The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien – Episode 40

The Buddies nerd out (more than usual) as they venture into Middle-earth and take on J. R. R. Tolkien’s, The Hobbit. The Buddies kept things high class on this episode, discussing the gentlemanly topics of: formal introductions, high fantasy (pronounced: high fin-ance-tsy) and tree fornication. So devour your two breakfasts, put on your magical rings, memorize your favorite riddles, and adventure into the magical world of The Hobbit with us.

Intro: (0:00-4:13)
 Stock Up/Down 4:14-21:18)
 Favorite Scene (21:19-23:37)
 Favorite Character (23:38-25:01)
 Love/Hate (25:02-37:04)
Listener Email (37:05-40:14)
Conclusion (40:15-44:02)

Transcript for SEO purposes 🙂

Alright. Welcome buddy Book Club. I’m Dylan, here with my furry footy companion, Keith, son of Dove. What’s up, buddy? Hey. How are we doing? That’s why you asked me what that is. I appreciate that. You didn’t ask me why I wanted to know what your dad’s name is. You just gave me your dad’s name and left it at that. No, I just I like a good book where they say or just any any society where you’re referenced by, like, son of or daughter of, whatever the case is, doesn’t have to be your father. You know that’s what Mick means, right? Oh, does it? Yeah. So let’s just say your last name was McDougall. It means son of Dougal. I believe I could be making that up. Okay. Or maybe O means that. Like O’Neill. Yeah. O’Connor. Got you. Well, we are at the Buddy Book Club, and here we’re breaking down some bestsellers. And this week we’re headed to Middle Earth and diving into the hobbit by John Ronald Rule Token Jets Jr. Token for the uninitiated. If you like to recommend a book for us to read or reach out to us in the past episodes, you can visit our website, buddy Bookclub.com, or sliding toward deems on Twitter or Instagram buddy Book Club podcast. You can listen to us on itunes and Spotify. So please download and subscribe. This is very important to me. I mean, not necessarily The Hobbit, which I do love, don’t get me wrong, but Middle Earth in general. I don’t know. I found Middle Earth. Or I discovered Middle Earth when the fellowship came out. The movie. What are you, Star Wars or Lord of the Rings guy? Because I feel like you can’t be both. I love me. I love both, don’t get me wrong, but Lord of the Rings for sure. I mean, if we’re just talking, like, canon, star wars is great, don’t get me wrong, but there’s so much convoluted bullshit in Star Wars that it’s like, not canon. No, that’s not canon. All of a sudden, these characters come out. It’s like wait. Who? What? Where? When? You couldn’t possibly do that with Tolkien’s work because he’s literally thought of every possible avenue. It’s almost a little bit like George RR. Martin in the sense of, like, if you just start digging into one character, you realize that there’s hundreds of years of backstory on that particular character, or potentially thousands. It’s like if you look up Gandolf, it’s like, okay, he’s actually an angel and he’s part of this thing of angels and they come from this area, and it’s because of this. And if you want to know a past adventure, this happened. It’s like, Wait, what all of this knowledge just to go into one character? I just don’t even know how someone could have the time or energy to put that much backstory and stuff in. So that’s why for me, it’s one of the Rings. But here we’re just tickling into Middle Earth, you know, we’re just getting The Hobbit. So this was the first book that Jr. Tolkien wrote in Middle Earth, or at least published. That was published here. The Hobbit is it’s pretty much a fellowship of 14 LPs that endeavor to kill a dragon with no apparent plan or how to achieve it. That’s the name of the game. Where are LPs little people? All right, that’s good. I’m not laughing at that. I was laughing at LP. The phrase terminology. Like you thought it was like the Marshall Mathers LP. Yeah. I was thinking of some video game reference, honestly. Like, what are the people the non player units? What are those? NPCs. NPCs. I said the fucking track. And he’s also said NPUs. Wow, you’re just nervous. Yeah. Is that a fair take on yeah, I said it’s basically Rudy Rudiger’s story, but the exact opposite. It’s about, like, a smaller, under guy that no one believed in but doesn’t want to work hard at all, does not want to move, hates everything he’s a part of, does not want to fight for that. He’s not gritty in any way. It’s like, yeah, it’s Rudy Rigor, but the opposite. Yeah. Except instead of sacking the quarterback as his achievement, at the end of a meaningless game, he kills a dragon. Or he doesn’t. Next. Actually, yeah, he doesn’t really do anything heroic, honestly, other than long as he saves people. He saves people. We’ll get into it. How dare you? Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s get into it. Let’s jump into stock up. Stock down. Stock up. The hobbit. Jr. Tolkien. What do you got? Well, you already kind of mentioned it early, but formal introduction stock up. Yeah, you kind of already stole my thunder here. But typically, you know me, I’m not a big introduction formal person. I always think I’m going to forget names, mess up names. I forget my name when I’m introducing things I’m like, and I’m shit. What’s my name? Yeah. No. You’re like? Hi, Tom. This is Keith. You’re like, oh, no, I’m Keith. No, I’m keith. Wait. Is my name Keith Gandalf? The way he does it, I loved it. He’s introducing Bilbo. And he goes, That’s Mr. Baggins. A habit of good family and unpeachable reputation, which I fucking love. I love that. I’m going to start doing that all the time. People be like, hey, who’s that over there? I’m like, oh, that’s my buddy. That’s D Man, a podcaster of questionable morals and a penchant for buggery

