Bayard's Books

I reread The Hobbit recently, and was reminded of how much depth a really good writer can put even into a children's story.  A good number of the books that I liked when I was younger have stopped being interesting now, but The Hobbit remains as fascinating as ever.  Even though, compared to The Lord of the Rings, the events in Bilbo's adventure seem to be kind of trivial, at least at first, we are reminded in the appendices to LOTR (at least I think it is there), that if Bilbo's quest, culminating in the killing of Smaug and the defeat of the orcs of the Misty Mountains, had not occurred, then things might have gone much worse with Frodo's quest.  If Smaug had been alive to take part in the events in LOTR, a lot might have been different.  In all of Tolkien's work, we are often reminded that there is nothing accidental in this world.  Even that which seems like evil to us may turn out to end well.