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The Hobbit
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The Hobbit
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The Hobbit
Ebook348 pages6 hours

The Hobbit

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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About this ebook

A great modern classic and the prelude to The Lord of the Rings.   Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum.

“A glorious account of a magnificent adventure, filled with suspense and seasoned with a quiet humor that is irresistible . . . All those, young or old, who love a fine adventurous tale, beautifully told, will take The Hobbit to their hearts.” – New York Times Book Review
LanguageEnglish
PublisherMariner Books
Release dateFeb 15, 2012
ISBN9780547951973
Author

J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was a distinguished academic, though he is best known for writing The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, plus other stories and essays. His books have been translated into over sixty languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide.

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Reviews for The Hobbit

Rating: 4.293303037051489 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

23,578 ratings501 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I originally reviewed this book on my blog - The Cosy Dragon. For more recent reviews by me, please hop over there.The Hobbit is a classic book, a sort of prequel to the Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins is the sort of hobbit that doesn't want to have adventures, but they come to him anyway. He is recruited as the thief for stealing dwarfish treasure back from a dragon! Nevermind that Bilbo has never left his comfortable hobbit hole before!The Hobbit is like a children's version of the Lord of the Rings in a way. At the same time, some of the material from it is very useful for understanding that trilogy, while having read the trilogy before also adds information to this one, particularly the references to the elves. I'd recommend reading both together, but if you don't have the stamina for the Lord of the Rings, give The Hobbit a go anyway.It's difficult for me to be objective about this book because it is such a classic. I have to say that the book's style of description didn't really draw me in. I continued reading mainly out of a sense of duty, because I just couldn't get attracted to the characters, which is a very important element for me. As the book progressed however, I really wanted to see how they would achieve things, and so I went on! It's not a bad book by any means, the plot line is interesting and Bilbo is believable and laughable as a character, it's just the style of excessive detail doesn't really do it for me. What stands out to me about this book is Tolkien's awareness of his reader, and the way that the text is addressed to the reader in order to make it more personal.I originally listened to this as a talking book while painting Lord of the Rings style Warhammer figurines. I'm pretty sure it was read by a full cast, and so it was really enjoyable. Nevertheless, on this reading of it I found that I didn't really remember anything from the talking book. I own two different copies of this book, the one above and also one that has a plain cover.I believe that this is being made into a movie that will be released soon. I really enjoyed the movies of the Lord of the Rings, even though I had read the books (an exception to what I usually find), and so I will hopefully get to see this one on the big screen!I would recommend this book for teenagers, adults and children. Although there are some scary sections, overall the book is very family friendly. Who doesn't love hobbits?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The saga begins, a hobbit called Bilbo Baggins finds a ring.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What can I say that hasn't already been said about "The Hobbit?" This edition, however, is well bound and includes Tolkien's own illustrations.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another set text. This is like the foreword of LOTR. If you like a magical epic journey about bravery and friendship, this is the one book you are looking for.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What can one say? A charming children's book for adults, with hints of darker things to come in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'm generally not a big fan of sci-fi/fantasy works, but I enjoyed the literature AND the performance of the audio-book version immensely.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Not my kinda book....I have to keep writing so that the review will stick in the mind of the computer that makes such decisions. Made a pretty good movie.