You forgot the final stage - when you've read the Silmarillion more than three times and now everything makes sense to you, but you can no longer communicate normally with other human beings and every time you visit the local supermarket you address the clerk by first providing eight generations worth of your lineage.
This actually happened to me. After finishing the Silmarillion, I tried to write a chatty email to a friend. I kept typing bizarre things like "in those days, our kinship was sundered "
Fist line of the Hobbit: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" First line of LORT: " When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton." First line of the Silmarillion: "There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Iluvatar; and he made the first Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made."
The Hobbit is a story meant for children. The Silmarillion was a work in progress decades before, a world meant for his made-up languages to exist and make sense. The Lord of the Rings was written so that the events in The Hobbit had a place and a meaning in this world.
Love how different the elves are in each book. In the Hobbit they're all singing "Tralalala Lally come down to the valley" when Bilbo and the dwarves first approached Rivendell. They love dancing, games, drinking wine and teasing the dwarves about their beards. In the Lord of the Rings they're sombre, mysterious, speak in riddles about the stars, the pull to the West and about things that were, are and have yet to come to pass. In the Silmarillion they're bloodthirsty maniacs, fighting wars over shiny bois and massacring therr own cousins who stand in the way of their quest for vengeance.
@@znmckague Specifically High King Fingolfin . . . Literally took on the most powerful entity in middle earth *alone* and nearly won; Melkor, a character so powerful that it took seven of the Valar to actually defeat him.
@@OscarDirlwood Lol fuck no. You can just choose not to read it if you feel that way. It's a very good thing that the Silmarillion exists and that Christopher put in all the work to bring his father's more obscure work to us. For the full details one can read History of Middle-earth, too.
1st time I read the Silmarillion was in middle school. Hardly understood anything. Reread again in college, and I have to say it's one of the greatest I've ever read
Usually parents reading childrens books and the kid is screaming "do it again" while rolling around instead of going to sleep. Madman. Parents. Same thing
This was my first experience reading the fellowship as a kid. Read it twice and its my favourite book rn. Having finished the trilogy, silmarillion is def the logical next step, but I think I'm gonna wait this out a bit more lol. Delaying the inevitable.
I almost gave up reading after 80 pages cause I found the earlier bit pretty boring and uninteresting but as soon as the Mormont steals the Silmarrils I was utterly engrossed and I can’t lie I prefer the Silmarrilion to the LOTR.
Luckily for us Tolkien fans, there's going to be this brilliant new show made by the illustrious Amazon Studios that tells the story of the 2nd age so we neverrrrr have to read the Sillymillion again. Thank goodness a studio like Amazon are making it! One we can trust and who have never desecrated a fantasy authors work!
I have, since the late 1970's, read The Silmarillion more than 25 times. It is one of the ebooks on my mobile. If I am stuck somewhere I read it again. It is awesome. When you ask people the question, "If you could go back in time what would you do?" a lot of people say, "I would kill Hitler." I answer, "I would go back and give JRR Tolkien a word processing machine so he could write faster, and a bag of gold so he would have time to do it." You can argue I do not have my priorities straight, but people die and literature lives on.
that's crazy. there are many great books out there, i don't think i could read even my absolute favs more than twice, and even then only after at least 20 years.
The Silmarillion is the most demanding book I've ever read and I'm proud of finishing it. I don't know what happened but it was great. I wish modern fantasy authors would seize the opportunity to revel in more archaic prose like Tolkien did. His world and characters are amazing but its his mastery of the English language that really sends you to another world. And shout-out to Christopher Tolkien, the man did such fantastic editorial work that he basically deserves a writing credit.
I delayed my reading of The Silmarillion for 7 long years. Had to buy a very beautiful hardcover edition to motivate me. Every character and place has, at least, two names, there’s a gazillion characters, many stories, but all of them are amazing. Too bad it’s not a cohesive story, one that you can remember easily.
His mastery of linguistics is what sets him apart. He could've written in any style and it would have still been just as great, its the meaning behind the words which gives his stories so much life.
It gets even better when you find out that The Silmarillion was pitched as the sequel to The Hobbit, but the publishers rejected it because they wanted something that 'had hobbits in it'
Because *that's* the issue with making it the sequel to the Hobbit. Not that the Hobbit is written for children and the Silmarillion is challenging for most adults to read. Gotta love old timey publisher logic. Now it makes sense that they greenlit Lotr as the sequel even though it also has a totally different style and target audience.
The Silmarillian, even as we know it, was far from finished or what Tolkien would've been happy with. That's why dome Tolkien authors dont consider it canon, because it's basically the product of Christopher taking his fathers notes, early drafts snd bits of story and assembling them into the most cohesive story he could
They were probably right to do that even in hindsight. The Silmarillion is a masterpiece, but only to those who can appreciate it and already have a vested interest in Tolkien's world. The LOTR series has similar aspects of profundity but can be enjoyed universally. If Tolkien hadn't taken that route it may have been the case that his works weren't nearly as widely known, and probably the case that not nearly as many people would be intrigued enough to even try to understand the Silmarillion
You need to understand that back in the day the hobbits were actually the audience favorites, because they representanted the interior, where normal people are call to a quest to do amazing things.
The Silmarillion is the first book I read from Tolkien and is by far my favorite one. I like to re-read it from time to time and it always surprises me how every time I notice something new. It's a little masterpiece.
@@m0thman777 I think that the fact that I read the Silmarillion translated in Italian plays a huge part in it: I bet that a lot is lost in the translation so it's easier to read
@@finrodfelagund8668 honestly it kind of is. lotr i think has a big hype because it’s not a mammoth of reading (i mean lotr is incredible it’s just also accessible)
I loved how The Hobbit was a simplistic, classical “character finds his courage” story, then LOTR became a “good vs evil” plot, then The Silmarillion was basically the Bible with Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, and Dragons lol. Tolkien was a master at his craft. Edit: a year later thanks to a comment, I just realized I’m a dummy who forgot the third “i” in Silmarillion lol.
Best part is that it wasn't even planned. The Hobbit was meant to be separate completely from his mythological stuff which would become the Silmarillion. But then the publishers asked for a sequel to the Hobbit and then Aragorn opened his mouth and sang to the hobbits outside Weathertop and the rest is history..
Currently reading The Silmarillion for the first time. It's great stuff, but it is INCREDIBLY dense and would be almost impossible to follow without the family trees and index of names.
I could name all of that off the top of my head lol Once you get a firm grasp of who is who and what's going on, you don't forget it and it has immense re-readability.
I have also just started reading it, my time is quite restricted so I'm not getting anywhere quickly. I'm just at the point where Morgoth is hiding in his subterranean 'lair' where the others can't see him.
His hopeless challenge dauntless cried Fingolfin there, Come open wide, Dark King, your ghastly brazen doors. Come forth, whom earth and heaven abhors! Come forth thou monstrous craven lord And fight with thine own hand and sword. Thou ruler of hosts of banded thralls Thou tyrant leaguered behind strong walls Thou foe of gods and elvish race I wait thee here, COME SHOW THY FACE!
Fingolfin is the best Elf in all of Tolkien`s writings. And the line of his House goes on to the birth of so many powerful and wise people in the entire legendarium. The single combat with Morgoth is probably the best scene ever. Fingolfin only died because he was just too small in stature, and he could not keep his footing among the pits Grond made. A Noldo vs. a God is crazy to begin with. He saw that the Noldor and their friends would never stop Morgoth, and the Nirniaeth Arnoediad made him go mad and fey. His eyes blazed like the eyes of the Valar, and some actually thought he was Orome come to kill Morgoth. I also love Glorfindel and Ecthelion, two great Lords of the Noldor. Finrod is also up there as well.
Silmarillion is like a synopsis of the entire backstory of Lord of the Rings. It definitely reads like one too, with tons of information squeezed onto every page. Imagine those writings were never published though, nobody would have known just how deeply Tolkien thought all this stuff through.
I'd really love to know what readers' theories were about LotR's backstory before The Silmarillion was published. Too bad there was no internet at that time.
Here's my tips: [1] Listen to the audiobook while reading along, [2] After reading each chapter, listen to a podcast about that chapter. I listened to The Prancing Pony, The Tolkien Professor, and Talking Tolkien, [3] Refer frequently to the appendix of names at the back, [4] Rope other people into reading it with you so you can discuss it (Silmarillion book club), [5] Take notes in those early chapters with all the Valar, Maiar, and Elven names, [6] Get the Atlas of Middle Earth (or refer to maps online), and [7] Down the line, read it again. And again. ∞ After a handful of chapters, your mind starts to click into the style of the writing and it goes much smoother. It is actually quite beautiful, poetical writing, and not like history book writing (which is the cliche that is floating out there). It is often very big picture, panoramic stuff (the creation of the universe, the movement of whole civilizations, etc.), but then at other times it zooms in on individual, intimate stories. My personal, anecdotal evidence seems to be that most people who read the Silmarillion have read it numerous times. To read the Silmarillion is to reread the Silmarillion. The first time you survive and are better for it, each additional time for the pleasure and to add depth. I found the text to be the deepest, densed, most intense work of fantasy I've ever read. Sometimes every few sentences are filled with mindblowing and evocative elements. Whole novels or cycles of novels could be written about just a few sentences. It's beautiful, heady stuff.
Truer words have never been spoken. I loved it from the first sentence. I couldn't believe what I was reading. It's pure luck that Tolkien was in a place (Cambridge) that have him time and space to put as much that was inside you on paper before his passing. I mean, he basically did what it took several minds at Marvel Comics over half a century to achieve ( - using the word generously). Sometimes I think about all the potential Tolkien-like once-in-a-lifetime writers across the world whose circumstances don't permit, and what we are being deprived of as a result. But at least, so far in the modern era, we got one. I think Suzzanah Clarke might be one, and - unpopular opinion incoming - I think that were JK Rowling to calm down and get interested in her own works again, she might notice that she does have a universe to expand upon. Anyway, long comment; but I loved yours. 🌟 Edited to say: Thank you! I've started following those three podcasts.
To @@havindatadhd & anyone else feeling the need to just spout off -- like, read the channel? It's a place for nerds. If you're not one - meaning, you don't feel the need to be nitpicky over what's conventionally considered trivial shit - then why bother commenting? Maybe just don't comment? I mean, you don't have to come to *everything*, especially things you don't get or feel. Just let us nerds be?
I tried a few times as a Tolkien obsessed kid and had trouble grasping a lot of the stories. Now, as an adult, I'm in awe of this masterpiece. The audiobook version is brilliant too if maybe it would be easier to listen? The stories in it are insane and not to be political, but it's epic that Tolkien was writing genuinely strong women (without it being forced) long before people were burning their bras in the streets. It makes me so mad when people say he was a misogynist for not having enough female characters. Not only does he include women, they often play integral or even hero freaking roles and don't exist solely for marriage and love. And he was writing all of this in the 30s, 40s, and 50s! Silmarillion is a bible for Middle Earth (and is written like a Bible), but it's true within the context of their world :)
Tolkien's work had strong female characters that didn't exist to be love interests or just wives, which was pretty rare for the time. Just because they weren't part of the main parties doesn't mean they weren't important? Why would someone say Tolkien was misogynistic? Not to mention he was very anti-Nazi and anti-racism (a known Nazi publisher asked him to prove he was not Jewish and he basically eloquently told him to fuck off) Just because someone from the early 20th century doesn't fit modern day moral standards doesn't mean they were a bad person.
