A decent introductory book for anyone wondering what 'that Hobbit fuss' is all about and is interested enough to read a basic outline about Tolkien so they don't look like perfect fools when discussion about The Hobbit films comes up. Also for folks who have time constraints on their reading, or like to time their reading, or are anal about reading something under a certain amount of time, or have a short attention span, or....
Or so I assume, since the author has taken the trouble to divide the chapters into twenty 3-minute features and assures you that 'a single paragraph will take you about one minute to digest, meaning that each feature can be understood in about three minutes.' He goes further to say that each of the three chapters will take about an hour to digest and promises a solid understanding of the life history, literary highlights, and importance of J.R.R. Tolkien in about three hours. Quite a promise. There are also '3-Second Quest' summaries in the side-bar of each page for those who can't handle reading for 3 minutes. Think illustrated Cliff Notes. I couldn't help musing about these '3-minute' readers actually tackling The Lord of the Rings or the Silmarillion.
A couple quibbles: For some reason unclear to me, the author chose to bold certain phrases and words. Bolding names or important points to grab your attention I can understand, but then we have quite a few sentences like these: "Ronald and Edith conducted a romance that constituted long walks, conversations that went deep into the night, and memories of watching the sun come up over the rooftops..." And, "Tolkien's love of words was put to good use, and the dictionary entries that he worked on included the words "waistcoat," "walnut," "walrus," and "wampum." Why 'walrus', I wondered? Well, there was an illustration of a walrus on the facing page but I was no wiser as to the reason for bolding it. Personally, I would have chosen waistcoat.
One more thing: each subject page includes a quote in the sidebar, which is nice, but Gandalf's "not all tears are an evil" quote from RotK is attributed to Frodo. How did that get by the proof-reader? I didn't go over the book with a fine-tooth comb, but this error left me wondering what other mistakes might be in here.
I did like many of the photos - some which I don't think I've seen before - and some of the Russian illustrations of Tolkien's works that were included were a nice addition. The time-lines are useful. Other than that, it's another quirkily amusing, quasi-useful book for my Tolkien shelf.