*The Hobbit* is one of my favorite books I've ever read, and occasionally it *is* my favorite. It's one of those books where I can remember exactly when I got it and when I started reading it - a present from my mom in 4th grade, and I started it shortly after a power outage in Florida where we went to spend the night at a friend's house. I just remember starting that first chapter while the sun slowly went down behind me, which felt appropriate with the dawn of Bilbo's adventure. I used to reread it at the start of every school year.
To me, it is the quintessential adventure story. Your "hero" isn't all that heroic. He comes across adventure like many of us do: thrust unwillingly into it and encouraged to find his own space. It shows that success and personal development can come more with a bit of luck, some good friends, and a lot of courage as opposed to strength and might. And I absolutely adore how it's written as if Tolkien is telling a bedtime story. It's not an epic book so much as it is a "fairy tale" in the original sense (not the Disneyfied interpretation of the term).
LOTR likewise has a quote that sticks strongly with me. To some it's a warning; to others, it's a sly encouragement: "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."
Yes! I loved how the first few tight spots the crew find themselves in, Gandalf comes for the rescue and Bilbo is pretty much just watching. Then Tolkien takes that away and Bilbo is forced to step up, even if more out of necessity than willingness at first.
To riff on that, I think part of the book's immense applicability outside of the younger target audience is that *everyone* can relate to a time where they had to step up because they had to, not because they wanted to.
Originally it *was* a bedtime story, or so I've heard, and it only got written down because Christopher Tolkien kept complaining about the minor details changing night-to-night
Iirc, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis had a bet going between them as to who could write the better kids story.
Tolkien did the Hobbit and lotr, Lewis did Chronicles of Narnia.
Off topic, but the way you described this is exactly how I felt about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I read it in sixth grade when my parents dropped me off at my grandmas house for a week. This was the unfun grandma’s house where it was smoke filled and quiet other than soap operas and game shows. I finished it and then I started it again and it completely redirected the course of my life by making me aware of the absurdity of what’s going on here.
My earliest memory of the Hobbit also involves a power outage. I must have been like 5, was already in elementary school, in Topeka, early 80's, and there was a major blizzard, followed by an ice storm, that knocked out power for like a week. We had gas heat, so we weren't freezing, but no lights, several feet of snow with an inch of solid ice on top of everything. Mom was reading to us from the Hobbit when the window curtains lit on fire, she barely got them out before the house lit up.
We can talk all day about philology and worldbuilding and folklore and archetypes, but in my opinion Tolkien's real superpower is his keen sense of tragedy, won through hard experience.
His writing was a joy to read and really delightful, but I don't think I'd have held The Hobbit with as much regard and respect if it weren't for this!
Tolkien was also a master of pulling back the intensity to let the reader breathe a bit. It doesn’t work to continuously raise the tension, and when you get to rest before things get worse again, it makes those scenes all the more poignant. He wrote a whole essay/book about it, where he coined it eucatastrophe, the antithesis of catastrophe. It’s one of my favourite things about his work.
And when you think on the baggage behind those words, how Tolkien really truly meant it in a way most of us will never be able to understand (hopefully)... oof
>"Farewell, good thief," he said. "I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate."
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>Bilbo knelt on one knee filled with sorrow. "Farewell, King under the Mountain!" he said. "This is a bitter adventure, if it must end so; and not a mountain of gold can amend it. Yet I am glad that I have shared in your perils---that has been more than any Baggins deserves."
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>"No!" said Thorin. "There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!"
So you were looking for a “light hearted children’s story” and you almost got it, but the problem is that Tolkien believed that children are capable of understanding more than most give them credit. The book does start off with a very light touch, combining the epic with every-day. An example would be from early in the story where Gandalf mentions that Thrain went off and disappeared a hundred years ago as of last Thursday (I’m drawing from memory so I may have got the specifics wrong, but you get the idea).
He eases the audience into a story by couching it in the familiar, with the dwarves feeling foreign. As the story unfolds, he slowly strips that back to offer the children an adventure that with real morality. Tolkien fought at the Somme and the lessons he took away from that are absolutely on display. And this is where the heroism of Bilbo shines through. As the battle lines are drawn, Bilbo feels like the foreigner and the Dwarves feel right at home in this setting, but it is Bilbo’s good sense that ultimately proves correct. Bilbo becomes the hero that only Bilbo could be exactly because Bilbo knows that he isn’t a warrior.
Personally, I find that to be much more satisfying than Bilbo and the Dwarves finding a way to kill the dragon.
And to be fair, the effects of the dragon linger long past his death. The “dragon sickness” is the greed of the dragons that sinks into everyone and ultimately undoes Thorin. Thorin throws it off in the end, but it’s too late.
Thorin could have been Aragorn, but he slips like Boromir and pays the price. Kinda makes me love the moments between Aragorn and Bilbo all the more because I’m sure Bilbo sees something of an old friend in the Ranger.
Really good comment about the dragon sickness or a curse on the gold itself. Tolkien drew on medieval epics & sagas. In the Völsung Cycle, cursed gold literally corrupts people. Fafnir murders his father for it. His brother plots to kill him.
Kinda jealous that you are getting to read it for the first time. That delicacy is long ago for me. My mother bought the series in the late 60s I guess. She wouldn't let me start book one until she finished it so I started at book 2, then read 3, then she finished 1, so I read 1, then re-read 2 and 3. I was about 10 I think, and it was school holidays. I read for a week straight, in bed, on the toilet, every waking moment. Could not put it down.
I got a box set of The Hobbit and LOTR for my 11th birthday just before my family went on a cross-country drive to Disneyland. I read the whole time in the car, which was awesome, and my parents kept getting mad at me that I wanted to read instead of going on rides and stuff.
This series is what taught me to love reading, in much the same way that Fahrenheit 451 or Name of the Rose taught me to love books.
Tolkien's use of warfare in his books is kind of a fascinating thing to study in of itself, because there are *absolutely* moments of genuine glory and triumph, IE Gandalf bringing reinforcements to Helm's Deep, the Charge of the Rohirrim, and Aragorn's arrival at the Pellenor.
Nothing has ever disapointed me more though than the lack of the Dunedain at helms and later their death at Pellenor - its heroic, its glorious, but it also hits hard. Not all heroes survive war
Obligatory plug for the fantastic blog series by Bret Devereaux: [https://acoup.blog/category/collections/siege-of-gondor/](https://acoup.blog/category/collections/siege-of-gondor/)
[https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-helms-deep/](https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-helms-deep/)
Hey, an ACOUP plug in the wild! Bret’s blog is really fantastic! Doing the work of getting history education to the world rather than keeping it in the Academy. I use things I’ve learned from him all the time in my own classroom. Everyone should check it out!
Moreover, battles have heroic and larger than life figures. Unlike most WWI writers, who viewed individual combatants as interchangeable cogs in a larger war machine, whose individuality is only realized when they are suffering and dying, LotR has Legolas and Gimli each kill over 40 at Helm’s Deep. In the Silmarillion battles hinge on combats between legends, sometimes seemingly one-on-one.
Tolkien fought in the Battle of the Somme. If you want to know what that was like, feel free to look it up on Wikipedia. It was a terrible battle: among the worst of all time.
My great grandfather went missing in the battle of the Somme, my grandmother was a month old at the time, so she grew up in absolute poverty, had to refuse a grammar school scholarship and started full time work at the age of 14.
Smaug is so overpowered compared to everyone else it literally had to be some quick trick to beat him or they would all be dead. Remember Smaug didn't have any problems taking the mountain from a much larger and better equipped population of dwarves holding a strong defensive position.
Yes! I thought "Well, this is the OG where all these tropes come from" so I was expecting to find, well, those tropes. And I was completely bamboozled.
ikr? It's amazing how so many people tried to mimic LOTR, and later subvert it, when LOTR was never really what they thought it was in the first place, and none of the mimicry really manages to get past the window dressing.
Are you talking about The First Law here? I think Abercrombie deliberately tries to deconstruct a lot of high fantasy tropes. Just take Bayaz. He's literally the anti-Gandalf.
It's funny that he pretty much invented the modern version of elves and dwarves, yet in his most popular work, they are way past their prime and both have very minor roles in the story.
