The Hobbit

The OG fantasy adventure. Jim reads this one every year when the leaves start to turn, curled up in his burrow with a cup of tea and a warm blanket. Tolkien invented an entire genre, and he did it with such warmth and charm that even a bookworm feels at home in the Shire. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" — greatest opening line ever? Jim thinks so. What makes The Hobbit timeless is Bilbo himself. He's not a warrior, not a wizard, not a chosen one — he's a comfortable homebody who gets dragged into an adventure and discovers courage he didn't know he had. Sound familiar to any bookworms out there? Jim sees himself in Bilbo every single time. The riddles in the dark with Gollum, the confrontation with Smaug, the Battle of Five Armies — each setpiece is perfectly crafted and dripping with Tolkien's playful narrative voice. Some snobby literary types dismiss this as "just a children's book." Those people are wrong, and Jim will fight them (well, gently argue with them). The Hobbit works on every level — as adventure, as comedy, as a story about finding bravery in the most unlikely places. Bilbo is proof that the smallest creatures can make the biggest difference. Five worms — always and forever.