Smaug Is Not a Bookworm

[Mithalwen]

'They are proud and wilful, but they are true-hearted, generous in thought and deed; bold but not cruel; wise but unlearned, writing no books but singing many songs, after the manner of the children of Men before the Dark Years' , Aragorn's comments on the Rohirrim seems to suggest that writing books (if not reading once written!) was a feature of other cultures otherwise it wouldn't be noteworthy here.

However even in the cultures that in some ways are technologically advanced they don't seem to have developed a printing press - books seem to be copied as needed and the preserve of specialists. The book culture doesn't seem to be further on than the libraries of great or monastic houses in our own world. Gondor and Rivendell have archives, the main dwellings of the big hobbit families would have genealogies and perhaps other records but I guess the reading would more be reference than pleasure.