18 Books Like Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth

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. 

I loved this book because it illuminated Tolkien’s lifelong fascination with Beowulf, probably his greatest influence. The translation is good, but the commentary is better, and the inclusion of two short works, Sellic Spell and the Lay of Beowulf, showed me Tolkien’s delight in “re-tellings.”

His creative genius was seldom far removed from his scholarly work. 

I loved this book because it’s as close as we can get to a Tolkien “Guide to Fantasy.” It contains two of the best essays I’ve ever read: the cauldron of stories described in “On Fairy-stories” changed the way I understand art and tradition, and Tolkien’s defense of the Beowulf poet as a literary craftsman made me want to learn Old English and helped me understand what he was trying to build in Middle-earth. 

I love it for taking me on a wild ride through Frodo’s dreams and along the lost road back to Númenor. Flieger’s study of Tolkien’s abandoned time travel stories is particularly effective; it made me want to explore every nook and cranny of The History of Middle-earth.

Much of her work on Tolkien is justly famous, but this one in particular showed me that Tolkien criticism could be a work of art in its own right. 

Professor Tom Shippey is one of the great Tolkien scholars, with the gift of being able to offer deep insight and analysis in an accessible way. In The Road to Middle-Earth he uses Tolkien’s academic life and interests to shed light on the development of his personal mythology, from the foundational History of Middle-Earth works through to Lord of The Rings. For me this is a ‘gateway’ book—if you enjoy what Shippey has to say and what he reveals about Tolkien’s work, then I suspect you’ll also like the remaining three books on this list.   

While yes, this is another work of Tolkien and this story is covered in the already mentioned The Silmarillion, this book expands in greater detail in the much closer look from the eyes of one Turin, son of Hurin.

I love how this book took an already tragic yet beloved story and fed my appetite with all of the particulars involved therein. The Children of Hurin is such a tragic story of poetic justice, curse, and irony. The main character is as equally frustrating as he is pitiable, and I see him as being quite relatable as any common, fallible human being.

And therein, its work of poetry is rich with matters that can be very relatable to the reader. These matters include lessons to learn, lessons of virtue and anti-virtue, lessons of vice, lessons of pride and its fall, what happens when we approach evil directly without having… show more.

There’s a paradox at the heart of The Lord of The Rings. Tolkien wrote that it is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,” yet Middle-earth is pre-Christian and has little-to-no trace of religion evident within it. So how to reconcile the two? In The Battle for Middle-earth, Rutledge, a priest, brings his own knowledge and understanding of scripture to bear on The Lord of the Rings, to reveal how Tolkien’s plots, themes, and characters can be understood from a Catholic perspective. One thing shines clear from this book: just what a great storyteller Tolkien is. He never seeks to dictate or persuade (unlike C.S. Lewis in his Narnia series), but allows each reader to discover for themselves the treasures within his stories. 

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.

It would be the most extreme of criminal acts for this beloved book not to be my ‘list topper!’ Reading this book instilled an instant love of good fantasy storytelling in me early on. It defines the fantasy genre, exemplifying the absolute best extremes in great world-building, characters, and epic storytelling.

Tolkien set the high bar I strive for in all areas in my own writing with one of the most memorable stories in one of the most unforgettable worlds of all time … and he managed to pull it all off within the context of a single book! No matter how many times I go back and re-read this one, I find something new to cherish, and you will too!

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.