The Hobbit

@bluejay The most famous opening line ever! Well, not really, but it’s up there on the most popular opening lines lists.

Good points about introducing characters. Obviously Bilbo and the hobbits needed a lot of introduction, but Tolkien did it without boring us- probably by only answering the questions that we had already asked ourselves (ie, what is a hobbit?). Likewise, the lack of introduction for Gandalf adds to the overall mystery surrounding Gandalf’s character; we want to know about this suspicious wizard. (In fact, it’s only in the Silmarillion that Tolkien actually explains what he is.)

I’d also like to point out that these chapters are some of the funniest Tolkien ever wrote. Character humor- like Gandalf’s cynicism and Bilbo’s flusteriness- and situational humor- like the dwarves turning up and the trolls’ argument- add to the story, but mix in some lightheartedness to an otherwise-dark tale.

That does it for my opening statement…

Did anyone else like the sound Bilbo’s door bell makes? “ding-dong-a-ling-dang” (The most philosophical question ever) I love the whole older MC thing. It seems like all the books these days have teenage characters, but even though Bilbo is 50, the story is still a hit with all ages.

I finally got around to reading the first two chapters. It takes so much longer when you are trying to notice writing techniques! So here are some of my thoughts…
-There was a really good inciting event. Really sets up the book well.
-There is such good description! You can get a good feel for what he is describing without getting bogged down in too many details. He very nicely mixed in hints about Bilbo/hobbits-in-general character while describing the setting.
-Really good narrator voice, very entertaining. Almost dry humor and seemingly absent-minded in places.
So there’s some of what I though!

@bluejay I vote we leave a week in between for reading the chapters. I think school starting again really threw everyone a curveball, and we should slow down a little until schedules get back on track.

@bluejay So the new deadline is the weekend? Sounds like a plan.

@bluejay I really need to go onto these forums more often, because I completely missed this topic! The Hobbit is definitely one of my very favorite books. Anywho, about the third and fourth chapters: “A Short Rest” and “Over Hill and Under Hill”. The first time that I read this book I also had a really difficult time focusing during these chapters. I think that the reason is because Tolkien spent a really long time in chapters 3 and 4 discussing characters that did not have much to do for the rest of the book (especially in chapter 3; Elrond and the elves, for example) and put in a lot of things that don’t mean much to anyone until they read LotR, like Rivendell/The Last Homely House and all of the poems (which is very strange, since when he wrote The Hobbit he had no plan of writing a sequel). For whatever reason, I didn’t really understand or care for these chapters until I watched the movie. As much as I disapprove of the first of the trilogy, (that’s a different discussion, of course) the book made a lot more sense after I watched it. This might be due to the fact that I was pretty young the first time I read it, and had not re-read it before watching “An Unexpected Journey”, thus I had forgotten a good bit of it. But back to the chapters, (sorry, I got off topic) they’re still pretty good and fit in the theme, plot, and style of the rest of the book.

I’m pretty sure that counts as a rant, sorry about that. I just think a lot about this. 🙂