All I can think to say is, this story is ✨precious✨

J. R. R. Tolkien’s writing is entrancing! I felt every description as if the fog of the Misty Mountains was surrounding me while I read!
His ability to tell a story is nothing less than magical, and reading this book was an absolute joy!

The Hobbit is a tale of high adventure, undertaken by a company of dwarves, in search of dragon-guarded gold. A reluctant partner in this perilous quest is Bilbo Baggins, a comfort-loving, unambitious hobbit, who surprises even himself by his resourcefulness and his skill as a burglar.



I first read this story when I was a child. Later when I was a teacher I would read it to my students. Now as an adult I read it for myself.



Subtle humor...
“That leaves you just ten minutes. You will have to run,” said Gandalf.
“But—,” said Bilbo.
“No time for it,” said the wizard.
“But—,” said Bilbo again.
“No time for that either! Off you go!”



After being caught by trolls...
“Blimey, Bert, look what I’ve copped!” said William.
“What is it?” said the others coming up.
“Lumme, if I knows! What are yer?”
“Bilbo Baggins, a bur—a hobbit,” said poor Bilbo, shaking all over, and wondering how to make owl-noises before they throttled him.
“A burrahobbit?” said they a bit startled. Trolls are slow in the uptake, and mighty suspicious about anything new to them.
“What’s a burrahobbit got to do with my pocket, anyways?” said William.
“And can yer cook ’em?” said Tom.
“Yer can try,” said Bert, picking up a skewer.



Descriptive storms...
You know how terrific a really big thunderstorm can be down in the land and in a river-valley; especially at times when two great thunderstorms meet and clash. More terrible still are thunder and lightning in the mountains at night, when storms come up from East and West and make war. The lightning splinters on the peaks, and rocks shiver, and great crashes split the air and go rolling and tumbling into every cave and hollow; and the darkness is filled with overwhelming noise and sudden light.

On finding the Ring...
He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it. He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking; certainly it did not seem of any particular use at the moment.



On discovering the magic of the Ring...
“What has it got in its pocketses?” he heard the hiss loud behind him, and the splash as Gollum leapt from his boat.

“What have I, I wonder?” he said to himself, as he panted and stumbled along. He put his left hand in his pocket. The ring felt very cold as it quietly slipped on to his groping forefinger.

The hiss was close behind him. He turned now and saw Gollum’s eyes like small green lamps coming up the slope. Terrified he tried to run faster, but suddenly he struck his toes on a snag in the floor, and fell flat with his little sword under him.

In a moment Gollum was on him. But before Bilbo could do anything, recover his breath, pick himself up, or wave his sword, Gollum passed by, taking no notice of him, cursing and whispering as he ran.

What could it mean? Gollum could see in the dark. Bilbo could see the light of his eyes palely shining even from behind. Painfully he got up, and sheathed his sword, which was now glowing faintly again, then very cautiously he followed. There seemed nothing else to do. It was no good crawling back down to Gollum’s water. Perhaps if he followed him, Gollum might lead him to some way of escape without meaning to.

“Curse it! curse it! curse it!” hissed Gollum. “Curse the Baggins! It’s gone! What has it got in its pocketses? Oh we guess, we guess, my precious. He’s found it, yes he must have. My birthday-present.”

With a spring Gollum got up and started shambling off at a great pace. Bilbo hurried after him, still cautiously, though his chief fear now was of tripping on another snag and falling with a noise. His head was in a whirl of hope and wonder. It seemed that the ring he had was a magic ring: it made you invisible! He had heard of such things, of course, in old old tales; but it was hard to believe that he really had found one, by accident. Still there it was: Gollum with his bright eyes had passed him by, only a yard to one side.



The finding of the Ring at first seemed to be a small bit of the story, but readers of Tolkien know that this was a pivotal part of surviving the whole adventure and would lead to more.

Bilbo still had to face more goblins, wolves, giant spiders, escape from dungeons, and waiting for them all was the Dragon!

There are hints and whispers of an older world, vast in scope and rich in history throughout this simple story. Great enemies, nameless monsters and wondrous heros brush the edge of Bilbo's knowledge.



The Hobbit is a portrait of personal growth as Bilbo gains the respect of the Dwarves, Men and Elves.

Often when reading to my class a student would ask me,
"Is this story real?"
And my answer would be, "I wish it was."