@@hanpines3808 I know, it makes me so upset to see them saying all those horrible and utterly incorrect things about Tolkien. The problem is also that Amazon is reinforcing all of those beliefs currently: The showrunners have said many things that suggest they believe his work needs to be "fixed" and this is giving people fuel to say there's a problem with Tolkien, that he's a r@cist, misogynistic, n@zi sympathiser and that his works are flawed because of that Y_Y You see it mostly under Rings of Power videos. Hordes of angry people who have clearly never even read his books, and don't know anything about him, using Amazon's words as ammo for their incorrect nasty beliefs :c Edit: they're now coming to this video as well. There are multiple responses to other comments saying stuff like "boo hoo you're just sad because there are black people in the show" etc Y_Y These people don't understand that Middle Earth has many diverse cultures who faced their own struggles with Sauron and Morgoth for centuries, especially for much of the Second Age! Just because Tolkien doesn't focus on their stories doesn't make him a r@cist, and if Amazon really cared they'd have actually gone to the effort to adapt the stories of the genuinely diverse cultures of Middle Earth!! Instead they seem to have cast black people in random roles solely for diversity points :/ Black Tolkien-content creators on TH-cam have been trying to speak out about this, how _they_ feel about what Amazon is doing, but the 'woke vigilantes' don't seem to care about what they have to say :/
@@Vexarax The funny thing with these people is that they're usually white too, just trying to get brownie points from minorities while mocking a work they're never even read.
@@Vexarax Okay so... you're gonna have to stop hyper-focusing on these people. Every artist, and I mean -every- artist, has flaws and those flaws matter to some people far more than others. That said, just 'cause someone finds Tolkien's work racist, misogynistic or anything bad, doesn't mean that your positive experience is invalid. Enjoy what you enjoy, that's fine. There's literally no use complaining about a tiny handful of very loud people on the internet.
@@writershard5065 It's important to speak out about this issue due to the amount of misconceptions surrounding it, and the fact that a beloved author's name is being besmirched by not only a _very large_ and very vocal group of people on the internet and elsewhere, but also by one of the largest companies in the world. This is a huge project that's already cost upwards of 400 million dollars and they themselves have claimed to be "fixing" Tolkien's work, and writing the story he never wrote. People such as myself, who have been Tolkien fans our entire lives, are doing what we can to clear up misconceptions and speak out about the injustice being done. As life-long fans who have invested often months or even years of our lives into studying and learning and honouring his work, I feel we have every right to speak up if we so wish. You, however, are free to ignore us :)
🤣🤣 The Silmarillion is my favourite book ever. It reads like real history to me. After I finish it, I always have to remind myself it's not true. 😅 But as you said, it definitely needs to be read a few times. I´ve read it at least 10 times. 😅
@@artugert honestly we really don’t…people base their entire lives around books they can’t even prove to be real, just because the silm is more recent does really mean it would be WRONG if you think about it…
It’s also interesting to see how the lore significantly changes from The Silmarillion to the 3 stand-alone tales of Turin, Beren and Luthien, and the fall of Gondolin.
That's why some Tolkien scholars dont consider the Silmarillian to be canon. Because Tolkien was far from finished it and likely never was going to finish it. It was a collection of drafts, rough ideas and unfinished stories which Christopher had the task of assembling into the most cohesive story that he could. JRR even expressed in one of his letters his doubt of ever actually finishing the Silmarillian
@@crimsonthumos3905 What would 'canon' even mean in this context? Neither JRRT nor CJRT considered The Silmarillion to be necessarily consistent either with itself or The Lord of the Rings. As CJRT wrote in the Foreword, "…my father came to conceive The Silmarillion as a compilation, a compendious narrative made long afterwards from sources of great diversity (poems, and annals, and oral tales) that had survived in agelong tradition…" Indeed, when JRRT later reconsidered even the basic cosmology of his world, he realized that the Mannish sources were unreliable. The word 'canon', nowadays a vague and ill-defined term of art for fantasy fans, seems to imply that there is a 'real' Arda with a single known factual history. I do not think that even Tolkien himself would have described matters thus (even aside from a possible distaste for using a word with a distinct ecclesiastical meaning in such away). About the only important thing that CJRT substantially added or changed was the story of the Nauglamir and the ruin of Doriath. See lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Of_the_Ruin_of_Doriath ; Again, CJRT explained his reasoning (which he came to regret) in detail in the History of Middle-earth.
@@majkus yes, but the Silmarillian also contains narratives and stories which Christopher himself said that his father didn't intend to be canon to Middle Earth. Stories such Beren and Luthien, Eru/"the One", Shelob etc. WERE things which Tolkien had fully thought out in detail and intended to be "true" to LOTR and the Hobbit. However, most of the Silmarillian were just spitball ideas for Tolkien which he constantly changed and couldn't make his mind about. Hence why the elves, for example, go from being more Catholic angelic-like in LOTR to more mythologically political and backstabby in the Silmarillian. In fact, Tolkien himself wrote in a letter how he doubted the Silmarillian would ever be finished as a published work because he had no real initiative or motivation to do so like he had with LOTR. Had LOTR (which took more than two decades to write) had been published in the same state as the Silmarillian, it would've a completely different story
@@crimsonthumos3905 it's weird because I just read a letter where Tolkien had been trying to get Silmarillion published alongside LOTR but Allen and Unwin had refused. Tolkien (in the letter) was now trying to get Collins to publish Silmarillion, and went on to describe the plot (and the meaning etc) in detail from beginning to end. It's letter 131 to Milton Waldman, written around 1951, and based on the language Tolkien uses he seems to intend Beren and Luthien, Eru, and everything else laid out in Silmarillion to be integral aspects of Middle Earth's history? He even called the tale of Beren and Luthien 'chief among the tales of the Silmarillion' like it's extremely dear to him. He lays out almost every overarching event in Silmarillion from beginning to end in quite a lot of detail. Waldman (for Collins) kept delaying publication and was worried about the length of Silmarillion and LOTR combined apparently. It's all there in the letter though. So while he did end up continuing to work on it for years, based on the language used he seems extremely passionate about it to the extent I would personally absolutely view it as canon. I have noticed a tendency among Tolkien scholars these days to sort of have their own opinions, and discard aspects of what Tolkien wrote to back up their opinions. I have no idea why they do this though. That does seem to maybe have happened here to some extent because one only needs to read letter 131 to see Tolkien's passion and love for everything that happens in Silmarillion, and that he had it all cohesively laid out in the early 50s as a history/legendarium for Middle Earth.
@@Vexarax as I already stated, important parts of the Silmarillian such as Beren and Luthien and Eru etc. were already written. But a lot of the rest if it wasn't, which Christopher Tolkien hisnelf said not all of it was intended by his father to be published as canon. That's why some of it doesn't align with LOTR. When Tolkien was trying to get it published, he hadnt yet finished it. It also didn't include parts that are in what we know as the Silmarillian now
"The Children of Hurin" is my personal favorite. It brings a lot of the Silmarillion to life, it stops being confusing, and you just want to know more.
I just got this from the library, I hope I haven't went a little rushed, at least I didn't go right for the Silmarillion, I was intimidated by it actually
So true! I’ve read The Hobbit as a child and fell in love with it; so me and my mum went to a book store to get me more Tolkien since I’m so obsessed with The Hobbit. They didn’t have LOTR, but they had The Silmarillion. Could you imagine how mind blowing my experience was 😆 I was, like , 11 back then; I’ve already read Greek myths, biblical stories (adapted for kids), Kalevala (again, adapted for children), but this one was something else haha 😅 Silmarillion ignited my love for Old English and Nordic epics and it’s still my favorite Tolkien’s thing. Love bloodthirsty elves!
The Silmarillion has no fat to cut off. You have to retain the names, places, and characters to understand the proceeding chapters. P.S. I enjoy reading the chapters and then listening to the audio versions of any past chapters if I feel I've missed something- which I have to do often. It's a labor of love.
I actually love the Silmarillion. I do usually recommend that people read "The Children of Hurin" in between the Trilogy and the Silmarillion, as it's a proper novel that tells one of the classic tales from the Silmarillion, so it's a good bridge. The Silmarillion is a bit like parts of the Old Testament, the Ainulindale parallel to Genesis, while the other parts parallel to Kings and Chronicles.
The Silmarillion is tough, but definitely worth it. There are a lot of epic tales, but it's an age-spanning history with lots of characters rather than a quest with a relatively small group of characters.
I have been through the Silmarillion cover to cover at least 10 times and this is exactly how it is... I still get lost when reading this book. But I love it 😀
Lol for me, reading it, I was like, "Where's the happy ending?" 90% of the Silmarillion's characters: "What happy ending?" Edit: (I was in high school at the time and finished the Hobbit and LOTR a year before)
This is perhaps the most important artistic reason that dramatizing any of the First or Second Age stories would be difficult to do successfully. The only 'happy endings', if you can apply the term, are Beren and Lúthien (they both receive the Gift of Men (death) together), the War of Wrath (Morgoth is defeated. Beleriand is basically destroyed, the Silmarils are lost or removed, but hey, the Edain get their own island), and the defeat of Sauron at the end of the Second Age (well, he isn't really dead, and Númenor is destroyed, and the True West is removed, and the great Elf-kings are killed, but Gondor and Arnor will be OK for a while). Good luck with that, Amazon. Perhaps these stories would better be told in another form, like opera. As Bugs Bunny wisely observed, "What did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?" Or perhaps Dr. Manhattan's reply to Ozymandias asking if everything had worked out in the end is appropriate: "'In the end?' Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing *ever* ends."
I listened to the Silmarillion as an audiobook, and found it was like the Odyssey (which I think in part was Tolkiens idea for it, so good job.) and loved it just the same.
When my mom first read The Silmarillion, she filled up like five notebooks to help follow along and keep everybody's names straight. It's like the diary of a madman.
The Silmarillion is my favorite; I cried when I first read it because it is the most beautiful origin story ever. I 100% believe Tolkien was on another level and tapping into real ancient events lost to time because his writing and world building is so absolutely exquisite.
The Ainulindale is truly breathtaking. How did Tolkien capture the ineffable so perfectly: A universe being sung into existence. I have often wondered how those ideas made their way into his imagination. I know he was a practicing Catholic, but the Music of the Ainur really bears no relation to the Old Testament. It is absolutely unique, and as beautiful as the finest poetry we have.
I had this exact experience as a teenager. I was ravenous for more and more Tolkien ... but had difficulty keeping track of events and characters in the Silmarillion. Of course, this was in the '70s, before there were a million reference options at the tip of my fingers.
True. It is remarkable how all those bits and references are invisible when not aware of Silmarillion. When Gandalf and Frodo have a chat about the Ring in Bag End Gandalf tells him how even Ancalagon could not melt it.
Someone gave me The Hobbit for my 8th birthday and I read it in a few days, absolutely loving it. Then about 9 years later I started reading LOTR. I remember stopping after about 2 hours and going "it's still talking about Bilbo's birthday party?? We haven't even left the bloody Shire?"...
@@MadastheHatter13 true that, I read some of Lovecraft's "short" stories and they spent *ages* describing the scenery or shape of buildings in a town. One of them, "The Lurking Fear" I think, involved a journey deeper and deeper underground for what felt like an eternity...
That sums up my Tolkien reading experience. The Silmarillion is not for the faint of heart! It requires a couple of rereads it really stick to the events unfolding in the story. The writing is like poetry to my ears!