fuck. And then you’ll say, at your service. At your service. There’s so much about those introductions that makes me happy. One is the at your service, which I appreciate, as opposed to just saying, like, hi. Also having someone else introduce you. And then if you’re at a party or something and you just meet someone, usually it’s like, oh, hi. And then you walk away, and that’s why you forget their names, because you’re like, I don’t know anything about this person. Who knows? You see them later and it’s like, oh, what was his name? But if the other person gives you a couple your accolades or just says maybe what your interests are or stuff you’ve done, anything along those lines, not only would you remember their name, but also there’s talking points in there like you’re already set up. It’s good fun. So if someone just says, oh, like this is Bilbo, he’s a Hobbit. Unimpeachable thing comes from the tubes. It’s like, okay. It’s like, oh, what’s your tube family like? What’s the deal with them? They are similar to the hard foot, so they’re different. Hard feet. I love that I need to start doing that. I’d also appreciate it if it’s just the other way. Like you don’t like someone and you’re like, oh yeah, this is my friend Greg, a relentless drunkard of slovenly nature. Yeah, those kind of things. So yeah, I’m with you on their stock up for sure, but everyone’s so quick witted. He just brings up Bilbo and says all the things about him in a second where I would be like, oh, this is Keith, son of Dave, an Irishman. Yeah, spike ball. Okay. My first stock up is trolls. So at least in pop culture, our understanding of trolls are hides under bridges, makes you pay the troll toll. Even in the movies, the Lord of the Rings movies, they just kind of make noises and look terrible and are really stupid. To be fair, they don’t have a lot, seems like going on up top. But trolls have to be doing something in their downtime. Even Freddie Kruger, even he has to go home to his wife and figure out his life. But in the Hobbit we get this view of trolls that’s much different from Harry Potter Lord of the Rings, or even the furry ones that you comb their hair and have jewels as belly buttons. Naturally, naturally. These trolls, they sit around a fire, they converse with each other. They like to drink a little bit of booze. They have their beer with them. And most importantly, they’re connoisseurs of cuisine. They’re asking with the Hobbit and the ponies and whatnot, should we mince them up? Should we roast them? Should we boil them? How’s that going to affect the texture of the different creatures they want to eat? These guys are interested in sitting down and enjoying a nice meal together, which is very common in Hobbit culture as well. So trolls and Hobbits I feel like have a lot more in common. Yes, they might be a little gross, they might not bathe often. Hygiene is not a big deal for them. They might not wash their hands before they roast the Hobbits. But at the same time, I think there’s something good about trolls in this. And I actually felt bad when they got turned to stone. Gandalf, not your best. Okay, fair enough. Ivy, I was going to ask the same thing about the dragon. What? How is the dragon doing all day? He just sits in that cave. They haven’t seen him or heard from him forever. Yes. They said he blocked up some passageways and whatnot. So he definitely has some housekeeping to do. I mean, the life of a dragon seems awful just in general, based off of any time I’ve ever seen a dragon, anything. They’re just like in a cave by themselves. It sucks. To be fair, it sounds a lot like Donald Trump there. They pretty much just sit on their riches and then come out every now and then to spit hellfire on the common people and then go back into their cave. That’s fair. No political affiliations on this podcast. Every politician, really, or most politicians. Yeah. My next stock up is the term ever. I don’t know if you notice this in the book, but ever is used, like, a million times. It’s actually used 95 times and looked it up and in every situation possible. Go on. He uses it as, like, a noun, an adjective, a verb. I don’t know what anything those mean, by the way. I’m just making those things up. I have no idea. I don’t know grammar. But he uses it like wicked or Northern cal. People use, like, hella. He’s like, ever quick, ever fast, you would say. Or he’d use it like, as always, evermore, or whatever. Or he’d be like, quick as ever. Or you just basically use it every possible way. And I was just thinking about the versatility of that word. It’s good. I appreciate it. It’s kind of like how I use vig just for everything. Any word that’s kind of ubiquitous, you like that word for anything I appreciate, you just throw it out there. That’s why I used to use, like, I call people Joe, because you don’t need to worry about their name, and then you can use it for everyone. Come on, Joe. Yeah, Joe. Joe. Yeah. That’s why I call everyone babe. Yeah, I like that, too. I think in the English language, the word set has the most definitions. Well, set and spike ball. That’s the only one I know. Yeah, but I think that word has the most different uses. But yeah, ever. Good for Jr. You did not notice that. Am I just I did. Okay. I mean, good for you for noticing it when you listen to it. Well, my next stock up is hobbits. So obviously, if this was 1937, it’s a penny stock because no one even knows what a hobbit is. But we get a lot of