-nine and I live in Toronto, Canada. I first encountered Tolkien when I was in Grade 4. I was a voracious reader. My teacher actually provided me with a copy of The Hobbit, and I would read it during our free time in school, and I never finished reading the whole thing because Gollum scared me too much. And I never finished reading the entire book until I was in my twenties actually, after discovering The Lord of the Rings. So, I found Lord of the Rings when I was working in a bookstore around age twenty and I was spending my breaks reading all of these books that I was discovering in my store. I had known about Tolkien, but apart from that encounter with The Hobbit I hadn’t really explored his works. I finally picked up Lord of the Rings, and I was hooked. It was only about a year after that, that the movies came out, at which point I had read the trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and quite a few books in the History of Middle-earth series, and also a few of Tolkien’s non-Middle-earth books. I’m a Tolkien fan because I love his style and the world he created. I’m a fantasy and sci-fi fan to begin with; and Middle-earth is just so complete. It feels so real to me, and he doesn’t just give us happily ever after in his stories, which is sometimes upsetting, but that is also so very real. His imagery, which many of my friends have said is too laborious, is so thorough, and I appreciate that. To me it doesn’t feel heavy at all. I like his characters. I like that his themes are epic but so relatable when you get to the core of them. Good vs. Evil. Big vs small. Love vs. hate. I think because I discovered Tolkien when I did; and then the movies came out—Peter Jackson’s version really helped me to understand why I was enchanted by the books. For me, the visual scope of the films match the written grandeur. One of the biggest things I’ve taken away from reading Tolkien’s works is his message of hope. I find it truly comforting. The hobbits are the heroes of The Lord of the Rings, but they’re so small and non-worldly, and so naïve in the beginning. And in Fellowship Elrond says, “This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.” And his words were paraphrased and given to Galadriel in the movie. “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.” I think that in this world we live in now, isn’t that a beautiful and encouraging thing to hear? "
331,20,Non-Binary,20191008,eng,Lake Mills,Wisconsin,United States,"I’m twenty years old and I’m from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I first encountered Tolkien rather young. It was when I was in elementary school. I was always a precocious reader, and so after finishing all of The Inheritance Cycle Books that had been published at the time, which is another large fantasy epic, I started reading Tolkien. I obviously loved The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and also—surprisingly again for someone that young, I would have been in middle school at this point—I read The Silmarillion, which many people find to be very dense and archaic. What I think Tolkien has really done is about as single-handedly as any one person can, created—maybe not created—popularized a genre of literature that almost went extinct without his influence. Tolkien wrote in many senses of the word a modern epic using very much of the style of literature that was the primary mode of storytelling for civilizations for thousands of years. We don’t write stories like The Odyssey anymore. We don’t write stories like Beowulf anymore. That form has kind of gone away. But Tolkien, obviously being a scholar of these things, revived it and made it accessible to a world of people who hadn’t encountered it or wouldn’t encounter it except as kind of a dusty tome they had to read in school once or twice. This obviously did a lot of work to recapture and revitalize the study of these peoples, but it also just captured the imagination and the storytelling traditions of a world that might not have had them any more. Human beings since we could speak have sat around campfires and told stories, and that mode of recording history or recording fiction, or recording just about any information, started to disappear pretty quickly as we moved into the first couple centuries A.D. But now it’s back, from Tolkien and from the people that he’s influenced. Dungeons & Dragons, despite what the creator claims, is very much influenced by Tolkien, and it is our modern storytelling—groups of people sitting around the proverbial campfire telling stories. Without it, without Tolkien’s influence here, we just wouldn’t have it. We wouldn’t have this burning sense of imagination, this burning sense of community that has made for some of the strongest groups that I’ve ever been a part of and some of the strongest groups in pop culture today."
332,25,Female,20191011,eng,Atlanta,Georgia,United States,"I am twenty-five years old and I am from Atlanta, Georgia. I actually encountered Tolkien’s work through the movies first when I was about nine. My dad had the movies up on the TV; I caught a glimpse of horses and swords, and having been an avid fantasy reader my whole life, I was immediately interested. He was actually quite reluctant at the time to let me watch it because he thought it would be too scary. Luckily, about three seconds later, he relented, and thank goodness, because I can safely say my life was changed that day. I was immediately headfirst into all things Tolkien. I am actually very blessed and thankful because my grandfather worked at Marquette, in the bookstore, for many years, starting in the Sixties. Both my mother and my aunt went there, and so they all knew that you have this fabulous Tolkien collection there. They brought me not long after I saw the movies, and I’ve really never looked back afterwards. Why am I a Tolkien fan? As I mentioned, I have been a big fantasy reader for my whole life. As a young child I didn’t have a lot of friends, just because I was always nose-deep in a book. When I discovered Tolkien—it just eclipsed anything I had read up unto that point. I also love writing, and words, and language. I kind of do lament the fact that people don’t think and talk with, shall we say the same eloquence as we might have once done. And so, to delve into something where the writing and the words were just as alive as the characters, that was really something beautiful and unique to have discovered. Finally, what has Tolkien meant to me? This question I find almost impossible to answer, just because I’ve had Tolkien in my life for sixteen years, going on seventeen now; I can’t really remember a time when he wasn’t. So, he has really changed my outlook on most things in the world. But if I had to narrow it down to one specific thing, I would say, to me, he means hope: hope and perseverance. And when I revisit the works that is what I seem to continuously pull out of them. In fact, there is this beautiful quote in The Fellowship of the Ring: “It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.” I think about that quote a lot simply because I think it’s very empowering, this concept of no matter what’s going on, no matter how hard or difficult things seem, you can’t ever give up because you don’t know how things are going to end, and it could always end in your favor. And that’s gotten me through a lot of things, difficult times, both big and small. So, I would say hope is what he has meant to me; but at the end of the day, he really does mean everything."
