Reading Tolkien

I have accumulated several editions of The Lord of the Rings over the years. I regret that I no longer have the paperbacks that were my introduction to the book, but they were pretty tattered by the time I retired them. My next earliest purchase, while in college, was the 1967 hardbound, three volume, "revised" edition from Houghton Mifflin. I later bought two, rather nice, single volume editions. One is illustrated by Alan Lee. I don't think I have actually read either — they are heavy and awkward to hold for very long. My favorite reading edition is The Lord of the Rings: Millennium Edition, boxed, in seven volumes. I bought it before the first of the Peter Jackson films so that I could comfortably carry and re-read Tolkien on the city bus traveling to and from school.

Each book in the set is one of the six often combined, two to a volume, in the "trilogy." The books here are: The Ring Sets Out, The Ring Goes South, The Treason of Isengard, The Ring Goes East, The War of the Ring, The End of the Third Age, and then a seventh book for the "Appendices." 

The time will come when I will need to reduce the size of my collection. Among those books that I will neither sell nor give away will be the 1967 trilogy and this set.