@@MegaSpideyman Well it’s more or less written like a fantastical history book of Middle Earth (or Arda). Which makes it quite challenging to get through on the first read. So no it is not structured like LOTR not really. However I promise if you go thru it thoughtfully and really ponder whats going on, you’ll get alot out of it. How not to make the same mistakes that elves and men made in the tales written about them. In general you’ll get a better appreciation of what went into LOTRs creation and get a better grasp of the themes he told in that book. It may be challenging but its well worth your time!
That Silmarillion reaction is ON POINT! I'm always going back to the character names pages because of the numerous characters that were introduced. lol
The best way to read it for any first timer is to have a finger permanently in the back of the book at the glossaries/family trees so you can quickly reference a name when you have no idea what you're reading(this will happen about 10 times per page for the first 80 pages)
This is so similar to my thoughts while reading the Silmarillion a couple months ago. Now I'm rereading LoTR and I'm kicking myself for not taking notes every time an elf or location is mentioned offhand. I've actually referred back to it a few times to see if a name was mentioned in it. I'm still pissed Tolkien named so many of the characters after their parents with like a single letter change, though. Like, sir, there are about 100 people I'm trying to keep track of in this story and you are not helping
Although at the same time that makes it even more authentic and like an actual historical account. Personally I really like how reading it feels almost like research, like I'm digging through the archives of Minas Tirith piecing together these events from differing and sometimes even conflicting accounts.
@@zachofthebattery2864 well technically it's a copy of an annotated revision of a 5th edition of Bilbo's notes written by the scribe Findegil at the request of Pippin's great grandson but yeah 😅 Tolkien was never exactly one to go light on detail lol
To be fair, Tolkien was far from.having actually finished the Silmarillian. That's why some Tolkienists dont even consider it to be canon. Because Christopher basically pieced together his father's notes amd ideas into the most cohesive story that he could
@@crimsonthumos3905 ...who tf doesn't consider it canon? It wasn't published in his liferime sure but it's still his writings and the basis for the world
I was in my teens when I first attempted Silmarillion and just could not follow it. After a few years I tried again and did better but struggled with the characters and got fed up of flipping to and from the appendices. So I designed a family tree that combined all of them on a separate sheet and it made a huge difference. Once I knew the names it was smooth sailing and I absolutely loved the book...couldn't put it down!
The Silmarillion is great, I didn't have the same struggles some people seem to have so it IS possible for a small brain to enjoy it. You just have to go with the flow, it all comes together eventually.
The Silmarillion audio book is where it is at. I've never read it, but I have listened to it 3 times. I love the narration, and all the names, titles, and places are pronounced for you. The narrator has a good story telling voice too. Highly recommend it, especially in the fall and your on a walk with the colorful leaves everywhere.
The Martin Shaw version, I assume? That was my entry to The Silmarillion. I bought it for a 13-hour road trip nearly 10 years ago and I can't stop listening to it.
The only unrealistic part about this is that after reading The Silmarillion I was like - “This was the greatest friggin’ book I have ever read, definitely gonna re-read next year” lol😄
It’s such a bizarre intersection of writing when you think about it. Because you have Tolkien spending decades building his legendarium and then a children’s story he wrote for his kids gets published and EXPLODES in popularity. Suddenly the publishers want a sequel and he sees the opportunity to get his legendarium actually published, so he weaves the two together into the same continuity and Lord of the Rings comes out the other side - all with the goal of them also publishing the Silmarillion which they have zero interest in doing at the time.
As with the first comment by Here Be Subtitles, I had a very similar experience to the one in the video when I first read the Silmarillion. I found the opening part in particular to be very boring and gave up the first couple of times I tried reading it. Now, about three decades on, I love the Silmarillion. The Lord of the Rings is still the absolute masterpiece and The Hobbit is still the fun little adventure but The Silmarillion offers up such a rich tapestry of intertwining stories over a longer, extended period of time. It creates the landscape in which the future struggle will take place and we get an insight into the otherwise aloof elves. If there was a director up to the task, who wouldn't cut out too much or add in unnecessary content, it would make for an amazing mini-series. There is enough room in many of the stories ( Beren and Luthien, Children of Hurin, The Fall of Gondolin ) to expand and add flourishes without simply making up content or altering character's personalities and motivations. However, I am not sure there is a director out there who wouldn't end up trying to 'make their mark' or 'add their own stamp' to it in some way so the Tolkien family are probably right to be very protective over the rights.
Hey I was reading comments and saw you mentioned my comment :D And yes I'd read Hobbit and LOTR many times by the age of 14, but every time I tried Silmarillion (I had the audio version and the book, as well as many Tolkien Companion books to help understand names and places etc) I just could not grasp what was happening. I kept getting lost and confused and would give up quickly. Nowadays, I'm in awe of how amazing Silmarillion is. Not only can I understand it, but I'm in awe of the poetry and beauty of the words themselves, and the way Tolkien uses language like art to convey meaning. I read Ungoliants chapter on my channel for Tolkien reading day, but I don't think I did the story justice - it's one of those books that needs to be read by someone with an _epic_ voice :D eventually I'd love to make videos _explaining_ each story, to help people understand who are having trouble with the book. That could help make it more accessible to those who are struggling :D And I agree about an adaptation, especially after what Amazon has done to Tolkien's lore and traditions. It's much better if the Tolkien estate keeps Silmarillion safe from being adapted. It could make an AMAZING series of course, one of the most amazing series in history, but directors and showrunners nowadays have a tendency to want to change everything to suit their own agendas and ideals, while often misunderstanding core aspects of the source material. Silmarillion will be best left safe in our minds and hearts I think, instead of being adapted to the screen. It would be painful to watch anyone ruin it by changing everything to "make it better" (which is what Amazon are claiming to have done with Rings of Power) Y_Y
This is one of those books you get exhausted reading and put it down, then you discover it years later wondering what happened, then remembered you need a notepad on standby to make a reference sheet just to keep track of who is whom and keeping track of all the different plot threads going on in different places all at once.
I did exactly this, earlier in the year! I'm dyslexic, so I listened to Andy Serkis read Hobbit, Fellowship, Two Towers, and Return. Then I started The Silmarillion and it was more like a geographical textbook than a novel. Lots of names of places and lineage of people than a novel. Then after explaining the location of all the places, it was all wiped out like washing away all the street names in Atlantis. I've got The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien and The Fall of Gondolin on my wish list.
I've read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and really want to read the Silmarillion at some point, but I feel like I'm gonna have to make notes as I go along with it 🤣
Hey there!! Silmarillion is more like a Bible than a book. It's sort of like the Middle Earth version of a Bible. Are you familiar with like, old Norse Mythology and Biblical tales and fairytales etc? Like the way they're all written is very different from modern stories. It's like a collection of myths and legends that all tie together (however in Middle Earth these stories are "true" because even though they happened thousands of years ago, some are still alive who were alive when they happened, or at least met people who the events happened to). If you read it from that perspective it's much easier. And some of the stories are AMAZING!!! There's one about Beren and Luthien where a great warrior is taken captive and his lover (an elf lady named Luthien) goes on a perilous adventure into the darkest parts of the world with a giant Maian dog named Huan to save him. Omg it's so good. Tolkien was really good at writing genuinely strong female characters, not like a lot of the nonsense we have today :D There's also the story of how Shelob's ancestor literally ate the light out of the world D: There's so many good stories, and it shows elves are not as wise nor as peaceful as they're depicted in LOTR and The Hobbit D:
@@kaitlyng7850 If you can finish LOTR more than once then it's safe to assume you love Middle-earth and want to learn more about it. That'll push you through, my good man. The prologue (or the Ainulindalë, as its called in the book) is without a doubt the hardest part. It's very abstract and hard to follow what's happening but once you've pushed past that things start to become more grounded. I mean, it's still the most challenging thing I've ever read, I won't lie, but it's so worth it. I've never read something so enshrouded in mysticism and archaic beauty. You won't understand everything upon your initial read and that's okay, nobody does. Like LOTR it's a pilgrimage to take every so often when the need arises.
I might recommend listening to the audiobook on Spotify , it’s read by Andy Serkis , and it’s just great . Also allows to do research as you listen or pause and do some . This is the step I’ve taken and it’s fantastic , once I’m done I plan on buying actual book and reading again , but I should have way more grasp
J R R Tolkien released so much masterful work. The Hobbit and Lord of the rings are,of course bona fide masterpieces and I adore both,especially Lord of The Rings,but for my money the best was to come,for the quality of writing superior in many parts within the unfinished material to The Hobbit and even The Lord Of The Rings.Tolkien's shining Silmarils really are the History of Middle-earth volumes,Unfinished Tales,and The Silmarillion .All outshining the books released in J R R Tolkien's lifetime.
This is basically my autobiography. Only difference is that I barreled through the Silmarillion the first time with the notion that I would immediately start it over again. Took my time the second time and absolutely loved it. I have now read it four times.
Ha, ha! Great little video 😊 With me it was a little different: i saw Ralpj Bakshi's incomplete movie first and throughout most of that movie I didn't have the foggiest idea who everybody was, and what kind of creatures were hobbits??? Who was Bilbo, and why was his birthday party important. And why was the evol ring still in Frodo's possession at the end of that strange movie ??? I decided that I needed to actually read the Lord Of The Rings. I immediately loved the books, and I realized that it wasn't really my fault that l hadn't understood Bakshi's movie. After I had read the LOTR trilogy, I was still a bit in the dark about Bilbo, and I decided to read "The Hobbit". I was totally astonished about the light hearted tone of the little novel - but I absolutely loved Tolkien's humour! I would have never guessed that Tolkien could be so funny! There's certainly not a lot to laugh about in the later novels. And for a while I even prefered "The Hobbit", and I still like Bilbo a lot better than Frodo. Frodo has always remained a bit pale as a character. As to the Silmarillion: I read it eventually, but while it's interesting, I am not at all fond of it! The only guy who made a lasting impression on me, is Fingolfin and his brave duel with the mighty Morgoth! I read a few mpre stories written by Tolkien which are not set in Middle Earth or Valinor, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. But I didn't read ^The Children Of Hurin^ because I knew that I probably would not enjoy them.
To be fair, when I first read The Silmarillion, the multiple categorization of the members of the angelic order, and the multiple names many main characters bore were very hard to keep up with. I recall I used Robert Foster's book The Complete Guide to Middle Earth to keep things straight, and went from the Silmarillion to the Guide every paragraph or two at the start. By my 3rd or 4th re-read I had the characters and their names and titles pretty much down and the stories of the War of the Jewels became my favorite of all Tolkien's writings. The writing was grand and dramatic and swept one away into the story as a good book should. I re-read The Hobbit, The Trilogy, and the Silmarillion and Lost Tales at least once a year, and always look forward to the Silmarillion the most.
Reading the Silmarillion is like studying paleontology. It's complicated, it recalls ancient times, it's a difficult puzzle to put together, but when the pieces fit in place, everything seems to shine in new bright colors and you see the patterns happening once, twice, thrice... everything makes sense and there is a purpose behind every single damn word written. It's just beautiful.
I wonder how many other people read The Silmarillion over and over again. I have been through it at least 25 times and I read it pretty much constantly. Each time I get something new from it.
For your average 'Tolkien connoisseur' it seems reading the Silmarillion is far less important than telling people you have read it, multiple times. By the way I have read it 0.2 times (in progress).