333,54,Female,20191011,eng,Rexburg,Idaho,United States,"I am fifty-four years old and I live in Rexburg, Idaho, USA. When I was about twelve my parents gave a copy of The Hobbit to my younger sister for Christmas. She tried to read it, but she didn’t really care for it. I picked it up and entered Middle-earth. When I began reading The Hobbit, my family lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We had very few neighbors and we lived right at the border of two national parks and miles upon miles of uninhabited national forestland.  Our home was surrounded by mountains and rivers and meadows and we regularly had bison, elk, moose, bear, and foxes passing right through our yard. As I read Bilbo’s adventures, I just knew that I was in The Hobbit and that I was a hobbit that lived over the edge of the wild and that his adventure was my adventure too. I began looking for elves and dwarves and orcs and dragons hidden alongside the majestic scenery and the wild animals. I soon discovered that the adventures continued on an even grander scale in The Lord of the Rings. I read these books continually through my teenage years, and I added The SIlmarillion in college and have been reading Tolkien ever since. Tolkien’s stories of Middle-earth captured my imagination as nothing else had. It seemed real to me. As a child it was possible for me to love the story alone. As I grew older, I began to appreciate the complexity of the languages in the stories. As a teen I tried to learn some of the Elven languages and would lay in bed at night constructing words and sentences. I also started thinking about some of the deeper messages of the stories. The importance of friendship and community, the magical strength that lies in kindness and humility, and the influence one person can have on the world. My husband had never read Tolkien. Early in our marriage I read the books aloud to him. He finished a bunch of my cross stitch projects while I read. He even created a tiny Gollum and inserted him into a few pieces. When my children were old enough, I read Tolkien to them. Now, my children are reading Tolkien to their grandchildren. His books have been a source of shared experience for all of us. Tolkien’s stories bring peace to my soul. His descriptions of the natural world are beautiful and soothing, his ability to use just the right word in just the right place is gratifying and strangely relaxing to me. No matter how many times I read the books there’s something new to consider and old to remember. In my most recent readings I’ve been considering endings. It’s so apparent in The Lord of the Rings that good things come to an end and the good guys leave the world just like the bad guys do. But they leave it a better place because of their heroic selfless deeds. I hope to live in a world like that. I have been reading Tolkien for over forty years and I hope to continue that joy for the rest of my life, and I am grateful. Thanks."
334,67,Female,20191011,eng,Shepherd,Michigan,United States,"I’m sixty-seven years old and I live in Michigan. I first encountered Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in 1972 when I was nineteen years old, married, and had a one-year old child. I had never been away from home before, but my husband was restless. So, we became hippies, living on the road, doing odd jobs for money and traveling the U.S. in a beat up ’61 Ford van that held everything we owned. I was so lost and homesick when we found a discarded old set of Tolkien’s paperbacks. I started reading The Fellowship and was overwhelmed. I related so much to the hobbits and their displacement and ordeals. They were endearing and fought to go home to their simple life. We moved twenty-two times in twenty years, and the story was my one constant I clung to. It became my lifeline and escape that I turned to, even now. The world Tolkien has created and the way he weaves his words transport me. I anticipate so many excerpts that make me smile or move me to tears. It’s like being with safe, close friends. It’s home. When I’m reading the story, I lose track of where I am and forget my problems. I especially love the Shire and Sam’s great heart, Frodo’s determination, Pippin’s optimism, and Merry’s perception. Then there’s Gandalf: A champion of life, especially a simple life. I read that same set of books annually through homelessness, the Vietnam War, divorce, rebuilding my life with two young kids, becoming a grandma of four, and now retired. I was amazed to find how Tolkien’s story spoke to me at a whole other level through each season of my life. Tolkien’s world also changed my life when The Fellowship was released and it brought me to TheOneRing.net website and a community of Middle-earth lovers just like me. Because of TORn and my friends, I went to the 2004 Oscars and several conventions, exhibits, and events where I’ve met many of the cast and filmmakers. Being a part of TORn inspired me to write and draw again. I couldn’t believe it when I saved enough to actually travel to Wellington, New Zealand and Hobbiton. I can’t imagine my life without Tolkien. For forty-seven years he has been with me through everything. I am as close to his characters as anyone in real life because Tolkien has given them the heart, values, and acceptance I look for in friends. That worn set of books is my most valued possession. They’re damaged and my favorite parts are underlined with scribble notes in the margins. There are tear-stained, mouse-chewed, and lines from the films are highlighted. Because of Tolkien and TORn, I have had the best times of my life, which has also brought me here. Who would have ever thought reading a story by an Oxford professor would have such an impact, not just on me, but the world? "
335,39,Male,20191014,eng,Milwaukee,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-nine years old. I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I grew up in Randolph, New Jersey, and that’s where I encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien for the first time. I read him pretty young—in first or second grade I read The Hobbit with a friend of mine and then a few years later read The Lord of the Rings. The story imprinted on me, or I imprinted on the story, and always thought about it. I wrote my own kind of rip-offs of it when I was a young fantasy writer. I returned to the story when I got a little bit older. I was working a very strange job at a hospital where my job was to try to cue the patients, many of whom didn’t speak English. The job had a lot of down time, so I wound up rereading The Lord of the Rings for several weeks while I was there and I’ve read it every couple of years ever since. As an adult, I have a lot of nostalgia for the story, but I’ve also found quite a bit of real meaning in it for an adult. I’m not a Catholic; I was raised Catholic, but I’m not a Catholic. The kinds of existential questions that he’s raising, the philosophical questions, the questions about consolation and living in a broken world really mean a lot to me. I now teach Tolkien to my students and I think it means a lot to them. Many of the students have read Tolkien like I did every couple years. Quite a number of them have had tattoos on their body from different quotes from the story. To me, there is a reason why this is arguably the greatest story of all time, the one that has connected to the most people, with a handful of other possible competitors. He really taps into something fundamental about what it means to live. I think that’s why I always come back to it. "
