The Hobbit

Or There And Back Again

(1937)
J.R.R. Tolkien

Finished Reading: 07.2009

A difficulty arises in writing about fiction, for I am torn between keeping hidden the great mysteries of plot and facts (that is to say not ruining the ending) and just telling you all the juicy details so I have something quite great to describe. You inevitably read on and are confused, perhaps uninterested in such nondescript drivel, or conversely you throw down your laptop because I have given you some hidden knowledge which burns your eyes before its time, stinging your anticipation with revelation. It is like me telling you all about my exciting trip to a certain place; where there were changes in elevation, the passage of time, maybe a little growth of my beard, and certainly some dialog which I was a part of. But if I don't tell you where I went, how long it took to get there, what brand of razor I used and how many times I cut myself using it, not to mention what choice words were overheard in certain places that serve certain beverages, you would then have both not read the book and not had a reliable description of my reading the book. You would have only heard that I had read the book, and you might suspect I think myself better than you for having done so. After all, I haven't written a single word about the Hobbit so far, and here we are moving right on to paragraph two, not nearly soon enough and finding ourselves slightly below this fabulous green dust jacket. Fantastic.

Bilbo goes there and comes back again indeed, but where does he go? There. And Back. Again. Actually just once. You see, we know hobbits well from our reading The Lord of the Rings, in which Bilbo certainly plays a part. Hobbits hate to do any exciting things at all but seem to do a great many exciting things anyway, and always with the best of company. At least the ones that get books and songs written about them. This is the adventure to begin such adventures and it ends well for the Bilbo, Gandalf and some others that we care the most about.

There is a lot of talk about beards for sure, and certain things are said about the length of them (in general regarding the hope for further growth and the avoidance of witherance on a fellow dwarf as a customary greeting) but really beards have little to do with anything here or there.

We might as well judge the book by its cover, since this one is so nice. Observing it, I suspect that some mountains are climbed or at least passed by, some trees are present in large bits of forest, and that the eagles are coming (or going). The sun balances dangerously on that far peak towards the middle, hoping you won't notice him, so I would guess the eagles are leaving that sort of thing. One shouldn't mess with the sun when he is in a mood to balance on something so cold as a snow capped mountain. If something were to go wrong, we would not be able to see Bilbo as he journeys back from there, and he might not even make it at all given the darkness and cold that would certainly follow. One thing is certain, and that is that I cannot read in the dark, and you are not sure whether I read this book at all.