Reddit reviews Tolkien's World from A to Z: The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth

David Day has a bad reputation for just making things up without any basis in Tolkien's work. I tend to not recommend them.

If you want an atlas the gold standard is The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen-Anne Fonstad


If you want to enhance his reading of LotR, Hammond and Scull's LotR Reader's Companion is the way to go.

If you want an encyclopedia style book, Forster's Complete Guide to Middle-earth is best.

Get Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-earth then thank me later. Even Christopher Tolkien has admitted to using it. Granted it does not cover materiel outside of The Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion. It is an excellent and complete guide and unlike many others is not full of misinformation.

 

Edit: If the Tolkien Dictionary you have is the one by David Day throw it away immediately. David Day is notorious for making up information and claiming it as Tolkien see here. I'm not familiar with his Tolkien: A Dictionary and any specific errors thererin, though the map, if it's the one in this post, is horribly incorrect. Foster's guide (above) is a much more reliable guide where he cites his sources, although, as I mentioned above, it is somewhat out-of-date.

I don't think The Hobbit won't help a whole lot with that. You could read The Silmarillion but that's even harder to read than The Lord of the Rings. If you really want to read The Lord of the Rings a companion book like this might be more helpful so you can lookup stuff as it's mentioned.

Or just don't worry about understanding everything. A lot of the stuff that gets mentioned isn't that important.

The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth by Robert Foster.

The Encyclopedia of Arda is fairly decent - in my experience, accurate, but pretty thin on the content/details. This is probably because it's not a wiki and put together by one person. Tolkien Gateway is another one - it's a wiki so it's much more fleshed out than Encyclopedia of Arda. If you're open to non-web works, my favorite resource is Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-Earth. It's a pretty cheap and comprehensive encyclopedia-style work, and I like it being a book because I often write notes in it and add post-its and whatnot.

I use this and it works pretty well for that purpose. No maps, but that's what Fonstad's atlas is for. http://www.amazon.com/Tolkiens-World-Complete-Guide-Middle-Earth/dp/0345449762

I can't speak to hardcover editions of LotR as I still haven't committed to those myself, but I would recommend that whatever version you get, get an ebook version too - being able to search the text is absolutely wonderful, particularly if you also have a copy of The Complete Guide To Middle Earth by Robert Foster.

As an aside, this version of the Silmarillion is very nice.

Unfinished Tales.

Also, I really recommend Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-Earth. It's nice to have as a supplemental resource. It's essentially a handy encyclopedia of LotR/Hobbit/Silmarillion. Very easy to pick up and read a section here or there if you come across a name or place you can't quite recall

I got this as a kid when I started reading the books so I could look up stuff I didn't understand helped alot.
Tolkien's World from A to Z: The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345449762/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_5h0SDb6T5C6YF

My experience with the silmerilian the first couple of times that I read it was that it was nearly impossible to remember all of the names. I would mix up finwe with finarfan with feanor with fingolfin and so on. What I found helpful was This Guide to middle earth by robert foster. It has every character and place listed, and if you forget what something is you can do a quick review just by flipping through it. Eventually, you'll be able to remember everything. Good luck reading!

This is probably the best-Robert Foster's guide was even approved by Tolkien:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345449762?pc_redir=1413709814&robot_redir=1

Also this is probably the second best by J.E.A. Tyler:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312339127?pc_redir=1413174325&robot_redir=1

Hope this helps

I know I am a bit late but try this: Tolkien's World from A to Z: The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth.

It is like a Tolkien dictionary. I used it to familiarize myself with Middle Earth. It's arranged alphabetically so you can look up character names, events etc.

If any one is looking to buy it, you can get it on amazon.

I had this next to me while reading it. Can't recommend it enough.