336,27,Female,20191017,eng,Silver Spring,Maryland,United States,"I am twenty-seven years old. I am from Pennsylvania, although I live in Maryland now. I first came across the works of Tolkien probably a year or so before The Fellowship of the Ring movie came out. So, probably somewhere around 2000. I was eight or nine. Well, no, I probably knew about The Hobbit earlier than that. I’d had The Hobbit read to me as a young child. The movies were coming out. I wasn’t allowed to read Harry Potter at the time, so my parents were like, “What about Tolkien?” And so I picked up The Lord of the Rings when I was nine and just devoured it. I loved it. That’s why I’m a fan, because I read The Lord of the Rings and just loved it. I read The Silmarillion; loved that too. I just really dove into it. Got so into Tolkien and there was so much there to explore. So, I loved the story, but also there was a whole world, a whole world so carefully crafted, a whole history of it. And it stuck with me over the years so that I’ve reread The Lord of the Rings more times than I can count, and it always has the same amount of meaning even if it’s different things that stuck out to me. I think that’s why I’m partially such a big fan. I got super involved in the fandom when I was young, too, when the movies were coming out, and it was kind of early-ish days of internet fandom. I made some of my best friends through fandom—one person specifically who I’m still super good friends with now, kind of in the similar boat of being two young girls obsessed with literature that was maybe a little out of our age range by most people’s standards, because we got into the histories of Middle-earth and all that super dense stuff. Everyone was like, “Oh, don’t read The Silmarillion; it’s boring.” No, it’s not. I think now I continue being a big fan of Tolkien for all those reasons but because, now more than ever, I really find myself needing the hope of it and the one star that Sam sees in Mordor kind of thing. And the reality of it, too, the realism—that it’s not just all magically okay in the end. Frodo doesn’t get to go back to the Shire in the same way. I think that’s important too. I’ve loved Tolkien almost since I can remember and continue to. "
337,28,Female,20191017,eng,Edmonton,,Canada,"I am twenty-eight years old, and I am from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I first encountered Tolkien when I was in fourth or fifth grade. Our English teacher read The Hobbit aloud to us in class, and he did such an amazing job of the voices that on the first day I actually ended up taking the book home and reading it for myself over the weekend, which we were told not to do, but I did anyway. I just needed to know what was going to happen to poor Bilbo. Similarly, I speed-read The Lord of the Rings over the course of four or five days in fifth grade because I just couldn’t put them down. I actually cried for hours when I finished the second book, because I thought for sure Frodo was actually dead. Honestly, I blame my best friend for the past twenty years for the fact that I’m a Tolkien fan. We still read and share Tolkien together. His works are a pillar of our friendship, so much so that when we decided to get tattoos together, we didn’t even need to discuss the subject. It was obviously going to be Tolkien. Tolkien’s works are also a lodestone personally for me though. I read Lord of the Rings every single year, sometimes two or three times a year and have since I first read them. I go back to The Lord of the Rings when I need comfort, when I feel lonely, and when I feel like I need to go home. The Shire, Gondor, Moria, Lothlorien, they’re as much the home I grew up in as any physical places. My understanding and appreciation of the depth and breadth of Tolkien’s work grew as I did. I undoubtedly love his works more now than ever, but the reason I keep coming back to Middle-earth is because it feels like home to me. His works formed the background for my childhood and shaped who I want to be. They shaped really who I’ve become. Tolkien’s characters were a family to me and I wanted to be like each one of them—to be able to face dragons down like Bilbo, to be loyal and courageous like Sam, to face my destiny with strength and softness the way Aragorn did, to be a bold and skilled shieldmaiden like Eowyn and face down all of my fears. I used to act out Lord of the Rings as a child. I built Mirkwood and Lothlorien in the trees and rode the plains of Rohan on broomstick horses across my backyard. My grandfather lent me his copies of the movies on VHS, and I didn’t give them back to him until I had the money to buy my own. It was quite a few years. Tolkien’s works are quite simply so much more important to me than I thought was possible and, yeah, I just love them."
338,22,Female,20191017,eng,Tehran,,Iran,"I am from Tehran, Iran, and I am twenty-two years old. It was about fifteen years ago when I first encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. I watched the movies and I knew that it was based on the novels, so I started reading the books. I mean I ordered the books as soon as I found out that the movies were based on his works. I started reading them as soon as I got the books and that’s it. That was the first time I encountered the works of J.R.R. Tolkien fifteen years ago. What I like most about Tolkien’s work is the relationships he makes in his novels. For example, the relationship between Sam and Frodo, between Frodo and Bilbo. They’re so pure and nice. You can’t find them really in other fantasies. What has he meant to me? He has meant a lot to me. At the very least he has meant that my dreams are valid, no matter where I am from or no matter how old I am. Growing up as an only child, with both parents working more than twelve hours a day, it was me and my imagination the whole time. That was really nice knowing that my imaginings are valid. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Being a Tolkien fan has really been an honor. Not everyone knows his work. Not everyone gets to daydream in Middle-earth. Our world can become so overwhelming sometimes and being a Tolkien fan has given me the chance to escape our world and get lost in his world. "
339,25,Non-Binary,20191017,eng,Littleton,Colorado,United States,"I am twenty-five, from Colorado. I first encountered Tolkien when I was about eight years old in 2002 after The Two Towers came out on VHS, and I watched that and The Fellowship of the Ring and then saw Return of the King in theaters. Read the books. Then it was a few years later in 2006, when I reread the books and re-watched the movies and started reading all of the other lore around Middle-earth, The Silmarillion, the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth. And I got really, really into the fandom then, and really it was my first in-depth fandom. I think what first attracted me to Tolkien was the sense of adventure and that it was something different. It was definitely an escapist thing. I was always bored with my life and going on an adventure, like in the story Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, was always something that I wanted to do. I just wanted to run away, and I was able to do that with Tolkien. It meant a lot to me. It was 2006, I started having some issues with school, with family, and I really escaped deep into Tolkien, did a lot of research on his life story, on his writing process, and that completely inspired me to continue to be creative. The way that he created an entire mythos that was so detailed with the languages and the history, that really inspires me to—I write, I am a creative writer, and the depth that he went into with his story, that’s my goal for my life. Probably a little bit less sexist with more variety of characters; but, yeah, that’s what inspired me about Tolkien and it’s been a while since I’ve really been involved with fandom or read anything Tolkien, but it’s always going to be dear to my heart."