creatures and different races in this story. Hobbits are just the ones I feel most akin with because they like a good eat. They like to hang out, they like to eat, they enjoy several meals a day. That’s more in the Lord of the Ring stuff. Couple suppers, supper. Dinner. Second breakfast. They like to sit around. They smoke their pipe weed. Bilbo’s more looking forward to his arm chair than anything else. Just sitting in his chair, relaxing by the fire, having a good meal, having a smoke. I just kind of respect that lifestyle. They have a really good lifestyle, which I’ll get into later with some stock down stuff. But nothing really sways him too much. He seems kind of in the middle. Never too high, never too low. And it’s something that I like to emulate. So hobbits and bilbo for sure. But Hobbits in general. Stock up. I like that. And can I throw in real quick also cigarettes and smoking tobacco? Because any time there was reference, it seemed like the best time ever. Then I just sat back after a great breakfast, smoked on my pipe, and it was like the most marvelous day ever. And I was like, god damn, I’m going to go pick up some marble reds or Virginia Slims, either one. I was like, that sounds terrific. They actually talk about stock up when vaping got huge and there was like vape competitions to like blow. Yeah, blowing rings and stuff. Yeah. I mean, that stock. Have you seen those videos? These guys are fucking losers. But Gandalf is like number one. He’s blowing smoke rings that change colors. His smoke rings are attacking other smoke rings. He’s turning them into crazy stuff. He’s using up all his mana for that. I want to see one of these vape videos or whatever where someone dresses up as Gandalf and just blows some epic smoke rings. So yeah, sitting around blowing smoke rings with the boys. What’s better than that? So smoking and Hobbits stuck up. They both need to be represented. Yeah. Do you have any other stock ups? Just a quick one. Just because every time I heard anything about Gollum or the Misty Mountains or anything like that, I just thought of Led Zeppelin’s songs. They referenced it a lot. And I always thought I just misheard it. And I looked it up and it’s like, no, they just love Lord of the Rings. Yeah. They love Lord of the Rings. They based so many of their songs on Lord of the Rings. I always thought I just misheard them. And I was like, no, this is just straight Lord of the Rings. They love that. My next and last stock up is high fantasy or epic fantasy, which is a subgenre of fantasy. Supposedly our boy Jr. Tolkien is like the father of high fantasy. Although there seemed to be some high fantasy before this guy William Morris. Before you say high fantasy one more time, can I correct you real quick? It’s high fancy. So it’s high fantastic. I don’t know what you’re you’re saying and incorrectly. Yeah, high fantasy because that’s the best way to enjoy high fantastic because that’s the best way to enjoy this kind of fantasy. But the idea of being that this is like as opposed to being like our world. It’s usually kind of like a different world that has its own set of rules and people and creatures and whatnot, as opposed to low fantasy, which is set on earth, but there’s magical elements or stuff like that. So although there was other high fantasy type things before, it seems like Lord of the Rings really kicked everything to high gear. That’s why we got a lot of the books that we’ve read before. Like I’m thinking Miss Born. And even the last one we read six of Crows. Yeah. So high fantasy. High fantasy. There we go. That’s my last. What do you have for stock down, stuck down adventure? If there’s anything we could learn from from this book, from all corn on the western Front, from Six of Crows, is you don’t chase the adventure. You know, you don’t chase the money. You let the money chase you. That’s why we’re not successful here at Hooker. We’re not chasing the money. All right? If we did, it wouldn’t be a good adventure. But yeah, the whole reason you want to make money and get treasure and all these things is so you can sit at a home in a nice house that you’ve made. You can have two breakfasts. You can have two dinners. You can spoil smoke rings after dinner. The hobbit already has that. Bilbo already has that. What’s he doing. Why would you go on an adventure? What do you need gold for? You literally have everything you need, so don’t chase that. Yeah, he almost sacrificed everything he loves for. And then he comes back. The worst part is the ending when he comes back and they’re like, yeah, this shit doesn’t belong to you anymore. It’s like, oh, so I chased all this stuff only for me to lose all the things I like. That was stupid. God damn sex phil baggins. They’re always coming for billboard shit. Yeah, I agree with you. Although I think the point is if there was I know that you’re having a laugh at it, but I do agree when he comes home, the sound of the tea kettle coming on and even like sitting there having his tea just had a different vibe to it. It’s one of those things like once you’ve been through something like that, couldn’t enjoy it anymore. Yeah, it’s hard to enjoy tea when your hands are shaking like a leaf because you drag and that whistle blows and I jump onto the table now, like before, it’s much different. All right. Yeah, I like it. My first stuck down is wealth and it kind of ties into yours, but it’s a curse and coming from zone that doesn’t have it. Although in monetary value, I’m very rich in all sorts of other things. These dwarfs are going to get the money. That’s their point. Although it is to reclaim their homeland once they