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The Silmarillion is just a collection of short stories and scribblings. It doesn't have an overal narrative focus. Reading the Silmarilion cover to cover is lik
by valarauca1 9y ago
The Silmarillion is just a collection of short stories and scribblings. It doesn't have an overal narrative focus. Reading the Silmarilion cover to cover is like reading the Bible cover to cover you won't enjoy it.
CT did a good job with Children of Hurin. The more developed stories (Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Grondlin) were going to be stand alone novels with several drafts finished before JRR's death.
Having read the Silmarillion you should recognize these stores spanned several chapters and had a clear narrative focus unlike the rest of the slog.
- jacobush 9y agoOr some, like I, DID enjoy reading Silmarillion cover to cover. It felt very "real", much like the Bible. Like a glimpse into a strange past.
- theSpaceOctopus 9y agoI agree, I've read The Silmarillion multiple times. The Bible reference makes sense but I've always thought of it as similar to reading a history book. That's essentially what it is, a history of the beginning and the first 2 ages. Whereas The Hobbit & the trilogy are narrative accounts of a very small portion of the third age.
- malydok 9y agoRead Silmarillion three times, would describe it as mythology. Think Beowulf rather than Bible. Thoroughly enjoyed the world Tolkien created.
- cannam 9y agoI read it as a young teenager while listening repeatedly to one of my few cassette tapes - Beethoven's violin concerto on one side, 5th piano concerto on the other. By the end of the book I was having trouble mentally distinguishing between book and music. The piano concerto in particular still calls to mind the true protagonists in all of Tolkien: mountains, rivers, lakes, forests and plains, rather than people.