Review - The Hobbit

I just finished my reread of this. I read it over and over again when I was younger -- "hundreds of times" would be hyperbole, but not that much. I used to finish it and then begin it all over again straight away. I'd curl up with a bag of sweets -- usually Werther's Originals, I think -- and suck/crunch my way through the book. And when my parents got wise to me reading in bed late at night, way past bedtime, I hid it in my pillowcase and read it by the light of the streetlights that were past the end of our garden... I really loved The Hobbit, is what I'm trying to say.

And I do love the rest of the Middle-Earth stuff I've read, but I love The Hobbit the most, probably. It's lighter -- there's humour in the writing, in the story, and it opened the door to all the rest of that world. Bilbo is the kind of hero who thinks the sensible thing, like, I wish I was back in my home and the kettle was on for tea. He's adorable and his adventure is simpler and easier and less painful for the reader than Frodo's. And he meets such interesting people.

I want to reread what Ursula Le Guin had to say about Tolkien in The Wave In The Mind, because she reminded me of how much I do love his writing after being told it's clunky and clumsy and overwrought for the last couple of years.