I have only read the Silmarilion and I think it´s fantastic, even tho It´s not cohesive, but every little story is far more interesting every time you re-read it. Fascinating how a world evolve within your eyes.
My first time reading the Silmarillian was actually listening to the audiobook. Highly recommend. It makes it a lot easier to follow. As a teenager I listened to it once a summer for a few years.
I’m convinced that Tolkien wrote the silmarilion way before lotr and even I dare say had footnotes before the hobbit. To create something so beautiful, powerful and in depth with so much lore Tolkien obviously had all these meanderings in the mind of his for decades. And was a lover of the bible. When aluew (can’t spell it lol) was about to kill the dwarves but was stopped by eru illuvatar is a direct parallel to God from the Bible stopping Abraham killing his son Isaac. The man was just an absolute genius
Fun fact, The Silmarillion has actually had the best adaptation of anything Tolkien. That adaptation being “Nightfall In Middle Earth”, a concept album by the band Blind Guardian. It retells the Silmarillion in a musical format, and it’s truly excellent. Also Blind Guardian is just amazing overall.
Suggestion for readign Silmarillion AKA The Nerd Bible: Find a Bible study group. More people you get involved the more you can understand it. Helped me out when I was reading it for the first time.
I have only read each of these books once, but I surprisingly kind of understood the Silmarillion. There are definitely parts that I didn’t get to well, parts I may have been zoned out, but overall I understood it decently. It just emphasizes the incredible development behind Tolkien’s more famous books, adding depth and providing a beautiful backstory. By far the most amazing fantasy world ever created (owing to how Tolkien developed it so completely)
The Silmarillion was my first Tolkien book and I understood it almost perfectly on my first read through! 😂 My mom had read all Lotr and the Hobbit and just could not get past the first chapter of the Silmarillion. I literally love that book so much!
I’m a big Tolkien fan. The problem is I watched the Lotr films when I was in 5th/6th grade, watched them again 1-2 years later. Loved it even more. Watched the hobbit and after some time AGAIN I just randomly found the silmarillion from my dad’s old book collection. He said he read Lotr and Hobbit but never the Silm since it was to hard to read. My personality loves to prove to others that I can do something they can’t, so that became my only reason at the beginning for reading it. (Remember I had only the 6 movies as back knowledge + yt videos talking about Lotr and hobbit lore) (I only heard the words valar, maiar, Arda, Ea and Morgoth one time in those vids. Was so confused, like “ SAURON HAD A BOSS, WHAT?! Who the hell is he??? He looks fvcking scary!) Anyway back to the story. The ainulindale was one heck of a chapter. I only remember 10 percent of it. The Valaquenta was actually quite interesting and the valar and maiar was fun to read about. Things got even more interesting and I was in awe of how great and deep this book actually was. I got more info about the elves, dwarves and men, understood more of the Ainur, learned the family lines of the elves quite quickly (with the help of the family tree in the last pages), cruses on some elves (erhm-maedhros-erhrm), finally understood all the references in Lotr and hobbit, had a laugh at some of the stories, cried tree times (SPOILER: it was Feanor, Finrod and belegs deaths), had a breakdown when one of the characters died, and was quite empty when the book ended. Like I read the whole book in two days during summer vacation (mom forced me to take breaks and eat sometimes 😑) I was happy too cause I had accomplished something my dad couldn’t and went and shoved it up my parents faces. Wished I had used more time to enjoy it though. The point is that I feel like I should have read Lotr and the hobbit before this. I’ve still never read them (mostly because I have seen the movies and know kind of what happens (I know there is more things that happens in the books and they are so great) but I can’t bring myself to do it) ahahaha sorry
You don’t want to read the books because you’ve already seen the movies?! 😂 I was the opposite. After I saw Fellowship in theaters, I immediately bought and read the books, which are vastly superior to the movies.
I would love to read the books, they sound amazing. But I never knew about what Lord of the Rings was before I hear about the films. I’m dumb like that because since I know what happens (at least a lot of it) the books doesn’t seem very tempting since most of it is already spoiled🥲😅. I did try to read them once but Sorry Tolkien the intro about hobbits (Lotr) was pretty boring Might read them one day, but right now I’m reading Wheel of time.
Not only do the books have more happen in them, but they're actually quite different at a thematic level, especially Lord of the Rings. And many characters act quite differently. As books they are not meant to be a plot-focused work, so already knowing the general plot arc won't harm the experience at all. I really suggest reading them.
In college in the 70s I discovered The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I think I read it all twice. I bought the Silmarillion and got comfortable and maybe got 25 pages in and just said “Hell no”.
I almost dropped reading it after the first 10 pages because there are so many characters and places thrown at you so fast. It is real hard to keep track at first. But then you start to get into a groove and the more important characters/places are repeated often enough that names start to stick. If you can stick with it though, it is worth reading in my opinion.
@@miketravelsnowhere6557 Yes! It got so much easier and easier as the story progressed. I no longer had to look at the map or family trees after every paragraph lol
I think the reputation makes it more intimidating than it actually is. However, as you are reading the Silmarillion i would recommend searching up " The Silmarillion Explained" series on youtube , its a great companion guide.
@@Trowa71 I would say that it is important to remember names (it wasn't easy but it wasn't toooo hard as well), because you have to know whom the text is talking about
😄😄😄 We forget when we read The Hobbit & LOTR that Tolkien didn't write all these stories through to their completion or even in a 'sequence' as such. He seemed to have similar to an ADH type brain that couldn't resist having to jump off into multiple 'backstories' so that mentions of a linear Elven, Dwarf, Man and Orc history would appear like 'natural linear history'. In essence, Tolkien told these stories to his son, he didn't read them from a finished manuscript as such. My understanding of The Hobbit & LOTR was that they were finished works from Tolkien's lifetime, but people loved the books so much that posthumously his son (Christopher) decided to compile stories from his Dad's voluminous notes - either editing them & including them in various other publications or having to finish writing them after his Dad's death, using his memory and his Dad's notes. The Silmarillion in that context makes sense to me. It is not a story - it is a compilation of the notes & individual backstories Tolkien envisaged when writing his 2 main works. So in the Silmarillion we get to read the stories of where the poetry, elven songs & references in The Hobbit & LOTR 'originated' in the histories of Elves, Dwarves & Men. I specifically loved the first chapter of The Silmarillion - a description of creation. And the concept of an 'Elbereth'. My house in the country in the forest on top of a hill which had a great view for 240⁰ around I named Elbereth.
I've only read the Hobbit. I love it cause it's not complicated. I will read Lotr and Silmarillion in the future but right now I'm still savoring Hobbit
I know very smart well read people who find Lord of the Rings a difficult read. Yes the Simarillion can be a tedious read but essential if you are a Tolkien geek and reading it totally transforms your understanding of The Hobbit and LOR. For example when the elves are passing through the Shire singing about Snowwhite you know who it is they are praising and why, etc. Plus the origin of the Dwarves, so cool. It helps to have a good Tolkien encyclopedia handy when reading it so you can tell all the elves whose name starts with "Fin.." apart. I recommend reading only what interests you at first and go from there. More than one read is necessary. My personal alternate title for the Simarillion is "Elves Behaving Badly" as they really aren't all that high and mighty after all
I practically read the Silmarillion twice the first time. I would read 2-3 pages, go look at the family trees at the back and then read again the same 2-3 pages.
I read The Silmarillion when I was 12 and I'm sure my brain imploded. The big advantage was friends were reading it around the same time too, so we quickly got to know stuff and you'd re-read sections. Then it began to make sense. Some 40 years later it's still my favourite of Tolkien's works. I read more Tolkien as they got released, so read Lays Of Beleriand when I was about 16.... now that is demanding.
I started reading Tolkien's works in the 70's when I was a kid. Our school library had a copy of The Silmarillion. Truth be told, after struggling through it twice, I got mad and read it, chapter by chapter, in reverse. From back to front. It made more sense that way. Many, many years later, I came to understand two things about the book. That, in truth, it was an Omnibus of many smaller stories with varying threads connecting them. And that it was, in many ways, an incomplete book; a sort of third draft, not quite yet meant for consumption by the writer who died before it was properly finished. This, of course, is just my opinion.
I read The Silmarillion(excluding the Children Of Hurin) to my sister when she was in second grade. She read it herself in sixth grade. Was really proud of her, given that she got all the questions right on her reading comprehension test for it despite not reading The Children Of Hurin yet. Used the process of elimination because she knew everything else to get the question right. It makes your head spin at times, but is definitely worth reading.
I have been a fan of Tolkien for over 30 years. I first started reading The Silmarillion when I was about 22. After reading a few dozen pages, the book threw me off. I was overwhelmed by the huge amount of names and land names. At that point, I decided not to read any further. I put the book aside for a few years, then picked it up again. I guess I had to grow up to it, because the second time the number of proper names didn't bother me at all. And at that moment I felt more or less as if I had been run over by a road roller and pressed into the ground. My mind refused to accept that a single person could come up with something so brilliant. The world he created struck with its vastness, but also with details that worked together perfectly. Even then I knew that I had just read the greatest story ever created by man in history. In my opinion, there are two factors that make The Silmarillion so great. It is the coherence of the created world and the Tolkien dry and sparing prose style that gives the reader a lot of room for imagination. It's hard to find at least two people who imagine the same way the Music of the Ainur, the creation of the two Trees, the birth of the Elves, the creation and appearance of the Silmarils, the duel of Fingolfin with Morgoth, the War of Wrath, and especially the duel of Earendil with Ancalagon the Black. All these events stimulate the reader's imagination and this is the greatest joy and reward that the reader gets after reading this book. Throughout the reading of The Silmarillion (especially the part concerning the struggle of Elves and Men with Morgoth in the first era) there is an indefinable sadness, a sadness into which Tolkien has wove an undying hope for a good ending. And even though Morgoth is finally defeated, the sadness of the lost things does not leave us.
I first listened to the Silmarillion audiobook, which was amazing for spelling and getting into the story. Since then, I have gone through it again, and through Unfinished Tales. There are some great TH-cam channels that explain characters and aspects of the Silmarillion so well for further understanding. Plus, there are several podcasts of folks going one chapter at a time and discussing it. It's my favorite Tolkien book.
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You forgot the final stage - when you've read the Silmarillion more than three times and now everything makes sense to you, but you can no longer communicate normally with other human beings and every time you visit the local supermarket you address the clerk by first providing eight generations worth of your lineage.
lol
I've been in this phase since I was 16. Can confirm.
You get to the point where even the chapter of Beleariand and it's realms is interesting and you want more.
This actually happened to me. After finishing the Silmarillion, I tried to write a chatty email to a friend. I kept typing bizarre things like "in those days, our kinship was sundered "
Hahaha... Yep, I've got that friend. Charming dork as he is. The Silmarillion bored me sensless but it gives more depth to The Lord of the Rings.
Fist line of the Hobbit: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit"
First line of LORT: " When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."
First line of the Silmarillion: "There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Iluvatar; and he made the first Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made."
First two: Hobbits are fun
Silmarillion: IN THE BEGINNING-
The Hobbit is a story meant for children.
The Silmarillion was a work in progress decades before, a world meant for his made-up languages to exist and make sense.
The Lord of the Rings was written so that the events in The Hobbit had a place and a meaning in this world.
The Silmarillion uses waaaaaay too many names for everyone.
Exactly why the Silmarillion is my favorite. Epic scale, beautiful prose.