"The Hobbit" my number two desert island selection.


Enjoy!

Como parte de la iniciativa del #febrerofantastico, he leído mi primera novela de Tolkien.

Me ha costado su lectura en algunos momentos y no sé por qué, porque no me ha parecido compleja, ni aburrida, cosas que pasan en las lecturas, me ha gustado descubrir el mundo que ha creado Tolkien, quien sabe si en un futuro me atreva con el señor de los anillos.

Sono così contenta di aver finalmente letto qualcosa di Tolkien! Lo Hobbit é stato un ottimo inizio e l'ho trovato meraviglioso. L'avventura che ha vissuto Bilbo mi ha talmente rapita che sembrava stessi vivendo tutte le loro spiacevoli e, a volte, piacevoli vicende. Inoltre Bilbo l'ho decisamente amato come protagonista, si è rivelato parecchio coraggioso pur essendo un Hobbit! Il finale mi ha lasciato una forte nostalgia dentro perché, ovviamente, c'è dell'amaro nelle ultime pagine e non si può restare indifferenti. La prossima tappa è La compagnia dell'anello!

Ah, here it is again, for the tenth or eleventh time, my all-time favourite book! I first read The Hobbit in junior school, at about ten years old (roughly; it was a long time ago) and I was immediately entranced. I frantically got hold of a copy of The Lord of the Rings because I needed more of this wonderful world and, lo, my fate was sealed.

The Hobbit wasn't just my first Tolkien, you see; it was my first steps into the fantasy genre as a whole. Up 'til that point, my reading consisted solely of horror (swiped from my mum's bookshelves) and science fiction (swiped from my dad's), but this added a third beloved genre to my literary world.

As such, this book will always hold a special place in my heart and I am absolutely unable to write an unbiased review of it as a result. You have my eternal thanks for this gift, Mr. Tolkien; I hope you're resting easy in the company of Hobbits, Dwarfs and Elves, wherever you may be.

The Hobbit is the forerunner to the The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It gives the first glimpse to the world of hobbits, dwarfs, elves, and wizards. It also gives the first taste of Tolkien's adventures, which are fully developed in the trilogy. Gandalf and Bilbo, who we later meet in The Lord of the Rings, mark their first appearance here. But what's important is that we learn how the most powerful ring of Sauron, which becomes central to the story of the trilogy, comes to the possession of Bilbo, the hobbit.

Apart from acting as the precursor to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit has its own adventure story. Bilbo Baggins, at the bidding of Gandalf the Grey, goes on an adventure with a group of Dwarfs led by Thorin to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and the treasures hidden in it from the hold of the Dragon, Smaug. Facing many hardships and perils, they outmaneuver the dragon successfully at a heavy cost.

The Hobbit is a children's book, and I believe must be read in your childhood or at least in your teens. If you are an adult by the first time you read it, I fear some of its magic is lost. An adult's mind can never awaken the innocent wonder of a child's. This, unfortunately, is my story as well. I read it as an adult, and so it deprived me of the charm it might have had as a child. As if this mistake was not enough, I piled it with additional follies. First, I read The Lord of the Rings before The Hobbit; second, I read the book immediately after watching the movie. Of course, the movie is an extensive interpretation of the book, but unfortunately, watching it had made me expect more. All these unintentional mistakes prejudiced my opinion of the book.

This is my second time reading The Hobbit. And happily for me, I was in for better luck this time. I listened to the audio while following the text. The combination worked wonders for me. I was able to enjoy the book for its worth. Listening to the audio narration created a sort of a similar atmosphere to listening to a bedtime story. :) I don't claim I had the same awed experience of a child, but I enjoyed it and appreciated it as an independent, important work of Tolkien canon.

More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/

I wanted to come back and put up a review for the Hobbit.

I read this before the Lord of the Rings and it did make me want to read the rest of the story I had heard so much about. I picked this up in my early 20s. This was before the movies came out.

I loved the little hobbits and the world that Tolkien created. Elves were mentioned at the beginning as something rarely seen. I also was fascinated how a hobbit could hide from a human. They were sneaky and good at hiding.

I thought the adventures were great. I was not well read by this point in my life and this simple adventure seemed amazing to me.