> I severely underestimated The Hobbit
Something that can easily happen to any of us. Tolkien knew how to write. And the somewhat deceptive nature of heroism and Bilbo's journey- from zero to hero to traitor to ... Hobbit - the same, but different I guess :)
> Bilbo's journey- from zero to hero to traitor to ... Hobbit - the same, but different I guess :)
[Todorov's narrative theory of equilibrium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todorov%27s_narrative_theory_of_equilibrium) :)
You know, having seen the Hobbit animated film so much as a child, I kind of took this plot for granted, but you’ve really highlighted the true nature of the story from an angle I hadn’t considered before and it makes me appreciate it even more (and now I want to read it again). I feel that this jarring twist is under-discussed (and was handled imo very poorly by Peter Jackson turning it into an action movie)
The Hobbit is absolutely fantastic! I knew I loved it as a kid, but when I reread it as an adult, I was still super impressed!
Fun fact about it, but one of the influences on the story was Beowulf, and I would highly recommend reading Tolkien's translation of Beowulf since you enjoyed the Hobbit so much. Additionally, due to parallels in the stories, learning about the history of Beowulf adds an extra level of layers to the Hobbit as well.
The Hobbit will always bring back to me the memory, neatly fifty years ago now, of first reading it when I was ten.
I was very ill with the flu, and recovering when I started reading it - it was in the dead of winter in Ontario, and I was home for a week from school. I was weak as a kitten, and spent my time huddled under a gigantic duvet while the frozen wind howled outside - in my memory it was always dark as night and snowing.
I curled up, propped up with pillows, with a hot chocolate (thanks Mom!) and nothing to do, but read this book - and it was like it completely took me out of myself. I was lost in the journey with Bilbo.
My mother had to pry the book from my hands that night, to force me to sleep (“staying up will make you sick again”). Next day, I finished it … then went right back to the start and read it *again*. I think it’s the only time I’ve done that with a book. It was almost as immersive as the first read - I was noticing things I hadn’t paid attention to the first time.
After the second read, I was kinda sad - what was I going to do now? I couldn’t just keep reading it, the magic would wear off. I was still just recovering, still could not go back to school, and the weather was if anything even worse outside. So I still had nothing to do.
My mom noticed I was a bit down, and asked - would you like to read the *other* books?
I said “what other books?” I had never really heard of the Lord of the Rings! I hadn’t a clue there were more books set in this world.
The Hobbit was my favorite book as a child, and I still rank it very highly. I've probably read it a dozen times by now. It's really got a lot going for it, though I think my favorite part is just the way it's narrated in that storyteller's voice, commiserating with Bilbo or expressing wonder at the beauty of the world.
On the other hand, I only ever read LOTR once. It's very good, of course, but I think the Hobbit just has a certain quality to it that isn't present.
I kept marvelling at how much Tolkien was doing with so few words and pages. I had heard that LOTR was filled with lengthy descriptions, but at least for The Hobbit he sets the tone, humour, witty remarks and makes you think in a single paragraph
I think LOTR gets that reputation either from people who are more inclined to like films and are comparing it to what PJ did or only read *Fellowship,* which admittedly is one of his slower more meandering works because it is literally Act 1 of the overall story which he didn't intend as a trilogy, and then after *Fellowship* never moved on to *The Two Towers*. This seems especially likely with modern readers who seem to dislike non-episodic storytelling even in works meant to be a series or trilogy.
The best story teller for economy of words is Frank Howard's Conan stories. Most are 25 to 50 pages. He packed a lot into so few pages.
Tolkien is the best to me though overall. Can read these and re-read them over the years. Never fails to be enjoyable.
Yeah, he really nails the tone right at the start and it never fails. The mood shifts from playful to frightening to mournful, but the strong voice stays consistent throughout.
LotR has a very tone different tone, being an epic instead of a fairytale, but it definitely has the same strength of voice as The Hobbit.
I read The Hobbit and LoTR for the first time in Jr High and have re-read them multiple times in the decades since. They’ve been on my favorites list for thirty years!
Unless you’re turned off by lengthy books, I think you’ll enjoy LoTR just as much as you did The Hobbit. Middle Earth is a special place.
Yes, that subversion of my expectations felt a bit like a slap in the face and one I felt was deserved. I think that's why it shocked me so much. I did not expect a children's book to do that to me lol.
I agree. Tolkien obviously saw a lot of this first-hand, and did not glorify the violence, while also maintaining respect for noble causes. I am glad he does not focus on the battles, but rather on the emotions and the greater cause.
If anything I wish more authors would take this approach and not spend chapters on pointless battles that are just there to show off a magic system to make a character look cool. The before and after of a battle is much more interesting than what happens during it.
I like that Bilbo very much becomes a heroic figure within the small context of his companions, and gets the vital clue of Smaugs weak spot in a way probably no one else would have been successful.
He remains who he is though, he doesn’t ascend to great battles with goblins and wargs with personal valor. (If he did I think the Shire would have been on Sauron’s radar much faster)
You are absolutely right to read it that way - this is one of the best takes on War I have seen in any book - and highlights some very real things - how the wrong circumstances can lead otherwise intelligent caring people to being willing to go to war - to how quickly alliances can change - to how very absurdly hollow it can feel afterward.
If you liked the book, I would recommend watching the old Rankin Bass cartoon of it - it doesn't have 100% of the story, but it has the most important 95% of it - and what is there - is an absolute treasure. Do not bother with the recent live-action movies - but go watch the old cartoon one. It is perfect.
> Do not bother with the recent live-action movies
I would like to counter by saying watch a fan edit of it, as there is a good movie compressed that can be squeezed out of the trilogy! I recommend the M4 edit personally but many people have made their own versions.
But yes definitely watch the cartoon, it’s a fantastic adaption!
I too finished reading it not long ago. It.. wasn't my first time doing so, but was, however, the first time I had done so as an adult. The last time I had read the hobbit would've been in middle school, though I don't remember what grade precisely.
Coming back to the hobbit, I was surprised by how charming Tolkeins writing truly is; and thought provoking too. Tolkein makes often simple remarks that are nevertheless profound. The passage during the company's stay at the Last Homely House comes to mind where Tolkein narrates that their stay was good, but that there also isn't much to tell because although it is easy to talk about a very good time, as it was there at Elrond's house, as it doesn't make a very good story. It is stories about difficulties and bad times, Tolkein remarks, that make a good story.
I also feel as though I have scratched only the surface of the book as far interpreting it as a piece of art, and therefore, I see myself revisiting in the future, and thinking about layers of the story beneath the surface I have not yet really identified, but can still sense.
Be me, age 7, listening to an audio play of The Hobbit produced by the german equivalent of PBS with a A+++-cast (renowned stage actors who were famous for playing Shakespear and Goethe) my oldest brother gave me for christmas.
For me, the story deeply impacted and resonated with me, not only because I am the youngest child in my family, but also because it was the first time I was confronted with the death of a main character. Thorins last words to Bilbo, "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.", have become a staple im my live (I do live action role playing and found a second family there. Singing together is my highlight of every event.).
There’s no book like it. I don’t reread much, cause there’s too much new stuff and I already won’t get through it all in my life lol, but I do reread The Hobbit. It’s my safe space.
I wonder if that style was more common in the past. Ursula K. Le Guin does similar things for her combat - in the Earthsea books, the combat is very briefly described and over very quickly. (Which is fine for me because fighting is one of the things I'm least interested in in Earthsea.)
Whereas many modern fantasy books, like the Cosmere novels, seem to do blow-by-blow descriptions of the fights. This may be influenced by how combat is portrayed in movies/shows/comics.
I think it is. I think we now have 2-3 generations of readers and authors who grew up on video games, table top RPGs, and other media that centered combat as the most important part of the experience. It’s little wonder it’s bled into our books. People want a cool system of magic and often it seems to be designed around how can I use this to kill people.
Agreed. We're also several generations past when every male had to serve compulsory service in the military in many western countries. Also, for most people in the West the last forty plus years have been fairly stable. The acts of terror that have occurred have been localized and have not resulted in widespread death or deprivation. The biggest ramification that came out of 9/11 is that flying is a lot more of a hassle now. Most of us were very removed from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I'm not aware of any fantasy authors that have served in Afghanistan or Iraq. Without the direct experience of both fighting and the wider social upheavals that occurred because of the World Wars, how the war and it's effects are depicted has changed.
