(WPF) The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien, 3 stars

[NancyJ]

I know this author has many fans, especially among those who loved it as a child. This was never a favorite genre of mine. I liked the book overall, but I struggled to stay engaged during the long journey. My favorite sections involved Gandolph, the dragon, and the dragon slayer. None of the dwarves stood out to me as particularly interesting characters. I'm not sure I would have liked it any better as a child, due to the lack of female characters.

The audio narration by Andy Serkis is very energetic and dramatic, especially with characters like the Golem. (That section was recounted in one of the Lord of the Rings books I think.) I think the audio would be great in the car, but the voice was too energetic for bedtime reading. The ebook was a nice switch as it had some illustrations.

[Andie]

Hmmm, your comments are so interesting to me. I did read this as a child, and I re-read it periodically as well as reading it aloud to my own children. It's one I enjoy :)
Do you know, it never really registered to me that there is a lack of female characters the story .... hmmm ... I have been puzzling over another comment somewhere else about misogynistic SF writers, and I wonder if this is what is meant ?? Thanks for giving me something to think about here.

[Theresa]

I personally find it inappropriate to designate a book as misogynistic simply because there are no female characters or those in it are sidelined. You have to look at the totality of when and why it was written as well as the audience it was written for. Tolkien did have some women in key roles in LOTR and other works.

Even the great early women SFF writers did not always provide women characters in their stories. My Feminerdy Book Club has read a number of the SFF classics from the 60s and 70s, written by men and women, and discussed this in some depth. In fact, we had more problems with how women were portrayed in The Lies of Locke Lamora than in the older classics.

On the other hand, there was a ton of 'boy's club' and misogyny as well as racism and gender exclusion in SFF awards granting, which came to an ugly head a few years ago in the whole ' sad puppies' controversy where one group was not happy at the trend to more inclusive and speculative works being nominated and winning top awards, like N.K. Jemisen (you should listen to her 3rd Hugo acceptance speech for the last book in The Broken Earth Trilogy). More info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_P...

I know I lean towards books with strong female characters and/or written by women. I preferred Nancy Drew to The Hardy Boys when I was a kid. But I also love all those studly men and hunky dog thrillers...and really don't care if any women appear in them.

[NancyJ]

I don't consider Tolkien misogynistic. I noticed the relative lack of humans before I noticed the lack of women. As a teenager I knew many boys who were reading the Hobbit, but no girls. I read the first chapter (as my boyfriend's urging) but I couldn't get interested in the hobbits or dwarves. Though my childhood favorites included Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Call of the Wild, and mysteries.

However, many sci-fi authors have long been accused of misogyny, though "male chauvinist pig" was a favorite term at the beginning. I believe it was mainly because of how women were discussed or portrayed in the books. Reportedly one famous sci-fi author was considered the worst, with stories about his offensive treatment of women in public.

[Andie]

Thank you both for these comments ... Tolkien never struck me as misogynistic as such (and he does have a few great women character moments), but the fact that I never *noticed* the lack of women characters, that I recall, is interesting to me.

It also made me wonder about John Wyndham - I really love his books too, and he does have some good women characters. Asimov ... some of his stories are favourites too, but he definitely didn't write women characters so well. Perhaps when I have my thoughts more coherent, I could start a topic about this.

I really appreciate you following up with your thoughts :)