One reason this is not my favorite story, yes, I do like it, is that I’m not the biggest fan of dwarves in the Middle Earth world. Little people are wonderful, but in Tolkiens world Dwarves are a little greedy and possessive and very hairy. I love in the movie when Gimli was talking about their women and he said there are plenty of dwarf women, they have long beards like a man so you might not notice them. That was funny. I guess I’m just an Elf person. They are romantic and artistic and more like me. They also live among the trees and talk with trees and if you know me a little, you know how that would appeal to me. Dwarves live inside mountains and under ground and they love mining. I don’t relate to that as much.

So, the story starts mysteriously with a group of dwarves walking in. They aren’t my favorite characters. So, this is my bias. It’s one of the reasons I don’t love this more.

I love Bilbo and Gollum in the bowels of the mountain and how the ring was found. It’s a brilliant bit of storytelling setting up an entire series. I love the eagles saving the day. I was also enraptured by Bilbo figuring out how to get inside the lonely mountain. The thief is pretty amazing.

It truly was a groundbreaking story setting up a larger world. I kept wondering what else was in the map at the front. What other people’s.

Another ingenious idea Tolkien had was to make the intro into the story as a middle grade book. The reader gets older and now the more mature series of the Lord of the Rings is there to move the story forward. That is a brilliant bit of marketing/storytelling.

I do wish he had been more forward thinking in his use of female characters. In the Hobbit, there is hardly a woman anywhere. I am glad that Peter Jackson added a few of them.

I know we don’t need another review of these works, but I wanted to write down my thoughts on this classic.

n  Where there's life there's hope.n

I've been thinking a lot of how many stars giving to the book, since there were parts that I loved a lot, but there were others that I found tedious and even anti-climatic, but in respect to this great writer, J.R.R. Tolkien, I think that the book deserves at least 4-stars rating with which I feel easy since I am not giving it a full rating but also I am not punishing it for things that maybe a future re-reading will solve.

n  In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.n

Anyway, it's amazing how with this line... In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. ... the epic fantasy were never the same... it got better!

It's so fantastic to think how Tolkien felt the impulse to write down this line, and from it, a whole epic universe came into life. I loved to read when some book came up from a dream (like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) or from an unknown impulse, like in these case. I watched at some moment a documentary abour Tolkien's work and I learned how he was looking for a mythology, in the sense like the Nordic one or the Greek one, to call as own on England, and it was the trigger to creat such vast and appealing universe. And even more interesting to choose its point of development, since the core books like this one, The Hobbit and the following trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, are located in an time where the magic is leaving the Middle-Earth and the age of men is becoming the important one.

n  If you sit on the doorstep long enough, I daresay you will think of something.n

I think that certainly many people could love "more magic" in the main story, there would be others who enjoy the "more downed" tone with more "realistic" elements. In that way, everybody can like this story since there is a good balance of magic and "terrenal" stuff. I learned that in the second edition/fifth printing (if I am not mistaken) was where Tolkien made the corrections in the Fifth Chapter, Riddles in the Dark, to make it fit better with the evolution of the sequel known as The Lord of the Rings.

n  Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!n

Still, it was amazing how Tolkien could develop such impressive "sequel" from the book of The Hobbit with only editing one chapter, but definitely a key one. It's wonderful how the mood of the book is at hand with the maturing of Bilbo Baggins, the main protagonist, since the story started quite innocent and even with such humoristic moments and step by step is turning more and more serious, in the same way as Bilbo is getting more serious about his role in the mission.

n  My Precious, my Precious.n

The two introductions about characters that I absolutely loved were the Elrond's and Smaug's...

n  About Elrond...n

n  He was as noble and fair in face as an elf-lord, as strong, as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as summer.n

I mean...wow!!! If you are not impressed about a character when he or she is introduced in such way, well, I don't know what else you'd need.

n  About Smaug...n

n  My armour is like ten fold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!n

Oh yes, right then, anybody without a ring of power on his finger should run like crazy and never n  NEVERn stop to look behind.

n  It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.n

Without spoiling anything really crutial, I think that my most favorite part were the moon-letters. I mean, secret messages that you can read only at certain position of the moon in the year... WOW!!! and my favorite moment there, was when is asked to Elrond if the map says something else... Not with this moon. (Or something much like it) I mean, it gives a promise that may that map has some other secrets in there, only to be revealed at the right position of the moon in the year. WOW!!! It's cool when you read or see an scene where certain treasure's location is revealed when the sun's light or moon's light came into a certain room at certain moment of the year, but I think that this "moon-letter" and/or "moon runes" are way WAY MUCH COOLER.

