** spoiler alert ** 
 I cannot believe that I've been on Goodreads all this time and have forgotten to review The Hobbit! I probably first read this back in the 8th grade, and have hit it maybe 4 times since then, the most recent being June 2010. Not every book is worth a reread, let alone 4, so that should speak to its quality in my opinion. The Lord of the Rings has had just a couple of reads for me, but that's because it's a bit rougher with the brain. The Hobbit has a sense of levity that is lacking in its sequel. That tends to happen when the author spends up to 200 pages per book describing the god damned trees! Levity becomes scarce, and brevity is shattered. But I digress. 
 The Hobbit is Mr. Bilbo Baggins. He's minding his business when one day a wizard and a bunch of dwarfs show up on his doorstep, and haul him off on an adventure involving trolls, a nice old elf, a skulky little wretched creature, a bear man, spiders, mean elves, men on a lake, a dragon, a mountain, eagles, goblins, fights, and probably a few other things I'm not thinking of at the moment. The story itself is engaging, but it's the light tone in which much of it is written that makes this story a winner. Gandalf gets some fantastic lines, and almost always has the last word, but I'm afraid my favorite quote in the book concerns the giant spiders of Mirkwood. Bilbo is invisible and is fighting and taunting the spiders. He calls them silly names such as Lazy Lob and Crazy Cob, and the narrator lets us know that ..."They were frightfully angry. Quite apart from the stones no spider has ever liked being called Attercop, and Tomnoddy of course is insulting to anybody." Why is this my favorite line? I don't know. Perhaps it's the straightforward way it's presented. I've never been offended by Tomnoddy, myself, but that may be because nobody has ever called me that. I might change my tune should someone actually bestow that moniker on me. I'll let you know if that happens. 
 The narrator also gives a great piece of advice towards the end of the book which I would like to share with the 2 or 3 of you that actually read these reviews, because I think it's something everyone should heed: "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." 
 So, scope out the book.