The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

303 pages (Paperback) Fantasy Fiction

I read this book because I am running a Book Club with 5th graders at my job. We were looking for something that would be interesting to the kids and at the right level for them. With the movie coming out, I thought this was a good choice. I imagine most anyone reading this knows who Tolkien is. To be honest I am not a big fan. Considering my love of the fantasy genre you would expect that to be sacrilege  I have always felt that the Lord of the Rings had better ideas than writing. I enjoy the movies more than I liked the books. This is not as true concerning The Hobbit. This is one of the first fantasy novels I ever read. Sometime when I was in junior high I picked this up, read it and enjoyed it.

The story follows an unlikely group of adventurers. Bilbo, the hobbit, is hired by thirteen dwarves, led by Thorin Oakensheild, to be a burglar of the dragon Smaug's treasure. Gandalf, the wizard, accompanies them. Most of the book focuses on traveling across the land to the Lonely Mountain where the dragon lives. The party  run into trolls, spiders, goblins and elves. All of this is written in a lighthearted and fun way. At one point Bilbo meets Gollum and from him acquires a ring of invisibility. This helps him on many occasions throughout the book. At first the dwarves have little respect for the small Hobbit with hairy feet, but soon come to appreciate his ability to save them in times of trouble.

To be honest it has been a number of years since I have read the Lord of the Rings. In comparing it to The Hobbit I find that it is much more dry and drawn out. The Hobbit seems to have been written from young people and the Lord of the Rings for adults. In The Hobbit, Tolkien avoids going on for pages describing the histories of Middle-Earth and for the most part the story moves from one action scene to another. It was easy to get into the book and I found myself quickly getting through my weekly readings.

3 Emotional/Intellectual - The characters are lovable and easy to care about. There is little in the way of intellectual discourse although events towards the end could be a place for discourse.

3 Style/Readability - In this book Tolkien keeps things simple and it moves along at a good pace.

5 Long Term Impact - Tolkien didn't invent the idea of fantasy fiction, but he certainly started it on its way to popularity. I doubt any fantasy writer of the last 50 years can claim their work wasn't a descendant of Tolkien's.

11 out of 13. I feel this right. The Hobbit is fun, easy and entertaining. Personally, I feel it is the best of Tolkien's work and well worth a read for young people as well as adults.

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? by Philip K. Dick

244 pages (Trade Paperback) Science Fiction

Philip K. Dick has been on my radar for a long time. I was heavy into sci fi when I was in college, but I never read anything by him. I have watched Bladerunner a few times and decided to give Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep a try.

Bladerunner is loosely based on the book, but their are a lot of differences. It is more like they took the world and the main character and then wrote a story separate from the movie. Rick Deckard is bounty hunter in the future. He hunts androids. Every time he "retires" an andy he gets 1000 dollars. In the future most animals are extinct and to have a real one is to have social status. If you can't you get an electric animal. Deckard has an electric sheep. He wants to have a real animal. The world is falling apart after an apocalypse that is explained as a war. People uses machines to set their mood. The populous uses another machine as a means of religion referred to as Mercerism. Eight androids have escaped Mars and after a colleague is shot Deckard is given the job of retiring the remaining andys.

Dick's style of writing was awkward for me. At first I thought that the dialogue was intentionally written this way to reflect the thinking of characters, but it continued through the book and eventually I just accepted it for what it was. He rights very simply, but then occasionally has these out of place sentences used to vividly describe something. All that said I was drawn into the story and read the short book in a few days.

3 Emotional/Intellectual - I didn't care much about any of the characters except J.R. Isadore who had a minor part in the book. Intellectually this is interesting. I imagine at the time in the late 60's this was ahead of its time, but in relation to all that has come since it doesn't stand out as much.

2 Style/Readability - I can't claim to be a fan of his writing.

4 Long Term Impact - The fact that I am reading this 50 years after its release attests to its staying power. I don't know how revolutionary it was for its time, but it has obviously had an impact on the sci-fi genre.

10 out of 13. I was glad that I read the book and would say that I enjoyed it. A friend of mine put it this way, "Maybe Dick is to be celebrated more for his ideas than for his writing." That is how I feel about this. I am not sure if I will rush to read anything else of his, but in a couple years I may try something else.

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