The Hobbit

Bilbo Baggins likes his pantry and his armchair, and he has no intention of going anywhere, until a wizard and thirteen dwarves arrive to recruit him as a burglar for their quest to reclaim a mountain from a dragon. Tolkien wrote it for his children, so the voice is warm, funny, and chatty, with the narrator stepping in to address the reader directly. It is much lighter than the trilogy it set up, and shorter, and easier to love on a first read. The riddle game with Gollum in the dark is the scene everything later grew out of.