get there and they see the money. It’s like, oh, shit, we need the money. Because all you’d have to do is pay off some people around you. There’s tons and tons to hoard of gold and trinkets and all sorts of stuff. Just turn that area back into a wonderful place. But Thorin’s like, nah, I can’t. And that’s the problem with societies that are built on money, is that people just can’t let go of it once they have it. That’s why they say, whether it’s true or not, it’s like rich people pinch pennies more than anyone else. Once they have that money, it’s like, never going to fucking give it up. And I think they call it the Dragon’s Curse or something in the book, but it’s true for almost everyone except our boy Bilbo, who’s like, I’ll give it all up. I just want to go back to my hole and smoke my tobacco by the fire. So that’s another pro. To be in a Hobbit or to have in Hobbit friends is, what am I going to do with all this money when I go home? It’s not going to affect my life any differently, except for having a chest of gold in a closet. So let’s get this whole thing over with and just enjoy a good SUPP. Did you have other stockdowns? Last one. Riddles stockdowns. I love me a good riddle. I’m a big fan. I didn’t know any of the ones they were asking, by the way. I almost needed to pause just to understand what they were saying. But to end it on what have I got in my pocket? And then not to give an answer. I mean, Gollum should have killed Bilbo. He should be like that. You can’t do that. Even if he didn’t threaten it before that he should have done it. You can’t ask that in like a fiery competition. Just make up one and then don’t give an answer for it. That’s rubbish. That’s complete rubbish. I’m with you 100% there. It’s funny you said that, because I didn’t write it down, but I wanted to. When I was listening to the section, I was like, oh, this is stock down for sure. Because I also love me a good riddle, brain teaser, that sort of thing. I get super frustrated if I don’t know it and I refuse to look it up. The one problem that really screwed me with that, though, was that there were so many in there that I had no idea what the hell they were talking about. Some of them were pretty standard brainteasers. The one is like the wind or death or time. Those ones seemed clear enough, but the other ones was like, what the heck are you talking about? So I’m with you there. Do you have a quick riddle that you go to? No, I’m more of a joke teller. Tell me a joke. Just kidding. I got a few of them. Tell me a joke, funny man. Was your go to joke. I like ones that if there’s, like, a group of people I just have the jokes. That I just include the people in it just because I think those are funny. And then purchase a generic one. Why did the elephants get kicked out of the pool? Why? They kept dropping their trunks. All right, well, bio. I just think it’s anything that I can make the other person picture a huge elephant dick. Yeah, you do it. That’s the joke. Anyways. I don’t have any riddles. I just have more, like, brain teaser. The one that I like well, I like two. One of them is you have you’re on one side of the river, you have, like, a fox, a chicken and a worm or whatever. You need, like, a piece of paper for that. Yeah, well, you can’t you have to think it out. But then a different one that I like is you’re in a room in a separate room that you can’t see into has three light bulbs. In the room that you’re in, there’s three light switches. How do you know which switch controls which light bulb? And you can only go into the other room once. Like, you can’t go back in. You can only turn switches and then go into the other room. Something to do with feeling the light bulb. Right, yeah, exactly. That’s exactly what it is. I have to think it out because that is basically you turn two on and then you turn one off or whatever. You can feel the heat. Yeah. Good for you. Because usually people don’t think that. Yeah. So I like brain teasers more than riddles, but I like that. Send us your riddle. It also makes you feel good. Yeah. If you get it, it makes you feel really good. And if you don’t, terrific. Super angry. Well, I always get super defensive. I’m like, no, my answer is right. I don’t give a shit. I know it’s wrong. That’s the only way to approach that. What about favorite scene? The hobbit? What do you have? I know this isn’t really the most action packed one but this is when I read it and when I told you it was like, 6th or 7th grade this is the only scene I remembered from the book. But it was Wetten Gandolf and The Hobbit walking into what’s his name? Baron. But Bjorn’s house. And in order to get all of them in the house he just keeps on telling this story and adding more people. I don’t know why, but I love that. Love that was like that was the most clever scene. And I know there’s action. I know there’s a bunch of other stuff, but that’s my favorite. Yeah. I don’t know what why I can what else to say, that scene. And I kind of forgot about it. But as I was listening to, I was like this is really clever. Like, written really cleverly. And additionally, it’s fun for kids. Like, this is a kid’s book and if you were if you were reading it to kids, I think they would have a lot of fun with that scene because it’s like, oh, they’re tricking him, but in like a fun way. It’s like those internet pranks they do nowadays that are just terrible, but there’s ones that aren’t so terrible out there. And this is what Gandolf did. I mean, it was funny because it’s like, oh, he doesn’t want a ton of visitors. So you just kind of keep including one more, but leave him on the hook with the