Disclaimer: The 30-Day Book Challenge is created by Professional Book Nerds. I’m merely responding to their prompts for my own writing challenge.

This prompt is quite challenging for me to respond to as I tend to think the work is a separate entity from the author in terms of the scope of favoritism. Reading the same novel from the same author does not immediately mean the author is one’s favorite, does it? It only means the reader likes the novel so much. The same way that one has a favorite author for reasons such as great humor and writing style but believes a work from another author is his favorite read. Let’s bring this closer to home: for example, I consider Lemony Snicket my favorite author. His writing style tickles my brain. Now, if we say that reading the same works over and over again correlates to one’s preference of authors, then J. K. Rowling may be my favorite author. It is funny though that I don’t have a favorite standalone novel from her and can only think of her Harry Potter Series. The same thing can be said for Lemony Snicket’s and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works.

This is why I’m nominating my honorary favorite author, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit as probably my favorite novel. Granted that it is the prelude to The Lord of the Rings but it is considered a standalone novel. The works supplement each other but aren’t dependent that they cannot exist without the other.

The exciting encounters with different beings like a gigantic spider and a magnificent dragon in The Hobbit can transport anyone from mundane activities in the real world to Middle-earth in an instant. Who wouldn’t want that? Apart from this, I was simply blown away by Tolkien’s different storytelling style when I read the book for the first time. Coming from The Lord of the Rings series where Tolkien impressed me with the made-up languages he created and the more serious tone he applied, I was amazed by how the lighthearted narration in The Hobbit as if Bilbo was my own grandfather who spun a yarn.