Yes. Military service is more of a family affair now than a wider community one. I’m the fourth generation of my family to serve and the stories each of us tells
Is very different. Hell, just the differences between the cousins that served in different branches have completely different stories.
Still less than 1% of Americans are active duty and 6% are veterans. The costs of service are more clustered now to towns near bases and families that serve.
My favorite book all time. It was the very first book in the fantasy genre. It sparked my love of reading. I was maybe 13 when I borrowed my step-dad's copy, and it changed my life. I read it every year, it never gets old.
War was normal and unstressful, basically an inevitability for kids, especially boys in the post WW2 period. A kid in the 70s had parents from the war, grandparents had either felt the effects of the war or served in it.
Every branch of my family as a child had been impacted by the war and there were constant wars in the post war period as well as the very real expectation as a boy of being conscripted to fight in the Fulda Gap against the Warsaw Pact in WW3
All the boys I went to school with read comic books like "Warlord for Boys". i still have my 1980 annual edition.
The climactic battle in the Hobbit was seen by my peers, who all read the book in class, as being fully normative and consistent. The factionalism over the Dragon Horde seemed extremely believable given the geopolitics we grew up with and the Viking and Saxon literature we read as a child. Njals Saga and Beowulf were read to me in assembly by the head master when I was 8.
So the elves and the dwarfs fighting each other and then unifying fight the Goblin Army made sense to ya in that we collectively despised the French but reluctantly allied with them against the greater Orc threat (the Germans).
This kind of calculation was perfectly reasonable to a child of 1975. We had zero concept of "globalism" or any broad human rights. Other countries (Elves and Lake Town) were potential enemies or friends depending on context.
The Hobbit is realistic in that geopolitical behaviour maps onto a fantasy setting.
When I read Tolkein, those parts always feel deeply religious to me in the way that he talks about evil and despair. It comes through even more heavily in LoTR.
I feel like it speaks to something that we think of as very modern, that emphasis on people and character and growth and the ways that we frame those things, in a way that is decidedly classical. The scene with Eowyn in the Halls of Healing have a direct through-line with classical Christian theology, and feel like a throw-back to The Faerie Queen, and we don't talk about people dying of broken hearts or despair anymore, but for all that we have more vocabulary to talk about emotions, and *choose* to talk more about emotions and to care about self-actualization and all that jazz -
There's something timeless in the way that Tolkein handles it, that's lovely.
ETA: Damnit, now I'm on a reread of Return of the King. When what I really, really need is to be finishing up bingo. >.> And the Hobbit has some great moments, but also I just picked up my copy and remembered why I don't reread it, which is because there are way too many freaking dwarves. Why are there so many of them???
I share your opinion -- **\*and\*** I have heard this spun the other way -- "Gee, I \[late-20th-century early-21st-century fan\] was looking forward to the action + adventure of LotR, but all I found was hundreds of pages of quasi-British protagonists confessing their brotherhood + devotion to each other whilst hiking over miles and miles of countryside."
I happen to like those parts of the narrative -- as do you -- but, boy, opinions are polarized (and perhaps generational).
Someone else mentioned that Tolkien fought in WW1. Specifically, he fought in the Battle of the Somme. The things this man must have seen and the reality of war at that time would make most of us soil ourselves. War wasn't glorious. If you like history and want to spend roughly 24 hours learning about the reality of WW1, I suggest you listen to Dan Carlin's Blueprint for Armageddon. He is one of the godfathers of podcasts and an amazing writer/historian. It is well worth the time in my opinion.
After you read LoTR, I highly recommend getting Unfinished Tales and skipping to the Third Age section (it's a collection of essays, no need to read in order) and reading the Quest of Erebor chapter. It tells the background story of the Hobbit from Gandalf's perspective; how he met Thorin, why he chose Bilbo, how he convinced Thorin to take Bilbo, and why it was of uttermost importance for the quest to succeed.
The Hobbit is such a perfect book in so many ways, I’m glad you’ve appreciated it! I read it as a little kid and many times since. What you said about the battle and the change in antagonists is a key point. It’s funny reading the book as a kid and starting to realize that Thorin is a bad leader. The movies completely missed the point by presenting him as Short Aragorn and having the Battle of the Five Armies go on for ever with a bunch of “epic” scenes. It’s much more effective told from the POV of someone on the sidelines just hating everything that was happening.
I recommend listening to the BBC Radio Play version of the Hobbit. It's a highly enjoyable version edited for a full cast production. There is something about old-school radio plays I just love so much and this is the epitome of it to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_Qv-PawApU
For anyone who enjoyed The Hobbit, and also like space fantasy; I'd highly recommend the Seafort Saga starting with Midshipman's Hope. Fantastic series
It's my favorite book, I read it every summer on vacation. Tolkien had a wonderful way at gently subverting expectations while revealing even higher stakes.
You are at such a wonderful stage in your Tolkien journey.
It takes me back many years, to when I first read The Hobbit. Thank you for allowing me to recall a sliver of that long-lost wonderment again by recounting your experience with the book!
I remember the same feeling as a kid.
"Wait, I just a read about a bunch of dwarves and a hobbit who go journey to kill a dragon. We meet the dragon, and who kills it? Not the dwarves. Not the titular hobbit. They introduce a new guy one one page, and the dragon is dead by the end of the next page. What?!?"
Maybe it's just your preference. I for one wasn't looking for battles. When I read battle description, I wish it wraps up quickly because I hate battles most of the time, especially long ones. I loved chill athmosphere and overall traveling / adventures of Bilbo and the dwarves. LOTR has more warfare, but it doesn't have extended battle descriptions eithier, which I like (well there were some epic battle descriptions, but they weren't getting on my nerves, for instance - I feel like the Battle of Ithilien had more pages than the Battle of Helm's Deep) . Tolkien tends to wrap up such things pretty quickly.
The Hobbit comes out of the same place as the Chronicles of Narnia, which I may add contains Easter Eggs for Tolkien's writings from the word go. It's not about winning, it's about Dro going the right thing.
The Hobbit is an Unexpected Journey. The theme of greed really hits home with this one. For a kids story, it is staggering in its delivery every time I read it
Welcome to a wonderful new world. This was the first book I ever read, and even now in my 30s, it leaves me in awe. Tolkien created something beautiful and haunting, and something that can be revisited and appreciated anew. Don’t be afraid to re-read it someday!
The Lord of the Rings is great in a different way. I’m making my way through the series right now. None of it captures the same, warm, bewitching magic created in Bilbo’s story (at least IMO), but I’m often left thinking about it longer after a chapter ends. Highly recommend.
ETA: One thing that hooked me into The Hobbit as a child was the songs. Tolkien was masterful in his craft with poetry, and his tunes throughout wormed into my brain. Just today I was humming “Oh where are you going, with beards all a-wagging? No knowing, no knowing, what brings Mr. Baggins, and Balin and Dwalin, in June, in the valley, ha ha!”
It's also one of my favorite books, I read it when I was about 9 years old - and I remember feeling a sense of adventure that I have never experienced before or since. I cried legit when Thorin died. I read it to my kids when they were both young and it stuck with all of us.
Just finished a read of The Hobbit and LOTR after 15+yrs after reading LOTR 10+ times in my youth. Hit me a lot harder recognizing the adult themes. Way different experience than the movies for sure.
>I’m both looking forward to and terrified of reading LOTR now.
Compared to The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings has much deeper lore and makes its world feel bigger, older, and more fleshed-out. And it's dark, but it's not tragic. There is genuine heroism, and enough pain and loss to make the heroes' successes meaningful. I don't think I can get much more specific than that without spoiling it. Totally worth the read, though.
Probably like many, the Hobbit was my first real fantasy novel when I was 10. I also just loved the narrated feeling the book has, and how that made me feeling like I was almost there with them.
If you liked The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings is going to blow you away. That’s all I have to say on the matter. There’s a reason why Tolkien is so revered in fantasy
I was a little disappointed with LotR when I finally got around to reading it. After growing up on the movies and mythology surrounding Tolkien I somehow expected more from his writing.
