287 pages
Published 1937 (text from 1995 edition)
Read from January 9 to January 10
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
* Denotes a reread.
Clearly I'm on a cozy cottagecore comfort read kick. That's January (and nearly three full years of the isolation that comes with a deadly global pandemic) for you!
Unlike The Lord of the Rings, which I used to reread on a yearly basis and have read at least half a dozen times, I only read The Hobbit once before, back in 2005 or so. Back then, it didn't click with me the same way as Lord of the Rings did.
Rereading it now, in the lovely edition my partner R got me for the holidays, I think it excels at the very things I now enjoy most about Lord of the Rings. The cozy hobbit hole vibes are immaculate, and the mystery and magic of the greenwood is if anything more beguiling and stranger here, closer to the wildwood fairy tale roots of anglophone fantasy. Despite The Hobbit's cultural prominence, and the overblown blockbuster trilogy treatment that reshaped my memories of the book, it feels closer to the strange delirium of its nearish contemporaries, Lud-in-the-Mist and The King of Elfland's Daughter. Put another way, Pratchett's Discworld isn't too far removed from this early version of Middle-earth.
Bilbo trips from one weird encounter to the next in a fae shaggy dog story: Cockney trolls with a talking coin-purse! Talking birds! Talking spiders! A dude who turns into a giant bear and also keeps bees! The elves are less the ethereal nature spirits of Peter Jackson and more fruity little goobers who sing good-natured taunts when the party finally locates Rivendell. The Hobbit delights in its weirdness.
Of course, nowadays I can't unsee the antisemitic origins of the dwarves, especially in Thorin's "sickness" when he obtains the dragon-gold. That, sadly, also is in keeping with its time.
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