With a very quiet voice, it's time I admit that I hadn't consumed ANY Tolkein media-- books or movies-- until now. As embarrassing as it is to admit, it means that I've had it all to look forward to eventually, right?

Well diving into the Hobbit was of course long overdue, and no doubt worth the wait. One of my favorite aspects of finally reading through some of the seminal classics of various genres is being able to see immediately the impact they have on other media I have enjoyed throughout my life (not to mention, being able to contextualize so many of the NYT crossword clues that always reference Middle Earth creatures!). The tropes, the style, and more all jump out and the influence Tolkein's Hobbit has had is undeniable. I was constantly filled with visions of how each chapter felt like episodes of a mini-series or levels of a fantasy video in a game that's no doubt not a coincidence. And that's what kept it fun, exciting, and page-turning. Doing some background reading after the fact that contextualized Tolkein's views of war and geopolitics in the pre-WWII era only made thinking about the themes and the characters even more rich.

Rest assured, reading through the LOTR trilogy at minimum, if not expanding my exposure to the rest of the Middle Earth saga, is on the near-term to do list, and I loved having the Hobbit be my first exposure to that.