The long anticipated movie version of The Hobbit opens tomorrow. In anticipation, and as part of my recuperation, I picked up my fine leather-bound copy of the book and began reading. It was a gift from my parents for Christmas of 1977 and a welcome replacement to the borrowed and battered paperback that I’d first read years before.
I am a great admirer of The Lord of The Rings, but The Hobbit remains my favorite. The tone is lighter and it pulls more strongly in the tradition and tone of the fairy tale. I believe that there’s an argument to be made that it’s a superior story and piece of literature than The Lord of The Rings, which is weighted down by so much created myth and linguistics. The Hobbit’s lightness serves it well.
I am delighted that they’re talking their time to tell the story over three long movies, although I imagine that it could be told very well in a single movie.
If you have not read The Hobbit, I strongly urge you to do so. It’s a wonderful book to read to your children and might help to inspire a love of books and story in them.
And it’s a book I will eagerly pull off the shelf to read to children yet to come, and perhaps, for myself once again.
Here’s the same edition that sits on my shelf: The Hobbit (or There and Back Again) Deluxe Edition
The Beyond The Misty Mountains Cold by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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