by J.R.R. Tolkien

Second Chance

This is a new type of post we’re trying, so new it doesn’t even have a little icon yet!

If you’d like to join in with ‘second chance Sunday’s', please check our Feature Posts page to see the perimeters we’ve set and please link back to our blog. You don’t have to choose the same Sundays we do, we plan to places them sporadically through the year (whenever we feel like writing one to be honest with you.)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001). Unforgettable!

-Goodreads

I’ve mentioned many times before that when I was younger I listened to audio books, lots and lots of audio books, before my reading skills were great enough to deal with my passion for stories. One of the audiobooks I really enjoyed was a dramatised version of The Hobbit. So much so that I attempted to read my dad’s copy a few years later. I think it may have been one of those collection books so that it had The Lord of the Rings in it too – the pages were awfully thin and it was a very big book! I gave up on the first page. It was heavily descriptive and I hadn’t yet learnt that I didn’t have to read every single word.
As a fan of fantasy and elves and epic adventures I’ve always thought that this is a series of books that I should like. I’ve enjoyed all the films.

When The Hobbit was turned into a film I was given a beautiful copy of the book and a The Hobbit themed notebook for Christmas. It wasn’t right away that I decide I was going to read it and then The Lord of the Rings. I collected for myself the equally pretty The Lord of the Rings series as it was in one of the amazon deals with vague ideas of reading it, but more for having a set.

Then more recently the 3rd Hobbit film joined netflix in the UK and I watched all three and then all three Lord of the Rings films. That was when I fully decided I was going to read the books. And that the year to read them was the year I was focusing on series. That year is here! I may have to wait for the over-too-soon summer holidays to really settle down and focus on them, but I’m going to be giving The Hobbit a second chance!

I’m older and I now know how to pick out the good from the boring when it comes to heavy description. This time I think I’ll be able to handle it!

I can’t wait.