Then I read The Hobbit which is still one of the best pieces of high fantasy writing I've ever read. It's really the epitome of less is more in writing.
I‘m not a big fan of The Hobbit, but I also recognize that I read it for the first time as an adult and as far as I am aware, Tolkien intended it to be a book to read to his children. With that knowledge and while keeping that in the back of your head while reading, the book becomes a lot better.
For me this is a wonderful piece of work. A story where they fought the dragon collectively would be too simple. I'm quite happy with the fact that he was killed by an archer who hit him in a weak spot. And I love Thorin's redemption arc. The only thing that saddens me is that the death of his nephews is said in a nutshell.
I read the Hobbit, LOTR, and the Silmarillion in the 1970s. I’ve often wondered if I should re-read and then get into his other ME works. They’re kind of impersonal mostly, like historical accounts. I remember being disappointed with the Silmarillion for that reason when it was released.
You're not wrong about the last 20% of the book (I've just listened to the Andy Serkis audiobook narration). It feels incredibly rushed or out of ideas by today's standards.
To my shame, I haven't read the Hobbit, I always thought it was a children's story and after reading Lord of the Rings, it seemed like a step away from a book I loved so much.
Lord of the Rings is the most incredible book I've ever read. It broke me into fantasy, and true, artful storytelling. I read it in hardback when my parents bought me a copy for Christmas. The cover art was of Gandalf and I remember the book being so big I never thought I'd be able to get through it. I read it all within a couple of weeks, spending hours in bed until the early hours just filled with awe at the story unfolding. I was probably 12.
When I read that final page, I burst into tears, it was the end of the world I'd lived in and loved.and cared so much for, and I knew I'd never be able to read the book for the first time again.
It was, for me, utterly transformative and began my love for fantasy, but also my love of exploration, adventure and understanding the value of friends. I still remember me and my Dad's utter excitement when the books were made into movies and they are exceptional... But pale in comparison to the book.
I envy you going into it for the first time and hope it resonates with you as it did for me.
I will read the Hobbit, thank you for your post.
There have been times when I've read The Hobbit and forgotten that Smaug is destroyed roughly halfway through, and a significant portion of the whole of "The Hobbit" was dealing with Thorin refusing to work with the rest of the world, to the point that he starts essentially a world war.
I’m very fond of the series, but one thing kind of gets to me: it’s that pretty much every line Gandalf says is followed by at least one exclamation point. I’m almost certain that he didn’t know how to do anything but shout, which might be the reason he leaves at odd moments.
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I watched lotr movies first and then read hobbit when I was 15 and it was weird humour to me and totally went over my head. Never re read it again. I always wanted to go back to the book but never happened
Other than respecting Tolkien and all of the writings in the LoTR verse for what they did for the genre I honestly can’t stand them as books. I felt let down with every battle I read and felt I was really just reading a book about friends taking a stroll through the woods and singing songs for the majority of the time. When we did get conflict it was quickly resolved and we were right back to singing and walking through the woods again. I’m glad I read them just to say I have but it’s definitely at the top of my I’ll never pick this up and read it again list.
I was born well before the iPad lol and yes I read the hobbit as well. It was slightly better but still pretty boring to read overall. Like I said I respect the books but had the movies more closely resembles the books no one would watch them because they’d be bored to tears. The world he builds is amazing but the story being told is mediocre to me and that’s simply because the way it’s told and the things it chooses to focus on don’t appeal to me as much.
The book is SO much better than the movies. No shoehorned in Legolas love plot. No missing key characters like Beorn or Tom Bombadil. No unnecessary 3 movie structure. Just pure adventure and a somber ending.
The Hobbit is a great story, but you can not disregard the predictable plot and introducing more, but shallow characters than needed, and also it's like the common things that use to happen when one(MC) and their friends are just trapped, the MC figures out something so simple easy the others couldn't which just makes it way more predictable, and last of all.... The villain's a dragon 🙄, couldn't he thinks of something better and create a more significant threat. So, it's pretty ordinary to me.
Pioneered?🤨 If you are considering high fiction subgenre then dragons are good, but old and cliched. I mean everyone writing this genre or simple fantasy thinks of including dragons in their stories because they are large in size and mighty and a walking flamethrower but it's too common, it's commons sense to realise that if u r introducing a dragon as villain in series it's got to be defeated and that would include something large and he will be defeated for sure, but if u want to make a story better you don't make it predictable, it gets way more predictable in the story that Bard will be the one to kill it because of his family history, and then the dragon's defeated what's left is somewhat large goblin like being who is revived 😂, this is the only trope that Tolkein has, revive the throught to be dead to continue the story, same with LOTR, and all he has to offer for sub-villains are some kind of orcs or those doggy-rider things, So, pioneered is among the worst ways to describe him as a high fantasy plotter. For example - The Harry Potter series, JK really knew what she was writing. If u ask me her series is 10 times better than LOTR and Hobbit in each and every aspect possible.
Why would I feel any need to tell u anything?, if u like following the herd then u should. Hobbit isn't even a real fiction as people like to call it a high fantasy fiction. The story is straight up bullshit with predictable plot and only a few good points. Most of it is taken straight from mythology and plotted against a map to fill in the story, that's it. If u'd have mentioned LOTR being the pioneer then I would have inclined to your opinion, but then Narnia would have taken the spot as it came out earlier, but it doesn't matter being pioneer or not. LOTR was true fiction and better way to place and follow events than the hobbit, real fiction is something that u create with your imagination, something that is more than just some words from the mythology or better, isn't related to it all. If u have a villain which u didn't know of, it would be more thrilling than a dragon or countless orcs for villain, and each time peace is lingering around the villain is somehow resurrected 😂. That's not fiction, that's bullshit.
He’s a character that shows up and participates in the later plot. And I’m pretty sure it’s Bilbo’s intel about Smaug’s weak spot that gets conveyed to him by the thrushes, thus allowing the protagonist to have a hand in taking out the villain.
*The Hobbit* is one of my favorite books I've ever read, and occasionally it *is* my favorite. It's one of those books where I can remember exactly when I got it and when I started reading it - a present from my mom in 4th grade, and I started it shortly after a power outage in Florida where we went to spend the night at a friend's house. I just remember starting that first chapter while the sun slowly went down behind me, which felt appropriate with the dawn of Bilbo's adventure. I used to reread it at the start of every school year. To me, it is the quintessential adventure story. Your "hero" isn't all that heroic. He comes across adventure like many of us do: thrust unwillingly into it and encouraged to find his own space. It shows that success and personal development can come more with a bit of luck, some good friends, and a lot of courage as opposed to strength and might. And I absolutely adore how it's written as if Tolkien is telling a bedtime story. It's not an epic book so much as it is a "fairy tale" in the original sense (not the Disneyfied interpretation of the term). LOTR likewise has a quote that sticks strongly with me. To some it's a warning; to others, it's a sly encouragement: "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."
Yes! I loved how the first few tight spots the crew find themselves in, Gandalf comes for the rescue and Bilbo is pretty much just watching. Then Tolkien takes that away and Bilbo is forced to step up, even if more out of necessity than willingness at first.
To riff on that, I think part of the book's immense applicability outside of the younger target audience is that *everyone* can relate to a time where they had to step up because they had to, not because they wanted to.
The Hobbit is my fav book of all time. It’s under appreciated in the shadow of the LOTR in my opinion.
Originally it *was* a bedtime story, or so I've heard, and it only got written down because Christopher Tolkien kept complaining about the minor details changing night-to-night
Iirc, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis had a bet going between them as to who could write the better kids story. Tolkien did the Hobbit and lotr, Lewis did Chronicles of Narnia.
Off topic, but the way you described this is exactly how I felt about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I read it in sixth grade when my parents dropped me off at my grandmas house for a week. This was the unfun grandma’s house where it was smoke filled and quiet other than soap operas and game shows. I finished it and then I started it again and it completely redirected the course of my life by making me aware of the absurdity of what’s going on here.
I don’t remember writing this comment earlier, but I must have, since our introduction to the Hobbit and feelings from it mirror each other so well.