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The story (and history) of this book is well-known; it drew heavily on the author's academic research, his wartime experiences and spawned a far more serious trilogy of blockbuster fantasy novels that themselves threw off seemingly a thousand imitators. What can be said about this novel that's not been said before?Well, I would contend that were it not for the circumstance of its origin, it would be fairly unremarkable. The style betrays its origin as a tale told to children in the 1930s, because there are recurrent authorial asides that a father would use. Many of them would not survive a modern editorial blue pencil; they don't just speak directly to the reader, they tell the reader exactly how they are supposed to think and feel at that point.Description is otherwise good and only slightly archaic for the modern reader. Characterisation is a different matter. I first read this book more than fifty years ago and had not picked it up since. But I had seen the Peter Jackson films, and they made it impossible not to see the characters as the depictions from those films. So I came away from the novel thinking the dwarfs excessively petulent, argumentative and unpleasant to each other as well as to Bilbo, something the films improved upon.Other differences I noticed were that the narrative in the films was adjusted to 'retcon' The Lord of the Rings. I see nothing wrong in this; this novel represents a far earlier vision of Tolkien's Middle Earth than the later trilogy accessed, Having made a detailed film version of the later books, Peter Jacksion could not have filmed The Hobbit as is; too many pointers to later events exist in the earlier book. Anyone coming to The Hobbit from the films has to understand this.One thing that I noticed - and this is possibly my science-fiction reader's critical examination of world-building coming in here - is that I kept seeing signs throughout the book (but especially in the Hobbiton segments) that somewhere there was a reasonably high-technology society hiding in full view. Because Tolkien started this tale as a story for his children, he kept putting into the descriptions of everyday life things the children would have been familiar with - kitchen utensils, crockery, kettles and all the other manufactured things that we take for granted in most normal houses. I thought this might just be in the films, but they are there in the novel as well. We have no idea where Bilbo Baggins gets his wealth from, either, but we are not supposed to think that he is stupendously rich - he is depicted as fairly solidly middle class - and he has the things that any middle class household would have, crafted in reasonable quantity and quality. Dwarvish or Elven metalsmithing is talked about often, but that ls reserved for making swords, chain mail and high-value fine craft objects. Elven swords, indeed, are sufficiently rare as to be given names, suggesting that they have been created by individual masters like Japanese katanas; but everyday items seem to exist in quantity and made at a reasonable price (though Bilbo's silver spoons do become an item of contention with his socially aspirational relatives!).If we look at hobbit society, there are a number of trades that can only reasonably exist in a fairly well-established society where there is surplus income; there are butchers who sell bacon and pork pies (instead of mere vendors of meat), there are solicitors and there are auctioneers. And as for the existence in Middle Earth of coffee...There are also a number of scenes in the book which would never have made it to the screen because there was just too many effects needed, even for Peter Jackson's vision; Gandalf's obsession with blowing multi-coloured and highly mobile smoke rings would have required too many effects inserting for no good reason; perhaps more noticeable were the scenes where the Dwarvish Party try to gatecrash the Wood Elves' alfresco feast, only to have it vanish and reappear in a different part of Mirkwood, which may have been too much effort to depict for their role in the narrative, or possibly would have made the pacing too disjointed, being partially interleaved with the spider scenes. This may equally be the reason why the Jackson films - all of them - rather back-pedal on actually showing Gandalf as a powerful magic user; watch the films at all objectively and you begin to wonder just how much magic Gandalf actually uses, whereas in The Hobbit, there are plenty of instances where he demonstrates his abilities; though to be fair, Tolkien does not use Gandalf's powers as a "get out of jail free" card.There is much use in the novel of the folkloric tropes of shape-shifting and communicating directly with animals through speech, either the animals using "human" speech or certain characters understanding animal speech. This is barely mentioned in the films, and possibly only alluded to. Perhaps we are now too literal-minded to accept this as the legitimate use of a folkloric device.The films also re-used visual effects and designs from the later trilogy; in particular, the Wargs were a different creature altogether in the films, whilst the goblins are rendered as orcs to a greater degree. Overall, it ended up with the novel giving the impression of being a sketch for Tolkein's later work. Some of the later characters amongst the Men of Laketown are little more than walk-ons in the novel, but are fleshed out in the films; and the Battle of the Five Armies is described in about five pages in the novel; it occupies about the last quarter of the third film.So after all that, what do I think of The Hobbit? I'm glad that I've re-read it, and I shall look forward to re-reading The Lord of the Rings in due course - but I'm not going to rush to push LoTR any further up the reading pile. And I don't expect to re-read The Hobbit soon. If it were not for its fame, I would not really have had this on the 'to be read' pile at all and I doubt I would have felt I'd missed much.