Book Beginnings and Friday 56 – The Hobbit (Sept 11)

It has been over 4 months since I took part in either of these Friday memes, so I thought it was time to participate again. The Hobbit is my favourite book of all time and I figured it was time for a reread, as it is about three years since I last read it. I still haven’t seen any of the movies yet, but I have promised our son that I will watch them with him this winter. I’m not sure how that will go, but I really can’t have an opinion on them if I haven’t watched them. Although I mostly enjoyed the LOTR movies, I wasn’t impressed with a lot of the things that Peter Jackson did with the stories, but that’s something I’ve discussed at length elsewhere.

The following is from the slipcover of a pocket edition I bought not so long ago to replace my favourite copy that is beginning to fall apart:

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End.

But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon.

Bilbo is most reluctant to take part in this quest, but he surprises even himself by his resourcefulness and his skill as a burglar!

Anyway, on to this week’s excerpts:

Book Beginnings is hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader, who invites anyone to join in, saying: ‘Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.  Please remember to include the title of the book and the author. Leave a link to your post.  If you don’t have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.’

The beginning of The Hobbit:

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.

I love this opening and I love this book. There’s not much else I can say, really!

The Friday 56 is a book meme hosted by Freda’s Voice and the rules are as follows:

*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url.

It’s that simple.

From page 56 of The Hobbit:

So they laughed and sang in the trees; and pretty fair nonsense I daresay you think. Not that they would care; they would only laugh all the more if you told them so. They were elves of course.

Apart from the hobbits themselves, the elves are among my favourite characters in this book. Hopefully, I’ll get the opportunity to read a fair chunk of this book over the weekend, but I’ll see how it goes.