The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Of all things I hate eating, my own words is the one I like least. Having spent the last few years soundly abusing Tolkien, I am very unhappy to have to report that I hugely enjoyed rereading this. I hadn't read this since I was very little, and realise that I had not understood it at all. The first half of the book is certainly much better than the second, and I spent most of the first few chapter laughing hysterically. Reading this right after Through the Looking Glass, I realised that The Hobbit in fact has a great deal of similarity to Carroll's work in terms of absurdity and nonsense; the dwarves tumbling over the doorstep out of nowhere, the 'respectable' profession of 'burglar'. There's an absolutely delightful quaintness about the whole book and a lovely homely humour. My favourite sentence of the entire book was 'Smaug had rather an overwhelming personality'. The reason I decided to reread this at all was that I saw the original cover and was shocked at how Arts and Crafts it looked, and once I started reading, I couldn't stop. I had forgotten Tolkien's engagement with William Morris's fantasies, and so many of the ideas and aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement are visible in this book, it was really fascinating to read it from that point of view. I was kind of surprised how dark it got towards the end, I wish it had all been kind of like the bit with the trolls, full of fun work games and simultaneously comical and dangerous situations. But overall, I enjoyed this so much, I really surprised. (I recently saw part of the movies and they are so fantastically bad, I can't even start).