"The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again" by JRR Tolkien (1892-1973)

 

Publisher: George Allen & Unwin

Copyright: 1937

ISBN: 0048231479

This is one of the classics of all high fantasy novels. And has been read by millions of people. I'm not overly sure how many times I've read the book, but over the years probably around ten times as a guess. I can remember exactly when I first heard of the book, and that was when my parents were having a garage sale, and it happened to be one of the books they had for sale. This was in the early 1980s, so yes, I'm a late starter. 

Prior to this I can't clearly recall a time when I even heard of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. I cannot recall anyone mentioning it when I was in school. In hindsight, I would've thought that a book of this quality would've been hard to miss but I guess it was, either that or it just wasn't discussed.

For those of you who are unaware of the story as I was it tells the tale of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, and his adventures with 12 dwarves and Gandalf the wizard who set out to reclaim the dwarfs stolen treasure from the lonely mountain, and if necessary fight the dragon Smaug. Bilbo goes along as he he's purported to be a master thief.

During the first part of this adventure Bilbo encounters Gollum, and finds a certain little golden ring that changes his life from that moment on. If you haven't read the story yet I'm not gonna go any farther and tell you what happened, so read it!

In the event you are one of the people who has only seen the movies by Peter Jackson you will be in for a treat by reading these books as Mr. Jackson made a number of what I consider to be rather drastic changes, and which I believe corrupted the story so much that I refused to even watch the third movie.

Happy reading,