Re-read to see how well I remembered it, & to see if my gripes with the movies (the trilogy & the Rankin-Bass) are off base, & also because I wanted to read something fun. The Hobbit really is a lot of fun. I'd forgotten how much character the voice of the narrator has. It's as if it's written to be read aloud by a good-humored storyteller. I forgot how quickly the story moves along, while also packing a lot in. The Hobbit is full of goofy little throw-away lines that hint at the wider world of middle-earth, but makes it clear that such things are not our concern (such as Gandalf's aside that he should see about having a helpful giant block up the new entrance to the Goblin city). I love how the narrator even ends various asides with something like “but that's not part of this story”. I see now that it was the Hobbit that primed my young mind to appreciate food descriptions in fantasy settings. There is no way that I would have been prepared for George R.R. Martin's elaborate food descriptions if I hadn't been prepared by those of Tolkien. Of course my favorite part of the whole book is Bilbo's conversation with Smaug, which the Rankin & Bass cartoon got pretty close to right, but the bloated Trilogy completely fumbled with it's attempts to shoehorn dark LOTR foreshadowing into what is supposed to be kind of a humorous scene. Of course, the 21st century movie wanders even further from the spirit of the book when it has the Dwarves all but defeat Smaug all on their own, but that is a gripe for another review. Now to excavate my Lord of the Rings Trilogy, to see how well they hold up (literarily, & physically).