Actually, if you want a good introduction to Tolkien, look for The Hobbit, instead. It's only 300 pages and the plot moves a lot quicker (though it's a bit more... childish, I guess. It's still an awesome book). It's a really easy read, so it won't slow you down much if you want to get on to Lord of the Rings, and it sets you up in the world a bit, which can be helpful. I mean, it is, officially, the first part of the story, but it isn't absolutely essential that you read it first to know what's going on. It's just recommended. ;)

Lord of the Rings ups the ante on everything and gets a bit more bogged down in the world-building details, but it's still a great story and it's not *that* bad to take in for the first time.

The Silmarillion, on the other hand... uh, yeah, unless you really, really love Lord of the Rings after you read (particularly the world it takes place in), I'd stay away from this one and any of his other "extended universe" books that were published after he died. These are the ones that have 1,000+ characters in them (half of them with names beginning with the letter F) and spend entire chapters doing nothing but describing the landscape.

Hopefully, that's of some use as a guideline, at least.

That would make me want to punch myself in the face. Also, how high was he when writing those last book or why wasn't he taking his medication? xD

He was actually writing them his entire life, he just never really finished them, and his son wanted to cash in on his father's success wanted to finish his father's work, after he died, so he put all of Tolkien's notes together and published, I think, 15 or so books from them.

Which means that the normal editorial pruning and such J.R.R. would have applied to it... didn't happen. I suspect given the difference in loquacity seen between LOTR and Silmarillion that Tolkien KNEW his writing style was verbose and put some effort into editing it down before publication.

As for the movies... Yeah, they don't stack up to the books, but as standalone pieces of entertainment they're good.

That's true. I imagine if Tolkien was still alive, he'd be unhappy that the Silmarillion (and all the rest) was published in the state it was in.

On the other hand, though, I'm glad that it was published, since it at least gives us a glimpse of his greater vision that he never got to completely fulfill.

His son sounds like a prick. xD

I obviously don't know him personally, but I kind of get that vibe from him. From his comments in the History of Middle-Earth books he comes off as a tad smug and overbearing.

Did get that myself but then I have only read comments of his in Children of Hurin. Apparently he was appointed J.R.R's literary executor by J himself so his dad had some degree of faith in them. I didn't mind the writing in C.o.H at all and I would call it a good book as far as that goes compared to much of the other general fantasy books out there. It just so happens that I'm not all that fond of the character Turin, which puts a bit of a damper on things.

As for the books and the movies, I generaly see them as seperate entities rather than trying to compare the two since almost everythign changes from book to film: appearances, mood, tone, lines may be changed, lines may be moved to other characters, etc. Lord of the Rings trilogy is among my favourite movies though, and I watch it more often than I plan to read the books (those took me a while).

It might help to know, Nanka, that the "trilogy" thing is largely arbitrary, since back in the world wars paper was too expensive to publish a book that large all at once, so it was broken down into three. The story is in 6 parts and one can buy a box set which divides LOTR into the 6, smaller parts instead of the standard three or all in one.

New post because I'd rather not tackle too many topics or ideas in one go. Makes things look plugged, and the last post was fairly big.

Not sure entirely what your talking about here, Suzerain. What is it in particular that the elves (pre morgoth or post, not sure) aren't really doing?

Oh, I mean that they're in a similar situation in the beginning of the Silm. (better, actually, as they've at this point never known war or even invented weapons) but they aren't singing tra-la-la and acting all silly like the elves in The Hobbit do.

Ah. One could make the argument that by comparison, the knowledge of sorrow can increase appreciation of happiness, thus more tra-la-la, but that's getting into philosophical territory.

Heh, indeed. And, also, it is possible they were like that given the... distant way that the Silmarillion is written. Tra-la-la-ing isn't something the narrator of that book is like to focus on.

One can imagine the elves awakening for the first time under the stars were probably pretty carefree. It's just, the Silm. has such an aura of despondency and lofty stoicism permeating the writing, it's hard to imagine that happening when you read it.

It's kind of sad that he is so smug about a book and story that he didn't even write himself. Way to cash in on fame.

