So, with the recent release of the Hobbit movie I have been thinking about the book and my own experience with it. I can say it has affected my life in a way I never realized.
I can't be sure about where first I heard of the story as a child. Most likely it was from one of my three older brothers who, not known for being the type to read books but would rather weaponize them as projectiles, must have told me about the animated film by Rankin/Bass and not the book. Since I grew up in the 1980s, with a lack of more than three TV stations, and due to no available playback technology for my poor family in a good portion of the decade, I never actually saw that film. So, I must have read the Hobbit somewhere along the way as a kid.
However, I can solidly remember reading it again in the 6th grade where the school library had a copy of the hardback that had illustrations from the aforementioned Rankin/Bass animated movie. The illustrations were amazing to my jelly little mind. The animated movie style of illustration has always been something I loved, which made the movie days in school tolerable despite them showing us a lot of that Disney princess crap. That tolerance evaporated when we started watching live action Disney movies instead; I must have seen Honey I Shrunk the Kids six or seven times in the sixth grade alone when teachers were too tired of dealing with us little howler monkeys.
Anyway, back the illustrated Hobbit book, I loved it so much I studied it and eventually copied some of the illustrations. I specifically recall that I looked at and redrew the large picture of angry Smaug and turned it in for Art class. I remember the teacher, who really liked me, coming to me and asking if this was something I head created out of my head. She had a very concerned look on her face and when I told her, "no," she visibly relaxed. Oh, Mrs. P., you had no idea what seeds that book planted in my mind, but you'd see them soon enough over the next three years until I left Middle School. And, yeah, sorry for the barrage on your hippy sensibilities with the all the demons, gunslingers, and such. At least you didn't have to deal with the High School years, when that magic female physique, complete with shapely boobs, entered the picture(s).
I can honestly say the Hobbit book launched me into the world of fantasy. Next came the Lord of the Rings, then stuff like Dragonlance, which led to Dungeons and Dragons, down into rabbit holes like the Drizzt Do'Urden adventures (let's be for real, those books are all about him, the rest of the Icewind Dale party be damned), somehow skipping the Shanara stuff (it just didn't vibe with me), on the way developing a giant crush on Lessa from the Pern series, who was the most fleshed out female character I had read at that point. The fascination moved on to movies such as Highlander, Excalibur, and Conan the badass. The cracks spread like a wizard's lightning through my "normal" kid psyche and moved on until I eventually became the giant geek who would go out on weekends to fight friends with foam covered sticks and play tabletop RPGs or collectible card games.
While I haven't read the Hobbit book in a long, long time, I did have an odd attempt at reading it again in my late 20s or so. It was the latest of my harebrained attempts to try to learn Spanish. Despite being of hipanic origin I don't speak the Spanish language, which I am somewhat shamefaced about. Am I ashamed enough to actually try to learn it through study, practice, and genuine effort? Oh, no. Laziness trumps shame yet again. But, at one point I heard that if you read books in Spanish, you will pick it up in an organic way. Well, damn, I know I can *read* at least. I thought it would be super simple to accomplish. So, I hit the nearest bookstore and checked out the Spanish language book section and was at a loss for what to read until I saw the title El Hobbit. I tried reading the book. I gave it an honest effort and made it in maybe 50 pages? Yeah, that theory about reading to learn a language may have held water if you've got at least some knowledge of the language, but I soon found out that I'd only understand maybe 3% of the words in El Hobbit with most of that meager percentage being made up of the character names.
So, in various ways The Hobbit had a serious effect on my life. It was probably my first direct experience with the fantasy genre and provided a course correction at a young age. Had I not discovered the book at that young age where would I be now? I'm not sure, but it would probably be a less interesting place for my mind, although I am guessing in that alternate universe I would probably know how to speak actual Spanish.
Thanks for reading and comments are welcome.
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