The Annotated Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit, is a story that any who enjoys the themes of fantasy will appreciate. Tolkien has written a wonderful story that takes the reader into another world with hobbits, wizards, elves, and goblins.  I love the amount of detail that was put into each chapter. It helps the reader to have a better visual of this other world, the people and creatures. By listening to the audio book, I was able to get more of a detail visual of the setting and character.

What I liked most about this book is that you see the main character go through changes from how he use to be. Bilbo the Hobbit is our main character and he was so use to his daily routine and being safe in his little hobbit hole that he was not enthused to go. But Gandalf, a great powerful and respected wizard puts him on this quest with 13 dwarves. In the beginning Bilbo protests the idea of going on any adventure, because hobbits our known for not being adventurous. Also Bilbo doesn't see how he could be of any use to the dwarfs. But despite what Bilbo and the other dwarfs (lead by Thorin), Gandalf knows that the little hobbit will become of great use to the dwarves even if Bilbo doesn't know it yet.

There are times in the story that Bilbo has come to save his friends in difficult situations. I like how through each chapter you can see the changes in Bilbo, that he's becoming braver and slowly becoming fond of being on this adventure. Of course having a magic ring that turns him invisible to also helpful in his adventures. I also saw that this story also shows how the other dwarves work together and start to respect Bilbo and are grateful for his assistance, and sorry that they didn't realize that sooner. Bilbo showed great courage and wit that was very useful, when it involved coming up with a plan and getting out of trouble. By the end of the story when Bilbo returned home, Gandalf could see that Bilbo had changed from being the scared and not adventurous hobbit he met before the journey. Bilbo was happy about this change as well. When he got back home, the other hobbits notices this change in him and didn't like it. Bilbo had lost the reputation of what hobbits are known for, staying in one place and not going off on adventures.

I think this was the first time I've read a book that has a lot of songs in it. Reading those lyrics were fun and it connected well to the time era of the story. Most people from long ago would tell some stories in song. Some of those songs would be about a hero, a warning of some danger to be feared and so forth. I could picture the dwarves and the elves singing these songs, because the narrator did great job using different tones for each character. If I didn't listen to this book on audio and listened to the song, I probably wouldn't enjoy the songs as much (I'm not a good singer).