story, which he really wants to to know. I really enjoy that as well. I’m glad you brought that up also. Bjorn, good guy. I think my favorite scene might have been when Bilbo found his quality in fighting the spiders. So Bilbo was pretty much just dragged along through the first half of his quest. Yeah, that’s fair to say. He has the situation with Gollum in the cave where he gets out and then he figures out this ring and the ring gives him this level of power that he didn’t know he necessarily had. I think obviously the ring makes him invisible. But between the ring and Sting, he had an internal quality that came through when he was fighting the spiders. And I just thought that was a fun scene how he kind of got so big in his britches that he was talking shit to the spiders as he was trying to save the guys, when it’s like that would scare the shit out of me. Like, if there’s a bunch of giant spiders around trying to eat me and I was the last one standing, I’d be pretty scared. If this isn’t War Zone, you got no one to revive you, so it’s just you. What about pick your character, who’d you have for your favorite character. There’s lots. And feel free to throw my boys Tom, Bird or Bill in there. The trolls from earlier. I mean, the two heroes were really Bjorn and the Falcons, or the Eagles, rather. Those are the two heroes a day. Bjorn we actually see more of. So I like to have the best. They save them from demise and they basically the Eagles and Bjorn both win the war for them, pretty much. So yeah, they’re like the best characters, I thought. And I just wanted to follow that Bjorn guy around. I feel like he had a cool life. Yeah. I’m team bjorn, for sure. Not only does he have a nice little house situation, talks to animals and all sorts of stuff, but this is a kid’s book. And he just goes out the night that they’re all there and murders a bunch of goblins. And it’s like, oh, what happened to goblins? Like, oh, I murdered them and ate them in the woods. We’re good. It’s like, whoa. Holy shit. And so that was pretty badass and Bjorn just seems like a total badass. So we’re done, and then we think we’re done with Bjorn. But then Bilbo sees him later at the Battle of the Five Armies and he’s like four times the size in bear mode. Like, go, Go Gadget bear and just rips goblins apart. So he just hates goblins. Who doesn’t? And there’s no problem telling children that there’s massacres going on, so I’m for it. What did you love about the hobbit? I went over the cigarettes and tobacco. I love that. But the invention of golf, I thought that was super clever. I don’t know if you recall, but he basically said his inventing during the Battle of Greenfields when Van de Brass Tuk charged the goblins and knocked the head off King Golf of them. And the head flew 100 yards in the air and down a rabbit hole. And that’s how golf started. I love that. I love when they work, like, real world things into the experience stuff in, like, a fun way and like this, where it’s just like a kind of a joke. Like a slid in joke. Right. It doesn’t necessarily take you out of it. It just makes it more fun. It’s like, I’m not being too serious about myself. Imagine creating this epic fantasy world and also being able to be chill about it. One of my other loves is really that I was just imagining Lord of the Rings in a book form. And then you come to this book and it’s kind of like a goofy, silly, funny book for most of it. That’s the problem with the movies. If they tried to translate that to the movie yeah, that doesn’t translate super well. In that instance. You need a couple of comic relief characters you can’t lean into all the way of an action movie or an adventure movie. It’s just yeah, you do like Thor Ragnarok or whatever where it’s just like there’s a comedic presence to it and it’s not as serious. You don’t make it like stupid, silly, barrel riding, pine cone throwing bullshit. Because that did happen in the book and it was good, but then they translated to a movie and it just seems fucking stupid. Yeah, okay, I might be doing a movie pod on this. So we’ll find out. One of the things I loved was the music in the book. I mean, you forget when you’re watching the movies how much singing Tolkien wrote. And he spent a lot of time writing poetry. Poetry is often turned into song. And there’s a ton of music in this book. And when I read the book because I read this book a couple of years ago, I kind of skipped the music parts because it’s tough to read. And we had different narrators for this audiobook, you had Andy Serkis, who plays Gollum in the movies and is also in Marvel movies. And I had a different voice actor who’s very good. But when someone else is doing the singing and there’s actually a tune behind it, I find it much more enjoyable. So I know that when I’ve read Lord of the Rings, I skipped a lot of that music, too. There’s a character who’s not in the movies called Tom Bombadil who does a lot of singing. And once again, if you listen to the audiobook, it’s much better. So the music in this I loved, but it’s kind of audiobook version only because otherwise you’re just kind of reading the lines. How was Andy circus with the music? He’s good. I mean, he’s a good singer. Every voice is different, so he’s obviously a great voice actor. The only thing I said, I just had to slow it down because he would get super into things. He had to turn the volume down. Then he’d like whisper the next thing, like, God damn it. That was the only thing. He’s too good of a voice actor. I actually didn’t like the singing, though, because it was too much. I think if you have one go to song that you can just crush