Obviously, Gandalf is a great character, but I think that it was "too" great and Tolkien had troubles to think about challenges to put into the travelling group and they could mean a real risk having a powerful wizard in the midst. And you sensed it when they are in peril UNTIL Gandalf appears again. I understand. Gandalf rules! But hey, if you create such powerful character you have to live with him/her, I mean, if you will have troubles to think about adventures involving him/her, well, then, at least, let's present him/her as a passing character like Elrond, but when you have Gandalf in the travelling group, it's even more notorious the conflicts of the author when that character is dissapearing and appearing.

In here, about Smaug's fate... You have such powerful and intimidating character as Smaug, the last of the dragons, with such fearful introduction and later bam! it is beaten with a dang arrow? Thanks to a very convenient failure in his armour that a hobbit that he doesn't know anything about warfare, he was able to deduce a weak point that many, many, many warfaring races weren't able to deduce? And so, this menace that it's been spoken about along the whole book...bam! It's killed with a single arrow and even the arrow is shot by a totally new character that you didn't know anything about until that moment? Geez!

I was expecting more about Thorin Oakenshield. Certainly, the first part of Peter Jackson's film adaptations gave him a lot of credit and respect, presenting him as a powerful leader, where in the book, he doesn't do anything useful. And in fact, I didn't find out why so many dwarves in the story since nobody did something particulary memorable. At some moments, you think that Balin will become something more in the story but no, Bombur is only remembered by his weight (that I found something cruel how he is treated in the story) and even I thought that since Gloin is the father of Gimli, he would do something awesome at some moment but no. So, why so many dwarves in the group if they won't do something useful in the story? I think Gimli, one single dwarf, did more to give a good name to the dwarf race in The Lord of the Rings, than 13 dwarves in the whole The Hobbit.

I loved the trolls! Maybe some people didn't get the most humoruous aspect of them. I mean, you are in the Middle-Earth and everybody has names like Bilbo, Thorin, Gandalf, Elrond, etc... but the trolls' names are: Bert, Tom and William!!! I don't know but I found that such amusing, that they had such common and "modern" names in the middle of such "epic fantasied" names.

At the end, The Hobbit is a wonderful piece of writing where you find a totally new race in almost each chapter and not only you know the new race but also you get a "glimpse" realizing that behind of each race there is an extensive and rich history that you won't be able to know in its entirely way, adding more mystery to the whole universe created here.

First Read: April 2016, Rating: 4/5 stars
Second Read: September 2018, Rating: 5/5 stars
Third Read: September 2021, Rating: 5/5 stars
Fourth Read: November 2022, Rating: 5/5 stars

Despite being an avid fantasy fan, it took me until 2016 to first read this fantasy classic. I thoroughly enjoyed my first reading of it and found it exceeded all of my expectations. It wasn't until my second reading, two years later, that I found a firm favourite in this delightful little volume, however. My third reading, another three years after that, cemented that fact.

There is something about Tolkien's atmospheric creations that seems to emit perfectly autumnal vibes. I lined my reading perfectly with the change in seasons, beginning my journey in the Shire while the sun was shining and ending it under the mountain as the leaves were falling from the trees outside. This enhanced my immersion in the novel and brought me to a deeper level of adoration for his masterful creation.

But it was not just the setting that transfixed my attention but the characters who traversed it. The fourteen intrepid explorers travelled across Middle-Earth to take what was previously theirs and managed to get themselves into a whole host of troubles along the way. I really appreciated the sense of camaraderie there was between the group of dwarves, Gandalf, and Bilbo. Despite totalling 14 in number, I rarely got confused as to who each individual was and rooted for them all almost equally... although Bilbo does hold a special place inside my heart.

The wit in this novel was so understated. This is not a book renowned for its hilarity but the often dry humour had me chuckling along, and also served the purpose of make the trials that quickly followed feel that much bleaker.

So, with a startling setting, colourful characters, fantastic feats, and dazzling dialogue all combined, there was nothing left to fault and I will quickly continue on to journey once again in Middle Earth, in the Lord of the Rings.

Hobbits are so much a part of global popular culture today that it’s hard to believe that there was ever a time when they (theoretically) didn’t exist. Fortunately for all of us, however, J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937; and since that time, the irrefutable reality of hobbits has been very much a factor, and an inspiration, in all our lives.

