As my awards season began, so it ends with my last review before the Academy Awards: The Hobbit .
I was introduced to the book in 8th grade. It was assigned reading in my English class and so I read it. I suppose everyone has moments in their life that seem innocuous, but in retrospect are moments that change everything, whether for the better or worse.
Reading The Hobbit was such a moment for me.
I loved the book. In fact, I devoured it. Long already, even at that young age, I had been an avid reader. If memory serves, and my parents’ stories are true, I had mastered the alphabet by age three and was reading by age four fairly proficiently. In first grade, I was immediately bumped to the second grade split class as I was reading (and doing math or whatever it is that one does in first grade) at a level advanced for that time.
I say this to set a scene: I was a reader. I read a book every day or so. I read everything I could find. I read fiction, non-fiction, newspapers, anything. And yet, reading The Hobbit was a transformative experience – for the first time in my tender life, I read a story, and had a dream, that everything around me, and myself in particular, could be far, far more than what I had imagined. I knew, for the first time, that I could be more than what I ever thought I was, and that I could do something far more meaningful than anything I had ever imagined.
A dream began with that book.
And so for your consideration, my review.
Oscars in Black and White 