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If you take 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' as books, one is written for children, and one is an adult's book.

I was fascinated by 'The Lord of the Rings' from about the age of eight, and that lasted well into my teens.

I'm a huge fan of Tolkien. I read those books when I was in junior high school and high school, and they had a profound effect on me. I'd read other fantasy before, but none of them that I loved like Tolkien.

I didn't read much SF as a kid - I was a total Tolkien geek - but I started reading Samuel Delany and Angela Carter and Ursula LeGuin in high school, and I was definitely taken with the notion that here was a literature that could explore various notions of gender identity and how it affects the culture at large.

I was a massive Tolkien fan. 'The Hobbit' was... my favorite book as a little girl, and the Silvan Elves were my favorite characters in the book.

The first book I really loved was 'Little Women' - I'd have given anything for Beth to have been allowed to live; I remember crying very much over her death, trying to make the words change just by staring at them. I loved 'Anne of Green Gables,' too; 'What Katy Did;' and 'Peter Pan.'

'The Hobbit' didn't include female characters at all and was a very linear story, a book for children, really.

I'd never read 'Lord of the Rings' until I was asked to play Gandalf, so I didn't really know it was a frightfully famous book.

Some of my favorite books to read are young adult books.