The Hobbit is Eighty!

[Nord]

Where would we be without him?

https://paintsngluenrocknroll.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/happy-birthday-bilbo.html

[Johnno]

Yay!
Maybe time for another reading

[Legion1963]

Indeed. Hooraahh. Hooraahh. Hooraahh! ;-)

[Vanvlak]

No, he's over a hundred eleven - oh I see 
Huzzah!

[Coenus Scaldingus]

Still as lovely a book as when it was first released (not that I read it back then). Although I've always enjoyed it, I listened to a couple of podcasts some years ago that gave me a new appreciation of the careful use of language by Tolkien and his precise storytelling. Good stuff to have on the background while painting: http://tolkienprofessor.com/lectures/the-hobbit/

[Hammers]

Yay!
Maybe time for another reading

I wonder how many times I have read that book...

[Captain Blood]

I wonder how many times I have read that book...

Yep. It's been with me my whole life pretty much 

[Hobgoblin]

A tremendous book. Perfectly structured for reading as a bedtime story, too, as I've discovered through successive readings aloud in recent years. The first few chapters are just the right length, and essentially give you hobbits, dwarves, trolls, elves, goblins in successive episodes. Perfect!

Several prominent tropes of fantasy gaming first appear in The Hobbit, I think. Off the top of my head, it gave us the following:

• Orcs (albeit channelling George MacDonald's goblins: but goblins as evil soldiery - "infantry of the old war" was a Tolkien thing)
• Orcs riding wolves (yes, the Edda has troll-women on wolves, but not as cavalry)
• Dwarves wielding battle-axes (and mattocks!)
• Dwarves being very strong for their size (there are those Norse Atlas-types holding up the skies, but legendary and folkloric dwarfs are generally rather weedy)
• And, of course, hobbits (or halflings)

[Matakakea]

Blimy. It's been forty years now since I first read this. My thanks to the school librarian who purchased our copy.

[Momotaro]

It was watching The Hobbit being read on Jackanory in the 70s that got me into this whole fantasy nonsense.  D&D Red Box a couple of years later was... mind-blowing.

So yeah, literally life-changing.  The glamour of the Old North has snared many a curious young mind!

[ZeroTwentythree]

I consider myself a huge Tolkien fan, but for some reason I have trouble getting into the Hobbit. LotR, Silmarillion and the later stuff distilled by Christopher Tolkien are all great. I've read it twice all the way through, and have made a couple of additional attempts at reading it but failed. I seriously feel like some sort of fantasy outcast for not liking The Hobbit. 

Maybe I should try it as a bed-time story, per Hobgoblin's comments. (Though I'm not sure how much it will be of interest to my daughter.)

[Sunjester]

Maybe I should try it as a bed-time story, per Hobgoblin's comments. (Though I'm not sure how much it will be of interest to my daughter.)

I read it to my sister as a bedtime story (she had tried reading herself it but just couldn't get into it). The first chapter and the Gollum scene are hilarious read out loud, we were both in tears at times. She was 50 at the time, by the way.

[Anpu]

I am reading it to my 8 year old daughter and she loves it.

[Vanvlak]

I actually first read The Hobbit late - I was about 20 - and it was because of a Dragon.

Not Smaug, although he played a part.

It's embarrassing but I first took an interest when I read a computer mag review (this was in the '80s) of a text adventure game based on The Hobbit, when a version came out for the Dragon 32, my home computer (there's the dragon bit). Some time later I went to the national book fair and saw a wall of Hobbits, with Smaug on the cover - it was a 50th anniversary edition, I think. I couldn't not buy it, so I did - the gorgeous illustration of Smaug did its bit too.

Some months later I saw a copy of The Lord of the Rings at a local shop (for local people...) and snapped it up, and since then I've read both a number of times, adding The Silmarillion a couple of years later. It's been there for thirty years now, and I'll be taking it up once again soon, I think.

[Hobgoblin]

Another fantasy-gaming trope that first appeared in The Hobbit, I think - or was at least popularised by it - is the mistrust between elves and dwarves.

There are also some interesting titbits in the text from a Middle Earth perspective:

• Orcs probably inventing gunpowder and other such destructive technologies
• "Wicked dwarves" making alliances with orcs
• Stone giants - and friendly giants that could be induced to block up an orcish cave

ZeroTwentyThree: I thought my daughter might be less keen on The Hobbit than her brother, given the near-complete absence of female characters. But she loved it.