h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i was under 15 when i first read it, i was about 11 i think & though i think i needed to read it twice 2 begin to understand it i would say that was the right age for me to read it at. each time i read it i find some new marvel that i had missed or forgotten about. the length dint put me off...except that it was an old copy of my mums & i dint want to wreck it! i like good stories to be long as then u can spend more time appriciating them (or getting lost in the pages as i did).
but maybe i was just an early reader...

omy

My son who is now 12 has just finished the books. He started the Fellowship when he was 11 and it took a while to grab him. But once it did he zipped through the rest of it and then through TT and ROTK appendices and all. He is a very keen reader though, but some of his friends have read it too.
I first read TLOTR when I was about 18 (I'm now 45) and I have re-read it on average once a year, plus lstening to the BBC adpatation so many times we wore the tapes out and had to buy the CD's.
I fell in love with the story the first time I read it and have grown to love it more deeply on every reading. I have recently been reading more of the background to Tolkien's sources and that has deepened my appreciation of it.
I believe that The Lord of the Rings is the greatest story of the 20th Century. Those who dismiss it as escapist fantasy I don't think can have read it at all. It is the least escapist book I think I have ever read. It makes you confront your own values and ask questions common to all humanity such as 'Does it matter if I do the right thing?". "What is Evil".