Bilbo Baggins, later to be known mostly as Frodo's relative, was a young, very respectable hobbit living at Bag End, Hobbiton, The Shire, Middle-Earth. That is, he was very respectable until a certain adventure involving fourteen dwarfs and a dragon.



"The Hobbit," the book that comes before "The Lord of The Rings" in the Middle-Earth timetable, is a different type of story than LOTR. "The Hobbit" is a much more light-hearted, happier tale, with only slight hints every once in a while at the disaster that awaited Middle-Earth.

Tolkien's way of describing Bilbo all through-out the book. Where Frodo is said to be almost elfish, Bilbo is very much a hobbit in all of his ways--loving simplicity, comfort, and good food.

Well, since I read this book after reading the LOTR trilogy (which is the best thing to do, actually; if you haven't read any of Tolkien's books, don't start with "The Hobbit," start with "The Fellowship of The Ring."), I wanted to read every single book of Tolkien's I could. And I have, buying all the books I could get in all the local bookstores till I ended up with a very nice collection.

Tolkien is the master of fantasy, definitely the writer I respect most. It's very hard for me to concentrate long enough on writing a book to finish it, let alone dedicate my entire life to creating a world like Middle-Earth!

Just one little interesting fact: "The Hobbit" was written before the LOTR, one of Tolkien's first books, as a matter of fact. The LOTR only came about after "The Silmarillion," which is the history of Middle-Earth in a "concise" version (only approx. 400 pages long). Publishers didn't want to print "The Silmarillion" because they said readers wouldn't be interested in it--readers would want something more interesting. And so Tolkien wrote the LOTR trilogy (though I seem to remember that he had started work on it sometime before).

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Created Jun 21, 2003 at 1:11pm • Submit your own review...