LOTR affected me deeply, it helped shape me as a person. I read it when I was thirteen.
Here's a breakdown of the trilogy from goodreads:
The Lord of the Rings
(The Lord of the Rings #1-3)
by J.R.R. Tolkien. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind themIn ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
From Sauron's fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor, his power spread far and wide. Sauron gathered all the Great Rings to him, but always he searched for the One Ring that would complete his dominion.
When Bilbo reached his eleventy-first birthday he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom.
The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard; the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam; Gimli the Dwarf; Legolas the Elf; Boromir of Gondor; and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider.
I can't express enough how deeply these books affected me as I was leaving childhood, and entering into adolescence. I have to include the Hobbit, here as it is the book that introduced me to middle earth and its denizens. I was in seventh grade, and I had to write a book report for English class. I went to the school library and as I was browsing, I discovered a paperback edition of The Hobbit on a spin rack. I read the premise, and saw the name Bilbo Baggins. I thought to myself, what kind of name is that ? IT sounds like ---. I won't tell you what I thought it sounded like, because there maybe ladies and small children in the room with you.
Anyway, I read the book, and when I say I read it, I mean I couldn't put it down except for meal times, bathing, brushing my teeth, that sort of thing. After I'd read it, I asked for it and the trilogy for Christmas. I burned through the trilogy and I felt as if I'd gone to Middle Earth, it seemed so real to me. I used to half imagine that I was descended from elves, and that explained why I felt so different and didn't seem to fit in with other kids. Of course now, I realize that most teens feel like outsiders as they head toward adulthood; and yes, I realized that I'm all too human.
I wanted more of that fantastic world. I wanted to be apart of it, to be a hero fighting against the forces of Sauron. I wanted to slay Uruk hai, the orcs of Sauruman, and journey into Kazad Dum and face the balrog. But reality, she is a harsh mistress, and you just can't find orcs and fiery demons made flesh in this dimension. So I did the next best thing that was available to me. I played Dungeons & Dragons. Excuse me, I meant Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy role playing game, grand daddy of all Role playing games and video games with similar motifs. Designed at first as a fantasy supplement for a medieval miniatures war game by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, they soon realized it had the potential to become something more, something grander. It was first published in 1977, with simple rules and character classes, but by the time I started playing in 1981, it had exploded in popularity and complexity. It was a siren's call to all the nerds and geeks out there who were rolling dice for God, country and glory.
Where Tolkien defined the epic fantasy genre and caused an explosion of books that often poorly tried to imitate The Lord of the Rings, and others that hit the mark, Dungeons & Dragons revolutionized gaming. Before it was miniatures and chit games, then RPGs ruled. If you were a lonely kid who didn't fit in with the rest of the crowd, it was a haven. (Although, oddly enough, I was able to come out of that extreme shyness enough to get involved with the drama club and school newspaper in high school. College didn't turn out too bad, either.) You create a character by choosing your race, and class by either rolling four six sided dice, and choosing the best three for each stat, IE strength, Intelligence, wisdom, constitution and charisma. Being human, elf, half elf, dwarf, halfling or gnome would influence those scores and help determine meeting the prerequisites for each of the classes, Ie, Fighter, Magic User, Thief, Cleric, Paladin and Ranger. Each class got special abilities like tracking and taming beasts for the Ranger, or laying on hands and a protection from evil radius for the Paladin, or turning undead for the Cleric.
This game was heavily influenced by Tolkien's LOTR in the early days of its development. TSR, the company that produced it, later added other elements of fantasy and horror, there by greatly enriching the gaming experience. I've played the game since high school, and through college, and after, stopping from time to time, as it was necessary for my mental health and family. Yeah, like many gamers, I could get very obsessed with the game, and often preferred it over the this world. I let it interfere with my family life, and so I stopped for a few years. Later on there came a point when I realized it wasn't what was going to fulfill my life. I enjoyed it, but I no longer wished to make it a way of life. So I left it again, until a bout six years ago, when I found a group who remembered that it's supposed to be fun and light hearted, and is no substitute for engaging in the things that matter.
Tolkien's works also affected me in another way. I realized that I wanted to write stories, because of his stories, and I realized there's something out there that really does call to us, as we hunger for something more than what this broken world has to offer. That something is God. I was agnostic until I was twenty-three, in spite of my dad being a Lutheran pastor. I remember at the age of fifteen, standing out front of the church on a sunny, beautiful spring day, when a thought occurred to me. If this is all there is, then life is meaningless. Then I went on for several years until I encountered Christ when I was in a Science Fiction English class of all places in 1988, via a fellow classmate. I asked a lot of questions and did research, and attended his church off and on, and to make a long story short, I began following Christ in 1989. There was more to my conversion than Tolkien, U2's music influenced me, the people I'd encountered at the church, which wasn't stuffy, or self- righteous, and valued the intellect as much as the spiritual aspect of life and most importantly, God's holy spirit.
So, yeah. You never know where a book might take you. As Bilbo said to Frodo,