[Formendacil]

I first read The Hobbit when I was about 9 or 10. My dad had The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and [/i]Unfinished Tales[/i] from the late 70s and early 80s on the bookshelves in our basement, and I was the kind of voracious reader then (would that I still were!) that was constantly in need of new things to read. I had burned through Narnia the year before, and it came closer to scratching the itch of "this is the perfect story," so I was primed to read more fantasy, and something I'd read in the non-fiction vein about Lewis had mentioned his friendship with Tolkien, so I recognised the name when I found it on my Dad's shelves and was predisposed to give it a try.

It turns out that Narnia was just the gateway drug--within a year or so, I had read not just The Hobbit, but also burned through The Lord of the Rings (more than once) and embarked on The Silmarillion (which was hard at like... 10-11 years old, but I persevered anyway).

The Hobbit itself is sort of lost in the shadows of Tolkien's two great works for me: if it hadn't been the gateway to publication for them both, I don't think it would be nearly as well-remembered today, though I suspect it would not have gone out of circulation long, if at all. It still holds up for what it is: an adventure story coloured with wonder and a final note of loss, and because it takes its own world so seriously, it doesn't feel as dated as other things written in 1930s might: i.e. it's not a mess of references we no longer get.

For myself, as I approach middle-age, I find that I appreciate the protagonist being a middle-aged homebody more: Bilbo's longing to just be at home, enjoying his own bed and good food, has some currency in my life, and maybe there's also some still-applicable lesson in being amazed at the adventures of life I find myself in anyway.