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For me it's Chapters 1-4 of Fellowship. I love the Shire (as I am sure many do) and the opening chapters that begin the epic tale all while giving us a glimpse of what it would be like to live in the Shire and to be a Hobbit.
I love the trip from Hobbiton to Crickhollow, the mysterious encounters with the Black Riders, the conversations with Gildor and Farmer Maggot, and so on.
These chapters are beautiful yet ominous - they show us an idyllic and bucolic society and yet there is an undercurrent of tension that starts with Bilbo's difficulty in giving up the ring and the shadow that seems to fall over the Shire as the years pass though most of the inhabitants do not seem to realize it.
Every time I read those chapters I cannot help but wish that they were longer or that there were more of them. For me, something more than the Shire itself is lost to the reader when the four hobbits pass through a misty field and into the Old Forest.
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