As hobbits are such important beings – indeed, they saved the entire world once, back at the end of the Third Age of Middle-Earth – I think that this is a good time to allow Tolkien to introduce (or re-introduce) them to us. And please remember, as you read this description, that in 1937, when these words were published, most people didn’t even know what a hobbit was!

[W]hat is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it). Now you know enough to go on with. (p. 16)

We do indeed; and on the basis of Tolkien’s description, we know that hobbits are the perfect heroes. They command our sympathy, with their good-natured personalities and their unapologetic enjoyment of the simple pleasures of everyday life. They are ordinary, and yet they have that potential for the extraordinary that each one of us possesses, whether we know it or not. Because they are small of stature, they cannot muscle their way through a situation, like Heracles or Ajax; rather, they must use their wits and intelligence to prevail in the face of the challenges that they confront – as must we all. They are, in short, exceedingly good and enjoyable company for this wondrous tale of adventure.

The Hobbit is, at its heart, a classic quest narrative; indeed, its subtitle is There and Back Again. The title character, a thoroughly ordinary hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, is recruited by the wizard Gandalf to leave his home at Bag End, in the bucolic Shire, and accompany a group of dwarves on a voyage into the wastelands of the East, with the goal of recovering a treasure stolen by the wicked dragon Smaug.

And it’s good that the dwarves brought Bilbo along; for as the group’s adventures unfold, Bilbo displays great presence of mind, and a knack for thinking on his feet – traits that are not always apparent among his companions. When a group of giant spiders with a flair for negative magic lure the hungry dwarves into a trap by contriving mirages of delicious food, it is Bilbo who comes to his senses in time to kill the spider that was starting to wrap him in a deadly web. “Somehow,” Tolkien writes, “the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark, without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath” (p. 154).

Bilbo is us, after all. Every time he finds a solution to a seemingly insoluble problem, he recreates the process by which all of us have done likewise, at different points in our lives when we thought that our problems were about to overwhelm us. “And that is an encouraging thought,” as Gandalf might say.

Readers who are rushing through The Hobbit because they want to hurry up and get on to The Lord of the Rings will probably find themselves, in spite of themselves, lingering over Chapter 5, “Riddles in the Dark.” For it is in that chapter that the reader – with Bilbo, who has fallen into an underground cave complex and found a ring – encounters the creature Gollum – “a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum – as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face” (p. 79).

Gollum likes meat when he can get it, and intends to feast upon Bilbo; but in the process of a deadly riddle game that unfolds between Bilbo and Gollum, Bilbo makes use of the magic ring that he has found, escapes from the cave, and in the process deprives Gollum of the one thing that the creature loves. Gollum’s parting words – “Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!” (p. 93) – echo beyond the plotline of The Hobbit, and resonate throughout the entirety of The Lord of the Rings.

One of the most powerful moments in The Hobbit, for me, comes when Bilbo has successfully penetrated Smaug’s mountain lair, and has taken a single cup from the dragon’s hoard. Smaug, of course, cannot make any use of his treasure – after all, it’s not as if he can just fly by the Green Dragon Tavern in Hobbiton and use some of his money to purchase a nice pint of ale and drink it from that cup – but nonetheless he feels the infinite rage of the truly miserly at losing even that tiny part of his treasure:

Thieves! Fire! Murder! Such a thing had not happened since first he came to the Mountain! His rage passes description – the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted. His fire belched forth, the hall smoked, he shook the mountain-roots….To hunt the whole mountain till he had caught the thief and had torn and trampled him was his one thought. (p. 208)

That use of the epic quest motif to provide commentary upon human ethics and morality is part of what gives The Hobbit its power. And Tolkien’s interest in ethical questions comes forth one more time in the book – when, after Smaug has been dealt with, the leader of the dwarves, Thorin Oakenshield, is corrupted by the vast hoard of wealth that he has gained. So completely has Thorin’s heart been turned by the dragon’s hoard that he refuses to share the wealth with the Elves and Men who are his natural allies, and is ready to make war against them – even though Elves, Men, and Dwarves all suffered equally from Smaug’s depredations, and even though goblin armies are on the march, bent upon wiping out all the Free Folk of Middle-Earth.

