From the Bookshelf of J.R.R. Tolkien…

The Hobbit

J.R.R. Tolkien

Start date: October 1, 2014

Finish date: December 31, 2014

Discussion: Group Reads

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Group Reads

* Group Read September 2021-January 2022 (No Spoilers)
By Michael · 21 posts · 118 views

last updated Jan 31, 2022 11:38AM

Group Read January-March 2015: The Silmarillion
By deleted member · 5 posts · 127 views

last updated Apr 18, 2023 01:00PM

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What Members Thought

Dec 06, 2008 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I love the feeling of connectedness you get when you've wondered about something for a long time, and finally discover the answer. I had a great example of that yesterday. As I said in my review of The Lord of the Rings, for me Tolkien is all about language. I must have read The Hobbit when I was about 8, and even at that age I was fascinated by his made-up names. They sort of made sense, but not quite.

Then, when I was 21, I learned Swedish, and suddenly there were many things in Middle Earth th ...more

189 likes · Like · see review

Mar 29, 2011 J. Aleksandr Wootton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" - an immortal beginning, for which we owe thanks to the grueling boredom of grading papers, and without which the past three-quarters of a century would have been remarkably different, and far poorer.

For I cannot imagine that, in the absence of The Hobbit, some other author would have risen in the early twentieth century to write an enduring novel that at once championed the epic spirit of what Lewis and Tolkien called "Northernness" ( "Will shall ...more

51 likes · Like · see review

Oct 11, 2009 Gaijinmama rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favorites, re-read, classics, fantasy

Full disclosure: I am a life-long Tolkien geek. Mock me, and I'll cuss you out in Elvish. And then I'll breathe a bit of fire at you.
This is the prequel to The Lord of the Rings. I actually read LOTR first when I was 9 years old (back when dinosaurs walked the earth...) and it was rough going, so I highly recommend reading The Hobbit first. It explains a lot of things that are important to the trilogy. Also, unlike LOTR, this is a children's book. It's not just for children, by any means, but it ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

May 08, 2009 Kevis Hendrickson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The interesting thing about The Hobbit is how close it came to never seeing the light of day. J.R.R. Tolkien's classic children's fantasy book only exists because he was bored while grading his students' papers and accidentally created the mythical creatures known as Hobbits.

But I think The Hobbit in particular came into being because Tolkien loved the old fairy tales and myths and couldn't find any contemporary books like the old ones he enjoyed reading. The Hobbit is such a fun book to read th ...more

2 likes · Like · see review