The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Finally, after three years of idling, finish it I did! I was stuck since 2011 (dunno why) at the part right before the party got into the mountain. Then I watched the first and third films and disliked them, so I got very close to never actually finishing The Hobbit. However, since this is book-a-week year (just finishing books counts too!) I couldn’t resist the temptation…
I have to say I quite enjoyed Tolkien’s writing, at least in The Hobbit. I think it was the perfect balance between complex descriptions and enjoyable dialogues, and I’m saying that having read LOTR in Greek many years ago and knowing what kind of an experience having the scale lean towards the descriptions and the story of everybody, their friends and their friends’ friends’ dog’s grandmothers side is.
In a few words: The Hobbit in book format was more enjoyable than the films, while in LOTR’s case the reverse was true for me. But books such as Tolkien’s are difficult to criticise because they are so deeply influential and part of everybody’s “discovering the realm of high fantasy” phase, somewhere between the ages of 11 and 14.
Is The Hobbit the post-war Harry Potter? Will teens enjoy Harry Potter 50 years from now the way I did growing up? Will Harry Potter eventually spawn a universe of influences unforeseeable to us today? Did Tolkien ever imagine what kind of worlds he would inspire in the imaginations of others?