I’m generally not one to reread books unless I have to. They’re mostly school-related, and they include White Noise (the only DeLillo novel I still really like), The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby (I reread that one on my own), and my thesis novels. Those are the only ones I can think of, but I’m sure there are a few more. And there was Lisa, Bright and Dark when I was 12 or 13, but we won’t talk about that.
And, now, there’s The Hobbit. I discovered Tolkien late: I read The Hobbit sometime around 2003 or 2004. I think I’d passed them up when I was younger because I thought they were so long. Except they’re not. When I was ten or twelve, I bought a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, but I didn’t get very far into it. I’m not sure why I bought it – I guess one of my friends read it – but I remember being at the Waldenbooks in Pierre Bossier Mall and pulling it off the shelf, marveling at how long and adultish it looked.
I didn’t read The Lord of the Rings until a few years after I’d completed The Hobbit, and the first movie, or so, was out. It took me about three months to get through them, though I really loved them. I got a nice hardbound set from the Thrifty Peanut the other day, only to discover that they’re moldy. Good thing I work in a library and know how to deal with moldy books. Denatured alcohol and sunlight, in case you’re wondering.
Anyway, I’m not going to rehash the plot of The Hobbit because you’ve probably already read it. If you haven’t, and you’re thinking, tl;dr, check out the Rankin/Bass animated version (they also did The Last Unicorn, which I love and which made me unable to watch a movie with Mia Farrow in it without thinking the unicorn was talking). Turns out you can watch the whole thing on Youtube. Here’s the first part:
At some point in the near future, I’m probably read The Lord of the Rings again. It’s one of my favorite books. Here, of course, I’d count it as three because it’s really long, and I have 50 books to read. If you haven’t read it, you should. If you have kids around 10 or 12 (or older!), you should introduce them, too. I wish I had caught on earlier.
