Unconditional Shelf-Love
14 April
2025-4-14 11:56:29 AM UTC
2025-4-14 11:56:29 AM UTC
For the first time since I joined this lovely site there are currently no Tolkien books in transit to my shelf, so I thought I might take the chance and present it here in a relatively solid state.
After falling in love with LotR in the early 90s I only just started my collection about a year and a half ago, so I guess you could say that all of my acquisitions are fairly recent. (The last picture is my shelf "before I met you guys.")
As you can probably tell I do not love dust covers (luckily, box sets come with boxes that those can be neatly stored in) but I love my clothbounds very much – just not enough to display the spines of the orange Silmarillion and its friends. That edition of The Silmarillion is gorgeous, but the low contrast spine has zero shelf-appeal. Speaking of shelf-appeal: I made cardboard boxes to put behind the books so they all line up at the front of the shelf.
Besides a lot of German editions there are also still a couple of non-Tolkien books left on the shelf, but I’m sure that in time these will get pushed off, just like all the others that once used to live there.
There are also a couple dozen Tolkien books not on display here because they are either current reading copies, duplicates, or just ugly to look at.
I am very happy to have found this community that makes my collector’s addiction feel normal (or probably even like a very mild case).
My favorite book so far is the 1978 India paper LotR. I am also very fond of the American 90s/00s Ted Nasmith/Alan Lee large format clothbouds (these are all 1sts).
As a rule – with the exception of the GA&U Silmarillion – there are no books older than me (1978). That self-imposed restriction has saved me a lot of money in the last year and a half.
That being said, my holy grail is the 1978 Tolkien Library box set. A couple of those got away from me when they were still being sold at reasonable prices on eBay but the sellers wouldn’t ship outside the UK. (So, if anybody owns one and wants to part with it … I don’t care about the box [or the dust jackets] so much, just the 1978 printings.)
Amazingly, out of all of these books some of the HC Mattes and PBs have given me the hardest time when I was tracking down the printing I wanted, and I would like to thank Velmeran again for keeping track of those.
After falling in love with LotR in the early 90s I only just started my collection about a year and a half ago, so I guess you could say that all of my acquisitions are fairly recent. (The last picture is my shelf "before I met you guys.")
As you can probably tell I do not love dust covers (luckily, box sets come with boxes that those can be neatly stored in) but I love my clothbounds very much – just not enough to display the spines of the orange Silmarillion and its friends. That edition of The Silmarillion is gorgeous, but the low contrast spine has zero shelf-appeal. Speaking of shelf-appeal: I made cardboard boxes to put behind the books so they all line up at the front of the shelf.
Besides a lot of German editions there are also still a couple of non-Tolkien books left on the shelf, but I’m sure that in time these will get pushed off, just like all the others that once used to live there.
There are also a couple dozen Tolkien books not on display here because they are either current reading copies, duplicates, or just ugly to look at.
I am very happy to have found this community that makes my collector’s addiction feel normal (or probably even like a very mild case).
My favorite book so far is the 1978 India paper LotR. I am also very fond of the American 90s/00s Ted Nasmith/Alan Lee large format clothbouds (these are all 1sts).
As a rule – with the exception of the GA&U Silmarillion – there are no books older than me (1978). That self-imposed restriction has saved me a lot of money in the last year and a half.
That being said, my holy grail is the 1978 Tolkien Library box set. A couple of those got away from me when they were still being sold at reasonable prices on eBay but the sellers wouldn’t ship outside the UK. (So, if anybody owns one and wants to part with it … I don’t care about the box [or the dust jackets] so much, just the 1978 printings.)
Amazingly, out of all of these books some of the HC Mattes and PBs have given me the hardest time when I was tracking down the printing I wanted, and I would like to thank Velmeran again for keeping track of those.
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