and you just sing it a few times during the book, I like, that actually. That’s good. I think they did that in like, Red Rising. There was like some song you couldn’t sing, and then you think of like, Braveheart or I’m sure even Lord of the Rings. There’s like a theme song throughout the movies, and I like that. When it starts playing, you’re like, oh, yeah, let’s go. But when you’re doing like twelve different songs, it’s like, is this a musical? Like, what are we doing here? I get what you’re saying. I thought some are definitely better. I mean, they should have started playing Led Zeppelin and then now we’re starting to talk. But the Goblins had songs and stuff where in the movies, they’re really just kind of just pure evil, which they are in the books as well. But if someone can sing, they obviously get some other emotions going. I did a thing. It’s tough to imagine someone that’s bad that’s also like standing above your tree being like, no, we’re going to get you. It’s like, all right, what are we doing here? The evil guy breaks down to strong. It does make some little less evil. Yeah. I mean, we’ve already kind of hit it several times, but Middle Earth in general, the creativity, the obvious. Oh, yeah, for sure. They don’t get into anything in The Hobbit in terms of the wider nature of the world, really. But there’s obvious, unseen depth in this land. They reference other things that are going on. There’s tons of lore here and stuff that happened that we haven’t even nearly scratched the surface on in this book. So there’s really no wonder that they asked Jared Tolkien to make a sequel. And actually a lot of the stuff, when they asked him to make the sequel and he wrote lord of the Rings, he put in, like, in the second edition and further, like, more stuff into The Hobbit that wasn’t in it before. So I’m wondering because the Necromancer, who they referenced a couple of times in this, is Sauron, so The Necromancer is Sauron, but I think that was added later because that then becomes the story of Lord of the Rings. I’m wondering if before he knew, like, Jarrettoki knew that Bilbo’s ring was the Ring of Power, like the One Ring, or if, like, that story hadn’t even been formed in his mind. I thought the reason that he was remember that at one point he gets sick because he’d been wearing the ring a bunch. I thought the reason that he got sick was because he’s basically having withdrawals, like, not wearing the ring anymore. But I didn’t know if that was setting that up. But then it doesn’t reference it ever again. Yeah. Yeah. He was at one point, he was sick for, like, a week, either right after or right before the barrel thing. He’d just been wearing the ring for, like, a couple of weeks straight. Yeah. Withdrawals, like frodohead and stuff. Yeah. I don’t know. I tried to find what he added back into the original version, like what Tolkien added back to bring it more clearly into Lord of the Rings. But I mean, what a setup. What a world. Phenomenal. Just phenomenal. Would you hate about the hobbit I mentioned? The singing wasn’t my favorite. I also really didn’t like how soft the dwarfs were and how they made The Hobbit do everything. That kind of pissed me off. They’re like, yeah, go down there and steal from the dragon. It’s your job. I’ve saved you, like, six times already. How is this my job? Yeah, and then they were about to abandon him early on, and then The Hobbit, it’s like, Well, I’m loyal, so I got to say, these guys, like, seven times in a row after this. It’s like a little pushback from The Hobbit. Should have been the whole book really should have been pushing back. Yeah, I was going to piss it at dwarf. They did go after him with the trolls. We’ll give them that. But I actually had dwarves as one of my potential stock downs, but I didn’t want to shit on any particular race in the real world in Middle Earth because yeah, for that exact reason. It was like, whoa, you guys had this quest. This plan was shoddy from the start, and then you get back to your homeland, and it’s like, all right, you’re the burglar. Like, make your money. He’s like, Bro, I saved you from the Spiders, from the wars, and whatnot I saved from the elves, get out of that dungeon. Save them from the dragons. Even getting them out of the Elves prison and saving them from the Spiders, that’s their fair share. Okay. Yes, I understand. I’m here to steal from this dragon. But like he said, it would take 100 pack meals 100 years to get all this shit out. So what do you want me to do just every day? Go in and take a goblet? I’m four foot tall. What do you expect from me? Also, we didn’t even touch on this. But Build potentially is a phenomenal athlete. When he jumped over Gollum, it said he jumped 7ft. He can jump 7ft. And on top of that, he was throwing rocks at something at some point during the book. And he was like, oh, yeah, I’m really good back home at darts and lawn bowling and stuff like that. And I was like, Fuck. Another reason I just got to hang with Bilbo. He just wants to drink some beer, smoke his pipe tobacco and and play yard games, which is really what I’d want to do with my life. Like, Bilbo, come to my house. Let’s throw darts in the basement, play a little ping pong. You’d grow up some meat, and then at night, you’d have a little puff of the little pipe and some tea and biscuits and the night off. I mean, that’s really I have mead in my basement. Bilbo, get over here. It’s local. Ipswich, Massachusetts. Mead I’m with you on that. And I’m also kind of torn. One of the things I kind of hated was I’m torn about the crew, the 13 Dwarves. Are there too many? Because we didn’t get