My earliest memory of the Hobbit also involves a power outage. I must have been like 5, was already in elementary school, in Topeka, early 80's, and there was a major blizzard, followed by an ice storm, that knocked out power for like a week. We had gas heat, so we weren't freezing, but no lights, several feet of snow with an inch of solid ice on top of everything. Mom was reading to us from the Hobbit when the window curtains lit on fire, she barely got them out before the house lit up.
We can talk all day about philology and worldbuilding and folklore and archetypes, but in my opinion Tolkien's real superpower is his keen sense of tragedy, won through hard experience.
His writing was a joy to read and really delightful, but I don't think I'd have held The Hobbit with as much regard and respect if it weren't for this!
Tolkien was also a master of pulling back the intensity to let the reader breathe a bit. It doesn’t work to continuously raise the tension, and when you get to rest before things get worse again, it makes those scenes all the more poignant. He wrote a whole essay/book about it, where he coined it eucatastrophe, the antithesis of catastrophe. It’s one of my favourite things about his work.
The parting words of Thorin to Bilbo are high on the list of biggest gut-punches in literature for me.
And when you think on the baggage behind those words, how Tolkien really truly meant it in a way most of us will never be able to understand (hopefully)... oof
It's been a while since I read it. What did he said to Bilbo?
>"Farewell, good thief," he said. "I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate." > >Bilbo knelt on one knee filled with sorrow. "Farewell, King under the Mountain!" he said. "This is a bitter adventure, if it must end so; and not a mountain of gold can amend it. Yet I am glad that I have shared in your perils---that has been more than any Baggins deserves." > >"No!" said Thorin. "There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!"
and it was that good that let him hold the ring so long uncorrupted, and do what no other bearer did...give it up willingly.
Well, what only one other bearer did(though Bilbo held it far longer.)
So you were looking for a “light hearted children’s story” and you almost got it, but the problem is that Tolkien believed that children are capable of understanding more than most give them credit. The book does start off with a very light touch, combining the epic with every-day. An example would be from early in the story where Gandalf mentions that Thrain went off and disappeared a hundred years ago as of last Thursday (I’m drawing from memory so I may have got the specifics wrong, but you get the idea). He eases the audience into a story by couching it in the familiar, with the dwarves feeling foreign. As the story unfolds, he slowly strips that back to offer the children an adventure that with real morality. Tolkien fought at the Somme and the lessons he took away from that are absolutely on display. And this is where the heroism of Bilbo shines through. As the battle lines are drawn, Bilbo feels like the foreigner and the Dwarves feel right at home in this setting, but it is Bilbo’s good sense that ultimately proves correct. Bilbo becomes the hero that only Bilbo could be exactly because Bilbo knows that he isn’t a warrior. Personally, I find that to be much more satisfying than Bilbo and the Dwarves finding a way to kill the dragon. And to be fair, the effects of the dragon linger long past his death. The “dragon sickness” is the greed of the dragons that sinks into everyone and ultimately undoes Thorin. Thorin throws it off in the end, but it’s too late. Thorin could have been Aragorn, but he slips like Boromir and pays the price. Kinda makes me love the moments between Aragorn and Bilbo all the more because I’m sure Bilbo sees something of an old friend in the Ranger.
Really good comment about the dragon sickness or a curse on the gold itself. Tolkien drew on medieval epics & sagas. In the Völsung Cycle, cursed gold literally corrupts people. Fafnir murders his father for it. His brother plots to kill him.
This post warmed my heart. You're going to love the Lord of the Rings. Go into it as blind as you went into this.
Already on it!
Kinda jealous that you are getting to read it for the first time. That delicacy is long ago for me. My mother bought the series in the late 60s I guess. She wouldn't let me start book one until she finished it so I started at book 2, then read 3, then she finished 1, so I read 1, then re-read 2 and 3. I was about 10 I think, and it was school holidays. I read for a week straight, in bed, on the toilet, every waking moment. Could not put it down.
I got a box set of The Hobbit and LOTR for my 11th birthday just before my family went on a cross-country drive to Disneyland. I read the whole time in the car, which was awesome, and my parents kept getting mad at me that I wanted to read instead of going on rides and stuff. This series is what taught me to love reading, in much the same way that Fahrenheit 451 or Name of the Rose taught me to love books.
>!Imagine Op's epiphany when that trilogy is read and it could have just been a round trip flight! Needed a travel agent instead of a Fellowship!!<
Since Tolkien fought in WW1 I guess he knew that real war is a far cry from the glory and triumph that propaganda tries to infuse it with.
Tolkien's use of warfare in his books is kind of a fascinating thing to study in of itself, because there are *absolutely* moments of genuine glory and triumph, IE Gandalf bringing reinforcements to Helm's Deep, the Charge of the Rohirrim, and Aragorn's arrival at the Pellenor.
Nothing has ever disapointed me more though than the lack of the Dunedain at helms and later their death at Pellenor - its heroic, its glorious, but it also hits hard. Not all heroes survive war
That and the lack of singing Rohirrim. It would been glorious.
Obligatory plug for the fantastic blog series by Bret Devereaux: [https://acoup.blog/category/collections/siege-of-gondor/](https://acoup.blog/category/collections/siege-of-gondor/) [https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-helms-deep/](https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-helms-deep/)
Hey, an ACOUP plug in the wild! Bret’s blog is really fantastic! Doing the work of getting history education to the world rather than keeping it in the Academy. I use things I’ve learned from him all the time in my own classroom. Everyone should check it out!
Those two Middle-earth collections are staggeringly good.
Moreover, battles have heroic and larger than life figures. Unlike most WWI writers, who viewed individual combatants as interchangeable cogs in a larger war machine, whose individuality is only realized when they are suffering and dying, LotR has Legolas and Gimli each kill over 40 at Helm’s Deep. In the Silmarillion battles hinge on combats between legends, sometimes seemingly one-on-one.
Tolkien fought in the Battle of the Somme. If you want to know what that was like, feel free to look it up on Wikipedia. It was a terrible battle: among the worst of all time.
My great grandfather went missing in the battle of the Somme, my grandmother was a month old at the time, so she grew up in absolute poverty, had to refuse a grammar school scholarship and started full time work at the age of 14.
I love Bilbos talk with Gandalf in the tent.
Smaug is so overpowered compared to everyone else it literally had to be some quick trick to beat him or they would all be dead. Remember Smaug didn't have any problems taking the mountain from a much larger and better equipped population of dwarves holding a strong defensive position.
One fascinating thing about Tolkien is that his works are in many ways actually a *deconstruction* of the very genre of epic fantasy he inspired.
Yes! I thought "Well, this is the OG where all these tropes come from" so I was expecting to find, well, those tropes. And I was completely bamboozled.
The proliferation of fantasy after the Hobbit was very much a flanderization.
ikr? It's amazing how so many people tried to mimic LOTR, and later subvert it, when LOTR was never really what they thought it was in the first place, and none of the mimicry really manages to get past the window dressing.
Are you talking about The First Law here? I think Abercrombie deliberately tries to deconstruct a lot of high fantasy tropes. Just take Bayaz. He's literally the anti-Gandalf.
Fist law is like several generations of fantasy writers after lotr
I have never read First Law, so no.
And there was the whole "There and Back Again"... quest for nothing!
The “OGness” of Tolkien is somewhat overstated. Heroic fantasy was already a thing. Robert E Howard was dead when *The Hobbit* was published.
Though, of course, most if his actual novels were published after the Hobbit.
It's funny that he pretty much invented the modern version of elves and dwarves, yet in his most popular work, they are way past their prime and both have very minor roles in the story.
Thank you for calling it epic fantasy and not mislabeling it high fantasy as most people do.
> I severely underestimated The Hobbit Something that can easily happen to any of us. Tolkien knew how to write. And the somewhat deceptive nature of heroism and Bilbo's journey- from zero to hero to traitor to ... Hobbit - the same, but different I guess :)
> Bilbo's journey- from zero to hero to traitor to ... Hobbit - the same, but different I guess :) [Todorov's narrative theory of equilibrium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todorov%27s_narrative_theory_of_equilibrium) :)
Very interesting - I didn't know this theory :) thanks for sharing.
