I rated this five stars when I was first setting up this account for reasons I cannot fathom because I hadn't read the book since I was in about the fourth grade. Like so many older fantasy books (Voyage of the Dawn Treader comes to mind) The Hobbit is extremely episodic in kind of a weird way. Some of these episodes are deathly boring (it takes a shocking amount of time for the group to ford a river) and some move entirely too fast and I can understand why the Peter Jackson movie adaptation drew them out (like, idk, the battle??). All in all, this is still a classic, the world-building is still just absolutely stunning, and the characters are still close to my heart. I just wish I could enjoy reading it more.