My 3 week old daughter felt chapter 2 wasn't as soothing.
There was a dramatic shift in the language from chapter 1 to 2. Chapter 1 had a songy cadence to the prose, where chapter 2 felt like standard fantasy (now mind you, it is the archetype that bog standard fantasy copies, so that is not a slight in the least). I l had remembered that bilbo had done more to help with the trolls, but also remembered the trolls being much further on the trip, when bilbo had done more character development. Memory is so fallianle.
I have to hand it to Tolkien. "How did bilbo decide to join the company?" "he doesn't remember, just gandalf was talking and suddenly he left". this gives him even a lower starting place for his character arc to go on.
raiding the den of the trolls has similarity to Frodo and the other hobits taking from the Wights in Fellowship. I wonder how much this inspired that? In LoTR, frodo gets equipment from the Wight, Rivendell, Galadriel (fuck you Celeborn), and +/- Faramir. So far bilbo has gotten his first treasure, we'll see if he gets the set of 3/4 or if he, with his shorter journey, will be shortchanged.

 

Trailing a bit, but here we go:

The first part of the chapter was a rather transitory bit with lots of descriptions, and with little in terms of dialogue, and it has a strong feel of the beginning of the RPG quest where our MC gets more in term of figuring out his own thoughts.

Funnily enough, it is the random RPG encounter that follows immediately after. I must say I love the trolls stream of thoughts; wild, random, but so so food focused. Like an ironic twist of hobbit himself. Anyway, after the successful bout there's always the loot, and I agree there's some similarity in it with the LOTR itself, and that it has a feel of Tolkien doing it on purpose.

Also, nothing says distress quite as well as Bilbo forgetting to clean the part where the note was. Amusing.

 

Same here. It's the troll chapter, most people will remember the basics. The trolls are portrait very differently than the ones in lotr.
We still have ideas that were dropped in the greater lore. Or is there a story in the silmarillion about talking troll purses I forgot about?

The whole troll encounter is much more light hearted than the troll scene in Moria in lotr.

 

Okay! Read over the weekend but didn't have my laptop on me, so turning my notes into posts.

I sympathize with Bilbo so much lol. The day after a big party first thing I wanna do is just get my place back into shape, and it absolutely 100% does mess with my routine. Kinda curious as to how Gandalf is quite so familiar with his routine tho.

I flagged that the dwarves make a reference to "the king", with no qualifiers at all. IIRC from LotR, the relevant king would've been the Northern Kingdom but that fell a long time ago. Makes me think he hadn't yet figured it out, which is 100% valid.

The next thing is that caught my eye was the mention of multi-headed trolls (which I don't think we ever do see again), and the talking troll pocket. How does no one ever comment on that?? It feels almost out of place lol.

Speaking of the trolls, I think this is a nice early sign that Bilbo has potential as an adventurer. He's able to sneak up to the trolls, not much beyond that, but hey at least his stealth rolls are good.