340,54,Female,20191024,eng,Lawrence,Kansas,United States,"I am fifty-four years old, and I am from Lawrence, Kansas. Gil-galad was an Elven-king And I was a girl of eleven-tween. Bronchitis kept me home from school Our librarian, she was no fool. The books she sent still grace my shelves Each year I’ve read since I was twelve. The Hobbit, Fellowship, and Towers, Return. The words within have powers. My first and oldest paper friends My heart still thrills as I begin! From riddles in a darkened cave To last farewells and Havens grey. Forty readings and plus four The text unchanging has kept score. Like Gandalf, Pippin, and Shadowfax, Still as stone, the world slips passed. Youthful love of dwarves and dragons, Mountains, Mordor, Mr. Baggins! The path itself I hurried through To glimpse the Balrog and Mount Doom. The leaving home and heading west, Hey Tom! Beorn, the Ents impressed. Galadriel and Faramir, I, too, found family unlooked for. My focus shifted to armies’ muster Bristling spears and Huorns cluster. Finding righteous anger there While AIDS and cancer, friends did pare. Companions, human, dwarf, and elf, Dear old Hobbits, clothed in wealth. Not of money nor of glory, But unerring friendship. That’s the story! Just passed the age when Frodo left And Bilbo, too. I’m now bereft Of youthful angst and restless fear. The path, I find, is much more dear. Not so hasty! I pause to ponder The thrush’s trill and those who wander. That plate and herb should never fail To ground us in our epic tale. That kings should all have healing hands And some goodbyes are bitter lands. Sweet Sam, he brings us to the close For hearth and home, a fine repose. What will my next year’s reading show? Tolkien, he said it best, you know. With family, friends, both here and gone The Road goes ever on and on. "
341,42,Male,20191024,eng,American Fork,Utah,United States,"I am forty-two years old and I live in American Fork, Utah. Tolkien helped me see the land where I lived with appreciation. He awakened my eyes to see my natural surroundings with imagination and enchantment, from the forests and lakes of Minnesota to the mountains of Utah. I heard The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings from my mother in my formative years. They remain the most meaningful to me in evoking not necessarily a heroic world but a world wherein we behold a marvelous and benevolent creative force at work and can make a good life by means of maker’s art. One of the most meaningful passages to me is in fact at the end of The Hobbit where we hear that Dale has been restored and there are birds and blossoms in spring and fruit and feasting in autumn. Somehow that phrase is almost a mantra for me in the quest to bring the spirit of that world to realization in my life, not necessarily through something like cosplay or aesthetic emulation; more fundamentally through this awakened view of the world, this engagement of life with imagination, enchantment, appreciation of nature, respect for human nature and needs, reverence for trees. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I read Mythopoeia in its fullness, but that single poem has come to serve as one of the most important touchstones or anchors of meaning in my life. As an idealistic and sensitive person, I have a keen sense of living in a world that is under Shadow’s sway, and I am inspired by the courage of the little maker, who brings whatever gift he or she can in earnest to the altar, in a similar way that Leonard Cohen’s words inspired me, “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering.” At one time, in our hard and disagreeable job I once had, I put the quote on my desk, “I bow not yet before the iron crown, nor cast my own small golden scepter down.” I was also carried through that rough part of my life by fantasizing on a dream I had concerning characters from The Lord of the Rings. The dream was a special and sacred experience for me, and as such I don’t want to talk about it too much. But I will say that when I discovered Lance Owens’s work and how Becca Tarnas is building from it, and I heard him say “Tolkien didn’t invent Elves; he knew them,” I knew what he meant."
342,33,Female,20191024,eng,Yateley,,England,"I’m thirty-three, and I’m from a village named Yately in Hampshire, in England. I first encountered Tolkien when I was about seven years old and sleeping over at a friend’s house. Her family lived in a cottage so old, the upstairs floorboards were warped and rolled like waves, and just visiting felt a bit like being in a story. We were reading together in her room by lamplight after we were supposed to be in bed asleep, and I remember I wasn’t happy that her book looked more advanced than mine. So I asked to take a look and that was the first time I encountered The Hobbit. I wish I could say I sensed it would change my life but really I wanted to prove I could read it faster than my friends, which I did by the way. And I liked it enough to ask my nan to buy me Lord of the Rings. Unsurprisingly, I stalled out at Tom Bombadil and didn’t come back to it until I was a couple of years older, at which point I also discovered The Silmarillion and fell harder and faster than Gandalf into the pits of Moria. Why am I a Tolkien fan? Well, Tolkien might have referred to his original desire to create a mythology for England as absurd, but that ambition is still the heart of why I love him. I grew up an hour south of Oxford, deep in the English shires, and when I read Tolkien I feel a kind of bone-deep recognition. Despite his worldwide appeal, it’s his Englishness I love, an idealized and frankly unreal Englishness that nevertheless reminds me of how I used to feel as a child, roaming the local countryside pretending to see elves—proper Elves—in the shadows under the trees. And actually if I’m honest, it’s still how I feel now at the age of thirty-three and how I hope to feel even if I make it as far as eleventy-one. What has Tolkien meant to me? Well, I’m actually a writer myself and at first I wanted to say something about how Tolkien influenced me as a storyteller. But honestly it goes deeper than that. I experienced severe bullying throughout my childhood and teens, and I could never have survived without fiction. I found a cathartic mirror of my own rage and despair in characters like Eowyn and Turin, but I also found comfort in the wisdom and compassion of Finrod Felagund. I’ve always loved the Athrabeth, Finrod’s conversation with the wise woman Andreth in which he treats her long-buried anger and bitterness with the respect it deserves. Fortunately, as an adult I found happiness and fulfillment; but on days when I struggle with my mental health, I know I can turn to Middle-earth. The Legendarium is my star-glass, my light in dark places when all other lights go out.   "
343,21,Female,20191024,eng,New York,New York,United States,"I am twenty-one, and I am from New York City. I was first introduced to Tolkien when I was around five years old. My dad had been watching The Fellowship on DVD and trying to get my older sisters into it; but instead, I was the one who was a bit more interested. But he did make me hide behind a pillow for the scary parts. Until I was eleven, he would fast forward through some of the orc and Gollum scenes. So, I kind of thought that they were about just little happy people with big feet. But he also clearly saw how interested I was in it because then he read the books to me. Around like fifth grade—I don’t know what age that is—that’s when I read them myself for the first time. Since then I’ve tried to read them every year and gotten more interested in not just reading for entertainment but also kind of study. I feel really passionately about Tolkien scholarship. I wrote my college essay on what The Lord of the Rings has meant to me. It’s definitely been one of the most important influences on my life and made me who I am today. There’s a scholarly aspect to it, but then also it’s still just something that you can rely on and escape to. And I think that’s why they are such important aspects in my life and in so many other people’s live because it’s such a personal experience reading them—all of Tolkien’s works—but then also a very social one as well. There is such a huge community of people who also connect so deeply with the characters. And you can feel like they belong to you while also being caught up in this giant, vast, epic, fantasy world. I think that’s what makes it so special. "
344,28,Male,20191019,eng,Paris,,France,"I am twenty-eight. I have lived all my life in France. I’m from a smaller city, about 90 kilometers west of Paris. I started with Tolkien around eight or nine when, finding a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring in my parents’ library, I started to read it—in the French translation of course—but only got until Bree. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started again and then I read everything, and it started then. Well, it started when I became a student and discovered that there was more to Tolkien than just The Lord of the Rings. I discovered The Silmarillion and then the History of Middle-earth, etc. and especially his languages, his invented languages, that are one of my main interests in his work. Why I am a fan of Tolkien? Actually, I never came with that question before and have no real answer. I am a fan because he is here, so to speak. Because I very much like his work. I am enthralled by his invention of languages. I’m very interested in his use of different English styles in his poetry. I have also translated, as an amateur, some of it. I’m working since nearly twenty years now on his invented languages, especially Sindarin. I’ve created with a friend a website recording all of his invented languages and also his languages of inspiration—like Welsh for instance; and I’ve taken part in many conferences. Tolkien was the source of, I could say, the larger part of my friendships. It’s also a treasury of stories and myths that help me in my daily life, like a historical mythology. Probably The Lord of the Rings would be the book I would go into a secluded island [with], or I would dispute that with The Silmarillion. But definitely he is the author that had the most impact upon my life."
