Read The Hobbit with me!

there are things more beautiful

than words can ever tell  

  I’m running a book club this year and our current book is the Hobbit - so I thought it might be fun to do a post on each couple chapters I read! It would be especially fun, I think, because this blog was kind of founded on my love for Tolkien :)

    So this is both the intro post and the review of chapters 1-3. I have no idea how many times I’ve read this book, but I think I love it more every time. Bilbo is the funniest, sweetest, most relatable protagonist ever written (in my personal opinion) and I love watching his character face (many) challenges and victories and grow in the end. 

    Also I love how different the tone of the Hobbit is from The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien wrote it for his children, and you can almost taste his delightful wry humour. For example (just to choose one, because there are too many delightful moments to choose from): 

    “Thank you!” said Bilbo with a gasp. It was not the correct thing to say, but they have begun to arrive had flustered him badly. He liked visitors, but he liked to know them before they arrived, and he preferred to ask them himself. He had a horribly thought that the cakes might run short, and then he—as the host: he knew his duty and stuck to it however painful—he might have to go without.” (Gasp! The horror—no cake!)

    And of course there’s Gandalf’s classic “do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not, or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?” (I shall be using this very frequently.)

    And then too there are beautiful things, like Bilbo’s thoughts while listening to the dwarves sing. 

    “As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.”

“i want to see mountains again. mountains, gandalf!”

    Those words wake up something inside of me, much as the dwarves’ song do in Bilbo. I want adventures like those—like Bilbo goes on to have. Something inside of me has always craved adventure, and I think it always will. But like Bilbo too, a part of me loves the comforts of home. Cozy things are beautiful too, and I think one of the most lovely things about the Hobbit is that it holds both in tension. Tolkien shows us comfort, and then shows us adventure, and makes us realise sometimes we must be made uncomfortable to truly appreciate the beautiful things in life. (Yes, I am well aware that I sound very academic. No, I do not apologise. Even “children’s books” have meanings deeper than those on the surface.)

    So overall—this is and will probably always be one of my favourite books. I’ll leave you with a part from the dwarves’ mountain song that will hopefully encourage you to pick it up too :)

far over the misty mountains cold

to dungeons deep and caverns old

we must away, ere break of day

to find our long-forgotten gold