on a serious note... The Silmarillion...

I've recently started reading this again... It's been a good 7 years since the last time i read this piece...

I forgot how hard a read the first 75 some pages are...

my head hurts... nothing really starts to come together until after it...

seems like a hell of alot of unnesessary setup...

I've never read it.

I bought it, got to around page 100-125 and stopped. Once I'm done with a book I'm half way through now, I may go back and try to start over with the Silmarillion.

the first 100 pages can turn even the most dedicated reader away...

i had to step away from it on several occasions...

The Harry Potter book i started reading today was such a treat... i breezed through the first 100 pages in less than an hour...

I agree about the Silmarillion, it reads like a very dry history book. But it does add a nice pre-history to the LOTR.
Have you ever read the Unfinished or Lost tales by Christopher Tolkien? They are a more detailed collection of Tolkien's works and are quite enjoyable.
The only problem I have with them is that nobody will touch Tolkien's original note's to make a new set of novels. The end result is a collection stories are incomplete or cause continuity problem's, but the author does introduce each story to try and explain them.

After the looooooooooooooooooooooooong intro. the Silmarillion gets really good. I really like the Silmarillion, but again after the first 100 or so pages.

Diesel, I didn't know you were sensative enough to read Harry Potter? :thud

i am not an animal...

i dig the HP movies, and decided recently to give the books a go... my wife is a HP nut, so it gives us another thing to talk about...

i'm sure i'll be reading them to AJ as he gets older as well...

grrrrr

You're just looking at it wrong. It's not a novel, it's a collection of short stories.

Pick it up and start somewhere else. If you can't get into the first age of sun stuff there's no hope (for you).

Re: grrrrr

i assume you are referring to the other work posted in this thread and not the Silm...?

Re: grrrrr

haha.. this is so interesting because what you guys are saying is EXACTLY what i said. I got to about page 100 and had to stop because, like Cory said, my head hurt. I was fasinated by it and was retaining all the information.. but it never thinned out... it just kept dumping more and more fact on you and it just became so hard to retain and enjoy... i put it down and said, ok, i'll come back to it and never have. ... which sucks.. and i still plan to... it is just nice to see that everyone else feels the same

And i know it was never meant to be a novel.. hell it was never really meant to be published so it is a treat in it of itself... still... its a damn hard treat to swallow

Re: grrrrr

No Diesel, Naugladur is right. The Sim is a collection of short stories. I did read it front to back and I agree- the first half is killer. But it does get easier and it is really good and really worth the effort. The second time was even easier and much more enjoyable.

I loved listening to the unabridged LOTR cds and hope to get the Sil next. I've been told that listening to the Sil being read while following along is the

Re: grrrrr

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>the first 100 pages can turn even the most dedicated reader away<hr></blockquote>

In that case I'd consider myself (at this point) a more-than-dedicated reader.

The first time I read it, I was like everyone else in finding the first portion difficult to get through. I quit, restarted, worked through, then kept going. But the first time I read it all the way through, the WHOLE THING was hard.

The first hundred pages aren't harder than the following 260 or so pages.

But then the second time I read the book, I flew through the whole ~360 pages really easily.


I think the reason is because people are used to a more action packed arena of story telling, but when it gets to poetry, or theoretical/hypothetical/ancient concepts, like the music of the ainur, people get bored because ... it's not actiony.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>seems like a hell of alot of unnesessary setup...<hr></blockquote>

One thing that makes me smile is that I believe there is absolutely no set up in the Silmarillion. Either that, or the whole book is a set up. Or half of it is. There's nothing that is a set up for anything else, at least definitely. It's just whatever a single person finds exciting.

And I like every single part. I really do wish others liked it as much as I do. It would me that we all love it so much more... gah. The silmarillion is pretty much my TOP favourite fiction book I've ever read. Either that or Stargate.

*shuts up*

Re: grrrrr

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I've recently started reading this again<hr></blockquote>

Sorry Diesel, for not being supportive in my previous post.

I'm really glad you've started reading it again. I'm glad just because I personally like that publication. It's a really grand piece of art. And even if you don't like parts of it, but you do appreciate other parts of it, then we've got stuff to talk about when it comes to talking about TS! <img border=0 src="https://www.maxwellsgoldenhammer.com/emo/duff.gif" />

Re: grrrrr

I'm about 10 chapters in or so and its not the most fun reading of the ME material I've read. I plan on picking it back up soon but it does actually take some work to get through.

Re: grrrrr

sorry, but i don't see this reading as fun... reading HP is enjoyable and "fun", but this is hardly what i call fun...

it's more educational to me...

i'm a numbers and calculations guy, so reading was never a favorite subject of mine in school...

i look forward to getting more into it in about a week... i'm just gonna take a break and breeze through the first 2 or 3 HP books to cool my brain... :

I actually started reading The Silmarillion when I was 12!!
Obviously, I didn't get it the first time! But I read the Ainulandale often and I love it! Sometimes just remembering those opening words brings back all the memories! "There was Eru, The One, who in Arda is called Illuvatar..."

Oh and the Audio CDs are Fantastic. Aside from being a great speaker/actor, Martin Shaw (along with the producers) made sure he was pronouncing all the names correctly.

If you think the Silmarillion is bad, try History of Middle Earth volumes 1-12.

Enough material for a semester college class . . . and is about as enjoyable.

Although if you can get through them, you will be close to a certifiable expert in things Middle Earth. There are tidbits of gold in there like the last prophecy of Mandos and the sequel to Lord of the Rings that you can't get anywhere else.

Dennis

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>There are tidbits of gold in there like the last prophecy of Mandos and the sequel to Lord of the Rings that you can't get anywhere else.<hr></blockquote>

Ahh!

Must read!

someday.. if I feel like it.

What history book would that be in? Mandos makign a prophecy during the 2nd or 3rd age? or just another from the first age?

Cant say I found anything in the Silmarilion boring. Its harder to read than LOTR, that much is true. But the story in it is fantastic. If you really want something hard to read, go and try the History of Middle Earth books. Now thats hard. Great!! ....but hard

Hmmm, this all reminds me that I DO need to pull out Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle Earth and dive deep again!

Great book albeit a little confusing at times. Here is also a very good and simple enough book on Tolkien and his work, might help some people who struggle with the history of Middle Earth. I recall reading somewhere that one of Sauron's most feared enemies was Galadriel and that she herself fought on the battle field many times, so you get little bits of amazing information like that that didn't naturally enough, always become obvious in the movies.

Link for book Tolkien Companion

www.play.com/play247.asp?...=148&pa=sr