[Book] Have you read The Silmarillion?

[Northy]

Funny you mention it, I'm reading it right now. Not an easy read, but doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. Lots of names and places to remember I find myself flipping all over to try to remind myself of who someone was. I'm a big fan of all Tolkien, he practically invented fantasy. Including lotr, hobbit, silmarillion, unfinsihed tales, and The Children of Hurin.

check out The Children of Hurin. Little known Tolkien book but worthy of praise like lotr and hobbit.

[mordale]

read it after i read the trilogy.
loved learning the back stories to many of the characters featured, namely gandalf and sauron.

[Sensei_Sin]

Read it but didn't like it. Maybe I was just burned out since I had recently read the 3 Lord of the Rings books and The Hobbit.

[racenutz]

I've read it a few times. The only part of the book I didn't like was the chapter "Of Beleriand and its Realms." Way too much geography to be entertaining. I've also read Unfinished Tales which is the parts that were mostly completed but cut from all of Tolkien's middle earth writings. I only made it through 1.5 volumes of 12 total volumes to The Book of Lost Tales series. Those books were mainly early manuscripts his son pieced together to show the progression of the story & not really a readable book.

To the OP: Now that you've read the Silmarillion I would urge you to reread LOTR. It's absolutely amazing how many references to the Silmarillion Tolkien wrote into it.

I doubt the Silmarillion will ever be made into a movie but it would make an excellent TV mini-series.

[cpnshrike]

I read it once and found some of it to my liking. Then I discovered an audio version on CD that is absolutely wonderful and I have been very attached to it ever since. While the common complaints of dryness are not without merit if you approach it in the right light then there really isn't much to complain about. It really is meant to be taken I believe as a world history course (for middle earth of course).

[Mizuumi]

I have read it several times in both english and danish. I love the details and it's awesome to read the background for The Hobbit and LotR. In fact most of my character names in WoW is from The Silmarillion.

[Venziir]

Funny you mention it, I'm reading it right now. Not an easy read, but doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. Lots of names and places to remember I find myself flipping all over to try to remind myself of who someone was. I'm a big fan of all Tolkien, he practically invented fantasy. Including lotr, hobbit, silmarillion, unfinsihed tales, and The Children of Hurin.

check out The Children of Hurin. Little known Tolkien book but worthy of praise like lotr and hobbit.

Own that one, though simply haven't read it... I tried though, but the first 50+ pages are just "This elf had a son named X, who then had a son named Y, who then had a son named Z..." Too much.

[Fuzzzie]

Read it a long time ago. It was a little tough to get through to be honest. Mostly because it seemed to jump around a lot story-wise. It's defiantly a good supplement to Tolkien's major works, but I wouldn't recommend it to all but real fans of LOTR.

[Lagwin]

i read it...dont know why i bothered though, i supose if you want background and lore for middle earth then sure but the book is so disjointed it was realy hard to follow and i dont say that lightly...ppl say the lord of the rings is a fairly dificuilt series of books to read and that was easy compared to the silmarilion.
If i remember right he was writing it while fighting in one of the world wars and it was writen in no particular order.

[Deleted]

Own that one, though simply haven't read it... I tried though, but the first 50+ pages are just "This elf had a son named X, who then had a son named Y, who then had a son named Z..." Too much.

It's worth reading actually, even though a lot of the plot is simply lifted from the Finnish Kulervo.

Anyhow, I have read it, enjoyed it for all the lore, especially the first couple of stories (the ones about the Valar). The whole account of the just-pre-LotR era was very bland though.

[Venziir]

i read it...dont know why i bothered though, i supose if you want background and lore for middle earth then sure but the book is so disjointed it was realy hard to follow and i dont say that lightly...ppl say the lord of the rings is a fairly dificuilt series of books to read and that was easy compared to the silmarilion.
If i remember right he was writing it while fighting in one of the world wars and it was writen in no particular order.

Not quite, he was writing the Hobbit while sitting in a "foxhole" during World War One.