345,32,Male,20191026,eng,Arak,,Iran,"I am thirty-two, and I live in Iran. About your question, I think about 2001, there was this movie, Lord of the Rings. It was really interesting. I was really interested about fantasy, about the valiant fight with sword, armor. I understand the movie, but I can’t get the whole story because in Eastern mythology we don’t have dwarves, we don’t have elves, we don’t have orcs, none of that. I have to find it out. I search and search and search. Then I found The Lord of the Rings collection of three books: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, translated in Persian by Riza Alizadih. Then I read that, then have it, and so I’m more interested in Tolkien’s work. I dig into the whole world. I look now for more of my questions, and my interest in Tolkien grew every, every day. If you can see through there, we have the complete History of Middle-earth over there. I had a lot of issues to reach them; only a few stores in America has that. About your second question, why I am a Tolkien fan? I always read fantasy, for example, Golden Compass, Harry Potter, David Gemmell’s work. But none of them were complete as Tolkien’s work. Tolkien created a whole world: about the Creation, about the God, about everything. You somehow feel sympathy for Elf, somehow sympathy for Men, somehow you feel sympathy with Dwarf. It’s interesting, and it’s a complex world, and it’s a complete world. It’s a complete world; it’s really fascinating."
346,53,Male,20191026,eng,Lawton,Oklahoma,United States,"I live in Lawton, Oklahoma. Southwest Oklahoma. I am fifty-three years old, father of many. I’m married to Cindy, my wife; we’re going on just over three years. And when I married her, I became an instant grandfather so I’m having fun with the grandkids. I first was introduced to Tolkien through my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Whitlock, who read us The Hobbit. We were so enthralled that he asked us would we want him to read The Lord of the Rings? He didn’t have much time. We understood that it was a continuation of The Hobbit, and we loved that book so much that everyone unanimously voted for it. What happened is he started to read The Fellowship of the Ring and didn’t get quite to the end of the book, so of course I had to see how the rest of the story turned out. That summer after sixth grade, I got The Fellowship of the Ring, read the rest myself, and read The Two Towers, Return of the King that fall. Finished up The Lord of the Rings in total. As fate would have it, or as luck would have it as you call it, the movie—Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings—was hitting theaters that very fall. So, I’m taking all of this reading from school and from on my own into the theater with all that excitement with me as I went into it. It was really neat. Seeing the Hildebrandt Brothers’ artwork that our teacher had in class, I was very informed of Middle-earth through those images and through the movie and through the music of the movie. Fast forward through time, I tried to get through The Silmarillion. Couldn’t do it. I finally got a CD and listened to that as I drove back and forth to different places that I worked. Finally got through it that way. Something about someone reading to you and they’re doing all the effort is kind of fun. Eventually came across the movies and enjoyed those even though they didn’t align exactly with the book. Then, The Hobbit movies came around, wasn’t enthralled very much with those. But I have enjoyed a whole lot getting to know the different podcasts that are coming out now. A lot more of Tolkien studies have been done these days, a lot more books coming out and enjoying adding to my library with all of those as much as possible. I’m enjoying throwing my introduction to Tolkien and love for his books and his readings, things throughout the years; so thankful to put my thing out here as well. So, cheers to all and enjoy."
347,33,Female,20191028,eng,Fort Worth,Texas,United States,"I am thirty-three, and I am from within the United States. I first encountered the work of Tolkien when I was actually in utero. My dad would read to my mom while she was pregnant. It was based on the theory that we would then recognize his voice when we were born. He read The Lord of the Rings to her when she was expecting me. Once I had emerged, he would read The Lord of the Rings to us pretty much every year—The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. So, I grew up hearing those books, once every year, once every couple of years, like my entire childhood—so you know, ten or twelve times. They’re important to me because of that memory, because I associate them so strongly with that bond with my father, with that time spent with my siblings as a family. They were a hugely important part of my childhood, but then as I got older, when I started to reread them for myself, what they meant to me really changed, because as a little girl who loved fantasy novels at a time when there weren’t very many fantasy novels that focused on women, I really latched on to characters like Eowyn. It was really important to me to see female characters who were central to the story, who played really important roles. In the grand scheme of The Lord of the Rings, Eowyn is extremely essential to that story. I thought about her a lot, and she was very important to me. When I got a little bit older, around the time that I was twelve and thirteen, I started to really struggle with intense depression, and having Eowyn as a character that I could look to, a character that I already knew was important and who I had already seen go through a journey, that suddenly was important to me and that has stayed important to me ever since.  "
348,48,Female,20191103,eng,,,Ecuador,"I am originally from Ecuador in South America. I am forty-eight years old. Speaking about Tolkien, I didn’t who was Tolkien until I was about nineteen years old. I was studying law in Quito, Ecuador. I was a very good reader from my earliest childhood. Thus, I knew all the bookstores in the city. In one of those bookstores, a very good friend of mine, who was much older than I, used to work and one day he allowed me to go to the basement. He usually allowed me to; and in the basement, I found the three-volume edition of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It was in Spanish. I didn’t know English at that time. I was very interested in it and he told me that he had been keeping it for himself. It was a very expensive set of books. I didn’t have the money also, so he allowed me to come back and buy it. It was a life changing situation for me to read those books. I had a lot of intentions to go out of the country, to do something. The call of adventure was knocking at my door. And when I read those first pages of the first book, the idea of going and seeing the world kind of coalesced in my mind. I never got over those pages. I read all the books that I could. Finally, I left Ecuador. I went to Europe. I went to the Unites States. English is my fifth language. My most intense memory about Tolkien now is the fact that my son, who is now thirteen, he also loves Tolkien. I introduced him to Tolkien, and Tolkien has become his favorite author. I reread the books in English after I learned English, and they mean a lot to me because even now they speak very deeply to what I find most important in my life."