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Greatest story ever told.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    loved this book when i was about fourteen, recommended for all youngsters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, these books are written for a younger audience.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A very different tone from Lord of the Rings, though clearly it prepares you for the trilogy. This edition, while beautiful, actually has some typographical errors.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Bilbo Baggins was sitting outside of his house one fine spring day when Gandalf appeared. The adventure begins.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A great fantasy story. a very nice mix, with thrills, fights, escapes and humour: not too whimsical - just enough.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    More of a children's fare than the pregnant Lord of the Rings. Good adventure story, great introduction the master's thesis.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    FAB!!! One of my favourites...
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Short simple entertaining fantasy novel. ( a bit over rated but )
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a small paperback I read for English class during one of my years of high school. Quite good despite the very disappointing movie that was made of it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Decent illustration, quality binding,
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well it was what everyone told me it would be. Not Lord of the Rings, but something else that's just ok. When I think about this book as a separate entity to the Lord of the Rings series, it's still a solid fantasy story. The only problem is, I only picked this up because I missed Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit doesn't necessarily give me the relief I was looking for. I only felt let down that I wasn't reading about the characters I loved.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Probably one of my all time favourite books.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I must have spent my childhood and adolescence skim-reading most of the literature I was introduced to, gaining impressionist pictures of those works but missing much of the subtlety of language, characterisation and narrative. Having taken it on myself to begin re-reading those books with more attentiveness, 'The Hobbit' is one of those I've chanced on.The first insight I got is that Tolkien's prose changes from whimsical to saga-like over the course Bilbo's journey there and back again. Despite the revisions he made to two subsequent editions (I read the most common 1966 third edition), the avuncular approach he takes at the opening, very reminiscent of the tone of the posthumously published 'The Father Christmas Letters', sits ill at ease with descriptions of casualities in battle and the more serious and earnest language at the end; revisions clearly haven't reconciled the two approaches.The next insight was a reminder from studies I'd previously read of how 'The Hobbit' could be viewed retrospectively as a practice run for 'The Lord of the Rings'. The plot and narrative elements are similar, among them being the hobbit on a quest, fellowship, troll glade, Rivendell, mountain tunnels, Gollum, Gandalf's disappearance, wood elves, spiders, beseiged habitations, climactic battle near a desolate mountain, intervention by eagles, and the giving up of a precious object. There are numerous differences, of course, but by the time Tolkien came to the trilogy he was clearly determined to make the secondary world he'd created more coherent and more fleshed out without simply retelling 'The Hobbit'. But he clearly didn't want to jettison the arc of the storyline that had pleased him in the earlier tale, which means that the inherent conflicts in storytelling style of 'The Hobbit' are made even more obvious. The rather perfunctory ending contrasts with the solemn and more satisfying conclusion of 'The Lord of the Rings' describing the Scouring of the Shire and the Ringbearers' final journey.This edition features Tolkien's own rather quaint illustrations. While no-one would claim that there was huge artistry involved (the line drawings in particular are not well finished) their stylisation and frequent symmetry add to the otherworldly character of the tale and help inform us of Tolkien's creative intentions in structuring the narrative.We come now to the songs with which Tolkien peppers the text. There is much to admire in his cunning alliterations, rhymes and use of metre, modelled on Middle and Old English examplars, and I don't want to deny the artistry involved. But, like his drawings, their formality is, for me at least, a barrier to really liking them, and I am perplexed by his suggestions that elves, dwarves and goblins were able to improvise such crafted songs on the spur of the moment. However, these songs would benefit from being set to modal melodies in a folk or medieval style; I am not a fan of the Donald Swann settings but, as Tolkien likes to appeal to the senses, including sympathetically composed melodic counterparts to the verses could add immeasurably to this reader's enjoyment. 