The Hobbit (Middle Earth, #0)

by J.R.R. Tolkien

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

I know that’s right

This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.

We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them,”

“What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!”

The hobbit’s aloha

You will notice already that Mr. Baggins was not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, also that he was very fond of flowers.

listen I’m obsessed with him

He had only just had breakfast, but he thought a cake or two and a drink of something would do him good after his fright.

Gandalf in the meantime was still standing outside the door, and laughing long but quietly.

This is hilarious

He did not remember things very well, unless he put them down on his Engagement Tablet: like this: Gandalf Tea Wednesday.

He’s just like me fr

And what would you do, if an uninvited dwarf came and hung his things up in your hall without a word of explanation?

Hmmm true

He had a horrible 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.

Selfless king 😔

“Let us join the throng!” “Throng!” thought Mr. Baggins. “I don’t like the sound of that.

Not a throng!!

this was the most awkward Wednesday he ever remembered.

This is killing me

More dwarves, four more! And there was Gandalf behind, leaning on his staff and laughing.

Chip the glasses and crack the plates! Blunt the knives and bend the forks! That’s what Bilbo Baggins hates– Smash the bottles and burn the corks!

Terrorizing the Virgo LMAO

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.

If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit, even to Old Took’s great-grand-uncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul’s head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.

You asked me to find the fourteenth man for your expedition, and I chose Mr. Baggins.

Bilbo: now why am I in it

He loved maps, and in his hall there hung a large one of the Country Round with all his favourite walks marked on it in red ink.

Pure

“Also I should like to know about risks, out-of-pocket expenses, time required and remuneration, and so forth”—by which he meant: “What am I going to get out of it? and am I going to come back alive?”

Sensible hobbit!

And well, don’t you know, I think we have talked long enough for one night, if you see what I mean.

Please get out of my house

In fact he was just sitting down to a nice little second breakfast in the dining-room by the open window, when in walked Gandalf.

we've had one, yes...

So after that the party went along very merrily, and they told stories or sang songs as they rode forward all day, except of course when they stopped for meals. These didn’t come quite as often as Bilbo would have liked them, but still he began to feel that adventures were not so bad after all.

“Now scuttle off, and come back quick, if all is well. If not, come back if you can! If you can’t, hoot twice like a barn-owl and once like a screech-owl, and we will do what we can.” Off Bilbo had to go, before he could explain that he could not hoot even once like any kind of owl any more than fly like a bat.

“Yes, lots,” said Bilbo, before he remembered not to give his friends away. “No none at all, not one,” he said immediately afterwards.

scream

Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars, not if you care for such things.

Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.

His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Evil things did not come into that valley.

I want to live in Rivendell so bad

The nights were comfortless and chill, and they did not dare to sing or talk too loud, for the echoes were uncanny, and the silence seemed to dislike being broken—except by the noise of water and the wail of wind and the crack of stone.

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something (or so Thorin said to the young dwarves). You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.

He wished again and again for his nice bright hobbit-hole. Not for the last time.

Gandalf thought of most things; and though he could not do everything, he could do a great deal for friends in a tight corner.

suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it. He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking; certainly it did not seem of any particular use at the moment.

Honey you got a big storm coming

“Go back?” he thought. “No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!”

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum—as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face.

Legend alert…

It seemed that the ring he had was a magic ring: it made you invisible!

🫢

“I am dreadfully hungry,” groaned Bilbo, who was suddenly aware that he had not had a meal since the night before the night before last. Just think of that for a hobbit!

Traumatic honestly

“My toes are all bruised and bent, and my legs ache, and my stomach is wagging like an empty sack.”

Me after ballet class

“What shall we do, what shall we do!” he cried. “Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves!” he said, and it became a proverb, though we now say “out of the frying-pan into the fire” in the same sort of uncomfortable situations.

So Gandalf gave a long shrill whistle, and presently Thorin and Dori came round the house by the garden path and stood bowing low before them.

This whole section is so hilarious I wish I could highlight the whole chapter

As the light faded Bilbo thought he saw away to the right, or to the left, the shadowy form of a great bear prowling along in the same direction. But if he dared to mention it to Gandalf, the wizard only said: “Hush! Take no notice!”

“Go on, if you must,” he said. “I’m just going to lie here and sleep and dream of food, if I can’t get it any other way. I hope I never wake up again.”

Me

From which you can see that they had changed their opinion of Mr. Baggins very much, and had begun to have a great respect for him (as Gandalf had said they would).

Finally

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

Noted

His rage passes description—the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.

If there is any grumbling to be done, I think I might have a say.

“Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!” he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. “You aren’t nearly through this adventure yet,” he added, and that was pretty true as well.

“Come, come!” he said. “‘While there’s life there’s hope!’

“It seems to be late morning,” he said, “and so I suppose it is more or less breakfast-time—if there is any breakfast to have. But I don’t feel that Smaug’s front doorstep is the safest place for a meal. Do let’s go somewhere where we can sit quiet for a bit!”

“We have had enough of the old men and the money-counters!”

Me too

“Back now to the Mountain!” cried Thorin. “We have little time to lose.” “And little food to use!” cried Bilbo, always practical on such points.