That rare kids book that I am incapable of reading as an adult.  Some of this has to do with the way that meaning is mostly just spoken at you but in the end it's more about the way the book invokes a memory of an adulthood that's not my own. 

This is not entirely down to the smoke rings but it's not wholly separate from them either.

I can deal with Lord of The Ring like the good EngLit wank I am, and I can even appreciate that book as someone who has been in Mieville/Moorcock's anti-Tolkien camp for a long time - there's a weird, conflicted melancholy to the thing that isn't replicated in most rip offs or adaptations. The Hobbit though... that just makes me feel like I'm a wee guy eating a toffee crisp in a hotel bar in Scarborough or something.

That's no use to anyone else, I know, but my inability to get past my own frame of reference was the most striking thing about this particular reading experience