JRR Tolkien was an author who wrote some fairly influential fantasy works. I always feel obliged to write a bit of an intro when I start a thread, but I imagine most people reading talking time know as much as I do or more about Tolkien.
I borrowed The Hobbit from my school library when I was maybe ten, and asked my parents for The Lord of the Rings, which I eventually got for Christmas. I found it much harder going than the earlier book, I think taking months to get through it and retaining very little. I found the Silmarillion in my high school library, but it was largely impenetrable to me. I haven’t really engaged much with Tolkien since - I saw the first Peter Jackson movie and that’s about it.
Recently my wife took The Hobbit out from our local library and read it over a few days. She’s since moved on to my old copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and I’ve made a start on The Hobbit. I’m up to the point where Bilbo falls off a dwarf’s back while fleeing goblins and passes out (yes I am using spoiler tags for a book that’s almost a hundred years old - I’m enjoying discovering what’s in it as I go), and so far I’m really enjoying it. Two things I’d kind of forgotten about it are that it was written for kids (Tolkien’s kids, specifically), which I think makes it quite an easy read (though no less enjoyable), and that there’s a lot of comedy in it. I’m sure I found the joke about the origin of golf funnier than it actually was just because it came out of nowhere when I wasn’t expecting it. When I was a kid I skipped over the songs and poems because I found them harder to read than prose, but they seem ok now, maybe because of all the rhyming kid’s books I’ve read in the last few years.
It’s claimed in the intro to the edition that I’m reading that Tolkien had no plans for the sequel when the Hobbit was written, and I can believe it. There’s a reasonable amount going on that doesn’t fit with my vague memories of the later books, like trolls turning to stone in the daylight. The party just stumbling across multiple legendary ancient weapons which are instantly recognisable to and feared by goblins is a fairly kid’s adventure book thing to happen. I remember LotR being a fair bit more serious, though it is a long time since I read it.
I’m tempted to try to read this to my kids, but I think they might be a bit young and find some of it scary, particularly all the mentions so far of people being eaten by trolls and goblins. Pretty sure there’s a giant spider coming up, too. Also, this was published in the 1930s and features various sentient races. Having had to do some unexpected editing on the fly while reading aloud TS Eliot’s 1930s Book of Practical Cats because of the racist bits, I’m slightly cautious about what might come up in this.
I borrowed The Hobbit from my school library when I was maybe ten, and asked my parents for The Lord of the Rings, which I eventually got for Christmas. I found it much harder going than the earlier book, I think taking months to get through it and retaining very little. I found the Silmarillion in my high school library, but it was largely impenetrable to me. I haven’t really engaged much with Tolkien since - I saw the first Peter Jackson movie and that’s about it.
Recently my wife took The Hobbit out from our local library and read it over a few days. She’s since moved on to my old copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and I’ve made a start on The Hobbit. I’m up to the point where Bilbo falls off a dwarf’s back while fleeing goblins and passes out (yes I am using spoiler tags for a book that’s almost a hundred years old - I’m enjoying discovering what’s in it as I go), and so far I’m really enjoying it. Two things I’d kind of forgotten about it are that it was written for kids (Tolkien’s kids, specifically), which I think makes it quite an easy read (though no less enjoyable), and that there’s a lot of comedy in it. I’m sure I found the joke about the origin of golf funnier than it actually was just because it came out of nowhere when I wasn’t expecting it. When I was a kid I skipped over the songs and poems because I found them harder to read than prose, but they seem ok now, maybe because of all the rhyming kid’s books I’ve read in the last few years.
It’s claimed in the intro to the edition that I’m reading that Tolkien had no plans for the sequel when the Hobbit was written, and I can believe it. There’s a reasonable amount going on that doesn’t fit with my vague memories of the later books, like trolls turning to stone in the daylight. The party just stumbling across multiple legendary ancient weapons which are instantly recognisable to and feared by goblins is a fairly kid’s adventure book thing to happen. I remember LotR being a fair bit more serious, though it is a long time since I read it.
I’m tempted to try to read this to my kids, but I think they might be a bit young and find some of it scary, particularly all the mentions so far of people being eaten by trolls and goblins. Pretty sure there’s a giant spider coming up, too. Also, this was published in the 1930s and features various sentient races. Having had to do some unexpected editing on the fly while reading aloud TS Eliot’s 1930s Book of Practical Cats because of the racist bits, I’m slightly cautious about what might come up in this.
