(no subject)

[crantz]

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats—the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill—The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it—and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained—well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.

-The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I read this outloud to my sister at a coffee shop to gauge her reaction to the opening. She'd actually already had it read (part of it, my father chose to finish it without her) to her as a child, so it wasn't like it was anything new, but I wanted her thoughts on the opening.

The part that charmed me was the bit where they go on about a Baggins having an adventure. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it, but I liked it. But speaking of descriptions, what my sister liked was the amount of description in this opening bit, because it let her realize what it would have felt like to be there in the scene.

As a note, our conversation while we settled in at Starbucks to read:

Me: Hey, this was published originally in 1937.
Doc: So old. No longer relevant. No one would ever want to read something from so long ago.

I was thinking more on Peter Pan after I made my last post, and telling a friend (Hina) that the actual hero of the story was Wendy, not Peter. Another friend added onto this that Peter was some monstrous boy, but Wendy cared for him, took care of him. It really was her story and her adventure. This argument (it may not even be an argument to any of you, I just know I got into one with my brother about it) makes more sense if you bear in mind as in a previous post that Peter was originally the villain.

Said friend (the monstrous boy comment one AKA SNACKY) was also reading the end of the book as we were talking about it, and we got to talking about how brave Wendy was. It's a spoiler, but it's about what Peter does after Wendy and how she chooses to deal.

Snacky added some other fun stuff that's not really relevant to anything except the love of the book, like how when she was a child all her games involved a girl named Wendy because she loved the book so much. I wonder what mine would have been like if I'd read this book early, instead of reams of Nancy Drew and Babysitter's Club.

I'm still a little haunted about that line about Mrs. Darling being dead and forgotten. Me and my mom had a talk about it:

Herr Muther: Don't ever forget me!
Me: Don't worry, me and my therapist will always remember you.