For some reason, I find the start of the Silmarillion a little bit more legible than the start of LOTR.
Love how different the elves are in each book. In the Hobbit they're all singing "Tralalala Lally come down to the valley" when Bilbo and the dwarves first approached Rivendell. They love dancing, games, drinking wine and teasing the dwarves about their beards. In the Lord of the Rings they're sombre, mysterious, speak in riddles about the stars, the pull to the West and about things that were, are and have yet to come to pass. In the Silmarillion they're bloodthirsty maniacs, fighting wars over shiny bois and massacring therr own cousins who stand in the way of their quest for vengeance.
They're COMPLEX, man.
Don't forget that first age elves were literally fighting a god
*A L Q U A L O N D E*
@@znmckague Specifically High King Fingolfin . . . Literally took on the most powerful entity in middle earth *alone* and nearly won; Melkor, a character so powerful that it took seven of the Valar to actually defeat him.
I mean what happens to your head when you live for that long?
If reading the Silmarilion is confusing, imagine the work Christopher did to edit it out from J.'s notes and drafts.
Probably should have kept it as such
@@OscarDirlwoodNah. It would not make any sense. He said it in the beginning of the book.
yes
@@OscarDirlwood Lol fuck no. You can just choose not to read it if you feel that way. It's a very good thing that the Silmarillion exists and that Christopher put in all the work to bring his father's more obscure work to us.
For the full details one can read History of Middle-earth, too.
About the Silmarillion. Just take your time, and look at tables and maps. It is honestly deeply fascinating even if you just get a little of it.
What sort of madman starts rereading a book without even having stood up after finishing it the first time? Absolute legend.
lol
1st time I read the Silmarillion was in middle school. Hardly understood anything.
Reread again in college, and I have to say it's one of the greatest I've ever read
@@benharder7816 I didn't understand it until I read the part where nienor ran naked. After that, I understood the whole thing
Usually parents reading childrens books and the kid is screaming "do it again" while rolling around instead of going to sleep.
Madman. Parents. Same thing
The kind of legend who has a toilet in his couch.
"I have no idea what I just read. It was pretty good, though" is probably the most accurate way to describe my experience reading the Silmarillion.
"the silmarillion is amazing, you remember that one guy?"
"no i actually don´t but it was cool"
This is too true 😂
This was my first experience reading the fellowship as a kid. Read it twice and its my favourite book rn. Having finished the trilogy, silmarillion is def the logical next step, but I think I'm gonna wait this out a bit more lol. Delaying the inevitable.
I almost gave up reading after 80 pages cause I found the earlier bit pretty boring and uninteresting but as soon as the Mormont steals the Silmarrils I was utterly engrossed and I can’t lie I prefer the Silmarrilion to the LOTR.
Mormont 😂😂😂@@AerysIIFirstofhisname
Luckily for us Tolkien fans, there's going to be this brilliant new show made by the illustrious Amazon Studios that tells the story of the 2nd age so we neverrrrr have to read the Sillymillion again. Thank goodness a studio like Amazon are making it! One we can trust and who have never desecrated a fantasy authors work!
But from posters it looks like it's full of wokeness. I really hope I am wrong.
@@kulwinderkuls8560 Looks like you missed the sarcasm
😆
@@joem7085 🤣🤣🤣
@@joem7085 my god, I really did! Thanks for pointing out 🤣🤣
I have, since the late 1970's, read The Silmarillion more than 25 times. It is one of the ebooks on my mobile. If I am stuck somewhere I read it again. It is awesome. When you ask people the question, "If you could go back in time what would you do?" a lot of people say, "I would kill Hitler." I answer, "I would go back and give JRR Tolkien a word processing machine so he could write faster, and a bag of gold so he would have time to do it." You can argue I do not have my priorities straight, but people die and literature lives on.
that's crazy. there are many great books out there, i don't think i could read even my absolute favs more than twice, and even then only after at least 20 years.
I don't think I've ever read anything more than three times.
@@duanebetz9270 Yes, I clearly have a problem. However, I own it in ebook and am reading it again. Just finished the Valaquenta.
@@vladimpaler3498 You probably almost have it memorized.
@@duanebetz9270i don’t know if the average person could memorize a single page of a book by only reading it 25 times
The Silmarillion is the most demanding book I've ever read and I'm proud of finishing it. I don't know what happened but it was great. I wish modern fantasy authors would seize the opportunity to revel in more archaic prose like Tolkien did. His world and characters are amazing but its his mastery of the English language that really sends you to another world.
And shout-out to Christopher Tolkien, the man did such fantastic editorial work that he basically deserves a writing credit.
@@bridge4241 I actually have that on my shelf, haven't gotten round to reading it. I've heard great things.
I delayed my reading of The Silmarillion for 7 long years. Had to buy a very beautiful hardcover edition to motivate me. Every character and place has, at least, two names, there’s a gazillion characters, many stories, but all of them are amazing. Too bad it’s not a cohesive story, one that you can remember easily.
@@bridge4241 Came back to this comment to inform you that I've started Shadow of the Torturer and it's fantastic.
@@jarltrippin oh dude hell yeah! im so glad you're enjoying it!
His mastery of linguistics is what sets him apart. He could've written in any style and it would have still been just as great, its the meaning behind the words which gives his stories so much life.
It gets even better when you find out that The Silmarillion was pitched as the sequel to The Hobbit, but the publishers rejected it because they wanted something that 'had hobbits in it'
Because *that's* the issue with making it the sequel to the Hobbit. Not that the Hobbit is written for children and the Silmarillion is challenging for most adults to read.
Gotta love old timey publisher logic. Now it makes sense that they greenlit Lotr as the sequel even though it also has a totally different style and target audience.
The Silmarillian, even as we know it, was far from finished or what Tolkien would've been happy with. That's why dome Tolkien authors dont consider it canon, because it's basically the product of Christopher taking his fathers notes, early drafts snd bits of story and assembling them into the most cohesive story he could
They were probably right to do that even in hindsight. The Silmarillion is a masterpiece, but only to those who can appreciate it and already have a vested interest in Tolkien's world. The LOTR series has similar aspects of profundity but can be enjoyed universally. If Tolkien hadn't taken that route it may have been the case that his works weren't nearly as widely known, and probably the case that not nearly as many people would be intrigued enough to even try to understand the Silmarillion
You need to understand that back in the day the hobbits were actually the audience favorites, because they representanted the interior, where normal people are call to a quest to do amazing things.
Nah bc I just finished reading Beren and Lúthien today and Christopher was talking about that 😭
The Silmarillion is the first book I read from Tolkien and is by far my favorite one. I like to re-read it from time to time and it always surprises me how every time I notice something new. It's a little masterpiece.
holy shit how does it feel to be more powerful than any of us could ever dream of being 😭
@@m0thman777 I think that the fact that I read the Silmarillion translated in Italian plays a huge part in it: I bet that a lot is lost in the translation so it's easier to read
Same 🙂, it’s my favourite book. I hope it’s not a blasphemy to say that The Silmarillion is better than LotR 😬
@@margarita_k95 oh, that’s a good point. still, good for you!
@@finrodfelagund8668 honestly it kind of is. lotr i think has a big hype because it’s not a mammoth of reading (i mean lotr is incredible it’s just also accessible)
I loved how The Hobbit was a simplistic, classical “character finds his courage” story, then LOTR became a “good vs evil” plot, then The Silmarillion was basically the Bible with Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, and Dragons lol. Tolkien was a master at his craft.
Edit: a year later thanks to a comment, I just realized I’m a dummy who forgot the third “i” in Silmarillion lol.
Best part is that it wasn't even planned. The Hobbit was meant to be separate completely from his mythological stuff which would become the Silmarillion.
But then the publishers asked for a sequel to the Hobbit and then Aragorn opened his mouth and sang to the hobbits outside Weathertop and the rest is history..
Ugh, the spelling puritans of the internet need to bring it back a few notches.
What about the fall of Gondolin?
@@bkdevil5278 It’s part of The Silmarillion narrative.
@@jmtheelitefan9616 But, they are different books.
Currently reading The Silmarillion for the first time. It's great stuff, but it is INCREDIBLY dense and would be almost impossible to follow without the family trees and index of names.
There are some really beautiful online maps of Beleriand as well. That helps immensely because then you know where stuff is happening.
I could name all of that off the top of my head lol Once you get a firm grasp of who is who and what's going on, you don't forget it and it has immense re-readability.
Elves in the Hobbit: “haha, let’s sing and dance in the forest!”
Elves in the Silmarillion: “FIGHT ME SATAN, YOU FILTHY COWARD!”
I have also just started reading it, my time is quite restricted so I'm not getting anywhere quickly. I'm just at the point where Morgoth is hiding in his subterranean 'lair' where the others can't see him.
His hopeless challenge dauntless cried
Fingolfin there, Come open wide,
Dark King, your ghastly brazen doors.
Come forth, whom earth and heaven abhors!
Come forth thou monstrous craven lord
And fight with thine own hand and sword.
Thou ruler of hosts of banded thralls
Thou tyrant leaguered behind strong walls
Thou foe of gods and elvish race
I wait thee here, COME SHOW THY FACE!
*Reads the Fingolfin Morgoth fight*
Me: This is the greatest thing I've ever read.
You need to listen blind guardian-time stand still on the background while you reading that
Agreeeee
That is my favorite part of The Silmarillion as well.
It’s insanely good
Fingolfin is the best Elf in all of Tolkien`s writings. And the line of his House goes on to the birth of so many powerful and wise people in the entire legendarium. The single combat with Morgoth is probably the best scene ever. Fingolfin only died because he was just too small in stature, and he could not keep his footing among the pits Grond made. A Noldo vs. a God is crazy to begin with. He saw that the Noldor and their friends would never stop Morgoth, and the Nirniaeth Arnoediad made him go mad and fey. His eyes blazed like the eyes of the Valar, and some actually thought he was Orome come to kill Morgoth. I also love Glorfindel and Ecthelion, two great Lords of the Noldor. Finrod is also up there as well.
Silmarillion is like a synopsis of the entire backstory of Lord of the Rings. It definitely reads like one too, with tons of information squeezed onto every page. Imagine those writings were never published though, nobody would have known just how deeply Tolkien thought all this stuff through.
I'd really love to know what readers' theories were about LotR's backstory before The Silmarillion was published. Too bad there was no internet at that time.
Someone's grandpa has the most wild lotr theories written in their journal and we're never going to get to see it
Here's my tips:
[1] Listen to the audiobook while reading along,
[2] After reading each chapter, listen to a podcast about that chapter. I listened to The Prancing Pony, The Tolkien Professor, and Talking Tolkien,
[3] Refer frequently to the appendix of names at the back,
[4] Rope other people into reading it with you so you can discuss it (Silmarillion book club),
[5] Take notes in those early chapters with all the Valar, Maiar, and Elven names,
[6] Get the Atlas of Middle Earth (or refer to maps online), and
[7] Down the line, read it again. And again. ∞
After a handful of chapters, your mind starts to click into the style of the writing and it goes much smoother. It is actually quite beautiful, poetical writing, and not like history book writing (which is the cliche that is floating out there).
It is often very big picture, panoramic stuff (the creation of the universe, the movement of whole civilizations, etc.), but then at other times it zooms in on individual, intimate stories.
My personal, anecdotal evidence seems to be that most people who read the Silmarillion have read it numerous times. To read the Silmarillion is to reread the Silmarillion. The first time you survive and are better for it, each additional time for the pleasure and to add depth.
