The Lord of the Rings Read-a-Long

I've been wanting to join/start a book club for a while, but since I'm too lazy to actually leave the house in the evenings, an online read-a-long is perfect! Eva, Teresa, Clare, and Maree are hosting a Lord of the Rings read-a-long over the next four months.

To kick it off, I'm answering Eva's discussion starters as an introduction.

When did you first hear of The Hobbit?
Elementary school. I didn't read fantasy then though. I stayed away from all things fantasy - Narnia, Tolkien, even Roald Dahl, - until Harry Potter came into my life in 1999, my senior year of high school. I dove into all the fantasy I missed then and through college.

What made you decide to join the read-a-long?
Eva's post warmed me up, then reading Teresa's post made me remember why I liked the books. I also like the idea of a sort of online book club, so I'm not just posting reviews into cyberland, but am part of a community.

Have you read it before? If so tell us about that experience.
Yes, just once, in college. I took a colloquial honors class on the LOTR the semester before the first LOTR film came out. We read all the books. My then boyfriend, now husband had been encouraging me to read them, so we took the class together with a bunch of nerds. It was awesome. I loved the Hobbit, and I loved parts of the LOTR, but I have to admit I got waded down in all the descriptions. Normally, I like that sort of thing, but the battle scenes just dragged on. Over the years I've started remembering only the negative, and reading Teresa's post reminded me why I did actually like the books, so I decided to reread them.

If you’re new to The Hobbit, do you have any preconceptions going into it? N/A

J.R.R. Tolkien pretty much founded the modern fantasy genre. So let’s take a moment to think about the genre as a whole; have you always loved fantasy? Or perhaps you still feel rather skeptical towards the whole idea of wizards and dwarfs and magic What was your introduction to the genre?
I answered this in the first question. I still don't read a lot of fantasy, usually just the popular stuff like Narnia, LOTR, and Harry Potter. I am completely obsessed with Harry though. I've been Hermione several times for Halloween and reread the books pretty much every year.

Do you have a certain plan for reading it? A few pages a day, spacing it out over the month? Or are you just going to race through it? Let whimsy decide?
I will probably start it this weekend and go slowly, although I'll probably end up reading the Hobbit pretty quickly. But if I could get a little ahead so I can read The Two Towers in small pieces that would probably be good. That's where I kept getting stuck when I read them the first time.