Life of Lydia

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” 

“Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all.” 

Well, I managed to drag it out for about three and a half months but all of life’s great pleasure’s must come to an end. 

I received my copy of The Annotated Hobbit for my 17th birthday. Considering that I had no idea that an Annotated edition of that particular book existed, and suddenly I owned it, my joy and surprise were immense. I started reading it that night, and couldn’t stop smiling. 

I’ve been familiar with The Hobbit for many a year. When I was early to mid elementary I can remember my father reading excerpts from the book to Luke and me. If I remember right he also showed us clips from the movie. 

I was first introduced to the full length Hobbit at about age 12. It had been selected by the book club our family was in at the time. To be honest, I can’t recall much about that first reading. I do remember dressing up like an elf for the book club. (I also remember that my mother brought two rotisserie chickens to the book club and multiple kids asked her why there was a hole where the head and neck should be.) 

 My mother worked very hard to create an elf hairstyle for me.

Not long after the book club that was so fatal to those poor chickens, I decided to listen to the Lord of the Rings. I thought it would be exactly the same type of content as The Hobbit. This turned out to be true except it was about 1,000 times longer, there were 1,000 different side plots to follow, 1,000 character and place names to remember, and there was a bit more at stake than the potential enrichment of a few dwarves. Unfortunately these differences were too much for me and I didn’t end up finishing the third book. 

I read the Hobbit one more time in eighth grade for an online literature class with Angelina Stanford. (She is a lady on the internet who hosts a podcast called The Literary Life and also teaches classes. My mother is a listener of the podcast, so that’s how I ended up taking her class.) After that I didn’t think about Tolkien that much for a few years. 

Relatively recently our cousin read the Lord of The Rings. This put the idea in my mom’s head that we should read it as a family. She followed through with her idea and as of now we are on book 3. 

All the reasons why me and LOTR didn’t get along well before had dissipated. At the ripe old age of 16, the long length, complex plot, and numerous characters didn’t bother me, in fact they probably added to my enjoyment. Not that I 100% understood it, but it was certainly a major improvement from age 13. 

One day this summer when I  was browsing at the library, I checked a book titled “The World of Tolkien.” I didn’t know it at the time, but that was one of the best literary decisions I’ve ever made. 

Because I checked out “The World of Tolkien”, I am now the proud owner of “The Annotated Hobbit. 

I really liked “The World of Tolkien.” It turned out to be a beginner’s guide to Middle Earth. I would read it in front of my mother and tell her about it.

My mother is a competent and frequent user of Google. Because of this attribute she watched some random YouTube video which was down on David Day, author of “A World of Tolkien.” Apparently, Mr. Day is guilty of creating his own maps of middle earth instead of using the ones Tolkien drew, as well as other similar crimes. This was distressing to my mother. She made a post on the Literary Life podcast Facebook page asking for a good alternative to David Day, with the intention of using the recommendations to aid her in buying a birthday gift for me.

I received a total of three books on my birthday. The World of Tolkien, The Annotated Hobbit, and another book called the Philosophy of Tolkien, which at the time of this publication, I have yet to read. 

She had gotten me annotated Jane Austen for Christmas with great success, so when someone recommended The Annotated Hobbit, she knew it would be a winner. It’s not really an alternative to “The World of Tolkien”, but I won’t complain. After all that, she also got me a copy of the very book she was trying to replace.

My first reaction after opening The Annotated Hobbit was, “It’s too good to be true.” In owning it I was given access to a wealth of information about the textual history of The Hobbit, Tolkien’s beliefs and influences and much more. I loved every letter of it.

I still have yet to finish “The World of Tolkien”. Maybe my mother’s replacement plan worked.