I found the text to be the deepest, densed, most intense work of fantasy I've ever read. Sometimes every few sentences are filled with mindblowing and evocative elements. Whole novels or cycles of novels could be written about just a few sentences. It's beautiful, heady stuff.
Truer words have never been spoken. I loved it from the first sentence. I couldn't believe what I was reading. It's pure luck that Tolkien was in a place (Cambridge) that have him time and space to put as much that was inside you on paper before his passing. I mean, he basically did what it took several minds at Marvel Comics over half a century to achieve ( - using the word generously). Sometimes I think about all the potential Tolkien-like once-in-a-lifetime writers across the world whose circumstances don't permit, and what we are being deprived of as a result. But at least, so far in the modern era, we got one.
I think Suzzanah Clarke might be one, and - unpopular opinion incoming - I think that were JK Rowling to calm down and get interested in her own works again, she might notice that she does have a universe to expand upon.
Anyway, long comment; but I loved yours. 🌟
Edited to say: Thank you! I've started following those three podcasts.
OR..... just skip it and watch a youtube on it if you are curious, youll forget about it anyway cause its still confusing.
This sounds like homework... Maybe on my reread
Another tip: check out the legendarium wikis, for reminding who are the characters.
To @@havindatadhd & anyone else feeling the need to just spout off -- like, read the channel? It's a place for nerds. If you're not one - meaning, you don't feel the need to be nitpicky over what's conventionally considered trivial shit - then why bother commenting? Maybe just don't comment? I mean, you don't have to come to *everything*, especially things you don't get or feel. Just let us nerds be?
I tried a few times as a Tolkien obsessed kid and had trouble grasping a lot of the stories. Now, as an adult, I'm in awe of this masterpiece. The audiobook version is brilliant too if maybe it would be easier to listen? The stories in it are insane and not to be political, but it's epic that Tolkien was writing genuinely strong women (without it being forced) long before people were burning their bras in the streets. It makes me so mad when people say he was a misogynist for not having enough female characters. Not only does he include women, they often play integral or even hero freaking roles and don't exist solely for marriage and love. And he was writing all of this in the 30s, 40s, and 50s! Silmarillion is a bible for Middle Earth (and is written like a Bible), but it's true within the context of their world :)
Tolkien's work had strong female characters that didn't exist to be love interests or just wives, which was pretty rare for the time. Just because they weren't part of the main parties doesn't mean they weren't important? Why would someone say Tolkien was misogynistic? Not to mention he was very anti-Nazi and anti-racism (a known Nazi publisher asked him to prove he was not Jewish and he basically eloquently told him to fuck off)
Just because someone from the early 20th century doesn't fit modern day moral standards doesn't mean they were a bad person.
@@hanpines3808 I know, it makes me so upset to see them saying all those horrible and utterly incorrect things about Tolkien. The problem is also that Amazon is reinforcing all of those beliefs currently: The showrunners have said many things that suggest they believe his work needs to be "fixed" and this is giving people fuel to say there's a problem with Tolkien, that he's a r@cist, misogynistic, n@zi sympathiser and that his works are flawed because of that Y_Y You see it mostly under Rings of Power videos. Hordes of angry people who have clearly never even read his books, and don't know anything about him, using Amazon's words as ammo for their incorrect nasty beliefs :c
Edit: they're now coming to this video as well. There are multiple responses to other comments saying stuff like "boo hoo you're just sad because there are black people in the show" etc Y_Y These people don't understand that Middle Earth has many diverse cultures who faced their own struggles with Sauron and Morgoth for centuries, especially for much of the Second Age! Just because Tolkien doesn't focus on their stories doesn't make him a r@cist, and if Amazon really cared they'd have actually gone to the effort to adapt the stories of the genuinely diverse cultures of Middle Earth!! Instead they seem to have cast black people in random roles solely for diversity points :/ Black Tolkien-content creators on TH-cam have been trying to speak out about this, how _they_ feel about what Amazon is doing, but the 'woke vigilantes' don't seem to care about what they have to say :/
@@Vexarax The funny thing with these people is that they're usually white too, just trying to get brownie points from minorities while mocking a work they're never even read.
@@Vexarax Okay so... you're gonna have to stop hyper-focusing on these people. Every artist, and I mean -every- artist, has flaws and those flaws matter to some people far more than others. That said, just 'cause someone finds Tolkien's work racist, misogynistic or anything bad, doesn't mean that your positive experience is invalid. Enjoy what you enjoy, that's fine. There's literally no use complaining about a tiny handful of very loud people on the internet.
@@writershard5065 It's important to speak out about this issue due to the amount of misconceptions surrounding it, and the fact that a beloved author's name is being besmirched by not only a _very large_ and very vocal group of people on the internet and elsewhere, but also by one of the largest companies in the world. This is a huge project that's already cost upwards of 400 million dollars and they themselves have claimed to be "fixing" Tolkien's work, and writing the story he never wrote. People such as myself, who have been Tolkien fans our entire lives, are doing what we can to clear up misconceptions and speak out about the injustice being done. As life-long fans who have invested often months or even years of our lives into studying and learning and honouring his work, I feel we have every right to speak up if we so wish. You, however, are free to ignore us :)
🤣🤣 The Silmarillion is my favourite book ever. It reads like real history to me. After I finish it, I always have to remind myself it's not true. 😅 But as you said, it definitely needs to be read a few times. I´ve read it at least 10 times. 😅
same 😭😭 i legitimately find myself thinking it’s real for half a second
How do you know it’s not real?
@@artugert I wish 🥰
@@artugert honestly we really don’t…people base their entire lives around books they can’t even prove to be real, just because the silm is more recent does really mean it would be WRONG if you think about it…
I always figured Tolkien gets to heaven and starts up a world building department. Prayer of Aule, man.
It’s also interesting to see how the lore significantly changes from The Silmarillion to the 3 stand-alone tales of Turin, Beren and Luthien, and the fall of Gondolin.
That's why some Tolkien scholars dont consider the Silmarillian to be canon. Because Tolkien was far from finished it and likely never was going to finish it. It was a collection of drafts, rough ideas and unfinished stories which Christopher had the task of assembling into the most cohesive story that he could. JRR even expressed in one of his letters his doubt of ever actually finishing the Silmarillian
@@crimsonthumos3905 What would 'canon' even mean in this context? Neither JRRT nor CJRT considered The Silmarillion to be necessarily consistent either with itself or The Lord of the Rings. As CJRT wrote in the Foreword, "…my father came to conceive The Silmarillion as a compilation, a compendious narrative made long afterwards from sources of great diversity (poems, and annals, and oral tales) that had survived in agelong tradition…" Indeed, when JRRT later reconsidered even the basic cosmology of his world, he realized that the Mannish sources were unreliable.
The word 'canon', nowadays a vague and ill-defined term of art for fantasy fans, seems to imply that there is a 'real' Arda with a single known factual history. I do not think that even Tolkien himself would have described matters thus (even aside from a possible distaste for using a word with a distinct ecclesiastical meaning in such away).
About the only important thing that CJRT substantially added or changed was the story of the Nauglamir and the ruin of Doriath. See lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Of_the_Ruin_of_Doriath ; Again, CJRT explained his reasoning (which he came to regret) in detail in the History of Middle-earth.
@@majkus yes, but the Silmarillian also contains narratives and stories which Christopher himself said that his father didn't intend to be canon to Middle Earth. Stories such Beren and Luthien, Eru/"the One", Shelob etc. WERE things which Tolkien had fully thought out in detail and intended to be "true" to LOTR and the Hobbit. However, most of the Silmarillian were just spitball ideas for Tolkien which he constantly changed and couldn't make his mind about. Hence why the elves, for example, go from being more Catholic angelic-like in LOTR to more mythologically political and backstabby in the Silmarillian. In fact, Tolkien himself wrote in a letter how he doubted the Silmarillian would ever be finished as a published work because he had no real initiative or motivation to do so like he had with LOTR. Had LOTR (which took more than two decades to write) had been published in the same state as the Silmarillian, it would've a completely different story
@@crimsonthumos3905 it's weird because I just read a letter where Tolkien had been trying to get Silmarillion published alongside LOTR but Allen and Unwin had refused. Tolkien (in the letter) was now trying to get Collins to publish Silmarillion, and went on to describe the plot (and the meaning etc) in detail from beginning to end. It's letter 131 to Milton Waldman, written around 1951, and based on the language Tolkien uses he seems to intend Beren and Luthien, Eru, and everything else laid out in Silmarillion to be integral aspects of Middle Earth's history? He even called the tale of Beren and Luthien 'chief among the tales of the Silmarillion' like it's extremely dear to him. He lays out almost every overarching event in Silmarillion from beginning to end in quite a lot of detail. Waldman (for Collins) kept delaying publication and was worried about the length of Silmarillion and LOTR combined apparently. It's all there in the letter though. So while he did end up continuing to work on it for years, based on the language used he seems extremely passionate about it to the extent I would personally absolutely view it as canon.
I have noticed a tendency among Tolkien scholars these days to sort of have their own opinions, and discard aspects of what Tolkien wrote to back up their opinions. I have no idea why they do this though. That does seem to maybe have happened here to some extent because one only needs to read letter 131 to see Tolkien's passion and love for everything that happens in Silmarillion, and that he had it all cohesively laid out in the early 50s as a history/legendarium for Middle Earth.
@@Vexarax as I already stated, important parts of the Silmarillian such as Beren and Luthien and Eru etc. were already written. But a lot of the rest if it wasn't, which Christopher Tolkien hisnelf said not all of it was intended by his father to be published as canon. That's why some of it doesn't align with LOTR. When Tolkien was trying to get it published, he hadnt yet finished it. It also didn't include parts that are in what we know as the Silmarillian now
"The Children of Hurin" is my personal favorite. It brings a lot of the Silmarillion to life, it stops being confusing, and you just want to know more.
Have a look at the Finnish epic Kalevala, and read the story of Kullervo. That was JRRT's inspiration.
@@gmansard641 Didn't Tolkien have his own translation of that? ... I'll definitely check it out.
@@gmansard641 Yeah, that was depressing.
I just got this from the library, I hope I haven't went a little rushed, at least I didn't go right for the Silmarillion, I was intimidated by it actually
You should listen to the Audio Book read by Christopher Lee. He goes full Monty Python on voice-acting the female characters 😄
So true!
I’ve read The Hobbit as a child and fell in love with it; so me and my mum went to a book store to get me more Tolkien since I’m so obsessed with The Hobbit. They didn’t have LOTR, but they had The Silmarillion. Could you imagine how mind blowing my experience was 😆 I was, like , 11 back then; I’ve already read Greek myths, biblical stories (adapted for kids), Kalevala (again, adapted for children), but this one was something else haha 😅
Silmarillion ignited my love for Old English and Nordic epics and it’s still my favorite Tolkien’s thing. Love bloodthirsty elves!
The Silmarillion has no fat to cut off. You have to retain the names, places, and characters to understand the proceeding chapters.
P.S. I enjoy reading the chapters and then listening to the audio versions of any past chapters if I feel I've missed something- which I have to do often. It's a labor of love.