349,37,Male,20191111,eng,Fort Wayne,Indiana,United States,"I am thirty-seven years old and I am from Fort Wayne, Indiana. When I first encountered Tolkien was through the old Rankin and Bass movie, as a six-year-old. I loved the movie so much that I immediately went to school the next day and checked out The Hobbit and quickly learned that, while I loved the world, I wasn’t ready for all of that yet. But I asked for it for Christmas, and my parents bought it for me. Over the years I was able to start to really delve into it, and then I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy soon after completing The Hobbit. I was probably about eleven when that happened. My love, though, for Tolkien has blossomed over the last few years as a pastor, and as a theologian, and a scholar, learning especially—reading through The Silmarillion, and understanding his cosmogony and his cosmology, and how these things, especially his faith, while not explicitly coming out, were implicit in almost everything that he did, as you would expect a good, faithful, Christian man to do. And so, studying various aspects, especially of The Silmarillion, how his world comes together, the role of good and evil in that world, and especially for me the concept of the will of the characters, how that will is used for good or bended and shaped by evil. One of the big projects that I am starting to work on now is tracing the concept of the will in Tolkien, especially in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, to see how the Ring, especially if we can think of it as the permeation of evil or sinfulness, how that changes the concept of the will, how it bends the will. Using characters to set this up like Melkor in The Silmarillion, how he influences will to get a break of the company of the Elves and to influence them. Then how Sauron picks up on that and uses it with the construction of the Ring, and how he bends that will, to me, is utterly amazing. And gives, even though they’re not human characters always, but certainly gives an indication of how the will in Tolkien’s anthropology really comes into play, and I think he does that beautifully throughout all of his works."
350,18,Male,20191112,eng,San Pedro Carchá,,Guatamala,"I am eighteen and [unintelligible]. My first appearance to the works of Tolkien were when I was eleven years old and my dad bought me The Hobbit. It impressed me because it was a simple book, but at the same time it was like a new kind of magic for me. After that, I began to read The Lord of the Rings. Then eventually I bought The Silmarillion and too many issues of so many works like the story of The Silmarillion, Beren and Luthien, The Fall of Gondolin. For me, Tolkien was like an introduction to all of literature in a sense because I began to get interested in reading more books. The third film of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies just began before I got started reading The Hobbit, so they [The Hobbit films] were my first opportunity to enter into the world. All of the experiences I have with Tolkien are fantastic. I began to encounter more people. I’ve been pretty shy when talking to a lot of people. It also improved my English and began an interest of ancient languages. Tolkien as a person, as the professor, is an example of someone admirable to me because as an author he can be so many, not perfect, but he was very good, so inspiring for a person. All of his life was important in his work. So that’s why I like the professor and all of his work. "
351,29,Male,20191019,fre,Paris,,France,"I am twenty-nine years old, and I live in Paris, France. I met Tolkien [‘s work] when I was around ten, it was my mother who introduced me to The Hobbit, but it was my sister most of all who had read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit before, and I remember that she had colored Moria’s door that is in the books, and that’s something I’ve always known. But in middle school, as soon as I read The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings, I began compiling….with The Silmarillion, I began a folder with all the stories, I filed all the poems and all the information I had about the rings, the stories…from the Valar to the Third Age. Why am I a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien? I think that it’s because it still raises many questions for me, and I must admit, that it’s not always something that leads me to create but it’s because other people’s questions lead me often to do some research and I try to answer them, and so it leads me to do a lot of research and… I have myself as project to do a study to suggest the answers that I myself have found and the angles I found that I think are interesting. I think that this has also to do with the fact that I’m trained in history and that I read almost the text as if I were an historian, almost with an internal vision in the book, I ask myself historical questions. Why is it that way? What are people’s practices? What references can we find from one Age to another, etc. that no one has raised until now? So, I mostly approach it as an historian. What has it meant to me? Paradoxically, it means a sort of isolation, it may seem strange, but sometimes I do think that it’s like an alveolus, a small hole in the whole literature and even more in the world of science in general. And I’m surprised to have to spend so much time to study something… he’s a great author, a really great author and a great work, he is still just an author among others…and I’m bit caught against my better judgment in this passion, but after all it’s a passion that we have the right to have. What could I say to conclude…Well that’s enough, thank you."
352,30,Male,20191115,eng,Letterkenny,,Ireland,"I am thirty years old, and I am from Ireland. J.R.R. Tolkien means a lot to me. Christmas 2000 was when I first discovered J.R.R. Tolkien. My dad gave me a copy of The Hobbit with the John Howe Smaug illustration on the cover, which I have since carved into a pumpkin, taking eleven hours, which was a lot of fun. I remember just seeing this book cover and just being really taken in—the maps, the runes, all of this kind of stuff, it just really took me in. I’m a very, very slow reader, even to this day, and I slowly but surely made my way through it. I remember just thinking, “What is a hobbit? What is this?” So, it was quite a journey, and I was coming to the end of reading it when December 2001 came, and the first Lord of the Rings film came, and I remember watching that. I think I was just up at the point where they had reached Erabor in the book, and I remember watching Fellowship of the Ring in the cinema at the age of twelve—perfect age to see that film—and I remember recognizing the likes of Gollum, the likes of Bilbo. And when they are talking about, “I wish to visit Lake Town again and see the Lonely Mountain.” I was like, “Ahhh!” I recognize these things; but at the same time, this is something new, this is something bigger. Then when I was at school my friend had the tome, the huge single volume edition of The Lord of the Rings with the John Howe Gandalf image on the cover, and I was just like, “What is this?” Since then, throughout my teenage years, a combination of Tolkien and Star Wars took over my life. I read through Lord of the Rings, watched the movies, watched the documentaries on the DVDs over and over and over again, and just became completely immersed in the world of Middle-earth. Between the illustrations of Ted Nasmith, of Alan Lee, John Howe, I was just completely taken in by this magical world. It has since meant to me a lot of spirituality; particularly the passing into the West meant a lot to me. It has helped me through a lot of very difficult times, particularly the passing of my mother four years ago. There are so many beautiful words of wisdom, one of which that comes to mind over and over again, “I will not say ‘do not weep’ for not all tears are an evil.”"
