Finding God in the Hobbit Review

I recently signed up to review books for Tyndale Blog Network and the first book they sent me is Finding God in the Hobbit by Jim Ware.  He is the bestselling coauthor of Finding God in The Lord of the Rings and Finding God in Narnia.  To be honest, I haven't read The Hobbit because I had little interest in reading about books with mystery and magical themes that have as their main characters: hobbits, wizards, elves, dwarfs, dragons and other fantasy type creatures.  Not my genre at all.  On the other hand, my brother loved this book so much that years ago, he named his dog Bilbo after the main character of the story.  That's all I knew and for me, and no offense to my brother, it seemed like it was written for children and had little to engage adults.  Or so I thought.

Jim Ware sets out to find God in this fictional story by J.R.R Tolkien.  And I'd say he did for the most part.  Each chapter begins with a short excerpt to a chapter in The Hobbit and then, Mr. Ware goes about pulling off the layers for supernatural meaning.  Next, he challenges his reader to look into their own lives and see the connection of our earthly life to heaven.  Does he always find supernatural meaning?  I don't think so for some of the connections felt loose.  He does include scripture and literary references that tie in with the main idea of each chapter.  Sometimes I was impressed and a few times, puzzled.

What I got for sure is that Mr. Ware is a big fan of this genre and especially Tolkien's work.  He does make this an easy to read book that does make you reflect on your life.  Surprisingly, it was interesting enough for me that I now want to read The Hobbit.  Now that I know there is more to it than some child like fantasy fluff story.  If that was part of Mr. Ware's goal, to entice new readers to Tolkien's work, he did just that.

I was given a complimentary copy of this book to read for my honest review.  No monetary compensation was given and this review is all my own.

Advent Blessings,
Noreen