Come to think of it, I don't think he's ever published any original works of his own. At least, if he has, I've never heard of them. He seems content to just re-use his father's work, though in his defense, he did have to do a lot of editing, since many of these stories were only in notes and fragments the Tolkien left behind.

I don't want to make it sound like he hasn't put a lot of work into the books that have gotten published, just that the core ideas aren't his. (We'll never know how much of the writing he did to fill in the gaps that J. R. R. left behind.)

I wonder if I still have these books. It's been well over 15 years since I read the Hobbit and the Trilogy and most of what you are discussing is floating over my head ><

Well, I reference the Silmarillion and the Book of Lost Tales a lot, so don't feel too bad. I've never actually read the rest of the History of Middle-Earth series, so I'm not, actually, the world's biggest Tolkien nerd, much to your surprise, I'm sure. :p

I haven't even read all the man's letters...

I think that probably, like me, you retain odd information, enough to make it sound like you're a Tolkien nerd even though it just happens to be stuff you remember. I myself remeber a LOT of odd things from various games/books.

Oh let me not derail the thread >>

Meh, no worries. It's a really broad thread topic. :p

And until someone comes along to oust me, I *am* the biggest Tolkien nerd here at the moment. :p

I can see my copies of the Hobbit and the Silmarillion on my shelf. I read a little in the Silmarillion, enough to get me through a laundromat in Ireland when it was pissing rain outside and I was waiting for my room to open up. Not the best of reading atmospheres. I was sitting cross-legged on top of a counter that was probably for folding clothes with no socks and no bra and wearing damp everything else.

[pseudo-psychologist] Sounds like negative association bias to me. :P No wonder you won't read it. [/pseudo-psychologist].

That's quite an image, Quiet. I can see why you wouldn't want to read in that condition though ><

Oh it's not so much that I don't want to read it, but I have doubts because I've got a bunch of other novels on the go as well, and some of them happen to pique my interest more at the time. I'm working on finishing some of them. Since I only make it as far as the introduction in The Silmarillion, (Morgoth and his dicordant note in the choir)I set it aside for now.

And the hostel was made of up of vacant college dorms so I had my own room, a big bed, and shower all to mayself, so it worked out well. :)

I'm reminded of a VS. debate involving Gandalf I read recently (can't remember who he was matched against) and someone made the following argument in Gandalf's favor:

1. Tolkien confirmed that Eru Iluvatar is the Christian God.
2. According to Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, angels exist outside of Time.
3. Gandalf, as a Maiar, is analogous to an angel.
4. Gandalf can time stop at will.
5. Gandalf wins.

On the second thought... I'm probably the only person in the world who finds that amusing. Nevermind.

I'm just not connecting the first point to the rest of the argument, but that's probably because I don't know how Mairs relate to Eru Iluvatar.

Well, together, the Maiar and the Valar are called the Ainur (Holy Ones) and are noted to be "The offspring of His thought." You can think of them as gods and demigods subservient to the overgod, but they're actually closer to arch-angels and angels of Judeo-Christian theology, in that they're directly subservient to the godhead and exist to serve Iluvatar as the divine governors of Arda (Middle-Earth) [/theology nerd] [/Tolkien nerd]

I always found it fascinating how almost none of this info is present in the text of LotR, and yet, once you read the Silmarillion and go back to LotR, it all fits in perfectly and certain things make a lot more sense in context.

So if you're really interested in the history and mythology, it sounds like the Silmarillion is the way to go?

Yeah, I'd so. The other books all build off of the Silmarillion, but they're even less coherent. In the form it's published in (which was arranged by Christopher; who knows what J.R.R. intended) the Silm. is at least a more or less complete story, even if it skips huge chunks of time and flips between dozens of different characters.

It's not an easy read by any means, but I found it really rewarding once I got a grasp of what was going on and who was who. And weirdly, while it's really light on character development, some of the stories are a lot more emotional and hard-hitting than anything in LotR. It's also a lot less black and white than LotR is, in terms of morality.

Less black and white is always good. I do like stories with clear cut good/evil lines, as they are a nice escape from reality, but stories with grey areas are more fulfilling overall.

