"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

I was very excited when the Tolkien Read-Along was announced. It's been years since I read any of these books and, as is the case with almost every book I read -- even those I love, I had forgotten most of the stories.  I usually remember the gist of the book but none of the details.  This made my reading of The Hobbit all the more exciting because so many parts were almost new to me again.  There were characters that I met again for the first time and others that I visited again after a long absence.  It was very satisfying.

I think the thing that stood out the most to me in this reading was the briefness of each part of the story. The scenes built quickly and then resolved in a timely manner. Any time that the adventurers were waylaid for longer periods, the narrator glossed over it with a few simple sentences. This really could have been a much longer and drawn out novel but I appreciate that it wasn't. Much of the beauty of this book is the simplicity of Bilbo Baggins and this is reflected in the simple manner of storytelling.

I'm very glad to have read The Hobbit again and I can't wait to continue through The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The storytelling is incredibly different in those books but satisfying in its own way.

There and back again,
K


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