a lot of character development outside of Thor and Oakenshield. And actually what I thought is the most references were probably to Thorn, Feely, and Keeley, who at the end all died. I was like, wait, what? I don’t think that was in the movies. It’s a kids book, and all these characters are dead. I do like Boffer. He’s just a fat guy. And he embraces it. He embraces his weights. I’m not going up there, man. I’m too fat. Just leave me behind. And Balin seemed like a cool enough like a wise old guy. But outside of that dory nori I don’t know what those guys do. Why do they have to be there? Why couldn’t it have been six person? Yeah, yeah. I feel like also Dar should have kind of done what I do when I write blogs is like, I’ll be like, all right, top ten list of this. And I get down to it. I’m like, top five? I’m not doing fucking ten of these. Five more of these are going to take me forever. He should have narrowed it down. But he probably just came up with good names. He’s like, fuck, I’m going to keep these guys in. What else do you hate? I didn’t like that Bilbo was kind of whining about being hungry all the time because it just made me hungry all the time. Every time I listened, I was like, damn, I could guess it for food right now. I’m like, wait a minute. He incepted you, I would have kind of like, this would have been a great book for different perspectives. The fact that Bard gets introduced with, like, 100 pages left. Wait, who the fuck this guy? And they’re like, yeah, he’s the hero for the next 100 pages. You’re like, Wait, what? Who is this? We should have had all the stories merging together. It would have been more epic. But I was like, oh, that’s funny that you’re talking about Bard. He must be big in The Lord of the Rings book. No? Yeah. So Bard is not a character until the end. He seems like a really interesting character. Like, he could be more also like the Arkanstone. They just kind of leave until they’re the end, and then it’s like, oh, there’s also this incredible gem that’s the Heart of the Mountain that’s in there. And it’s like, whoa. What? This thing is super important, and this is the first time it’s being discussed. So they tried to, in the movies, make Bard more of a character and make the Arkanstone, like the big feature. Like, this is why we’re going for the Arkanstone. That makes sense. It didn’t necessarily work well, but Bard has more throughout the movies. But also with that is it’s a short book, which I appreciate, and they’re trying to stuff a lot into it, which I also appreciate, but there’s a lot of filler in there where then when they kill Smug, it’s like, okay, Smug is dead. It’s like wait, what? He just died? All of a sudden, he goes to attack the town and then Bard shoots him? I didn’t feel like it was long enough for for a battle. You know, it should have been a cooler battle thing there. And then additionally, talking about battles, like the Battle of the Five Armies, belbows knocked out for most of it. It was so quick. It was just, like, ten minutes of the battle, and him fighting the Spiders, which was great, but was like, 30 minutes, or him being in the caves was like, an hour. So I just would have loved and I know it’s a kids book, so you don’t want to get, like, too nitty gritty into the battle and people lopping each other’s heads off and dragging roasting people alive, which my troll friends would appreciate. But yeah, I just thought we could add a little bit more there. Yeah, I agree. And additionally, I need to know more about Gandalf’s quest against the Necromancer. Gandalf says, don’t go that route when he’s talking. At one point, it’s like, the Necromancers that way. And it’s like, OOH, the necromancer. That sounds fucking cool. And then that’s not discussed. And then when it’s like, oh, Gandolf, what were you doing? He’s like, Me and some other wizards got together and we banished the Necromancer so he won’t be around these parts for a while. That story. I want to know that fucking story. Do we have listener mail. You’ve got mail, Rick. From Morgantown, West Virginia. Oh, Richard or Dick. What does the dragon need treasure for? And is there something that you have that you don’t use that if it got stolen, you’d be pissed? Interesting. Thanks, Rick. This actually makes me think so. Dragons in lore, they just are treasure horse and virgin horse. For some reason, they just love to hoard treasure. And there’s so many things that people do in this world that are unexplainable, like Denver feliacs, that I don’t know what that is, but I think it’s people who have sex with trees. So if a dragon wants to hoard gold and sit on it, yeah, that checks out for me. I don’t need much more than that, so I think that’s why they do it. As for the answer that is, well, people fuck trees. Sitting on gold is not a big deal. I think we all that fuck trees probably have some sort of chemical imbalance. So you’re just saying dragons are all mentally unstable? Yeah, they got some chemical imbalance. They just want to sit on gold. It doesn’t make any sense. I think you’d want to melt that gold down and make some sick dragon armor, like on top of your scales. Although gold isn’t really a good armor. It’s pretty heavy. Yeah. And it’s malleable. Do you have any other feelings towards that? Did I cover it? There’s no way to answer that after saying, well, there’s tree. I mean, you could literally say that about anything in the world. Well, there’s tree fuckers. I guess that does make sense, why you don’t need meat. Meat. That is what I say. Whenever I’m at work, I’m like, hey, why don’t you give me this back? You should do better. Yeah, you know