The Silmarillion - Tolkien

[James S]

I've started reading it a few times....gotten through about half of it and gotten lost! It's deep, and it's pretty hard going!!

There is one thing that you must keep in mind when reading Tolkien's Middle Earth work - LOTR wasn't where it started, that was just a story that came from a world that he created first.

Tolkien was a professor of linguistics. First he created the languages - Dwarvish and Elvish. Then he created the races, the cultures and the world they lived in. Form this world came the story of LOTR.

The Silmarillion is a history book that details the people and places that Tolkien used to build Middle Earth

regards,
James.

[The AlphaOmega]

I'm like James.  I've gotten very far in this book, but towards the end I forget how it begins.  As I read it I found it to be almost like a bible for Tolkien's world.  Not in the same sense as ours, but it speaks of how the middle earth was created, how the first beings got there, how evil began, etc.  Interesting idea, but that book (and it's author) are kind of... "out there".

[Mystic Cloud]

I've actually read the whole book, it is a really good mythology, with very accurate 'things' []

Ulmo the Lord of Waters is my idol []

[Gwathren]

I've also read the whole thing. It was magnificent. I just hope someone would make a movie about it. Although that would be quite a challenge[]. It's deep, yeah, and Morgoth is way cooler than Sauron. He's the "bad guy" over there. I promise you, it will become more and more exciting when the book goes on. One guy even asks the dark lord (nice thing to say here, since I don't remember which was it – anyway asks Sauron/Morgoth[]) to a duel.

All the best,

Gwathren

[rodentmouse]

hello good people  

after LOTR i wanted *more*  so i got the Silmarillion,  im not far into it but it seems to go a lot deeper than LOTR into middle earth itself as opposed to its civilisations- (so far)   what ive read so far is that illuvitar created his  (12?) children from different aspects of his own mind so they would learn and create music to reflect what they are  experiencing and to each learn about each other, to unite and create harmonic music.  But one of these (12)  rebels you could say, hence  breaks the  harmonic music  with his selfish desires.  
Quite different from LOTR, but in the same world.

Then it goes into the people which really boggles me as there are lots of names and places in this book, a lot more  than in LOTR.

Anyone read it all? im about 40 pages into it.