the hobbit: i-iv

the hobbit by jrr tolkien, chapters 1-4

I’m re reading The Hobbit while listening along with the JRR Tolkien unit of Shelved by Genre. I’m going to try to follow their schedule pretty closely, so I’ll aim to log each chunk as I go. First up, chapters 1-4!

I could not tell you the last time I read The Hobbit, but I was surprised by how many sentences I could complete in my head as I was reading. Lots of lines here seem to have just stuck. It’s remarkable how tonally different it is from The Lord of the Rings (which I’ve definitely read more recently), and it’s really surprising how colloquial some of the speech ends up being. Thorin makes a comment about being kicked “like a football” which (while totally in keeping with the light, children’s story tone) does not line up at all with my memory of the tone of the LOTR books.

In any case, what a delight this book is. Off to a great start, sharply realized, the world starts to feel so big so quickly, and Bilbo is such a fine fellow. My wife, in spite of being a tremendous fantasy fan, has never read these books, and my daughter is only a few years out from potentially having this book read to her, so I’m continuously trying to look at this book from their potential perspectives. I think it would hit from the start - Rivendell in particular truly feels magical.