Now the route Mr. Bilbo Baggins transverses to seek adventure and a pot of gold...several in fact, may not be as glamorous as the yellow brick road nonetheless thoroughly lucrative...he will never complain....after he is safely back home.... As our story begins the Hobbit is having a quiet, delightful time drinking his tea and a nice breakfast, steps out the door (from his hole in the ground the unkind would say) blows a wonderful smoke ring...And is the last one for many moons... a peaceful situation I mean. An old man, a stranger appears the polite hobbit greets him, Bilbo later regrets it often but that's further down the road. The sociable Mr. Baggins invites the man who reveals himself to be the powerful, mystifying, lofty wizard Gandalf to tea...tomorrow. The nervous hobbit, half the size of a human just wants to be left alone and enjoy his comfortable life which unfortunately doesn't occur, on the other hand the reader is greatly rewarded. Next day a dwarf arrives Dwalin, than another Balin, and still more, two in fact, Kili and Fili, five then, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, and Gloin, this will in a short while ( pun intended) be thirteen, no I haven't forgotten Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and last very appropriately , the leader Thorin, they are a superstitious bunch. The need for a fourteenth member is obvious ( you can't count a wizard) , these creatures are eating, drinking at poor Bilbo's home... an unexpected party is fully in bloom causing the owner a headache ...think of the expense and danger to his dishes and furniture. Finally Gandalf comes and the purpose of the gathering disclosed, a bold plan to kill a huge dragon Smaug the Magnificent, take the vast priceless treasure, the winged fire breathing behemoth sits on, inside the very distant Lonely Mountain, the dwarfs ancient home. The reluctant Mr. Baggins agrees to go along, not too confidently , he can see disaster in his future... Deadly monsters, goblins, wolves, unfriendly elves are between their goal, the sinister Misty Mountains, rivers to cross, lakes too, the dark thick forest Mirkwood, where evil giant spiders, sinister wizards, unfriendly wood-elves reside, with only a little stream to guide and follow , then Gandalf abandons them...Still the frightened little hobbit becomes the leader, with the help of a magical ring. The battle of five armies, a grisly fight where no quarter is given, an epic style end to this tale is the high point. This classic written in 1937 is the original, The Lord of the Rings are sequels and more magical than Mr. Bilbo Baggins band. If you wonder why someone would read a book for the third time all you need to do is get this title... (yes more than one novel in my library ) . A trip in a world where you can forget your troubles and drop into one let's face it, quite interesting ... an ominous place to become a hero even get rich if you serve well, and survive obstacles in the way that all good people will.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

That book literally killed the bloody movie, they missed with everything in the novel:
The unexpected party.

Tom and Bert and Bill.

The battle in the goblin caves with the foe-hammer and the goblin-cleaver and The Great Goblin.

The riddles in the dark.

Out of the frying pan into the fire.

The Eagles.

Beorn`s meeting.

The battle with the giant spider (specially this one).

The Elvenking's Gate.

The Barrel-Riders.

The (OMG) conversation with Smaug the Magnificent.

Smaug vs Bard The BowMan.

The theft of The Arkenstone of Thrain.

The Clouds Burst And The battle of The Five Armies.

Everything is different when you read the book and you find out how silly the movies was, I highly recommend not to watch it.
It`s been a very good ride :)

Hit the road Bilbo, and better don´t Smaug no more

A short piece for kids ready to unleash its full potential
Without its, and C.S. Lewis's impact on Tolkien, there may have been no LOTR. Just imagine how empty the nowadays fantasy world could look like. But at least it´s not

As complex as the Silmarillion
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
Holy heck, this thing was a mind blowing, complex, interwoven, totally over my little nerd brain behemoth of a book, truly hardcore stuff if you´re into that. Some purists may argue that the hobbit is too simplified, but again, it´s a freaking book for kids. I just don´t get the people ordering pizza at the golden arches drive in and then complaining and wanting to talk to the manager. Reading Karens are just ridiculous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(...

Would be a bit over the top to see a deeper allegory regarding greed and power in Smaug
But it´s always a nice move to show kids the problems with endless exponential shiny growth until there is no gold left anymore. There definitively is an equivalent of this concept in the pure, endless exponential evil growth concept in LOTR and one could take another, controversial step and ask who Morgoth (the Prime minister or CEO?) Sauron (an important minister or CDO), and Saruman (an overachieving higher bureaucrat or rayon manager) could be in 21st century real life. I´m not just joking, I´m really often thinking

About the manifestations of evil in different genres and reality
See how hidden it is in this short piece, opening the just potential for many kids to later ask what it could have meant. And for everyone else to look at her/his society and point at the darkest, crudest unfolding potential. In the worst case, this is not just political terror mixed with theocracy witch burning, but garnished with a stupid, self destructive economic system ruining everything. At least privileged Western people like me just have the ethical problem of choosing the favored luxury consumer goods from the top of piles of corpses and natural destruction caused in some place nobody knows. I just don´t know which 8K 65 inch TV I should buy and if I should spend my vacation in the mountains or by the sea. However,

Why should anyone handle Tolkien the Nobel prize for literature?
Just because he founded one of the greatest literary genres ever? So better give it to another sophisticated intellectual who probably ( I haven´t read any Ivo Andric https://www.goodreads.com/author/show... ) is so over the top work to read that it´s just exhausting. But I´m biased regarding Nobel Price and snobby classic literature, so I´ll better stop complaining about things I´m too lazy to read and that just aren´t fun, but even often pretty downers too. But it´s still funny that nobody reads all this Nobel Price stuff, fantasy and sci fi never were allowed to enter, and still became the most inspiring literature to rule them all.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...