The Hobbit

I was six when the animated movie, The Hobbit, came out. My brothers loved The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. One of my brothers undertook to read The Hobbit aloud to me. I admired the picture on the front of his copy. I don’t remember much about the book except that my brother loved me and was excited about this book. Then for Christmas we were given an LP and storybook of the animated Hobbit. My sister and I pored over that book; we listened to the LP as many times as we could get someone to restart the record for us. I still remember the dwarves’ song. The picture of the goblin king attacking electrified me. The riddle, “A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid,” remains in mind, in Bilbo’s voice. And I remember the futility of war over gold. “Your kind will never understand war, Hobbit.” True enough.

Gandalf: “You take only two bags of gold home with you? Your share was greater.”

Bilbo: “It’s all my pony could carry, and it’s more than I’ll ever need.”

I remember laughing in chagrin when my brother told about the auction when Bilbo got home; a lot of that gold went to buy back his own stuff!

Gandalf told him, “Write the story of your adventure, which you believe has come to its end.”

Bilbo: “What do you mean, believe? It has, hasn’t it?”

Gandalf: “Oh, Bilbo Baggins, if you really understood that ring, you’d know that your adventure is only beginning!”

I felt the promise of interesting things. In that sense, The Lord of the Rings was a sort of let down when I read it a few years later. But I found the promise of more interesting things fulfilled in dozens of other books. I read and read and read, as much as I could, as often as possible. I read on the way to school, in classes, walking home with a book in my hands. I felt then, and I feel now, that there is more adventure coming. I’m living it, and, God willing, I’m writing it.