Part five of my bookshelf tour! Next up is the third bookcase in my living room. It’s a 2-shelf bookcase that the TV and blu-ray player live on top of, but the important things are the shelves. Take one look at them, and you will quickly figure out that J.R.R. Tolkien is my favorite author. Both the shelves on this bookcase are devoted to Tolkien’s books and books about Tolkien.
Once again, I’ll denote the books on these shelves that are unread, but there are only a couple of them.
Top Shelf:
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1994 Houghton Mifflin edition
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, illustrations by Alan Lee, centenary edition, 1991
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, boxed set, 1988 Houghton Mifflin edition
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1999 Houghton Mifflin edition
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, 2006 Harper Collins edition
- The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, 2012 Mariner books edition
- The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- Beren and Lúthien by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- The Fall of Arthur by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Verlyn Flieger
- The Story of Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Verlyn Flieger
- The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- Roverandom by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings boxed set, by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Book of Lost Tales, Part One (The History of Middle-earth #1) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (The History of Middle-earth #2) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- The Lays of Beleriand (The History of Middle-earth #3) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
The boxed set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings on the right (the mass-market paperback set with dodgy cover art) is the edition I’ve had the longest. My parents bought it for me for Christmas when I was twelve or thirteen, and it has been read many, many times. I loaned The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers to a college roommate, who kind of trashed them (I still cringe to see how beat up they are next to the well-cared for copy of The Return of the King). I don’t read that set anymore because of their condition, but I won’t get rid of them. These days, I read the white-covered hardbacks from the boxed set on the left. The edition on the far left is the one I read for my Lord of the Rings reread project in 2018-2019.
I will probably end up with more editions of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, because I tend to buy sets as they appear at the used bookstore downtown.
The camera is a Canon AE-1, which is a workhorse of a camera and my favorite of the 35mm film cameras I own. It was made in Japan between 1976 and 1984.
Bottom Shelf:
- The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, BBC radio production from 1981, CD boxed set
- A Tolkien Treasury by J.R.R. Tolkien, illustrations by Pauline Baynes, edited by Wayne Hammond, Christina Scull, and Verlyn Flieger
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
Roverandom
Farmer Giles of Ham
Smith of Wooton Major - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo translated by J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Tolkien Reader by J.R.R. Tolkien, introduction by Peter S. Beagle
- The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
- The Fellowship: Literary Lives of the Inklings by Phillip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski (unread)
- J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey
- The Road to Middle-earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology by Tom Shippey
- The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter
- The Return of the Shadow (The History of Middle-earth #6) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien (unread)
- A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Andrew Higgins
- The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull
- The History of the Hobbit, pt. 1: Mr. Baggins by John D. Rateliff
- The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien, First American edition (book club edition)
- Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth edited by Catherine McIlwaine
- Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Baillie Tolkien
Not pictured: The J.R.R. Tolkien Audio CD Collection, which was in the car when I took the photos.
Also not pictured: ‘Symphony No. 1: The Lord of the Rings’ by Johann de Meij, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, which was boxed up with the rest of the CDs that I don’t know what to do with.
So there are my ever-growing Tolkien shelves! There are a couple of Tolkien-related books I want to get, such as The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary by Peter Gilliver, E.S.C. Weiner, and Jeremy Marshall; Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth, and Flora of Middle-earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium by Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd. And, of course, the boxed set of the History of Middle-earth, which comes out this fall.
So many great books about Tolkien and his legendarium!
Traveling in Books 
These shelves are absolutely amazing!
I love these Tolkien shelves! I have a similar shelf mostly dedicated to Tolkien, though you have far more works than I do. My prized pieces are a single volume red leather (or faux-leather?) edition of The Lord of the Rings and a green one of The Hobbit, along with an older 3 volume UK edition of the History of Middle-Earth. I’ve only read a small portion of the History, so there’s lots of interesting reading ahead. Thanks much for sharing this collection! I’ll have to go looking for some of these books.
Anyone who dares question your devotion to Tolkien’s work is in for some trouble hahahah This is soooo comforting to look at. As a collector myself, it definitely makes me happy to see your collection. I look forward to FINALLY read The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time soon!
Oh no! That’s messed up that the roommate treated your books like that.
I’m curious, how many camera do you own?
Yeah, I was pretty upset when she returned the books to me in that condition. I didn’t loan her anymore of my books for a long time. Not until she became a librarian and took better care of books in general. She’s still a good friends, though. 🙂
I own 13 cameras altogether. Two digitals, one Polaroid, and the rest are film cameras. I use (or have used) four of those. The rest either use film that isn’t made anymore, or would need film that’s been respooled from another source.
I’ve seen that read faux-leather edition! I want one, but I haven’t seen it in bookstores for a long time. Perhaps I’ll have to turn to the internet for it. It would be great to have my own ‘Red Book of Westmarch’… The Tom Shippey books are especially enlightening. I plan to reread them in the next couple of months.
Have you ever listened to The Prancing Pony Podcast? The hosts, Alan and Shawn, go into all sorts of detail about the legendarium, and they clearly have a lot of fun doing it.
Thanks!
You’d be even more the envy of us all if you found yourself with a copy of the Red Book of Westmarch!! I was fortunate to stumble across the red and green books shrink-wrapped in a chain book store long ago, back when they were still is most malls. I snagged them and have never regretted that purchase. I hope you find a copy, it’s a real beauty. I have an ebook of Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth, but I’ve yet to read it. I’ll pop that up towards the top of my reading list on the kindle.
No, I’m not familiar with The Prancing Pony Podcast but I’ll be sure to seek it out. Lately I’ve been slowly listening to all of the Tolkien Profressor (Corey Olsen) podcast lectures and discussions. I finished those on The Hobbit and now I’m listening to those on the Silmarillion. It’s been years since I read that so it’s interesting listening to the discussions and sometimes struggling to remember details. One of these days I’ll have to do a reread.
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the red books! Maybe they’ll reappear at Barnes and Noble when we can go back into bookstores again!
The PPP is great! Corey Olsen has been a guest on the show once or twice, as have many Tolkien scholars like Tom Shippey and Verlyn Flieger. It’s not as scholarly as I’m sure Prof. Olsen’s podcast is, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun. It’s really helped me keep track of the Who’s Who of The Silmarillion. I should Prof. Olsen’s podcast a shot, though, since I’m also planning to read a bunch of the History of Middle-earth books over the rest of the year.
Always love to see another Tolkien fan’s shelves! The Flora of Middle-Earth is a well-designed book; it will make a great addition to your collection 🙂
Oooh! That makes me want to get The Flora of Middle-earth all the more! I do ove well-designed books. 🙂
I’m so used to everyone using their phones for photos that it’s become a little surprising when a person has an actual camera. These days the only people I know who have a camera (or cameras) are photographers
I don’t currently shoot professionally, but I’ve done wedding, portrait, sports, and event photography before and I still work in the photography industry, so for me, having a camera in hand is natural. 🙂
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