Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit'

By: Corey Olsen

Narrated by: Corey Olsen

Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

The Hobbit is one of the most widely read and best-loved books of the 20th century. Now Corey Olsen takes listeners deep within the text to uncover its secrets and delights.

Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s "The Hobbit" is a fun, thoughtful, and insightful companion volume, designed to bring a thorough and original new reading of this great work to a general audience. Professor Olsen takes listeners on an in-depth journey through The Hobbit, chapter by chapter, revealing the stories within the story: the dark desires of dwarves and the sublime laughter of elves, the nature of evil and its hopelessness, the mystery of divine providence and human choice, and, most of all, the transformation within the life of Bilbo Baggins.

Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" is a book that will make The Hobbit come alive for you as never before.

©2012 Corey Olsen (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"An admirable and thought-provoking consideration of the underlying themes of The Hobbit, following the there-and-back-again progress from its famous first line on through to Bilbo’s return home at the story's end." (Douglas A. Anderson, author of The Annotated Hobbit)

An Nice companion to a re-Reading of the Hobbit

Listen to this if you need inspiration to re-read the hobbit.
I hope theres a exploring the Lord of the rings coming 😄

Fantastic!

Professor Olsen enthusiastically narrates an illuminating walkthrough of The Hobbit. His explanations of the songs helped me to understand and enjoy Tolkien's poetry instead of just skipping over it!

A Book about a Book?

I normally don't read interpretations or explanations of other books. Normally that's boring to me and too much like being back in a classroom. In this case, I I loved The Hobbit very much and just thought it would be interesting to listen to this with my kids. It turned out to be less of an interpretation and more of giving a lot of extra background about things or just pointing out some things that you might have missed. To sum it up, we just enjoyed the book and if anything it made us want to read The Hobbit again. I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys The Hobbit and wants to hear the thoughts of someone else who also enjoyed it as well.

Brings the songs and obscure characters to life!

I have enjoyed the author's Tolkien Professor podcast, so I was excited to find this book. If you liked the Hobbit but always skipped the songs, this is for you! It's not deeply academic/scholarly/complicated to follow, but with humor and enjoyment discusses the deeper meanings that enriched my delight of a book I've loved for decades. You don't need to be a hard core Tolkien fan, but you should read/listen to the Hobbit itself first because this assumes you know the story.

Fantastic. Kept my interest the whole time.

The author as reader was fabulous. You can tell he loves Tolkien and it makes you excited to learn more as well.

Good analysis, bad audio editing

below average editing. More than a few stops and repeats left in the audio but the analysis was excellent.

Makes me want to read The Hobbit again!

I enjoyed delving deeper into meanings behind the storyline of The Hobbit. This book brought up some ideas that I had not considered. I will listen to this book again while simultaneously reading The Hobbit. The narration was nice too.

A Hobbit Reader’s Vademecum

This is a magnificent piece of literary criticism—neither evaluative nor deconstructive, it rather presents a close reading of Tolkien’s text intended simply to illuminate our reading of it, and thereby increase our enjoyment and enrich our understanding. Olsen is a careful and wise guide, offering many insights that may well surprise even longtime fans of The Hobbit—I myself read it for the first of many times nearly thirty years ago, and yet found myself pausing in wonder and delight at many of the subtle connections Olsen here teased out of the text (his analysis of Riddles in the Dark is especially superb!). As much as I enjoyed the audiobook, I will definitely be purchasing a hard copy of the book as well, and already plan to give copies as gifts to a couple of friends.

Thoughtful analysis

Corey Olsen has provided a literary analysis of the themes that flow through The Hobbit, and traced the emotional growth of Bilbo, Thorin, Thranduil, and others that makes this story so satisfying. Additionally, Professor Olsen analyses the various poems found throughout the book, bringing anyone who either casually reads the poems or skips them altogether to a deeper understanding of how the poems both fit in the story and show the character of the speaker (or speakers).

Altogether, this is a satisfying book, whether you read it or listen to Professor Olsen read it.

Wonderful insights into the Hobbit

I enjoyed every moment of this book, the narrator did a great job for most of the book. My problem was more the production, there were a dozen or more places that a line was repeated, causing a jarring in the flow of the story. Also about 3/4 the way through the voice changed in harshness delivery and tone that took a while to get used to, like they took a break and couldn't remember the delivery tone. While I agree that the author sought to enhance our experience in the book, sometimes I wonder if Tolkien really spent that much time coordinating tiny parts of the book, the section where the author draws out attention to a word repeated like shiny and gold said several times seems a little over the top. That does not stop me from recommending this book to anyone that has a love for The Hobit.