Against this background, Bilbo makes a crucial choice, in a chapter aptly titled “A Thief in the Night” (a clever allusion, by the devoutly Catholic Tolkien, to Saint Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians - chapter 5, verse 2). Bilbo escapes from the dwarves’ lair, goes to the Elves and Men, and gives them the Arkenstone, the most precious of all the dragon’s treasures, and the one most coveted by Thorin. He tells the Elvenking and Bard the dragon-slayer that the Arkenstone is “the heart of Thorin. He values it above a river of gold. I give it to you. It will aid you in your bargaining”; and then he adds that “I am going back now, and the dwarves can do what they like to me” (p. 257).

This is one of my favourite moments from The Hobbit. It makes me think of the scene in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when Huck agonizes over whether to betray his companion, an enslaved man named Jim who is escaping from slavery. All his life, Huck has been told by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of his antebellum Missouri community that he has to uphold the system of slavery, and that he will be a criminal in life, and damned forever after death, if he helps someone escape from slavery. Yet Huck reflects on the feelings of friendship and respect that he has come to hold for Jim over the course of their long and arduous adventures together; and finally, Huckleberry Finn decides once and for all that he will never betray his friend Jim, even if it means that he will be damned to hell for helping an escaped slave – “All right, then, I’ll go to hell!” In the same way, facing a difficult moral situation, Bilbo makes a courageous ethical choice, and plans to accept the consequences.

I re-read The Hobbit while my wife and I were on a visit to New Zealand, the nation where director Peter Jackson directed six films based on Tolkien’s works -- and where we enjoyed the opportunity to tour the wonderfully detailed Hobbiton Movie Set near Hamilton. I must say that I disagreed with Jackson’s decision to make The Hobbit a trilogy; by the same logic, The Lord of the Rings should have been nine films rather than three. If Peter Jackson wanted to make more Tolkien adaptations, why didn't he start filming The Silmarillion? There's material enough for several movies in that book, I would think.

Yet the worldwide popularity of all these films speaks to the ongoing influence of The Hobbit. It is one of the great heroic narratives of all time, with a small hero who does big things.

In so many ways The Hobbit is the perfect read or reread for me. It's heartwarming, heartbreaking, adventurous, imaginative, page-turner, colorful, inspiring, mature. It speaks beautiful to the reader, lectures you without sounding condescended or superior and mantains your attention the whole time. It has so much to say and more for you to discover in just a few pages. The Hobbit is everything I ask for a light fantasy to be, and will forever be the way I end my reading year.



n  “Seguir adelante fue la mayor de sus hazañas. Las cosas tremendas que después ocurrieron no pueden comparársele. Libró la verdadera batalla en el túnel, a solas, antes de llegar a ver el enorme y acechante peligro.”n

Desde hace como 10 años tengo la costumbre de terminar el año releyendo El Hobbit, no sé porque lo escogí en su momento, pero después de tantos años entiendo que para mí el libro es el ejemplo estrella de una lectura perfecta.

Hacerle una reseña sería muy raro, casi imposible, de mi parte. Estructuralmente hablando es la aventura perfecta, pero el corazón de la historia es mucho más que el viaje y cambio del personaje, la transición de eventos y el cierre perfecto son el resultado de un libro que le apuesta a la narrativa más que al dialogo directo o acción. Y como antesala de la monstruosidad que es LOTR, El Hobbit sobresale por su diversión y singularidad. Bilbo aprende más de sí mismo estando rodeado de cosas que jamás ha visto ni vivido.

Una idea que inicia como cuento para sus propios hijos y se convierte en un clásico contemporáneo. El corazón del libro no es más que una ovación a todas las grandes historias de aventura, el inicio de una mitología tan grande que nadie vio venir.

No puedo no recomendarlo, no puedes irte sin al menos haberlo intentado.

n  "Hasta el final de sus días Bilbo no alcanzó a recordar cómo se encontró fuera, sin sombrero, bastón, o dinero, o cualquiera de las cosas que acostumbraba llevar cuando salía, dejando el segundo desayuno a medio terminar, casi sin lavarse la cara, y poniendo las llaves en manos de Gandalf, corriendo callejón abajo tanto como se lo permitían los pies peludos, dejando atrás el Gran Molino, cruzando el río, y continuando así durante una milla o más"n

We loved Alan Lee's illustrations in this one and also the larger size of the book. This is our favorite edition yet.

5*****