The Hobbit There and Back Again Audiobook

March 15, 2022 Post a Comment

The Hobbit

Description

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable and tranquillity life. His contentment is disturbed one day when the magician, Gandalf, and the dwarves arrive to accept him away on an risk.

Smaug certainly looked fast comatose, when Bilbo peeped once more from the archway. He was just about to step out on to the flooring when he casught a sudden thin ray of ruby-red from nether the drooping lid of Smaug's left eye. He was only pretending to sleep! He was watching the tunnel archway!

Whisked from his comfortable hobbit-pigsty by Gandalf the wizard and a band of dwarves. Bilbo Baggins finds himself defenseless up in a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a big and very dangerous dragon…

Fantasy
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About the author

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on the 3rd January, 1892 at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, simply at the age of four he and his brother were taken back to England by their female parent. After his father'south death the family moved to Sarehole, on the south-eastern border of Birmingham. Tolkien spent a happy babyhood in the countryside and his sensibility to the rural mural can clearly be seen in his writing and his pictures.

Reviews

What people retrieve well-nigh The Hobbit

4.six

900

ratings

544

Reviews

Reader reviews

What can ane say? A charming children'southward book for adults, with hints of darker things to come in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I'thousand by and large not a big fan of sci-fi/fantasy works, but I enjoyed the literature AND the performance of the sound-book version immensely.
The story (and history) of this book is well-known; it drew heavily on the writer's bookish research, his wartime experiences and spawned a far more serious trilogy of blockbuster fantasy novels that themselves threw off seemingly a thousand imitators. What tin can be said about this novel that'southward not been said earlier?Well, I would contend that were it not for the circumstance of its origin, it would be adequately unremarkable. The style betrays its origin as a tale told to children in the 1930s, considering at that place are recurrent authorial asides that a male parent would utilize. Many of them would non survive a modern editorial bluish pencil; they don't just speak directly to the reader, they tell the reader exactly how they are supposed to recollect and experience at that betoken.Description is otherwise good and only slightly primitive for the modern reader. Characterisation is a dissimilar thing. I first read this book more than fifty years agone and had non picked it upward since. But I had seen the Peter Jackson films, and they fabricated it incommunicable not to run into the characters as the depictions from those films. And then I came away from the novel thinking the dwarfs excessively petulent, argumentative and unpleasant to each other as well equally to Bilbo, something the films improved upon.Other differences I noticed were that the narrative in the films was adjusted to 'retcon' The Lord of the Rings. I see nothing incorrect in this; this novel represents a far earlier vision of Tolkien'southward Middle Earth than the afterwards trilogy accessed, Having made a detailed film version of the later books, Peter Jacksion could not take filmed The Hobbit equally is; too many pointers to later events exist in the earlier volume. Anyone coming to The Hobbit from the films has to sympathise this.One affair that I noticed - and this is possibly my scientific discipline-fiction reader's critical examination of world-building coming in here - is that I kept seeing signs throughout the book (only especially in the Hobbiton segments) that somewhere there was a reasonably high-technology gild hiding in total view. Because Tolkien started this tale equally a story for his children, he kept putting into the descriptions of everyday life things the children would have been familiar with - kitchen utensils, crockery, kettles and all the other manufactured things that we take for granted in well-nigh normal houses. I thought this might just exist in the films, but they are there in the novel as well. Nosotros have no thought where Bilbo Baggins gets his wealth from, either, but we are non supposed to call up that he is stupendously rich - he is depicted equally fairly solidly middle class - and he has the things that whatsoever middle grade household would have, crafted in reasonable quantity and quality. Dwarvish or Elven metalsmithing is talked near often, but that ls reserved for making swords, chain mail and high-value fine craft objects. Elven swords, indeed, are sufficiently rare every bit to exist given names, suggesting that they have been created by individual masters like Japanese katanas; but everyday items seem to be in quantity and made at a reasonable price (though Bilbo's silver spoons do become an detail of contention with his socially aspirational relatives!).If we look at hobbit society, there are a number of trades that tin just reasonably exist in a fairly well-established society where there is surplus income; at that place are butchers who sell salary and pork pies (instead of mere vendors of meat), there are solicitors and there are auctioneers. And as for the existence in Middle World of java...There are also a number of scenes in the book which would never have made information technology to the screen because there was simply as well many furnishings needed, even for Peter Jackson's vision; Gandalf's obsession with blowing multi-coloured and highly mobile fume rings would have required too many effects inserting for no good reason; perhaps more noticeable were the scenes where the Dwarvish Party try to gatecrash the Wood Elves' alfresco feast, just to have information technology vanish and reappear in a unlike part of Mirkwood, which may have been too much endeavor to describe for their function in the narrative, or possibly would have made the pacing besides disjointed, being partially interleaved with the spider scenes. This may equally be the reason why the Jackson films - all of them - rather back-pedal on really showing Gandalf as a powerful magic user; lookout the films at all objectively and you lot brainstorm to wonder just how much magic Gandalf actually uses, whereas in The Hobbit, there are plenty of instances where he demonstrates his abilities; though to exist off-white, Tolkien does not utilise Gandalf's powers every bit a "exit of jail gratis" menu.There is much use in the novel of the folkloric tropes of shape-shifting and communicating straight with animals through speech, either the animals using "homo" voice communication or certain characters understanding animal speech communication. This is barely mentioned in the films, and maybe merely alluded to. Perchance we are now too literal-minded to accept this equally the legitimate use of a folkloric device.The films also re-used visual effects and designs from the afterward trilogy; in item, the Wargs were a different creature altogether in the films, whilst the goblins are rendered as orcs to a greater degree. Overall, information technology ended upward with the novel giving the impression of being a sketch for Tolkein's later work. Some of the after characters amongst the Men of Laketown are little more than walk-ons in the novel, but are fleshed out in the films; and the Battle of the Five Armies is described in about five pages in the novel; information technology occupies almost the last quarter of the third film.Then afterwards all that, what do I think of The Hobbit? I'm glad that I've re-read it, and I shall await frontward to re-reading The Lord of the Rings in due course - but I'm non going to rush to push LoTR any further up the reading pile. And I don't wait to re-read The Hobbit soon. If it were non for its fame, I would not really have had this on the 'to be read' pile at all and I doubt I would have felt I'd missed much.
"There is more in you of good than you know [...] Some backbone and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gilded, information technology would be a merrier world."
This was a fun adventure, and I really enjoyed it! While not my favorite children's fantasy, it was a fantastic introduction into Tolkien's earth, and I am very excited to explore it more in his adult works.
A very unlike tone from Lord of the Rings, though conspicuously information technology prepares you for the trilogy. This edition, while cute, actually has some typographical errors.