Bookish Highlights from my New York Trip feat. Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth

Last year for Reading Week, my sister Ash came to visit me. This year, the two of us went to New York City. The impetus for this visit was the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth exhibit on at the Morgan Library. We booked our plane tickets back in June! In a happy surprise, my best friend got accepted to grad school outside of NYC shortly after we booked the trip. So the three of us, who used to road trip to Minneapolis, got to hang out in New York and attend the exhibit together. I won’t bore you with everything that we got up to during our trip, though. This is a book blog and books are where I’ll keep the focus 😉

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth at the Morgan Library and Museum

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth celebrates the man and his creation. The exhibition will be the most extensive public display of original Tolkien material for several generations. Drawn from the collections of the Tolkien Archive at the Bodleian Library (Oxford), Marquette University Libraries (Milwaukee), the Morgan, and private lenders, the exhibition will include family photographs and memorabilia, Tolkien’s original illustrations, maps, draft manuscripts, and designs related to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

The Morgan Library and Museum

I’ve written this post mostly in chronological order, but I’m starting with this exhibition cos it was the star of the week. 😛 I actually saw some of Tolkien’s works back in 2013 at a different exhibit at the Bodleian. In that post, I attempted to describe why it was such an exciting experience for me, but it’s difficult to describe. Recalling that incredible experience made me extremely excited for this one, which would be on different level.

Ash and I lined up at the Morgan about 15 minutes before it opened on a Friday morning. There were about 20 people already waiting. The exhibit is well-laid out and has a clear flow, but it soon became crowded. (Which was mostly exciting. As the only intense Tolkien fan I know IRL, it was fun to be surrounded by my people and overhear snippets of excited conversation).

I had pre-ordered the book Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth. On the advice of the Tolkien Society Facebook group, I didn’t read the catalogue section of the book before visiting the exhibit. I’m glad I didn’t, as the information in the exhibit is the same as in the book and I preferred to explore the items in-person first. Conveniently, the book notes which items were exhibited in New York (a more limited selection than what was originally on show at the Bodleian), making it easy for me to ‘revisit’ the exhibition through the book. The book faithfully recreates the exhibition with additional essays; I highly recommend it for any Tolkien fan. All that is preamble to say – you can view and read about the following pieces, which were some of my favourite to view, in the book:

• Colourful doodles on newspapers from the 1950s
• “Eeriness”, a watercolour drawing from 1914 with blue and purple tones, of a Gandalf-esque figure entering a wood
• The first map for The Lord of the Rings, folded and worn and written all over
• Dustjacket designs for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
• Paintings for The Hobbit (my favourite is vibrant Smaug lounging on the treasure)
• A title page from 1938 that has “The Magic Ring” crossed out and “The Lord of the Rings” written below, with a small question mark above it

That last item helped to realize what is so special about viewing something like it (that feeling I couldn’t quite capture in 2013). It’s a capsule of history and time travel, to reflect on how things were when that item was created and how they have changed since then. The other items on that list fall into two categories: seeing original pieces of a work you’ve seen so many times in reproduction, in books or on a computer screen, and seeing new pieces I didn’t know about or had never before been shown.

I told Ash I would only spend two hours there. This is a good amount of time to fully enjoy everything in the exhibit, but I could have spent hours longer viewing and reflecting (thank goodness for the book). No photos allowed inside the exhibition, but this photo of me beaming afterwards hopefully conveys how excited I was to check this out!

THE MAPS WERE SO COOL 😭

Ash, who is not even really a Tolkien fan (I don’t think she’s read any of his books) but she loves history and maps

The Dead Poet Bar

We arrived in New York late at night. Our first stop in the city was this literary-themed bar, open til 4AM a few blocks from our hotel. A long and narrow place with lots of character and delicious drinks. Highly recommended!

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Bookshops

Books of Wonder

While we were in NYC, children’s bookstore Books of Wonder hosted a middle grade fantasy author event which included Anna Meriano, author of the series Love, Sugar, Magic. The event didn’t fit in with our plans, but we were able to visit the 18th Avenue location a couple days later. My wonderful sister treated to me some books for my birthday 🥳 I picked up signed hardcovers of A Sprinkle of Spirits by Anna Meriano, Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand, and The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore (that last one was a very exciting find for me!).

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The Strand

For Christmas, I gave Ash a giftcard to the Strand because I knew it was one of the stores she wanted to check out. I’m glad we went! I don’t know why I had it in my mind that it wasn’t a bookshop I wanted to check out…The Strand is a massive new and used bookshop, with great selection.

I didn’t buy any books which felt a bit unnatural for me. (I was saving that for Books of Wonder. The USD to CAD exchange rate makes it difficult to justify buying books in the States.) But, they have this delightful enamel pin section. Even though I’m not a pin person, there was this pin I had open in a tab on my iPad since last summer…and I saw it there! So I decided fate was telling me to purchase that pin. Now my bookwyrm lives (when not on my clothing) by the Tolkien books that match his colour. (Ash bought The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender and The Gangs of New York, btw.)

Rizzoli

Writing this post made me realize the variety in the bookshops we went to! Rizzoli publishes beautiful books on the “fashion, interior design, culinary, art, architecture, and photography fields” and has a pretty swanky shop. This is the kind of shop that lends itself to browsing and discovering. I explored gorgeous books on all kinds of intriguing topics that I wouldn’t have encountered elsewhere. I did note a few to add to my TBR (mostly from the fashion section), but I didn’t make any purchases in shop.

New York Public Library

We did not enter the Fifth Avenue library because I had done that on a previous trip to New York (which you can read about here). But I did snap a cool photo of my sister on the steps of the library before it opened. When her flight home was delayed, she visited the library on her own. Hence this photo of the original Winnie-the-Pooh toys (Piglet looks so precious) owned by A.A. Milne’s son, Christopher Robin.

What are your favourite bookish places to visit in New York? What city would you like to travel to to engage in book-related sightseeing?