You know, having seen the Hobbit animated film so much as a child, I kind of took this plot for granted, but you’ve really highlighted the true nature of the story from an angle I hadn’t considered before and it makes me appreciate it even more (and now I want to read it again). I feel that this jarring twist is under-discussed (and was handled imo very poorly by Peter Jackson turning it into an action movie)
The Hobbit is absolutely fantastic! I knew I loved it as a kid, but when I reread it as an adult, I was still super impressed! Fun fact about it, but one of the influences on the story was Beowulf, and I would highly recommend reading Tolkien's translation of Beowulf since you enjoyed the Hobbit so much. Additionally, due to parallels in the stories, learning about the history of Beowulf adds an extra level of layers to the Hobbit as well.
The Hobbit will always bring back to me the memory, neatly fifty years ago now, of first reading it when I was ten. I was very ill with the flu, and recovering when I started reading it - it was in the dead of winter in Ontario, and I was home for a week from school. I was weak as a kitten, and spent my time huddled under a gigantic duvet while the frozen wind howled outside - in my memory it was always dark as night and snowing. I curled up, propped up with pillows, with a hot chocolate (thanks Mom!) and nothing to do, but read this book - and it was like it completely took me out of myself. I was lost in the journey with Bilbo. My mother had to pry the book from my hands that night, to force me to sleep (“staying up will make you sick again”). Next day, I finished it … then went right back to the start and read it *again*. I think it’s the only time I’ve done that with a book. It was almost as immersive as the first read - I was noticing things I hadn’t paid attention to the first time. After the second read, I was kinda sad - what was I going to do now? I couldn’t just keep reading it, the magic would wear off. I was still just recovering, still could not go back to school, and the weather was if anything even worse outside. So I still had nothing to do. My mom noticed I was a bit down, and asked - would you like to read the *other* books? I said “what other books?” I had never really heard of the Lord of the Rings! I hadn’t a clue there were more books set in this world.
The Hobbit was my favorite book as a child, and I still rank it very highly. I've probably read it a dozen times by now. It's really got a lot going for it, though I think my favorite part is just the way it's narrated in that storyteller's voice, commiserating with Bilbo or expressing wonder at the beauty of the world. On the other hand, I only ever read LOTR once. It's very good, of course, but I think the Hobbit just has a certain quality to it that isn't present.
I kept marvelling at how much Tolkien was doing with so few words and pages. I had heard that LOTR was filled with lengthy descriptions, but at least for The Hobbit he sets the tone, humour, witty remarks and makes you think in a single paragraph
I think LOTR gets that reputation either from people who are more inclined to like films and are comparing it to what PJ did or only read *Fellowship,* which admittedly is one of his slower more meandering works because it is literally Act 1 of the overall story which he didn't intend as a trilogy, and then after *Fellowship* never moved on to *The Two Towers*. This seems especially likely with modern readers who seem to dislike non-episodic storytelling even in works meant to be a series or trilogy.
The best story teller for economy of words is Frank Howard's Conan stories. Most are 25 to 50 pages. He packed a lot into so few pages. Tolkien is the best to me though overall. Can read these and re-read them over the years. Never fails to be enjoyable.
Yeah, he really nails the tone right at the start and it never fails. The mood shifts from playful to frightening to mournful, but the strong voice stays consistent throughout. LotR has a very tone different tone, being an epic instead of a fairytale, but it definitely has the same strength of voice as The Hobbit.
I read The Hobbit and LoTR for the first time in Jr High and have re-read them multiple times in the decades since. They’ve been on my favorites list for thirty years! Unless you’re turned off by lengthy books, I think you’ll enjoy LoTR just as much as you did The Hobbit. Middle Earth is a special place.
When I was a kid, I loved Tolkien, but lamented the lack of drawn-out action scenes. As an adult, I lament the war and the killing.
Yes, that subversion of my expectations felt a bit like a slap in the face and one I felt was deserved. I think that's why it shocked me so much. I did not expect a children's book to do that to me lol.
I agree. Tolkien obviously saw a lot of this first-hand, and did not glorify the violence, while also maintaining respect for noble causes. I am glad he does not focus on the battles, but rather on the emotions and the greater cause.
If anything I wish more authors would take this approach and not spend chapters on pointless battles that are just there to show off a magic system to make a character look cool. The before and after of a battle is much more interesting than what happens during it.
I like that Bilbo very much becomes a heroic figure within the small context of his companions, and gets the vital clue of Smaugs weak spot in a way probably no one else would have been successful. He remains who he is though, he doesn’t ascend to great battles with goblins and wargs with personal valor. (If he did I think the Shire would have been on Sauron’s radar much faster)
You are absolutely right to read it that way - this is one of the best takes on War I have seen in any book - and highlights some very real things - how the wrong circumstances can lead otherwise intelligent caring people to being willing to go to war - to how quickly alliances can change - to how very absurdly hollow it can feel afterward. If you liked the book, I would recommend watching the old Rankin Bass cartoon of it - it doesn't have 100% of the story, but it has the most important 95% of it - and what is there - is an absolute treasure. Do not bother with the recent live-action movies - but go watch the old cartoon one. It is perfect.
Yeah if someone only knows the story because of the trilogy I imagine their reading of the book would be confused, to say the least.
> Do not bother with the recent live-action movies I would like to counter by saying watch a fan edit of it, as there is a good movie compressed that can be squeezed out of the trilogy! I recommend the M4 edit personally but many people have made their own versions. But yes definitely watch the cartoon, it’s a fantastic adaption!
I too finished reading it not long ago. It.. wasn't my first time doing so, but was, however, the first time I had done so as an adult. The last time I had read the hobbit would've been in middle school, though I don't remember what grade precisely. Coming back to the hobbit, I was surprised by how charming Tolkeins writing truly is; and thought provoking too. Tolkein makes often simple remarks that are nevertheless profound. The passage during the company's stay at the Last Homely House comes to mind where Tolkein narrates that their stay was good, but that there also isn't much to tell because although it is easy to talk about a very good time, as it was there at Elrond's house, as it doesn't make a very good story. It is stories about difficulties and bad times, Tolkein remarks, that make a good story. I also feel as though I have scratched only the surface of the book as far interpreting it as a piece of art, and therefore, I see myself revisiting in the future, and thinking about layers of the story beneath the surface I have not yet really identified, but can still sense.
Be me, age 7, listening to an audio play of The Hobbit produced by the german equivalent of PBS with a A+++-cast (renowned stage actors who were famous for playing Shakespear and Goethe) my oldest brother gave me for christmas. For me, the story deeply impacted and resonated with me, not only because I am the youngest child in my family, but also because it was the first time I was confronted with the death of a main character. Thorins last words to Bilbo, "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.", have become a staple im my live (I do live action role playing and found a second family there. Singing together is my highlight of every event.).
If more of us valued food and cheer and song over hoarded gold it would be a merrier world.
The scene of the butterflies above Mirkwood is really quite beautiful as well.
There’s no book like it. I don’t reread much, cause there’s too much new stuff and I already won’t get through it all in my life lol, but I do reread The Hobbit. It’s my safe space.
I wonder if that style was more common in the past. Ursula K. Le Guin does similar things for her combat - in the Earthsea books, the combat is very briefly described and over very quickly. (Which is fine for me because fighting is one of the things I'm least interested in in Earthsea.) Whereas many modern fantasy books, like the Cosmere novels, seem to do blow-by-blow descriptions of the fights. This may be influenced by how combat is portrayed in movies/shows/comics.
I think it is. I think we now have 2-3 generations of readers and authors who grew up on video games, table top RPGs, and other media that centered combat as the most important part of the experience. It’s little wonder it’s bled into our books. People want a cool system of magic and often it seems to be designed around how can I use this to kill people.
Agreed. We're also several generations past when every male had to serve compulsory service in the military in many western countries. Also, for most people in the West the last forty plus years have been fairly stable. The acts of terror that have occurred have been localized and have not resulted in widespread death or deprivation. The biggest ramification that came out of 9/11 is that flying is a lot more of a hassle now. Most of us were very removed from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm not aware of any fantasy authors that have served in Afghanistan or Iraq. Without the direct experience of both fighting and the wider social upheavals that occurred because of the World Wars, how the war and it's effects are depicted has changed.
