NO SPOILERS:
The prequel to the legendary Lord of the Rings, I feel everyone should read The Hobbit at one point of their lives. Seriously, The Hobbit was such a wonderful and enjoyable read, I honestly believe it’s well suited for any high school English class (hell, this book was written for children!). This relatively short book is not only a wonderful introduction to Tolkien’s iconic Middle-earth universe and to an array of really interesting characters, it’s also is an awesome introduction to high fantasy literature in general. Again, I would’ve loved to have read The Hobbit back when I was in high school, instead of having endure other absolute garbage novels (like the The Joy Luck Club and To Kill a Mocking Bird, to name a few).

Anyways, enough rambling. This book (and the entire Lord of the Rings series) has been on my “to be read” list for well over a decade. I’ve never seen any of The Hobbit movies, and was fortunate enough to put watching them on hold until I first read the book. So reading the book not knowing exactly what events would happen, made the experience of reading it, even more enjoyable. For example those events that will eventually become really important in The Lord of the Rings. Although it wasn’t the focal point, it was really cool reading how Bilbo came upon the “magic ring”.

I can’t think of anything negative of this book, if anything I wanted this book to be longer. The Hobbit definitely has deep lore, which explains how Hollywood was able to make three movies based on this short book. I wanted this book to be longer! For example perhaps more back story of Gandalf, and definitely longer content regarding the Battle of Five Armies. I’ll be reading The Lord of the Rings next, so maybe this is mentioned there. Thus said for what it is, this book is really good.

As a side note. Tolkien being the godfather of modern day high fantasy, and having read The Witcher saga (heavily Tolkien influenced) a few months ago. There were instances while reading portions of The Hobbit, that reminded me of The Witcher. Most notably how similar Zoltan Chivay’s company is to Thorin Oakenshield’s company.