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Thursday, March 15, 2012

The Enhanced Hobbit: What I'm Reading This Morning

Ah, the joys of ebooks! Okay, I'd rather curl up in bed with a paper book. But while I have several editions of The Hobbit, including the annotated edition and the hard-to-find Michael Hague one, none of them can do what this one does. In the first chapter, as Bilbo runs around in a panic, the Dwarves grab up the dishes to wash and sing a teasing song about how they're going to smash the lot. This scene is always wonderful, of course, but in this edition, you press Play and J.R.R. Tolkien sings it for you! There are three of these special moments in the book. There are also all the original illoes - remember, not all of his art made it into every edition. There's one that,for a long time, was only in the US edition. The line drawings are in colour, but if you prefer them as they were, just wave a hand over the page and voila! Back to black and white. All the maps are there too. This cost me just under $10 on iBooks. Now, excuse me, I'm going back to my book and have the Professor sing for me again.

4 comments:

Lan said...

It's been so long since I read The Hobbit that my memory of any of he scenes is very sketchy at best. I think I might have to give it another read before the movie comes out.

Sue Bursztynski said...

Good idea. :-) Mind you, it may be hard to connect the book Thorin with the very sexy Richard Armitage. But Martin Freeman is an ideal Bilbo. I can now picture him as I read.

Sean Wright said...

Just went to check if its available on the Kobo site, sadly no.

Sue Bursztynski said...

Oh, so sorry, Sean! :-( I got mine in iBooks, the book section of iTunes. I don't suppose you could download it to your computer, could you? I don't think it would work on one of those little e-book readers which are really only for text...?