For heaven's sake, man, I'm reading through the entire History of Middle-Earth series (for the 2nd time): that's like reading the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales four or five times over in sequence as the mythology was drafted and redrafted from the earliest forms written around the First World War to the post LotR reworkings and the later philosophical and metaphysical works as found in Morgoth's Ring and War of the Jewels.
The Book of Lost Tales
The Sketch and the Quenta Noldoriwa
The Annals & the first draft of Quenta Silmarillion
Etc.
I highly recommend the series if one wants to be "inside" the development of the mythology.
Btw, the ranger at Bree as originally written was a hobbit named "Trotter" that wore wooden shoes, not Aragorn son of Arathorn, Isildur's Heir.