UKH

Can anyone recommend a good current edition of The Lord of the Rings book(s) that has decent size print? The two (4 book sets including The Hobbit I think) being most heavily pushed by Amazon right now have a number of reviews complaining about print size, especially the dearer one.  My nephew wants to read it, he already has one that is a bit too small-print for him to really read happily (he is not myopic or anything, it's just hard work for young eyes to follow such small print). I want to get him a good one for his imminent 9th birthday. I may have a chance to visit a book shop this week and look with my own eyes but thought it worth asking on here too. 

Go to your local Charity Shops as they'll invariably have a set of them. 

That's a pretty good call actually, thanks! They are like the Jim Reeves LPs (or indeed the Louise CDs) of classic literature!

Aye right.  

I'd go for three separate volumes, possibly hardback, for example:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-fellowship-of-the-ring/j-r-r-tolkien/9...

But have a look on AbeBooks, or Ebay, and pay a few quid rather than £60!

Abebooks is tricky for this sort of thing as it often uses stock images and it can be hard to tell which edition you are looking at. eBay maybe a better bet for me but I think ultimately I have to go to a physical shop

If he gets a bit stuck at times you could cheer him on with a set of the BBC R4 Series from 1981 (pretty definitive apart from having to cut a bit to fit it within 13 hours) - I heard that and it encouraged me to read the book.  A rather fine production with some great actors (Michael Hordern made an engaging Gandalf)

Is it straightforward to get hold of that? 

It's on SoundCloud for free.

Thanks

It does look as if the original tape or CD set has to be bought second hand now.

The Aragorn from that series is far more someone I'd have faith in than anyone in a film, and sounds as if he has been around a bit and endured some hardship

Visited Waterstones this morning. A single volume red paperback was pretty small print, and a three-volume set wasn't much bigger. I get that it is a lot of pages already and making bigger print would put the prices up. 

Fed all this back to my sister who's said she'll take care of it and I can get him something else for his birthday, which is easy!

Thanks and I'll mention the BBC one. 

How dearly do you love your nephew? The Folio Society set is available for £40.

And, for extra nerd trivia, Ian Holm nicely links the BBC series with the film by being Frodo in the former and Bilbo in the latter.

Might as well go the whole hog and buy him a kindle! No issues with font size and only weighs around 5% of the full series in hardback (which incidentally was the main reason I never finished the series prior to buying my own kindle). 

The Folio Society do a fancy hard back boxed set.   There’s a 1997 set including the Silmarillion on fleabay for £80.  Not exactly charity shop prices...