'The Hobbit' is certainly not a masterpiece. A pioneering work, yes, that broke the mould for children's literature and created a template for much post-war fantasy writing; and though flawed definitely a thrilling adventure story that flies once it gets off the ground.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I didn't enjoy this much as Lord of the Rings. I found it quite repetitive. Looking forward to the film though.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I love this classic. Bilbo Baggins is taken from his quiet home in the Shire to find out the nature of a shiny object with a strange power. He ends up going on a quest with his friends to follow the guidance of the Wizard Gandolf. Gandolf helps him become a well-repected hero who longs for adventure. There are hobbit s, elves, magic, and don't forget dragons! A must-read, even after the movie.-Breton W Kaiser Taylor
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Awesomeee!!!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Vermakelijk verhaal van het avontuur van de hobbit Bilbo Ballings die met een groep dwergen en de tovenaar Gandalf een goudschat gaat heroveren op een draak. Leuk is de humoristische ondertoon en de vlotte verteltrant. Interessant is vooral de diversiteit aan "soorten" in deze fantasiewereld. De Hobbit was duidelijk een blauwdruk voor het latere epos, In de Ban van de Ring.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    a mythical adventure.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Indeholder "I. Et uventet selskab", "II. Lammesteg", "III. Kort rast", "IV. Over bjerg og under bjerg", "V. Gåder i mørket", "VI. Fra askien og i ilden", "VII. Et mærkeligt hus", "VIII. Fluer og edderkopper", "IX. Drivende tønder", "X. En varm modtagelse", "XI. På dørtrinnet", "XII. Indenfor", "XIII. Ikke hjemme", "XIV. Ild og vand", "XV. Skyerne samler sig", "XVI. Som en tyv om natten", "XVII. Der går hul på en skjorte", "XVIII. Hjemrejsen", "XIX. Sidste etape".Hobbitten Bilbo Sækker bliver opsøgt af en troldmand, Gandalf, der lokker ham med på et eventyr sammen med nogle dværge, Dvalin, Balin, Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur og sidst men ikke mindst Thorin.Deres mål er at fordrive dragen Smaug. På vejen møder de troldene Bert og William, der er lidt dumme og derfor bliver forvandlet til sten. Elveren Elrond tyder dværgenes kort og læser månerunerne på det. Nogle sværd, de har taget fra troldene, er gamle og lavet af højelverne i sin tid. De drager videre og må slås med bjergtrolde. Bilbo farer vild i bjerget, men det er heldigt for han støder på et sært væsen Gollum og får fat på en magisk ring, der gør bæreren usynlig. Han kommer tilbage til dværgene, men de bliver jaget af ulve og kun med nød og næppe reddet af ørne, som Gandalf påkalder. Næste stop er hos Beorn, som hjælper den videre til Dunkelskov, hvor Gandalf forlader dem.Dværgene bliver fanget af edderkopper, men Bilbo hjælper dem fri, lige på nær Thorin, der bliver taget til fange af skovelverfolket. Senere bliver dværgene også fanget af skovelverne, men Bilbo går fri og han får også befriet dværgene omend de ikke er begejstrede, for vejen til frihed går via et ophold i nogle tønder på en flod.De kommer til menneskenes by, Søby, og får en god ladning forsyninger med, for menneskene er ikke begejstrede for Smaug. Ved bjerget finder de en gammel dør og kommer ind i en tunnel, der leder til Smaug. Bilbo opsøger Smaug og driller den, så den letter og flyver på hævntogt til Søby. Imens kommer dværgene og Bilbo ind. Bilbo opdager en stor ædelsten, Kongestenen, som Thorin ønsker over alt i verden. Bilbo stopper den i lommen til senere brug.Imens har Smaug ødelagt Søby, men Bard har til gengæld skudt dragen en pil i brystet, så den døde. Elverne og menneskene samler en hær og drager til bjerget for at få fat i dragens bytte, som den har samlet gennem årene.Thorin mener at skatten er hans og han vil forsvare den. Han bliver belejret og sender bud til sine slægtninge, der også stiller med en hær. Imens er Bilbo blevet træt af både dragehulen og Thorin. Han sniger sig ud og giver Kongestenen til Bard. Thorin giver efter, men dværgehæren under Dain er utilfredse og går til angreb.Præcis på denne tid angriber bjergtroldene støttet af varger, ulve og flagermus.De bliver med nød og næppe slået af dværge, mennesker og elver. Og efterfølgende sluttes der fred mellem disse. Thorin er faldet i slaget og bliver begravet sammen med Kongestenen. Bilbo får en lille kiste med guld og en med sølv og drager hjem. Han har den magiske ring, et godt sværd og en brynje, han har fået af dværgene.Smuk lille bog om hvordan selv en hobbit kan ændre verdens gang.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic!