I have been meaning to do my reviews for the past few days but my latest music purchase has kept me from getting to work on them.... George Ezra is proving to be quite the little distraction. Well at least, that is what I am telling myself. It is probably more a combination of being busy with nothing in particular and a good dose of procrastination that has kept me from doing my civic duty.
But, not one to be able to bear looking at a stack of books randomly sitting in my table for too long I finally managed to get myself in the writing mood.
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The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
My first thought after I had finished the book was "I wonder how they managed to make more than one movie out of this one?" I can't say I was really disappointed with it but can't say I was completely bowled over by it either. If I had to break the world record for briefly describing a book I would say this one was Hobbit meets dwarfs (funny), goes on adventure discovers he is a hero, finds a little "precious", does not kill the dragon (disappointing), gets involved in epic battle (chaaaaaarge) and goes home again.
It was good to get to meet Bilbo and to learn a little more about the attitude of the hobbits to travel - they hate it, and about being different - they hate that too. You also get to meet Gandalf, who seems to be doing a lot less magic in this one than he did in the Lord of the Rings. One thing that I did have to remind myself not to do was to see these dwarfs in my head as similar to the ones that are in the Disney movie. Tolkien's dwarfs would have my guts for breakfast if I did. These guys are dyed in the wool fighting machines and not to be confused by the fluffy Disney version... and they are all the better for it.
One of the most fun parts of the book is the chapters where the dwarfs descend one by one on Bilbo, eat all his food, and decide that they will give him a shot as their main Burglar. It seems an unlikely task to be put upon the home-bound hobbit but it turns out Bilbo is a fast learner and ends up getting them all out of a scrape or two. As they set off on their trip to find the Lonely Mountain, Smaug and their gold they get captured several times, almost killed by lots of spiders but also get to spend some time with Beorn and the Elves. Beorn is one of my favourite characters. He is a man built like a bear who has this perfect set up tucked away in the forest where every animal seems happy and no danger could possibly assail the posse. Along the way Bilbo meets Gollum and has a riddles contest with him. Bilbo is quite good at this riddles thing... better than I would be. We also see how Bilbo comes to have the ring (by a complete fluke). Yes - The Ring... the one that launches a three part follow up story). The scrapping that happens on the way to the Lonely mountain is suitably entertaining and you can tell that along the way Bilbo grows in confidence in his role as burglar and escape artist. Although at times Gandalf has to step in and take charge to keep them on track and out of the cooking pots.The dwarfs want the gold but Bilbo is the one that come up with the ideas to get them out of the messes they are in when they meet a new foe. He enables them to succeed. Therefore I found it a bit of a let down that he was not the one to kill Smaug. He finds his way down the mountain to taunt Smaug and he squirrels away some gold without Smaug noticing him but in the end Smaug is felled by a human arrow.
The battle at the end is Epic... with a capital E. Everyone turns up for it; human, elf , dwarf and Beorn. Naturally they conquer evil in the end but it is still nice to have them all fight together to achieve it. I think Tolkien was an eternal optimist of the good in mankind and it truly shows in battle like this. good will conquer evil! Even if he has get every last animal on earth to fight at Good's side.
Bilbo is never the same once he gets back home. I think he has developed a certain kind of restlessness that comes with having great adventures, seeing and exploring new words. New impressions are always needed and things are never quite the same once you get back home. Especially not if you have to get your own family to believe that you are actually not dead and to please give back your furniture.
As I was reading this one I was quite aware that it made sense to read this one before reading the Lord of the Rings. Characters and mythology is introduced that would have helped give more depth to the follow up. However, still think that the Lord of the Rings trilogy holds up well without having read this one. It is a nice addition to it but not essential reading before you plunge into that epic tale... Tolkien might disagree?
Liked it? Yes I did. Almost tempted me to go and read the Lord of the Rings again. If it wasn't for the little matter of about 130 books still left to read I might have.
Title: The Hobbit
Author: JRR Tolkien
280 pages
Harper Collins
ISBN# 0-261-10221-4
Books to be read: 131
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