(CNN) — What would truly delight the geek in your life? It’s nearly impossible to know if you don’t share his or her peculiar tastes. It’s not good enough just to get them a Rubik’s Cube or copy of “The Hobbit.” (You know they could solve a Rubik’s Cube by the time they were 7, and they already own the complete collection of Tolkien in hardback.) Show them you care by learning about the things they like and demonstrating that knowledge with your gift choice. Start by determining what the geek in your life is obsessed with. Geeks are passionate about niche interests, and a little digging on your part is sure to result in a wide-eyed, bouncy, emphatic “thank you!” when it’s time to open presents. More..

Be sure to read our own Altaira‘s quote in the CNN article, and a link to our Tolkien Gift Guide!

TORN is an acronym for TheOneRing.Net, a popular Lord of The Rings fan site. The TORN Geek Tag™ is cast in sterling silver and is available as a necklace or key chain. The necklace includes an 18″ long silver colored bead chain. The TORN Geek Tag™ measure 26.5 mm (just over 1″) long, 14.8 mm (just under 5/8″) wide and 1.2 mm (1/16″) thick. Get Your Geek On™.

Smaug clutches the Arkenstone, the Heart of the Mountain™ to his chest. The Arkenstone is a 10 mm (3/8″) Swarovski Crystal sphere. The ring is cast in solid sterling silver and is available in US sizes 5 to 13, in whole and half sizes. Sizes 13 ½ (13.5) and larger are an additional $15.00 US.

The ring measures approximately 16.4 mm (5/8″) top to bottom, 19.7 mm (3/8″) thick and 3.1 mm (1/8″) wide at the back of the band. The ring weighs approximately 9.9 grams. Weight will vary with size.

This ring comes in a two-piece black ring box.

Includes Card of Authenticity.

Every December an envelope bearing a stamp from the North Pole would arrive for J.R.R. Tolkien’s children. Inside would be a letter in a strange, spidery handwriting and a beautiful colored drawing or painting. The letters were from Father Christmas.

They told wonderful tales of life at the North Pole: how the reindeer got loose and scattered presents all over the place; how the accident-prone North Polar Bear climbed the North Pole and fell through the roof of Father Christmas’s house into the dining room; how he broke the Moon into four pieces and made the Man in it fall into the back garden; how there were wars with the troublesome horde of goblins who lived in the caves beneath the house, and many more.

No reader, young or old, can fail to be charmed by Tolkien’s inventiveness in this classic holiday treat.

“Once in a lifetime.” The phrase comes up over and over from the people who worked on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. The film’s seventeen Oscars, record-setting earnings, huge fan base, and hundreds of ancillary products attest to its importance and to the fact that Rings is far more than a film. Its makers seized a crucial moment in Hollywood–the special effects digital revolution plus the rise of “infotainment” and the Internet–to satisfy the trilogy’s fans while fostering a huge new international audience. The resulting franchise of franchises has earned billions of dollars to date with no end in sight. Kristin Thompson interviewed seventy-six people to examine the movie’s scripting and design and the new technologies deployed to produce the films, video games, and DVDs. She demonstrates the impact Rings had on the companies that made it, on the fantasy genre, on New Zealand, and on independent cinema. In fast-paced, compulsively readable prose, she affirms Jackson’s Rings as one the most important films ever made.

Scholars and fans of the great mythologist will find a rich vein of information in Humphrey Carpenter’s The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien was a prodigious letter writer all his life; the sheer mass of his correspondence would give pause to even the most stalwart archivist (one shudders to think what he would have done with e-mail). But with the able assistance of Tolkien’s son Christopher and a healthy dose of determination, Carpenter manages find the cream of the crop–the letters that shed light on Tolkien’s thoughts about his academic and literary work, as well as those that show his more private side, revealing a loving husband, a playful friend, and a doting father. The most fascinating letters are, of course, those in which he discusses Middle-Earth, and Carpenter offers plenty of those to choose from. Tolkien discussed the minutia of his legend–sometimes at great length–with friends, publishers, and even fans who wrote to him with questions. These letters offer significant insights into how he went about creating the peoples and languages of Middle-Earth.

I have long ceased to invent (though even patronizing or sneering critics on the side praise my ‘inventions’): I wait till I seem to know what really happened. Or till it writes itself. Thus, though I knew for years that Frodo would run into a tree-adventure somewhere far down the Great River, I had no recollection of inventing Ents. I came at last to the point, and wrote the ‘Treebeard’ chapter without any recollection of any previous thought: just as it is now. And then I saw that, of course, it had not happened to Frodo at all.

This new edition of letters has an extensive index, and Carpenter has included a brief blurb at the beginning of each letter to explain who the correspondent was and what was being discussed. Still, we strongly recommend buying the companion volume, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, in order to better understand the place these correspondents had in Tolkien’s life and get a better context for the letters. –Perry M. Atterberry