Helpful Score: 8
This is the book that arguably started the fantasy genre. It's easy enough for kids to understand, but with a breadth and depth that will entertain the most jaded reader. This is one of the most influential books I've ever read!
Helpful Score: 6
Nice edition of the book. It has interesting illustrations, and as always draws the reader into a magical world.
Helpful Score: 5
I read this for the first time as an adult and will forever lament that I did not grow up with this story. I had seen the animated movie but thought I should start reading Tolkien at the beginning, so I picked up my dad's copy of The Silmarillion. Not a great choice for me at ~10 years old, as I was used to reading Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary at that time. I didn't try Tolkien again until I was an adult and looked over my husband's illustrated copy of The Hobbit, gifted by his school-teacher aunt and uncle when he was a child. I have devoured JRRT's works since then. That's how good The Hobbit is.
Helpful Score: 4
J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" is perhaps one of the best-written books about the advantages of having parties. Written relatively early in his days as an Oxford don, "The Hobbit" is a strongly autobiographical novel about Tolkien and his status as a party man. His reputation as a party enthusiast was so secure, in fact, that Tolkien regularly was the host to impromptu parties as other Oxford and even Cambridge professors would appear uninvited at his home with the expectation of a good meal, some beer or wine, and rousing party games.
It is such experiences that form the basis for "The Hobbit." A sedentary fellow, much like Tolkien, Bilbo Baggins finds himself the unassuming host of a party of dwarves (more established professors) and the wizard Gandalf (the president of the university).
Wooed by promises of great wealth, and strongly encouraged by Gandalf, Bilbo joins the dwarves on a quest to regain their lost ancestral gold, an action that represents Tolkien's own quest for tenure, a position that, once secured, would guarantee him employment, a place to live, social status, and ultimately a healthy retirement package.
The story follows Tolkien-as-Bilbo's journey to the heart of the Lonely Mountain, where he must confront the dragon Smaug (the experience of teaching undergraduate and graduate students) and be swept up in the dramatic Battle of Five Armies, a situation not unlike peer review.
And in the course of the story, Bilbo acquires a magical Ring that secures his reputation with the dwarves, much as Tolkien's literary and liguistic prowess, developed through education, secured his position in academia.
A thoroughly fascinating and enchanting book, "The Hobbit" will have you wishing again and again for the opportunity to attend more parties and, even more, to host them yourself.
It is such experiences that form the basis for "The Hobbit." A sedentary fellow, much like Tolkien, Bilbo Baggins finds himself the unassuming host of a party of dwarves (more established professors) and the wizard Gandalf (the president of the university).
Wooed by promises of great wealth, and strongly encouraged by Gandalf, Bilbo joins the dwarves on a quest to regain their lost ancestral gold, an action that represents Tolkien's own quest for tenure, a position that, once secured, would guarantee him employment, a place to live, social status, and ultimately a healthy retirement package.
The story follows Tolkien-as-Bilbo's journey to the heart of the Lonely Mountain, where he must confront the dragon Smaug (the experience of teaching undergraduate and graduate students) and be swept up in the dramatic Battle of Five Armies, a situation not unlike peer review.
And in the course of the story, Bilbo acquires a magical Ring that secures his reputation with the dwarves, much as Tolkien's literary and liguistic prowess, developed through education, secured his position in academia.
A thoroughly fascinating and enchanting book, "The Hobbit" will have you wishing again and again for the opportunity to attend more parties and, even more, to host them yourself.
Helpful Score: 3
this is a classic. i remember reading it as a child and loving it, then picking it up fifteen or twenty years later, reading it again, and still loving it. in my personal opinion, it's the best of the whole series.