Here's a tip: read Tolkien's work aloud like a recital. I and many others have found it makes things flow WAY smoother
I actually love the Silmarillion. I do usually recommend that people read "The Children of Hurin" in between the Trilogy and the Silmarillion, as it's a proper novel that tells one of the classic tales from the Silmarillion, so it's a good bridge. The Silmarillion is a bit like parts of the Old Testament, the Ainulindale parallel to Genesis, while the other parts parallel to Kings and Chronicles.
The Silmarillion is tough, but definitely worth it. There are a lot of epic tales, but it's an age-spanning history with lots of characters rather than a quest with a relatively small group of characters.
I have been through the Silmarillion cover to cover at least 10 times and this is exactly how it is... I still get lost when reading this book. But I love it 😀
Lol for me, reading it, I was like, "Where's the happy ending?"
90% of the Silmarillion's characters: "What happy ending?"
Edit: (I was in high school at the time and finished the Hobbit and LOTR a year before)
This is perhaps the most important artistic reason that dramatizing any of the First or Second Age stories would be difficult to do successfully. The only 'happy endings', if you can apply the term, are Beren and Lúthien (they both receive the Gift of Men (death) together), the War of Wrath (Morgoth is defeated. Beleriand is basically destroyed, the Silmarils are lost or removed, but hey, the Edain get their own island), and the defeat of Sauron at the end of the Second Age (well, he isn't really dead, and Númenor is destroyed, and the True West is removed, and the great Elf-kings are killed, but Gondor and Arnor will be OK for a while). Good luck with that, Amazon.
Perhaps these stories would better be told in another form, like opera. As Bugs Bunny wisely observed, "What did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?"
Or perhaps Dr. Manhattan's reply to Ozymandias asking if everything had worked out in the end is appropriate: "'In the end?' Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing *ever* ends."
Mandos is such a buzzkill, isn't he?
@@chargingrhino5636 lol
I listened to the Silmarillion as an audiobook, and found it was like the Odyssey (which I think in part was Tolkiens idea for it, so good job.) and loved it just the same.
When my mom first read The Silmarillion, she filled up like five notebooks to help follow along and keep everybody's names straight. It's like the diary of a madman.
Elves in the Hobbit: Pretty chill
Elves in LOTR: Depressed
Elves in the Silmarillion: Kinslaying maniacs
They are depressed from being alive for so long lol
The Silmarillion is my favorite; I cried when I first read it because it is the most beautiful origin story ever. I 100% believe Tolkien was on another level and tapping into real ancient events lost to time because his writing and world building is so absolutely exquisite.
The Ainulindale is truly breathtaking. How did Tolkien capture the ineffable so perfectly: A universe being sung into existence. I have often wondered how those ideas made their way into his imagination. I know he was a practicing Catholic, but the Music of the Ainur really bears no relation to the Old Testament. It is absolutely unique, and as beautiful as the finest poetry we have.
I had this exact experience as a teenager. I was ravenous for more and more Tolkien ... but had difficulty keeping track of events and characters in the Silmarillion. Of course, this was in the '70s, before there were a million reference options at the tip of my fingers.
Best part is reading LoTR again *after* reading Silmarilion - I saw so many lore bits and refrences that flew over my head on 1st reading.
True. It is remarkable how all those bits and references are invisible when not aware of Silmarillion.
When Gandalf and Frodo have a chat about the Ring in Bag End Gandalf tells him how even Ancalagon could not melt it.
You forgot going back and forth to consult the charts, maps, etc during the sillmarillion every single time a new character is introduced.
Someone gave me The Hobbit for my 8th birthday and I read it in a few days, absolutely loving it. Then about 9 years later I started reading LOTR. I remember stopping after about 2 hours and going "it's still talking about Bilbo's birthday party?? We haven't even left the bloody Shire?"...
That's like Lovecraft.
I can't remember what story it was but he spent about fifteen pages describing the appearance of snow.
@@MadastheHatter13 true that, I read some of Lovecraft's "short" stories and they spent *ages* describing the scenery or shape of buildings in a town. One of them, "The Lurking Fear" I think, involved a journey deeper and deeper underground for what felt like an eternity...
That sums up my Tolkien reading experience. The Silmarillion is not for the faint of heart! It requires a couple of rereads it really stick to the events unfolding in the story. The writing is like poetry to my ears!
I have The Silmarillion, but I've never read it.
Does it have a narrative, like Lord of the Rings, or is the story told like it?
@@MegaSpideyman Well it’s more or less written like a fantastical history book of Middle Earth (or Arda). Which makes it quite challenging to get through on the first read. So no it is not structured like LOTR not really. However I promise if you go thru it thoughtfully and really ponder whats going on, you’ll get alot out of it. How not to make the same mistakes that elves and men made in the tales written about them. In general you’ll get a better appreciation of what went into LOTRs creation and get a better grasp of the themes he told in that book. It may be challenging but its well worth your time!
That Silmarillion reaction is ON POINT! I'm always going back to the character names pages because of the numerous characters that were introduced. lol
Thank you!
The best way to read it for any first timer is to have a finger permanently in the back of the book at the glossaries/family trees so you can quickly reference a name when you have no idea what you're reading(this will happen about 10 times per page for the first 80 pages)
I don't understand why reading the silmarilion is so hard? Its like reading the Bible, only shorter, with elves.
Yeah seriously!
This is so similar to my thoughts while reading the Silmarillion a couple months ago. Now I'm rereading LoTR and I'm kicking myself for not taking notes every time an elf or location is mentioned offhand. I've actually referred back to it a few times to see if a name was mentioned in it.
I'm still pissed Tolkien named so many of the characters after their parents with like a single letter change, though. Like, sir, there are about 100 people I'm trying to keep track of in this story and you are not helping
Although at the same time that makes it even more authentic and like an actual historical account. Personally I really like how reading it feels almost like research, like I'm digging through the archives of Minas Tirith piecing together these events from differing and sometimes even conflicting accounts.
@@lizardlegend42 in world it is bilbo's notes of the elven poems he heard while in rivendel
@@zachofthebattery2864 well technically it's a copy of an annotated revision of a 5th edition of Bilbo's notes written by the scribe Findegil at the request of Pippin's great grandson but yeah 😅
Tolkien was never exactly one to go light on detail lol
To be fair, Tolkien was far from.having actually finished the Silmarillian. That's why some Tolkienists dont even consider it to be canon. Because Christopher basically pieced together his father's notes amd ideas into the most cohesive story that he could
@@crimsonthumos3905 ...who tf doesn't consider it canon?
It wasn't published in his liferime sure but it's still his writings and the basis for the world
I was in my teens when I first attempted Silmarillion and just could not follow it. After a few years I tried again and did better but struggled with the characters and got fed up of flipping to and from the appendices. So I designed a family tree that combined all of them on a separate sheet and it made a huge difference. Once I knew the names it was smooth sailing and I absolutely loved the book...couldn't put it down!
The Silmarillion is great, I didn't have the same struggles some people seem to have so it IS possible for a small brain to enjoy it. You just have to go with the flow, it all comes together eventually.
The Silmarillion audio book is where it is at. I've never read it, but I have listened to it 3 times. I love the narration, and all the names, titles, and places are pronounced for you. The narrator has a good story telling voice too. Highly recommend it, especially in the fall and your on a walk with the colorful leaves everywhere.
The Martin Shaw version, I assume? That was my entry to The Silmarillion. I bought it for a 13-hour road trip nearly 10 years ago and I can't stop listening to it.
The only unrealistic part about this is that after reading The Silmarillion I was like - “This was the greatest friggin’ book I have ever read, definitely gonna re-read next year” lol😄
Getting past page 2 of The Silmarillion is a MAJOR flex
I've never seen anyone so perfectly capture my Tolkien experience.
It’s such a bizarre intersection of writing when you think about it. Because you have Tolkien spending decades building his legendarium and then a children’s story he wrote for his kids gets published and EXPLODES in popularity. Suddenly the publishers want a sequel and he sees the opportunity to get his legendarium actually published, so he weaves the two together into the same continuity and Lord of the Rings comes out the other side - all with the goal of them also publishing the Silmarillion which they have zero interest in doing at the time.
As with the first comment by Here Be Subtitles, I had a very similar experience to the one in the video when I first read the Silmarillion. I found the opening part in particular to be very boring and gave up the first couple of times I tried reading it.
Now, about three decades on, I love the Silmarillion. The Lord of the Rings is still the absolute masterpiece and The Hobbit is still the fun little adventure but The Silmarillion offers up such a rich tapestry of intertwining stories over a longer, extended period of time. It creates the landscape in which the future struggle will take place and we get an insight into the otherwise aloof elves.
If there was a director up to the task, who wouldn't cut out too much or add in unnecessary content, it would make for an amazing mini-series. There is enough room in many of the stories ( Beren and Luthien, Children of Hurin, The Fall of Gondolin ) to expand and add flourishes without simply making up content or altering character's personalities and motivations. However, I am not sure there is a director out there who wouldn't end up trying to 'make their mark' or 'add their own stamp' to it in some way so the Tolkien family are probably right to be very protective over the rights.
Hey I was reading comments and saw you mentioned my comment :D And yes I'd read Hobbit and LOTR many times by the age of 14, but every time I tried Silmarillion (I had the audio version and the book, as well as many Tolkien Companion books to help understand names and places etc) I just could not grasp what was happening. I kept getting lost and confused and would give up quickly.
Nowadays, I'm in awe of how amazing Silmarillion is. Not only can I understand it, but I'm in awe of the poetry and beauty of the words themselves, and the way Tolkien uses language like art to convey meaning.
I read Ungoliants chapter on my channel for Tolkien reading day, but I don't think I did the story justice - it's one of those books that needs to be read by someone with an _epic_ voice :D eventually I'd love to make videos _explaining_ each story, to help people understand who are having trouble with the book. That could help make it more accessible to those who are struggling :D
And I agree about an adaptation, especially after what Amazon has done to Tolkien's lore and traditions. It's much better if the Tolkien estate keeps Silmarillion safe from being adapted. It could make an AMAZING series of course, one of the most amazing series in history, but directors and showrunners nowadays have a tendency to want to change everything to suit their own agendas and ideals, while often misunderstanding core aspects of the source material. Silmarillion will be best left safe in our minds and hearts I think, instead of being adapted to the screen. It would be painful to watch anyone ruin it by changing everything to "make it better" (which is what Amazon are claiming to have done with Rings of Power) Y_Y
This is one of those books you get exhausted reading and put it down, then you discover it years later wondering what happened, then remembered you need a notepad on standby to make a reference sheet just to keep track of who is whom and keeping track of all the different plot threads going on in different places all at once.
I did exactly this, earlier in the year! I'm dyslexic, so I listened to Andy Serkis read Hobbit, Fellowship, Two Towers, and Return. Then I started The Silmarillion and it was more like a geographical textbook than a novel. Lots of names of places and lineage of people than a novel. Then after explaining the location of all the places, it was all wiped out like washing away all the street names in Atlantis. I've got The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien and The Fall of Gondolin on my wish list.
I've read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and really want to read the Silmarillion at some point, but I feel like I'm gonna have to make notes as I go along with it 🤣
Same! I've read both but I think I'm going to read LOTR a couple more times before I read Silmarillion because it def scares me a bit haha
Hey there!! Silmarillion is more like a Bible than a book. It's sort of like the Middle Earth version of a Bible. Are you familiar with like, old Norse Mythology and Biblical tales and fairytales etc? Like the way they're all written is very different from modern stories. It's like a collection of myths and legends that all tie together (however in Middle Earth these stories are "true" because even though they happened thousands of years ago, some are still alive who were alive when they happened, or at least met people who the events happened to). If you read it from that perspective it's much easier.
