One of the highlights of 2019 was reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit aloud to my 6-and-a-half-year-old son at bedtime. We started towards the end of August 2019, and finished it in just over a month. I tweeted the entire experience as we went, often commenting on points in the text that I hadn’t quite noticed before, and which reading to a young child brought to the forefront. Reading aloud really showcases the oral origins of The Hobbit, a story Tolkien told his children many times before writing it down and “fixing” the text (in the event, the text wasn’t really “fixed” until a major revision after The Lord of the Rings).
So here is my reading journal, exactly as it appeared on Twitter, warts and all (you will notice the glaring typo in the very first entry!!!). Each image links to the relevant tweet, in case you want to follow comments, etc.
So this was my Twitter journal of reading The Hobbit with my son. Here are two bonus tweets, one during the time we were still reading the story, and the other a few weeks later:
And here are a few more bonus images: my son’s Hobbit fan-art! Can you guess who is who?