353,32,Female,20191115,eng,Oak Park,Illinois,United States,"I am thirty-two years old and I am coming to you from Oak Park, Illinois, outside Chicago. The best way to communicate all that Tolkien has meant to me is through song. This is “This Oxford Prof,” based on “This Old Guitar.” I have recorded this on YouTube with guitar accompaniment; but, acapella this time: This Oxford prof taught me to sing an elf song Gave me times to laugh and times to cry Introduced me to some friends of mine And brightened up some days Helped me make it through some lonely nights, oh What a friend to have on a cold and lonely night! This Oxford prof gave me my love of language Opened up my ears and mouth to say: ""Ich singe gern im Chor"" [“I like to sing in choir”] or words that break your heart: ""Hos hoi g'amphiepon tapon Hektoros, Hektoros hippodamoio"" [""thus they performed the funeral rites for Hector, tamer of horses.""] This Oxford prof gave me my life, my living: Helping words do all that they can do Helping the author illustrate a world all their own. With my red pen, I'll make your words come true. I sub-create along with you, yes I do, you know that, I sing creation's song with you. In the song, I talk about how Tolkien has given me some of the best friends I have ever known and continue to have, and how those friends and Tolkien’s writing itself has helped me through some lonely nights. He helped me pursue and foster my love of language, to learn German and Spanish and Latin and ancient Greek; and because I was pursuing that, I have come upon my career as an editor."
354,63,Male,20191115,eng,San Francisco,California,United States,"I am sixty-three years old. I live in San Francisco, California. I first was introduced to Tolkien, about—I think I was in fifth grade. A schoolmate of mine shared with me The Hobbit—lent me his copy of The Hobbit, and I read it. I thought it was great, and I searched for The Lord of the Rings at a local used bookstore. This was in L.A. I found them—I don’t know, this was—I’m old—so it was the cover that was really trippy and Sixties-esque. I read those. I was very young. I was like in fifth grade. I read it, and I don’t think I understood it all, but I read it about three or four times since then. I read The Silmarillion. I’ve read some of his lesser works. Leaf by Niggle I think was one of them. It was very interesting. I love him. He’s the creator of a genre that I have come to love all my life; and I still read, and I’m amazed by the wonderful writers that have taken this world creation and given us so much—so many journeys in our imagination. As an older person, we didn’t have video games. We didn’t have this kind of immersive experience. We had books and this was really exciting to experience this. The thing I respect most about Tolkien, and the thing I’m in awe of, is his world creation. Most times, mythology is created by a culture. He created a mythology—a very coherent mythology—all by himself. It has everything. It has its own physics. It has its own kind of racial mythology. It has its own theology. That’s the thing that I get most of it, and it causes me to constantly reflect on that. So, anyway, that’s my story. "
355,55,Male,20191115,eng,Brighton,,England,"Fifty-five years old and I currently live in Brighton in the United Kingdom. My first encounter with Tolkien was through my dad, who was actually one of the members of the Tolkien Society in America. I grew up with the Tolkien Society magazines and all that; and when I was about six, my dad read my brother Tom and I The Hobbit after dinner every night, a chapter a night. Then we progressed to The Lord of the Rings. I just became totally fascinated by the whole world and everything. From a very early period on, the languages was always something I was very interested in and decided to learn as much as I can about the languages. I remember going through the appendices and checking back on the poems and trying to figure out how the grammar worked and everything. Then, because my dad did have some of the Tolkien Society magazines and things like Orcrist and Quettar—all these magazines—I was able really to dig into it. I just became fascinated, and I think when I was in my early teens, I remember buying Ruth Noel’s book, The Languages of Middle-earth, which has lots of problems, but it was a wonderful book at the time; and I remember trying to take Chapter 2 “Shadow of the Past” and translate it into Sindarin based on what she had in there and everything. Luckily, that’s gone the way—it no longer exists because I’m sure it would have been terrible. I became so fascinated by also Tolkien’s love of Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon and Finnish. I taught myself Latin when I was in high school, and then I was a Classics major at college. As I was learning Greek and Latin and Sanskrit, I was also teaching myself Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse using the E.V. Gordon edition that Tolkien knew. Gothic, Finnish eventually. And just kind of patterned my academic life and my academic loves after Tolkien. Because I love what he had done, and so I did that. Then when I moved here to the U.K. I started keeping a Tolkien blog, and I met a wonderful person named Dr. Dimitra Fimi, who told me why don’t you do some serious Tolkien research. So, I did. I did my Ph.D. on Tolkien, on the earliest version of the mythology: The Book of Lost Tales, called “The Genesis of Tolkien’s Mythology.” While doing that we worked on some of the manuscripts at the Bodleian and uncovered some materials from the manuscript of A Secret Vice and got permission from the Tolkien Estate to publish Tolkien’s A Secret Vice, which I co-edited with Dr. Dimitra Fimi. Now I study Tolkien as much as I can. I love Tolkien. I love his world building, and I’m still digging into his languages. I encourage anyone who loves Tolkien to look at the languages, because there is myth in those languages as much as they are languages. Lit and Lang, mythology and language, altogether. Thank you."
356,16,Female,20191117,eng,Greenwood,Indiana,United States,This interview is restricted until 2021 because the fan was only sixteen years old on the date of the interview. 
