A few favorite items
27 February
2025-2-27 6:31:41 PM UTC
2025-2-27 6:31:41 PM UTC
I don't have any books that are particularly rare or valuable, but here are a few recent acquisitions that I don't see around too often:
• HarperCollins deluxe box set of Alan Lee's The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Sketchbooks (9780008367435)
• Houghton Mifflin edition of the deluxe The Children of Húrin (9780618904419)
• HarperCollins deluxe single-volume The Lord of the Rings (9780261103689)
I paid way too much for the sketchbooks but whatever, it's a hobby and I like them. The design is similar to the HarperCollins deluxe "second series" (e.g. https://www.tolkienguide.com/store/9780008387969), which I love the look of with the full cloth binding and the illustration embedded on the front board. The HM Húrin is basically the same book as the HC one. The blue paper of binding and slipcase is quite a bit darker/grayer than my HC edition, but it's also a first printing (not sure if there were others) and my HC is a 10th printing.
The deluxe LOTR is probably my favorite book I own. It's a beautiful book. Quarter-bound in leather with cloth on the rest of the boards. The slipcase is leather too although I think it might be faux, but it's overall much sturdier than the later HC deluxe series. It's super-thin, the spine is only about an inch thick and indeed the entirety of LOTR and its appendices are in there. The paper is super-thin so you have to be careful with it, they stick together and adjacent pages are often hard to separate, but it's overall much easier to read/handle than most other single-volume editions I've attempted to actually read. If it just had a ribbon it would be perfect. There's some nice-looking copies on eBay of Hobbit and Silmarillion in this series that I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on. HoME was also released in this style in three volumes although they're quite hard to find and a little out of my price range typically.
• HarperCollins deluxe box set of Alan Lee's The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Sketchbooks (9780008367435)
• Houghton Mifflin edition of the deluxe The Children of Húrin (9780618904419)
• HarperCollins deluxe single-volume The Lord of the Rings (9780261103689)
I paid way too much for the sketchbooks but whatever, it's a hobby and I like them. The design is similar to the HarperCollins deluxe "second series" (e.g. https://www.tolkienguide.com/store/9780008387969), which I love the look of with the full cloth binding and the illustration embedded on the front board. The HM Húrin is basically the same book as the HC one. The blue paper of binding and slipcase is quite a bit darker/grayer than my HC edition, but it's also a first printing (not sure if there were others) and my HC is a 10th printing.
The deluxe LOTR is probably my favorite book I own. It's a beautiful book. Quarter-bound in leather with cloth on the rest of the boards. The slipcase is leather too although I think it might be faux, but it's overall much sturdier than the later HC deluxe series. It's super-thin, the spine is only about an inch thick and indeed the entirety of LOTR and its appendices are in there. The paper is super-thin so you have to be careful with it, they stick together and adjacent pages are often hard to separate, but it's overall much easier to read/handle than most other single-volume editions I've attempted to actually read. If it just had a ribbon it would be perfect. There's some nice-looking copies on eBay of Hobbit and Silmarillion in this series that I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on. HoME was also released in this style in three volumes although they're quite hard to find and a little out of my price range typically.
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