That's actually one of the ways it adds to LotR, in that you get a deeper understanding of the elves and the position they're in by the time LotR roles around. Knowing what they've been through for the last 10,000 years really fleshes out their reasons for being so melancholy and wanting to leave Middle-Earth.

Oh right I forgot about the exodus they did. But it's been so long since I read the books and I don't remember the movies touching on that part. Not that the movies didn't leave out a lot of important parts anyways while fleshing out useless stuff :P

(It's been 2 years since I saw the movies)

No, that's just one of many nuances the movies missed from the books. Their leaving Middle-Earth in the films seemed pretty arbitrary and without justification. It makes a lot more sense in the books, especially with the framing of the Silmarillion's tragedies.

I know you hate the movies and all but if they were renamed with different characters and not associated with LotR how would you feel about them as standalone movies?

Well, that's the thing. I don't hate them because they're different from the books, I hate them because the story they tell is inferior, in my opinion. I find the characters shallow, the plot nonsensical at times, and certain aspects of the setting, particularly the distances between places in the movies, really unsatisfying.

Maybe one of these days I'll type a long review of the things I don't like about the movies, but I should probably watch them all again if I'm going to do that, as it's been at least a year since I last saw them.

The Silmarillion is my dad's favourite of all the books and he reads it every two years or so. It's one of the things we talk about a lot. I left my copy of Children of Hurin for him to read when I was last visiting. The story appears in The Silmarillion as a chapter I think (checks with Suzerain :p). We mostly talked about reading perspective since we both had different thoughts when reading the book. I looked at it more from the perspective of Turin, the son wandering around. Dad on the other hand, being a dad, looked at it from the perspective of Hurin, who was "given the eyes and ears of Morgoth" so to speak, and was made to watch everything that happened to his children before being let go at the end of the book.

Like everything else in the collection, Children of Hurin (one of three stories Tolkein intended to expand on, so says Christopher) ties back to the Silm. with it's other details. One of the characters, Beleg, uses a sword that was forged by a particular elf who's story is told in the Silmarillion, a dark elf apprently and the sword itself is somewhat malevolent in nature. His story ties in with the elf king who raised Turin and who's name I can never recall. Thingol? The guy in the forest with the maiar for a wife who casts the girdle around it for protection. Sheol, help?

That all sounds about right.

Gurthang is Turin's sword, means "Iron of Death," forged by Eol the Dark Elf (not like DnD dark elves, just an elf that never set foot in the Undying Lands, and hence was never infused by the Light of Aman). I believe the sword is forged from meteoric iron and is semi-sentient. I think it had a sister-blade as well, but its name eludes me.

Elu Thingol rules Doriath with his wife, Melian, a Maia, and yes, she upholds an interdiction around the entire realm.

The worst part about that story? Hurin eventually, inadvertently enacts both the Siege of Gondolin and the Ruin of Doriath after he gets free. The guy just can't get a break.

Yeah, the sword was formed from a meteorite. The fall of Gondolin was another of the three stories that Tolkein apparently intended to write in more depth. The three were listed in the foreward to Children of Hurin. I think the third might have had something to do with Luthien and Beren.

The Fall of Gondolin is kind of a mess the way it's written. It's clearly an earlier piece. The most egregious issue is entire armies of Balrogs being present, as it was only later that he made them corrupted Maiar and, arguably, the most powerful of Morgoth's servants.

I wonder if he'd still have Glorfindel, Ecthelion and the like killing them if he'd ever gotten around to rewriting it.

Dunno, but I think we can -or according to Chrispher we might be able to - expect a new novel version of the story. I'd have to check my book again, which is currently 800 kilometres away, but I think he intended to flesh out each story in novel form. Children of Hurin happened to be the most fleshed out of the three from the notes.

That's possible. I just wonder, if he's planning to do that, why he hasn't done so already. It's been a fair few years since Children of Hurin was published.

There really isn't any reason to hurry given what's already out there is likely more than whatever is going to come from the next novel. I guess it depends on how much commercial value Christopher and the estate are expecting from it.