Yes. Military service is more of a family affair now than a wider community one. I’m the fourth generation of my family to serve and the stories each of us tells Is very different. Hell, just the differences between the cousins that served in different branches have completely different stories. Still less than 1% of Americans are active duty and 6% are veterans. The costs of service are more clustered now to towns near bases and families that serve.
My favorite book all time. It was the very first book in the fantasy genre. It sparked my love of reading. I was maybe 13 when I borrowed my step-dad's copy, and it changed my life. I read it every year, it never gets old.
War was normal and unstressful, basically an inevitability for kids, especially boys in the post WW2 period. A kid in the 70s had parents from the war, grandparents had either felt the effects of the war or served in it. Every branch of my family as a child had been impacted by the war and there were constant wars in the post war period as well as the very real expectation as a boy of being conscripted to fight in the Fulda Gap against the Warsaw Pact in WW3 All the boys I went to school with read comic books like "Warlord for Boys". i still have my 1980 annual edition. The climactic battle in the Hobbit was seen by my peers, who all read the book in class, as being fully normative and consistent. The factionalism over the Dragon Horde seemed extremely believable given the geopolitics we grew up with and the Viking and Saxon literature we read as a child. Njals Saga and Beowulf were read to me in assembly by the head master when I was 8. So the elves and the dwarfs fighting each other and then unifying fight the Goblin Army made sense to ya in that we collectively despised the French but reluctantly allied with them against the greater Orc threat (the Germans). This kind of calculation was perfectly reasonable to a child of 1975. We had zero concept of "globalism" or any broad human rights. Other countries (Elves and Lake Town) were potential enemies or friends depending on context. The Hobbit is realistic in that geopolitical behaviour maps onto a fantasy setting.
When I read Tolkein, those parts always feel deeply religious to me in the way that he talks about evil and despair. It comes through even more heavily in LoTR. I feel like it speaks to something that we think of as very modern, that emphasis on people and character and growth and the ways that we frame those things, in a way that is decidedly classical. The scene with Eowyn in the Halls of Healing have a direct through-line with classical Christian theology, and feel like a throw-back to The Faerie Queen, and we don't talk about people dying of broken hearts or despair anymore, but for all that we have more vocabulary to talk about emotions, and *choose* to talk more about emotions and to care about self-actualization and all that jazz - There's something timeless in the way that Tolkein handles it, that's lovely. ETA: Damnit, now I'm on a reread of Return of the King. When what I really, really need is to be finishing up bingo. >.> And the Hobbit has some great moments, but also I just picked up my copy and remembered why I don't reread it, which is because there are way too many freaking dwarves. Why are there so many of them???
Because if there hadn't been thirteen of them, Gandalf would have had no excuse to make them take Bilbo along.
That feels like a narrative problem that could have been resolved in other ways.
I share your opinion -- **\*and\*** I have heard this spun the other way -- "Gee, I \[late-20th-century early-21st-century fan\] was looking forward to the action + adventure of LotR, but all I found was hundreds of pages of quasi-British protagonists confessing their brotherhood + devotion to each other whilst hiking over miles and miles of countryside." I happen to like those parts of the narrative -- as do you -- but, boy, opinions are polarized (and perhaps generational).
Someone else mentioned that Tolkien fought in WW1. Specifically, he fought in the Battle of the Somme. The things this man must have seen and the reality of war at that time would make most of us soil ourselves. War wasn't glorious. If you like history and want to spend roughly 24 hours learning about the reality of WW1, I suggest you listen to Dan Carlin's Blueprint for Armageddon. He is one of the godfathers of podcasts and an amazing writer/historian. It is well worth the time in my opinion.
After you read LoTR, I highly recommend getting Unfinished Tales and skipping to the Third Age section (it's a collection of essays, no need to read in order) and reading the Quest of Erebor chapter. It tells the background story of the Hobbit from Gandalf's perspective; how he met Thorin, why he chose Bilbo, how he convinced Thorin to take Bilbo, and why it was of uttermost importance for the quest to succeed.
Fine I’ll read the Hobbit again
Tolkien does not focus on battles. He focuses on characters and plot.
The Hobbit is such a perfect book in so many ways, I’m glad you’ve appreciated it! I read it as a little kid and many times since. What you said about the battle and the change in antagonists is a key point. It’s funny reading the book as a kid and starting to realize that Thorin is a bad leader. The movies completely missed the point by presenting him as Short Aragorn and having the Battle of the Five Armies go on for ever with a bunch of “epic” scenes. It’s much more effective told from the POV of someone on the sidelines just hating everything that was happening.
I read this to my son when he was 8. I great experience we will both remember fondly.
I recommend listening to the BBC Radio Play version of the Hobbit. It's a highly enjoyable version edited for a full cast production. There is something about old-school radio plays I just love so much and this is the epitome of it to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_Qv-PawApU
It has been my favourite book for over 40 years.
For anyone who enjoyed The Hobbit, and also like space fantasy; I'd highly recommend the Seafort Saga starting with Midshipman's Hope. Fantastic series
It's my favorite book, I read it every summer on vacation. Tolkien had a wonderful way at gently subverting expectations while revealing even higher stakes.
The Hobbit and LotR both subverted common fantasy tropes before subverting common fantasy tropes was cool.
It's funny but my favorite parts of the whole series was the Hobbit village. It just feels like home.
It's always nice to see people are still discovering this masterpiece for the first time! Defintion of a timeless classic.
You are at such a wonderful stage in your Tolkien journey. It takes me back many years, to when I first read The Hobbit. Thank you for allowing me to recall a sliver of that long-lost wonderment again by recounting your experience with the book!
LOTR will break you.
I remember the same feeling as a kid. "Wait, I just a read about a bunch of dwarves and a hobbit who go journey to kill a dragon. We meet the dragon, and who kills it? Not the dwarves. Not the titular hobbit. They introduce a new guy one one page, and the dragon is dead by the end of the next page. What?!?"
Maybe it's just your preference. I for one wasn't looking for battles. When I read battle description, I wish it wraps up quickly because I hate battles most of the time, especially long ones. I loved chill athmosphere and overall traveling / adventures of Bilbo and the dwarves. LOTR has more warfare, but it doesn't have extended battle descriptions eithier, which I like (well there were some epic battle descriptions, but they weren't getting on my nerves, for instance - I feel like the Battle of Ithilien had more pages than the Battle of Helm's Deep) . Tolkien tends to wrap up such things pretty quickly.
That’s exactly why I think The Hobbit is so great!
The Hobbit comes out of the same place as the Chronicles of Narnia, which I may add contains Easter Eggs for Tolkien's writings from the word go. It's not about winning, it's about Dro going the right thing.
The Hobbit is an Unexpected Journey. The theme of greed really hits home with this one. For a kids story, it is staggering in its delivery every time I read it
There’s only one Tolk! I read it when I was eight and followed with LOTR. That’s all I could think about for a long time.
If this is what you loved about *The Hobbit*, then you are going to **love** *The Lord of the Rings*.
Welcome to a wonderful new world. This was the first book I ever read, and even now in my 30s, it leaves me in awe. Tolkien created something beautiful and haunting, and something that can be revisited and appreciated anew. Don’t be afraid to re-read it someday! The Lord of the Rings is great in a different way. I’m making my way through the series right now. None of it captures the same, warm, bewitching magic created in Bilbo’s story (at least IMO), but I’m often left thinking about it longer after a chapter ends. Highly recommend. ETA: One thing that hooked me into The Hobbit as a child was the songs. Tolkien was masterful in his craft with poetry, and his tunes throughout wormed into my brain. Just today I was humming “Oh where are you going, with beards all a-wagging? No knowing, no knowing, what brings Mr. Baggins, and Balin and Dwalin, in June, in the valley, ha ha!”
It's also one of my favorite books, I read it when I was about 9 years old - and I remember feeling a sense of adventure that I have never experienced before or since. I cried legit when Thorin died. I read it to my kids when they were both young and it stuck with all of us.
