New reads:

This week, I'm reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm not sure how I missed this book growing up. I was never required to read it in school and it somehow flew under my radar. When A and I started dating however, I was introduced to the magical world that Tolkien created through the "Lord of the Rings" movies. I never thought I would like them (not really my kind of thing) but I've actually grown to love them. They are some of our favorite movies to sit down and watch on a rainy Saturday.

A few years ago, for his birthday, I got A a really great boxed set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I had every intention of reading them. But again, somehow, I've just never gotten around to it. Last year, for Christmas, he got a really nice leather-bound copy of The Hobbit in his stocking and it's been taunting me from the bookshelf ever since. So, I decided to finally give it a go.

I thought it would be hard to read but so far I'm really enjoying it. I like the writing style and the characters are interesting, but there are just so many dwarves running around, I don't know if I'll ever get them straight.

If you don't know the story of The Hobbit (and how could you not?), here's a really great introduction from Amazon.com:

"'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.'

The hobbit-hole in question belongs to one Bilbo Baggins, an upstanding member of a "little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves." He is, like most of his kind, well off, well fed, and best pleased when sitting by his own fire with a pipe, a glass of good beer, and a meal to look forward to. Certainly this particular hobbit is the last person one would expect to see set off on a hazardous journey; indeed, when Gandalf the Grey stops by one morning, "looking for someone to share in an adventure," Baggins fervently wishes the wizard elsewhere. No such luck, however; soon 13 fortune-seeking dwarves have arrived on the hobbit's doorstep in search of a burglar, and before he can even grab his hat or an umbrella, Bilbo Baggins is swept out his door and into a dangerous adventure.

The dwarves' goal is to return to their ancestral home in the Lonely Mountains and reclaim a stolen fortune from the dragon Smaug. Along the way, they and their reluctant companion meet giant spiders, hostile elves, ravening wolves--and, most perilous of all, a subterranean creature named Gollum from whom Bilbo wins a magical ring in a riddling contest. It is from this life-or-death game in the dark that J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork, The Lord of the Rings, would eventually spring. Though The Hobbit is lighter in tone than the trilogy that follows, it has, like Bilbo Baggins himself, unexpected iron at its core. Don't be fooled by its fairy-tale demeanor; this is very much a story for adults, though older children will enjoy it, too. By the time Bilbo returns to his comfortable hobbit-hole, he is a different person altogether, well primed for the bigger adventures to come--and so is the reader."