357,34,Female,20191117,eng,Salem,Ohio,United States,"I am thirty-four years old and I grew up in Salem, Ohio. When did you first encounter the works Tolkien? I believe it was sixth grade and one of my teachers played The Hobbit Rankin Bass version. I was completely horrified. I didn’t like it. It freaked me out. I had heard of Tolkien, and I heard about the movies—Peter Jackson’s movies were being made; and I actually went to go see The Two Towers first. Had no idea of anything about Lord of the Rings besides what is mentioned in The Hobbit. Even though it was completely out of context, I fell in love. Absolutely loved it. Went back, got Fellowship, got the book out of the library. Read it through the whole summer between junior and senior year. Then my senior year in high school I was in AP English, and I was so obsessed with Tolkien that I wrote my senior thesis on Marian imagery in Lord of the Rings. That’s the brief history of how I got involved, and then after that it’s been utter obsession for the last fifteen years. Why I’m a Tolkien fan—many, many reasons. I could probably talk about this for two hours, but the primary reason—and I’ve kind of come to understand more about this as I’ve gotten older—Sam is my favorite character in all of Tolkien’s works. He’s so understated and simple and kind. I love Hobbiton; the hobbits are my favorite people in Lord of the Rings. I realized as I’ve gotten older, they remind me of my home region of Appalachia. It is completely about being Appalachian; I really relate to it. They are the simple folk or the common folk. Hobbiton isn’t regarded as a very important place in the grand scheme of things for the powers that be in Lord of the Rings. So, the older I’ve gotten, I’m like that’s completely because I relate to it because I am an Appalachian. It’s been an interesting part of my identity, and I think also why it was important to me growing up. The second part to that: his use of language. The fact that he came up with the languages first then built the world and the stories around it. I started studying Elvish and that led me to become a linguist. I ended up going into foreign languages and spent about the last ten years of my life being an ESL instructor. That’s also what he means to me. It really just completely consumed my life. Following his journey as a linguist led me into my own journey as a linguist. "
358,67,Female,20191117,eng,Lovettsville,Virginia,United States,"I am sixty-seven. I am originally from Baltimore, Maryland, and now I’m currently living in Northern Virginia. I first was introduced to the works of Tolkien when I was in high school—a long time ago, probably the end of the First Age—when somebody literally threw me a copy of The Hobbit and said, ”You have to read this.” I went “Okay,” and it was the paperback copy, first issue I think; I still have it. And I read it, and that was it. I was completely and utterly taken into Middle-earth and decided that’s where I wanted to stay. Reading all of his works—and I have read all of his works: good, bad, and indifferent—it’s a happy place for me. Middle-earth is a happy place for me. His writings are so descriptive. I can visualize the places, the people, everything that’s going on. It got me through bad places in high school and college, because I would just take myself to Rivendell, Erebor, Moria, depending upon my mood. For some reason, it just resonated with me. It came at a right time for me. His writings, as an artist, they helped me visualize a lot of things. I did a whole series of paintings based on the books, and ended up seeing a lot of those visions in Peter Jackson’s movies. The music from the films helped enhance me visualizing what Tolkien wrote, and I’ve used the music in routines with my horse, who happens to be named Mithrandir. His writings, they spoke to me, and they still speak to me, and I still reread the books. I still see the movies. During a blizzard a couple years ago I binge watched. I have a button that says, “I’d rather be in Middle-earth”. And that’s where I would rather be. He just touched something in me and it’s still a big part of my life, and there you go.  "
359,29,Female,20191119,eng,Baseville,Indiana,United States,"Twenty-nine. Originally from Indiana. I don’t remember when I first encountered Tolkien. My dad read my siblings and I The Hobbit when I was three or four years old. It must have strongly influenced my imagination because I have never been without a longing for traveling and seeing the mountains as Bilbo had. When I was nine, I asked for The Hobbit to be read to us again, and my dad agreed, only then revealing that there was a sequel. Three whole books. I vividly recall exclaiming, “Let’s go to the library now and get them!” Then he said, “We have them. They’re on the bookcase downstairs.” I could not believe it. All this time, all my life, they were in the house, on a shelf just beyond my reach. It was like learning we were actually the royal family of Lithuania or something. It was an unbelievable secret. This was in ’99. And another world-stopping shock awaited me when he had finished the trilogy and then he revealed to us, “Oh by the way, they are making these into films.” I was so upset that I would be so old—thirteen years old—when The Return of the King finally came to theaters. So why am I a Tolkien fan? I can’t really untangle him from my childhood and teenage years. From the very first, Legolas was my favorite character and imitating him was absolutely an obsession. Legolas seemed always preoccupied with the moon and the stars. So, I realized Elves were astronomers, and it was beyond argument that I too learn the constellations and the sky cycles with the seasons. I spent many nights therefore tripping around the backyard with the Night Sky Field Guide. This evolved into its own passion, and I majored in astrophysics and currently I work in the space industry. So that’s entirely on Tolkien. Another Tolkien imitation that developed into a passion was writing. Most of my teenage years were spent neck-deep in the Tolkien fan fiction world. Writing my own stories, critiquing my friends, it certainly saved me from getting into worse things on the internet. Other examples are—there are too many. If you pull the thread of Tolkien from my life, everything would unravel, and I would not be who I am, which I think you probably understand. One last example, Tolkien has meant the most to me for his stout, conservative, Catholic faith—writing with the unabashed sincerity as it does through his writings. It’s encouraging, as I see it, to be in such good company and a joy to see what a profound and positive influence he has had in people’s lives, even now, fifty years from his passing."
360,32,Female,20191121,eng,Appleton,Wisconsin,United States,"I am thirty-two years old and I live in Appleton, Wisconsin, in the United States. I first encountered The Hobbit when my sixth grade teacher was reading it to us. I don’t think she finished it, so I had to go find it on my own. Then I found out that my dad had been a fan, and so I read all of the books that he had had from when he was in high school in the Seventies. I think I even did a book report on The Silmarillion when I was in the ninth grade, which seems really young now that I think about it. My dad and I watched all the movies together as they came out. It was really cool because it was a way that we could have something to talk about. We’re both kind of quiet and awkward people. And now I serve as his personal reader’s advisory librarian, so that worked out. I am a fan for a lot of reasons. I was reading The Lord of the Rings—I started when we lived in Idaho and finished after we moved back to Wisconsin, and I remember our books were all packed up and I couldn’t find them, and so I had to get a copy of Return of the King from the library so I could finish it. I remember reading it out in the woods of the property that my parents had bought, where they were building their house. It was in the fall, and I was sitting at the edge of this golden wood. That’s where I really fell in love with it. I love the books, of course. I love the story, but especially the language and the description and the world. It gives me this sense of longing, or nostalgia, for a world that didn’t ever really exist. It’s similar to the sense that I have when I go see great historic sites or am out in nature. I’ve had similar experiences. A couple years ago I hiked the Pembrokeshire Coast Path in Wales, and I remember taking a little turn off the trail we were hiking and running across the Neolithic ruin in somebody’s field in the middle of nowhere. It gives me that sense of something bigger than myself, or being put outside of yourself—that sense of grandeur that is really hard to come by these days. And I’d say I’m an archivist because of Lord of the Rings. That’s why I went into History and why I went into the literature."