what? I’m just a guy over here. You know, there’s people fucking trees out there. Let’s solve real problems here. What was the second part? Is there anything is there anything that you don’t use, but if it got stolen, you get pissed like the dragon did, don’t use? Do you have an answer so I can think about it? The obvious answer is some sort of sentimental art or thing. That sentimentally. You don’t really like the other thing. Physical object. Golf clubs. I bought them. They’re nice. I like playing golf. I don’t play very often, and even when I do play, I usually travel. I rent clubs, but if I came back and they were missing, I’d be like, hey, what the fuck? You haven’t used this in a year. I’ll be like, yeah, but fuck you. I want those golf clubs. Yeah, that’s fair. I have my stuffed animal as a child. Baby bear. You don’t sleep on him still? No, I didn’t until I went to college, so I’m not afraid to admit it. Yeah, I brought my television to college, but whatever. Yeah, I believe that. So I have him upstairs, and I wouldn’t appreciate if someone took him. There’s a lot of sentimental value. If someone did, I wouldn’t even know he was gone for months. So at least the dragon knows his entire horde. Like he’s on top of it. Bilbo takes that chalice and he’s like, what the where the fuck’s the chalice? 1876 log number brings yeah, the Doe decimal system over there. So yeah, I think that and I hope to to bequeath that to to a child of my own. So I don’t think the dragons bequeathing anything else to anybody. So cool. Good listener mail. Thanks, Rick. We’re not going to cast the movie because I think we’re going to do a movie pod on this. And for those listeners out there in the new year, this will be our last podcast for 2022. This is our 40th episode. In general, John 20. Each year. We’ll continue to try to keep that pace, but we’re also going to be working in some movie parallels. Think of it like that crappy English class I was in, which was actually awesome, where you read the book and then you watch the movie. And I just watched the movies. So we’re going to be doing that. So if you just want to watch the movies and tag along, we’ll also be doing some movies that we didn’t read the books for, maybe aren’t attached to books because we either like them or hate them and want to discuss. So we’re probably going to be doing The Hobbit, probably just the first one because we’re not watching three terrible Hobbit movies. I might because I’m sick in the head. You don’t fuck trees, though. Yeah, exactly. Well, as far as I know I don’t. I cut trees down with your dick. So, yeah, we’re not going to cast the movie. We’ll talk about maybe some recasting or something along those lines when we get there. But Keith, the hobbit. Would you recommend it? Yeah, I liked it. I think you’ve mentioned it a few times. It’s more of a kids book. I think this would be a really good intro to the fantasy realm. I also think if I had to say, because I think Percy Jackson is one that everyone talks about as a kid’s book, I think this one’s much more opens your mind a bit more and it makes you kind of think that’s the bugs, this book is nuanced and there’s actual original ideas. And Percy Jackson was just like, take these old things and stuff them into this silly right? If my kid wanted to read it, I’d be like, sure, yeah, read Percy Jackson. But then after you’re done with that, then let’s read The Hobbit. This one opens your mind. This one gets you into another world. Whereas the Percy Jackson one’s kind of like, oh, look at these bad guys that are just Greek people. You know, Greek people. All of a sudden I’m a best swordsman ever, considering I’ve never picked up a sword. Percy get your shit together. Although there was that goat guy. It was pretty cool. Yeah, go back to the person, Jackson, and find out about the goat guy. I would recommend it as well. I mean, this is my goal in life is if and when I have a child to introduce them to Middle earth. Harry Potter and Middle earth are like my two most important things. Obviously in the in the book world and movie world, star wars is definitely there as well. But if I can get them into The Hobbit at the right time and they’re sparked by it, my dream is for someone to say, let’s go to bed and can you read me The Hobbit? I’d be like, oh, my God, yes, please. So, yeah, love it. Love middle earth. Maybe this opens the door for us to read Load of the Rings at some point because I would love to do that. I don’t even know how we would do it because I’d be kind of mind blowing the whole time and I’d have to do all the research. Like, I go so deep. I’d become like a professor of the subject. Yeah, it’d be a real book club. Yeah, I would treat it like a real book club, which would be with it. I’d be like making jokes. You’re like, well, actually, slow down, slow down. It’s actually just the shards of Narshil right now. Well, Keith, as always, this was great. The Hobbit. Everyone else check it out if you want to watch the movie. We’re going to get to that at some point too, probably in the new year. What do we got for the next book? The silent patient. It’s a popular one. It’s by Alex. Michelle Michelle. I’m going to butcher that name. Michelleus. I don’t know if it’s a woman that wrote it or man. Either. Not going to work here anymore. So the silent patient coming up. Everyone seems to like it. So we’ll be doing the silent patient next. That will come out in the new year. So over the Christmas holidays, if you hate your uncles and don’t want to hang out, then listen to or read The Silent Patient. Or listen to it and check us out in the new year. All right, bye now.