The Hobbit

The geek in me (who is the same geek that has seen the long ass director's cuts of the three LOTR movies in the cinema even) is pretty excited about Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit". Of all the LOTR books it is by far my favourite. It also contains one of the best opening lines of any book in history:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Before this sentence no one even knew what a hobbit was. No one had ever seen or heard of a hobbit. No one knew what they looked like, where they lived, or how many times a day a hobbit might like to eat breakfast (at least twice). It makes this first sentence unique and original. It is also a fine first sentence because of its simplicity and it's ability to immediately get your imagination going.

I was eleven when I undertook reading The Hobbit and Tolkien's other LOTR books. I had been long obsessed with C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia and read somewhere that the two men had been friends and had influenced each other a great deal. So out I set to the school library and from the first sentence I didn't stop. I read while walking; before sleeping; while eating; basically any chance I could get (including hiding the books inside my textbooks during class; and when I had finished all four of the books I read them again.

Over the years I've read a or a few books from Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia nearly every year of my life. The last time I read the Tolkien books was when the first of the films was set to come out and only to see how true Jackson was going to be to Tolkien's much beloved material. While I have my complaints (mostly surrounding Elijah Wood) about the films I still enjoyed seeing some of my favourite fictional characters come to life. Especially Gandalf.

Living in a forest it's hard not to think about Tolkien's books and Middle Earth. Once on a long walk unsure of where to go me and my friend thought, how would Gandalf decide what road to take when he encountered five separate paths in the wood? Then when my neighbour's son started reading The Fellowship of the Ring I decided it was time to read the books again. So naturally I started with The Hobbit.

But I had to buy it as I had lent the set I bought before The Fellowship of the Ring came out in theaters and it was never returned, which really upsets me as they weren't a valuable set, but they happened to be the first books I ever bought at The Strand  and I happened to find them under a set of shelves as opposed to on them. They were covered with thick dust that made them seem all the more magical.

I bought a cheap paperback copy of The Hobbit (I could have had a first UK edition for 200,00 euros but I couldn't afford it) in Amsterdam at The Book Exchange and read that first line again, but this time with the perspective of someone who would love to write something as brilliant for children..."In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

If you're looking for news more on the movie than the book this is a pretty decent website, but I warn you that any true fan of the books isn't going to like the initial news. Yes Orlando Bloom is one sexy Englishman and I loved his portrayal of Legolas, but he isn't in the book. Jackson's "tinkering" around with details and well just between me and you I don't approve.

Why don't I approve Mr. Jackson? For the same reasons why I didn't approve of your other "tinkerings". For the past twenty + years I've been entranced by that one opening line alone, nevermind the entire book. Why change it? Why make it more Hollywood? If something has lived in the hearts of its fans for such a long time I would think it's good enough to be left alone.

But reading this book after so many years has made me smile. Like Bilbo, I'm there and back again to a time when my imagination was all I needed to make a book come to life.