The Annoying Hobbit

[Lalaith]

My feelings for the Hobbit are mixed. On the one hand, I have a great deal of affection for it, my first taste of Tolkien when I read it at the age of seven.

But even at seven, I remember wanting something more. Particularly intriguing, I found, was the paragraph about woodelves who 'never went to Faerie in the west, unlike the Deep Elves, the Fair Elves and the Sea Elves'. (Sorry, I'm quoting from memory here). Who were these other elves? What was Faerie?

The storytelling is excellent, the visuals perhaps even more immediate than in LotR. I can close my eyes right now and see poor Bilbo plodding along in the rain on his horse, water dripping off his hood. What I find somewhat lacking in the Hobbit is the grandeur and nobility of the heroic epic. We do get a taste of it with the death of Thorin, (and of course his gallant nephews) and the arrival of Beorn at the Battle of the Five Armies.
It all depends on your literary tastes, I suppose. I know so many people who liked and enjoyed the Hobbit but then couldn't get past the Fellowship in LotR.