I don't look at it as a blank slate. The information presented in the appendices is obviously the starting point and the basis for the series. I also never said that the show should ignore the lore, I said that like all adaptations it need not be a slave to every detail of the source material (especially for an adaptation that moves from one medium to another).
The lore being covered in the series is a shadow of what LotR and the Hobbit are in terms of detail and narrative depth. People really need to get over this idea of this lore being some sort of definitive, sacred text. It's an appendix. It's notes and lists that are there to give a very brief and vague backdrop for the REAL story which was LotR. There is no narrative, there's almost no detail, characters have no descriptions, personalities, arcs or dialogue, and large swaths of time are left completely blank. And what's more, it wasn't even the final, definitive vision of the author (and neither was the Silmarillion which also barely touches upon the Second Age).
It's also not being presented as just a hero's journey. While Galadriel is the focus for a large portion of the show, it's very much a sprawling story told across several perspectives. You wouldn't say that GoT season 1 was centered on Ned Stark just because he had almost twice the screen time of any other character (roughly the same compared to Galadriel for season 1), or that the entirety of the series was centered on Tyrion, right?
I'm trying to think of a show or movie that doesn't ground itself with one or several main characters through whose perspective the narrative unfolds... I mean, certainly none of the best ones did, and I'd say it's pretty obvious why character driven drama is the benchmark for good storytelling (and has been since antiquity).
So you wanted a documentary? Because the appendices are little more than that. Like I said above, the lore for this stretch of time is bare bones AT BEST. And again, it's NOT centered on one character. If you want a dry accounting of the lore then the appendices are still there for you to read. All 2 pages dedicated to the 2nd Age (only half of which occurs between the forging of the rings and the end of the age). The lore of Numenor from the forging of the Ring to the downfall is less than two pages (1,700 years covered in less than two pages, more than half of which is dedicated to Ar-Pharazon). The lore of Durin's folk for the Second Age is one paragraph. These are pretty easy reads if you really don't give a shit about having them adapted to the screen.
The books have a very rich history? No, they don't. The description for why Tar-Minastir sent the fleet to aid Gil-Galad is "He loved the Eldar but envied them" (Appendix A). That's it. There is nothing at all about the relationship he had with the elves, how he "loved but envied them", no description of the force he sent to aid them, nothing at all about the battles that were fought. The Silmarillion has no details about it at all other than Sauron was still pissed about it centuries later ("nor did he forget the aid that Tar-Minastir had rendered to Gil-galad of old, in that time when the One Ring was forged"). Even the Unfinished Tales don't add much more than names to the locations of the battles.
It's like you've concocted this whole idea of a deep and detailed lore in your head completely separate from the reality that it's all based on just a handful of disjointed, often time contradictory, notes mostly edited and published posthumously.