STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Nicolas Gentile realized something. He didn't want to simply read fantasy books; he wanted to live in one. So he bought some land in the Italian countryside and started building. His goal is to create a hobbit village modeled after the Shire from J.R.R. Tolkien's epic. He and his family dress in hobbit clothes. And he told The Guardian that in many ways, he has always been living like a hobbit. It was just a matter of becoming aware of that. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.