"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."- Amazon
The Hobbit - the book that everyone loves, the book that everyone adores. One problem though, I hated it. It was horrible, by far the worst book I have ever laid eyes on. Now, I know if I were to go around "hating" on one of the most popular books of all time, I better have some pretty good reasons for it. And trust me, they're coming.
- Point 1: I think the main problem of The Hobbit is that it was set in a far off distant world, and had absolutely nothing to do with ours, so it was extremely hard for me to care what happened to Bilbo, simply because it didn't affect me. Usually there is some sort of punch-line like " if you don't stop Smaug now, he will tear open a portal and head towards for your world next" However The Hobbit lacked that sort of incentive, that would have made me care a little bit more about Bilbo.
- Point 2: In the Hobbit there were some bizarre and odd words, that are not used very often in the present day, this caused me to make bi-hourly trips to the dictionary to find out what on earth J.R.R Tolkien was trying to say, This combined with the excess amount of brackets, proved very detrimental towards the flow and plot speed of the book.
- Point 3: For my last point I would like to point out the plot speed, now, I'm not sure if this is because of the of the "odd word" here and there, or the lack of incentive, or perhaps the millions of brackets ,but for me, The Hobbit had an very slow plot speed. It simply didn't move anywhere!
Why? The plot was slow, it was an immense strain just to get through the book, and I barely managed to connect with the characters ,quite Frankly, if I hadn't been forced against my will to read this book, I would have dropped it on chapter 3. please, do yourself a favour, and don't read this book!
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