Did the Tolkien fans know there was a Shire Radio on Live365 that plays nothing by Tolkien inspired tracks?

YES.

However, streaming media is verboten at work, and at home...I own almost all of it. (hands head in shame)

heh ... we've been TOLD not to link to any streaming media, but I think that depends on who you are. The woman in the office next to mine tends to link to an online radio site and leave it going all day ... sometimes for several days.

I was more taken with Grand Concepts like Foundation when I was younger. I don't know whether I'm more pessimistic about the long-term success of Grand Concepts or my attention span is just shorter.

My discovery of SF is one of those crystal memories like the moon landing. I spent the years until I could drive in a constant scramble for books. My mother would only drive me to the library every two weeks and I could only get something like seven books at a time. We had library at elementary school once a week and could get two books. I was burning through about a book a day, so there was always a shortfall. My parents were not really readers, but they had the standard '50s assortment of books, so as a last resort I read things like Keys to the Kingdom and Forever Amber. It was therefore crucial to get two books from the school library, but that day I couldn't find anything I wanted. At the end of the period, I grabbed a book pretty much at random. It was Robert Heinlein's Time for the Stars.

I haven't had the same sense of discovery with authors or genres as I had discovering all these people.

It's been a long time for me, but my neighbor kept recommending C.J. Sansom to me. I just finished the fourth one he's written set it Tudor London and I want more. Many more. Now.

I read a few books that were science fiction when I was youner -- including a lot of asimov short story collections ( not all asimov stories , I think) A lot of them creeped me out -- including one that DH remembers. I wasn't big into science fiction until college.

Blame Fredric Wertham.

Incidentally, Wertham wrote the introduction to this brilliant book I just read called Murder For Profit by William Bolitho. It's from 1926 and is, I think, the first attempt to profile serial killers in literature. But damn, Bolitho could write, and, as a bonus, has this arch sense of humor that reads like P.G. Wodehouse writing about Jack The Ripper. I mean, he's wrong about most of his conclusions, but he fascinatingly wrong. The Wertham part doesn't mention comic books, to its credit.

Tolkien first for me. When I was seven my Dad started reading The Hobbit to me as a bed-time story, with voices in character, one chapter at a time. I got so impatient at the pace when we were in Mirkwood that I picked up the book and finished it myself. That was my transition from picture books to text-only books. Then I received a volume of The Lord of the Rings each birthday after that. I re-read them all about once a year. I tried to read The Silmarillion when I was 13, but couldn't maintain interest. Picked it up again when I was 16 and devoured it.

Other early authors: H. Beam Piper, then Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov all made big impressions on me. Foundation was okay, never much cared for the sequels. I liked his other stuff better. There's certainly plenty to choose from. My favorite Isaac Asimov joke (I think originated with Harlan Ellison): Isaac Asimov had writer's block once. It was the scariest ten minutes of his life.

I tried to read The Silmarillion when I was 13, but couldn't maintain interest. Picked it up again when I was 16 and devoured it.

You have greater fortitude than I; it took FIVE tries (as a teen) to get through Silmarillion. I got terminally confused (literally! I'm dead as I type this!) by all the similar names - Finrod and Finarfin and Fingolfin and so on. And it's important to keep that all clear. Stupid Greek tragedy of Elf angst.

(Of course, OCD that I am, I have the Ainulindale memorized. It makes great campfire recitation, especially Morgoth smashing things up like a testy 3-year-old.)

I feel like a total outsider in the cool kids club. I don't read scifi and only very limited fantasy. I cut my teeth on historicals and mysteries and of course, romances and the big glitzy, smutty roman à clef novels of the late seventies and eighties.

I cut my teeth on historicals and mysteries and of course, romances

Have you read any Jane Aiken Hodge? I adore her.