The most recommended Middle Earth books

I love this one because it’s a fitting tribute to Christopher Tolkien’s monumental work of literary archeology. The essays in this collection feel as fresh today as they did 24 years ago. It’s hard to pick favorites from such a strong and wide-ranging collection, but I often return to the essays by the late scholars Charles E. Noad and Richard C. West on the making of the Silmarillion and on the concept of ofermod, respectively. 

This is an odd book in some ways. It’s half narrative, half editorial commentary. But I absolutely loved it as a look at the creative process and writing for the sheer joy of writing.

What we have here is a few early stories by Tolkien which show the genesis of his Middle-earth setting along with commentary by his son Christopher. You see Tolkien’s ideas evolve, which was a great reminder that writing is often about polishing, editing, and distilling concepts.

But it was also fun to read, knowing it was just stuff Tolkien was playing with. At the time of writing, he had no thoughts of publishing it. Indeed, it was never published until a few years after his death. He was just writing and creating for his own enjoyment.

I am fascinated by the contradictions of Tolkien’s women and by the tension between Christian and pagan in his writing.

This book is particularly valuable for its explication of Tolkien’s integration of Marian and Valkyrie imagery, resulting in female characters of transcendental beauty and heroism. And the writing is absorbing and informative.

A great place to start if you’re new to books on Tolkien (as opposed to books by Tolkien!). David Day has written many books on Tolkien and always offers intelligent and informed insights. Although The Hobbit Companion looks rather like a children’s book, it’s really more of a profusely-illustrated exploration of, as Day says, “the power of language,” looking at the derivations of all the key names in The Hobbit and what they reveal about Tolkien and Middle-Earth. It’s a fun and surprisingly rewarding read.   

Tolkien is my all-time favorite author. The material in this book had appeared before, but was scattered all over in books published over several decades. 

Bringing all this material together and organizing it in a more coherent fashion makes the stories come alive like never before and allows the reader to more easily situate them within the grand scope of Tolkien’s mythology. Moreover, the depth, beauty, and complexity of the writing demonstrate just how much more erudite Tolkien was than most of the hacks posing as fantasy authors today. You get a real sense of the history of Middle Earth.

When I started college, I majored in English because I had ambitions of becoming a Tolkien scholar. I was also interested in history, particularly that of Asia, which just seemed deeper and more mysterious than the Western history I learned in high school. But by the end of my first… show more.

Whilst the Lord of the Rings trilogy should be read as one story, my favourite of the series is the second book, The Two Towers.

I loved the separation of our characters and the focus on one narrative concerning one group in its entirety before we see what happens to the other group. It was a new way of reading when I first read The Two Towers.

Prior, my encounter with books containing multiple storylines saw intercut sections, switching from one set of characters to the other.

I particularly enjoyed the overarching dread surrounding the story of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum. For me, there were many gut-wrenching moments when hope fizzled away. The character building in these moments is exquisite.

Beautifully written and well worth a read.

I love a good, solid, chewy book of critical essays around a specific theme—I know, it’s a specialized taste. This is a good one.

Yes, I’d love to tramp peacefully around Middle-earth with the field guide I reviewed above, but there are horrors there as well, and this collection gives Tolkien’s dragons, wolves, spiders, and other monsters their due.

If you are anything like me, one of the reasons you keep coming back to Middle-earth is the landscape. This is the field guide I want to take on my next trip!

This is a very thoroughly researched compendium of information and folklore about real-world plants in Tolkien’s world—and about his invented plants as well. It's nicely illustrated, too!

To be fair this was part of my re-read of the entire LotR series, but I hadn't read them in over 20 years. I had seen the movies quite a few times, and while I love them but there's something about reading the originals. This is especially true for scenes either altered or left out of the films. I'm not knocking Jackson, even with the deletions and alterations his adaptation of the story runs over 9 hours. However, meeting the original characters and reading the unaltered scenes provides an even deeper picture of Middle-Earth. The pace may be a bit slow for some - Tom Bombadil does sing a lot - but that's part of the charm, too. It's understandable that songs and old tales covered in the Council of Elrond didn't make the films, but they enhance the immersive experience of reading the books. If you've only seen the… show more.

I love this book for its gloriously unfinished glimpses into three Ages of Tolkien’s sub-creation. It taught me just how important Túrin Turambar was to his author, took me to parts of Númenor I’d not dreamt of, and showed me Gandalf blowing smoke rings in Saruman’s face.

It also showed me Christopher Tolkien’s care as an editor and served as a first step towards the rich and unabashedly scholarly studies of The History of Middle-earth.