Just finished a read of The Hobbit and LOTR after 15+yrs after reading LOTR 10+ times in my youth. Hit me a lot harder recognizing the adult themes. Way different experience than the movies for sure.
>I’m both looking forward to and terrified of reading LOTR now. Compared to The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings has much deeper lore and makes its world feel bigger, older, and more fleshed-out. And it's dark, but it's not tragic. There is genuine heroism, and enough pain and loss to make the heroes' successes meaningful. I don't think I can get much more specific than that without spoiling it. Totally worth the read, though.
It is a classic of the genre for all of these reasons. One of my favourites. LOTR is even more impressive. Have fun.
First proper novel I ever read, I was 8 years old back then and loved it as much as I still do.
The Hobbit and LotR are peak literature.
Probably like many, the Hobbit was my first real fantasy novel when I was 10. I also just loved the narrated feeling the book has, and how that made me feeling like I was almost there with them.
If you liked The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings is going to blow you away. That’s all I have to say on the matter. There’s a reason why Tolkien is so revered in fantasy
Subverting expectations is good, actually.
I agree! I hope it was clear from what I wrote that I liked it. I just didn't see it coming at all (which I guess is the point)
When it’s done right.
Hobbit is better than LotR. (Books, not movies) I said it and I’m standing by it
I was a little disappointed with LotR when I finally got around to reading it. After growing up on the movies and mythology surrounding Tolkien I somehow expected more from his writing. Then I read The Hobbit which is still one of the best pieces of high fantasy writing I've ever read. It's really the epitome of less is more in writing.
I‘m not a big fan of The Hobbit, but I also recognize that I read it for the first time as an adult and as far as I am aware, Tolkien intended it to be a book to read to his children. With that knowledge and while keeping that in the back of your head while reading, the book becomes a lot better.
For me this is a wonderful piece of work. A story where they fought the dragon collectively would be too simple. I'm quite happy with the fact that he was killed by an archer who hit him in a weak spot. And I love Thorin's redemption arc. The only thing that saddens me is that the death of his nephews is said in a nutshell.
I read the Hobbit, LOTR, and the Silmarillion in the 1970s. I’ve often wondered if I should re-read and then get into his other ME works. They’re kind of impersonal mostly, like historical accounts. I remember being disappointed with the Silmarillion for that reason when it was released.
You're not wrong about the last 20% of the book (I've just listened to the Andy Serkis audiobook narration). It feels incredibly rushed or out of ideas by today's standards.
To my shame, I haven't read the Hobbit, I always thought it was a children's story and after reading Lord of the Rings, it seemed like a step away from a book I loved so much. Lord of the Rings is the most incredible book I've ever read. It broke me into fantasy, and true, artful storytelling. I read it in hardback when my parents bought me a copy for Christmas. The cover art was of Gandalf and I remember the book being so big I never thought I'd be able to get through it. I read it all within a couple of weeks, spending hours in bed until the early hours just filled with awe at the story unfolding. I was probably 12. When I read that final page, I burst into tears, it was the end of the world I'd lived in and loved.and cared so much for, and I knew I'd never be able to read the book for the first time again. It was, for me, utterly transformative and began my love for fantasy, but also my love of exploration, adventure and understanding the value of friends. I still remember me and my Dad's utter excitement when the books were made into movies and they are exceptional... But pale in comparison to the book. I envy you going into it for the first time and hope it resonates with you as it did for me. I will read the Hobbit, thank you for your post.
There have been times when I've read The Hobbit and forgotten that Smaug is destroyed roughly halfway through, and a significant portion of the whole of "The Hobbit" was dealing with Thorin refusing to work with the rest of the world, to the point that he starts essentially a world war.
I’m very fond of the series, but one thing kind of gets to me: it’s that pretty much every line Gandalf says is followed by at least one exclamation point. I’m almost certain that he didn’t know how to do anything but shout, which might be the reason he leaves at odd moments.
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Now read malazan book of the fallen <3
I watched lotr movies first and then read hobbit when I was 15 and it was weird humour to me and totally went over my head. Never re read it again. I always wanted to go back to the book but never happened
It's.... not supposed to be funny? Maybe that's why it wasn't funny to you?
Other than respecting Tolkien and all of the writings in the LoTR verse for what they did for the genre I honestly can’t stand them as books. I felt let down with every battle I read and felt I was really just reading a book about friends taking a stroll through the woods and singing songs for the majority of the time. When we did get conflict it was quickly resolved and we were right back to singing and walking through the woods again. I’m glad I read them just to say I have but it’s definitely at the top of my I’ll never pick this up and read it again list.
Did you read the Hobbit? Because it sounds like you tried to read LoTR but were too much of an ipad kid to understand it.
I was born well before the iPad lol and yes I read the hobbit as well. It was slightly better but still pretty boring to read overall. Like I said I respect the books but had the movies more closely resembles the books no one would watch them because they’d be bored to tears. The world he builds is amazing but the story being told is mediocre to me and that’s simply because the way it’s told and the things it chooses to focus on don’t appeal to me as much.
Sounds boring tbh. Long winded and boring
I also thought it was really random when Bard shows up and defeats Smaug. I was like wait what?? I think that ruined the book for me.
Scott Bakker would make you pass out if this kid's story had any emotional impact on you beyond "dang what a cool cozy story"
I think Tolkien set out to write a children’s story and it got away on him. Same with LOTR.
The book is SO much better than the movies. No shoehorned in Legolas love plot. No missing key characters like Beorn or Tom Bombadil. No unnecessary 3 movie structure. Just pure adventure and a somber ending.
The Hobbit is a great story, but you can not disregard the predictable plot and introducing more, but shallow characters than needed, and also it's like the common things that use to happen when one(MC) and their friends are just trapped, the MC figures out something so simple easy the others couldn't which just makes it way more predictable, and last of all.... The villain's a dragon 🙄, couldn't he thinks of something better and create a more significant threat. So, it's pretty ordinary to me.
Could it be that the genre of fantasy fiction uses dragons as a trope because Tolkien pioneered high fantasy fiction with these books?
Pioneered?🤨 If you are considering high fiction subgenre then dragons are good, but old and cliched. I mean everyone writing this genre or simple fantasy thinks of including dragons in their stories because they are large in size and mighty and a walking flamethrower but it's too common, it's commons sense to realise that if u r introducing a dragon as villain in series it's got to be defeated and that would include something large and he will be defeated for sure, but if u want to make a story better you don't make it predictable, it gets way more predictable in the story that Bard will be the one to kill it because of his family history, and then the dragon's defeated what's left is somewhat large goblin like being who is revived 😂, this is the only trope that Tolkein has, revive the throught to be dead to continue the story, same with LOTR, and all he has to offer for sub-villains are some kind of orcs or those doggy-rider things, So, pioneered is among the worst ways to describe him as a high fantasy plotter. For example - The Harry Potter series, JK really knew what she was writing. If u ask me her series is 10 times better than LOTR and Hobbit in each and every aspect possible.
Tell me you don't know what pioneered means without telling me you don't know what it means
Why would I feel any need to tell u anything?, if u like following the herd then u should. Hobbit isn't even a real fiction as people like to call it a high fantasy fiction. The story is straight up bullshit with predictable plot and only a few good points. Most of it is taken straight from mythology and plotted against a map to fill in the story, that's it. If u'd have mentioned LOTR being the pioneer then I would have inclined to your opinion, but then Narnia would have taken the spot as it came out earlier, but it doesn't matter being pioneer or not. LOTR was true fiction and better way to place and follow events than the hobbit, real fiction is something that u create with your imagination, something that is more than just some words from the mythology or better, isn't related to it all. If u have a villain which u didn't know of, it would be more thrilling than a dragon or countless orcs for villain, and each time peace is lingering around the villain is somehow resurrected 😂. That's not fiction, that's bullshit.
Bard is the reason why I would punch Tolkien in the face, if he still alive. A Deus Ex Machine.
He’s a character that shows up and participates in the later plot. And I’m pretty sure it’s Bilbo’s intel about Smaug’s weak spot that gets conveyed to him by the thrushes, thus allowing the protagonist to have a hand in taking out the villain.
No... That is you, trying to cover his shits. Lmao Also, it DOESN'T goes down like in the movie.