The Hobbit

To be quite honest I never actually read J.R.R Tolkien's masterpiece the Hobbit until I was 21 and vacationing in Rome with my family. I was familiar with the story of course. In fact my first exposure of it came when I was younger. For a gift my mother gave me an illustrated version of it when I was about nine years old. I never really read the story in detail thanks to the wonderful watercolor illustrations of Alan Lee that sat behind the cover. They always distracted me from the actual content the words tried to convey. I encountered the Hobbit for a second time in high school where my fellow classmates from alternate freshmen English class were reading it. I remember being exceptionally upset that my class was stuck reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (even though later on I realized the brilliance of the book) not some epic fantasy novel courtesy of the author who had penned the then current Lord of the Rings films. I remember seeing my friends reading it and thinking, I really wish I could read that in class.
It wasn't until I was somewhere over the Atlantic ocean did I begin reading the Hobbit. I read the Hobbit in literally eight hours which may seem crazy but anyone who has ever been completely entrenched with a novel should hopefully understand. I found the book to be amazing through and throughout. I feel this strange societal norm that as a writer I should pick some little known authors non-mainstream novel that somehow affected me in a strange counter-culture way. But no, I am afraid I am not a traveler on that particular road. The Hobbit is my favorite novel. Not only is the Hobbit one of the original pieces of epic fantasy writing that spawned an entire genre that is arguably modern literature's most popular, but it also resonates as a powerful piece of simply good writing. The Hobbit has all the essential pieces of a amazing fantasy novel. The Hobbit has world creation, a merging of fantasy components, realistic based dilemmas and excellent morals. Beyond all these great elements the Hobbit has something that cannot be replicated easily by other fantasy writers. That element that makes the Hobbit so special is tone. The tone of the Hobbit is literally like the voice of an old storyteller gathering you around the fireplace on a rainy day. The tone of the Hobbit is sweet, friendly, and is truly the voice of a master storyteller guiding you through a nearly impossible world. This aspect of the Hobbit is what makes me love it so dearly. You can have all the fancy fantasy elements, creative settings, and intricate characters. Unless you deliver these elements in truly a storytellers tone, all those amazing fantasy traits cannot operate. What is created is simply an empty world. So many fantasy novels these days get lost in the jargon and worlds the authors create, so many of them loose that tone that can't distribute these fantasy elements so delicately. That is why I love the Hobbit, it is a true novel completely original and told like the glow of a campfire story. This is my criteria for an amazing novel. This is what I endeavor to do whenever I write. I aspire to create a novel that can captivate a persons imagination as they hurtle across the sky thirty thousand feet high over the deepest ocean. That is my endeavor, but not mine alone, hopefully.