And some of the stories are AMAZING!!! There's one about Beren and Luthien where a great warrior is taken captive and his lover (an elf lady named Luthien) goes on a perilous adventure into the darkest parts of the world with a giant Maian dog named Huan to save him. Omg it's so good. Tolkien was really good at writing genuinely strong female characters, not like a lot of the nonsense we have today :D
There's also the story of how Shelob's ancestor literally ate the light out of the world D:
There's so many good stories, and it shows elves are not as wise nor as peaceful as they're depicted in LOTR and The Hobbit D:
@@kaitlyng7850 If you can finish LOTR more than once then it's safe to assume you love Middle-earth and want to learn more about it. That'll push you through, my good man. The prologue (or the Ainulindalë, as its called in the book) is without a doubt the hardest part. It's very abstract and hard to follow what's happening but once you've pushed past that things start to become more grounded. I mean, it's still the most challenging thing I've ever read, I won't lie, but it's so worth it. I've never read something so enshrouded in mysticism and archaic beauty. You won't understand everything upon your initial read and that's okay, nobody does. Like LOTR it's a pilgrimage to take every so often when the need arises.
I might recommend listening to the audiobook on Spotify , it’s read by Andy Serkis , and it’s just great . Also allows to do research as you listen or pause and do some .
This is the step I’ve taken and it’s fantastic , once I’m done I plan on buying actual book and reading again , but I should have way more grasp
J R R Tolkien released so much masterful work. The Hobbit and Lord of the rings are,of course bona fide masterpieces and I adore both,especially Lord of The Rings,but for my money the best was to come,for the quality of writing superior in many parts within the unfinished material to The Hobbit and even The Lord Of The Rings.Tolkien's shining Silmarils really are the History of Middle-earth volumes,Unfinished Tales,and The Silmarillion .All outshining the books released in J R R Tolkien's lifetime.
Legend says, he's still reading it even today.
You don't read the Silmarilion, you study it
💯 I got into it. And that’s all it’s been. Studying the material so it all makes sense . Best book I’ve ever read/listened to
Yea, more!!!
This is basically my autobiography. Only difference is that I barreled through the Silmarillion the first time with the notion that I would immediately start it over again. Took my time the second time and absolutely loved it. I have now read it four times.
The virgin LOTR fan vs. The chad Silmarillion enjoyer
Ha, ha! Great little video 😊
With me it was a little different: i saw Ralpj Bakshi's incomplete movie first and throughout most of that movie I didn't have the foggiest idea who everybody was, and what kind of creatures were hobbits??? Who was Bilbo, and why was his birthday party important. And why was the evol ring still in Frodo's possession at the end of that strange movie ???
I decided that I needed to actually read the Lord Of The Rings. I immediately loved the books, and I realized that it wasn't really my fault that l hadn't understood Bakshi's movie.
After I had read the LOTR trilogy, I was still a bit in the dark about Bilbo, and I decided to read "The Hobbit". I was totally astonished about the light hearted tone of the little novel - but I absolutely loved Tolkien's humour! I would have never guessed that Tolkien could be so funny! There's certainly not a lot to laugh about in the later novels. And for a while I even prefered "The Hobbit", and I still like Bilbo a lot better than Frodo. Frodo has always remained a bit pale as a character.
As to the Silmarillion: I read it eventually, but while it's interesting, I am not at all fond of it! The only guy who made a lasting impression on me, is Fingolfin and his brave duel with the mighty Morgoth! I read a few mpre stories written by Tolkien which are not set in Middle Earth or Valinor, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. But I didn't read ^The Children Of Hurin^ because I knew that I probably would not enjoy them.
To be fair, when I first read The Silmarillion, the multiple categorization of the members of the angelic order, and the multiple names many main characters bore were very hard to keep up with. I recall I used Robert Foster's book The Complete Guide to Middle Earth to keep things straight, and went from the Silmarillion to the Guide every paragraph or two at the start. By my 3rd or 4th re-read I had the characters and their names and titles pretty much down and the stories of the War of the Jewels became my favorite of all Tolkien's writings. The writing was grand and dramatic and swept one away into the story as a good book should. I re-read The Hobbit, The Trilogy, and the Silmarillion and Lost Tales at least once a year, and always look forward to the Silmarillion the most.
If you need another book to keep things straight that is an issue. I have tried three times and could never get it. Not trying again.
Reading the Silmarillion is like studying paleontology. It's complicated, it recalls ancient times, it's a difficult puzzle to put together, but when the pieces fit in place, everything seems to shine in new bright colors and you see the patterns happening once, twice, thrice... everything makes sense and there is a purpose behind every single damn word written.
It's just beautiful.
Bro idk how people don't like the sillmarillion!! It's soo freaking good, literally a history of the world
I spent 2,5 years reading the Hobbit. But true enough, it was easy to read.
Once you get sucked into the Silmarillion you will never ever stop reading it again and again.
I wonder how many other people read The Silmarillion over and over again. I have been through it at least 25 times and I read it pretty much constantly. Each time I get something new from it.
That is exactly what I did with Tolkien, never finished The Silmarillion! I'll try it again, eventually. Thanks for the video.
For your average 'Tolkien connoisseur' it seems reading the Silmarillion is far less important than telling people you have read it, multiple times. By the way I have read it 0.2 times (in progress).
I have only read the Silmarilion and I think it´s fantastic, even tho It´s not cohesive, but every little story is far more interesting every time you re-read it. Fascinating how a world evolve within your eyes.
Read Children of Hurin, it's a pretty amazing standalone adventure from the Silmarillion
Cool, I'll check it out!
My personal favorite.
My first time reading the Silmarillian was actually listening to the audiobook. Highly recommend. It makes it a lot easier to follow. As a teenager I listened to it once a summer for a few years.
I suspect that 99.9% of people who say they read the Silmarillion are lying.
I’m convinced that Tolkien wrote the silmarilion way before lotr and even I dare say had footnotes before the hobbit. To create something so beautiful, powerful and in depth with so much lore Tolkien obviously had all these meanderings in the mind of his for decades. And was a lover of the bible.
When aluew (can’t spell it lol) was about to kill the dwarves but was stopped by eru illuvatar is a direct parallel to God from the Bible stopping Abraham killing his son Isaac.
The man was just an absolute genius
Fun fact, The Silmarillion has actually had the best adaptation of anything Tolkien. That adaptation being “Nightfall In Middle Earth”, a concept album by the band Blind Guardian. It retells the Silmarillion in a musical format, and it’s truly excellent.
Also Blind Guardian is just amazing overall.
That is cool! I might have to check that out
I didn't know about it!!
Suggestion for readign Silmarillion AKA The Nerd Bible: Find a Bible study group. More people you get involved the more you can understand it. Helped me out when I was reading it for the first time.
Hobbit - Mostly Dwarves
Lord of the ring - Mostly men
Silmarillion - Mostly elves
I have only read each of these books once, but I surprisingly kind of understood the Silmarillion. There are definitely parts that I didn’t get to well, parts I may have been zoned out, but overall I understood it decently. It just emphasizes the incredible development behind Tolkien’s more famous books, adding depth and providing a beautiful backstory. By far the most amazing fantasy world ever created (owing to how Tolkien developed it so completely)
The Silmarillion was Tolkien's episode 1-3 of Star Wars, while the LOTR was comparable to Star Wars episode 4-6.
The Hobbit was like an episode of the clone wars.
Read all three for the first time as a young teenager and the Silmarillion was instantly my favorite!
You have been reading LOTR wrong: you have to read it from the perspective of a black man
The Silmarillion was my first Tolkien book and I understood it almost perfectly on my first read through! 😂 My mom had read all Lotr and the Hobbit and just could not get past the first chapter of the Silmarillion. I literally love that book so much!
I’m a big Tolkien fan. The problem is I watched the Lotr films when I was in 5th/6th grade, watched them again 1-2 years later. Loved it even more.
Watched the hobbit and after some time AGAIN I just randomly found the silmarillion from my dad’s old book collection.
He said he read Lotr and Hobbit but never the Silm since it was to hard to read. My personality loves to prove to others that I can do something they can’t, so that became my only reason at the beginning for reading it. (Remember I had only the 6 movies as back knowledge + yt videos talking about Lotr and hobbit lore) (I only heard the words valar, maiar, Arda, Ea and Morgoth one time in those vids. Was so confused, like “ SAURON HAD A BOSS, WHAT?! Who the hell is he??? He looks fvcking scary!)
Anyway back to the story. The ainulindale was one heck of a chapter. I only remember 10 percent of it. The Valaquenta was actually quite interesting and the valar and maiar was fun to read about. Things got even more interesting and I was in awe of how great and deep this book actually was.
I got more info about the elves, dwarves and men, understood more of the Ainur, learned the family lines of the elves quite quickly (with the help of the family tree in the last pages), cruses on some elves (erhm-maedhros-erhrm), finally understood all the references in Lotr and hobbit, had a laugh at some of the stories, cried tree times (SPOILER: it was Feanor, Finrod and belegs deaths), had a breakdown when one of the characters died, and was quite empty when the book ended. Like I read the whole book in two days during summer vacation (mom forced me to take breaks and eat sometimes 😑)
I was happy too cause I had accomplished something my dad couldn’t and went and shoved it up my parents faces. Wished I had used more time to enjoy it though.
The point is that I feel like I should have read Lotr and the hobbit before this. I’ve still never read them (mostly because I have seen the movies and know kind of what happens (I know there is more things that happens in the books and they are so great) but I can’t bring myself to do it) ahahaha sorry
You don’t want to read the books because you’ve already seen the movies?! 😂 I was the opposite. After I saw Fellowship in theaters, I immediately bought and read the books, which are vastly superior to the movies.
I would love to read the books, they sound amazing. But I never knew about what Lord of the Rings was before I hear about the films. I’m dumb like that because since I know what happens (at least a lot of it) the books doesn’t seem very tempting since most of it is already spoiled🥲😅. I did try to read them once but Sorry Tolkien the intro about hobbits (Lotr) was pretty boring
Might read them one day, but right now I’m reading Wheel of time.
@@userjsjsks4141 Perhaps you wouldn't enjoy the books, then. It's not for everyone.
The books compared to movies... fact the books are more detailed. Sad thing is in the movie, the great Tom Bombadil isn't exist.
Not only do the books have more happen in them, but they're actually quite different at a thematic level, especially Lord of the Rings. And many characters act quite differently. As books they are not meant to be a plot-focused work, so already knowing the general plot arc won't harm the experience at all. I really suggest reading them.
In college in the 70s I discovered The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I think I read it all twice. I bought the Silmarillion and got comfortable and maybe got 25 pages in and just said “Hell no”.
Lol this is why I'm so scared to read The Silmarillion!
I almost dropped reading it after the first 10 pages because there are so many characters and places thrown at you so fast. It is real hard to keep track at first. But then you start to get into a groove and the more important characters/places are repeated often enough that names start to stick.
If you can stick with it though, it is worth reading in my opinion.
@@miketravelsnowhere6557 Yes! It got so much easier and easier as the story progressed. I no longer had to look at the map or family trees after every paragraph lol
I think the reputation makes it more intimidating than it actually is. However, as you are reading the Silmarillion i would recommend searching up " The Silmarillion Explained" series on youtube , its a great companion guide.
What he said. Just let the names and language stuff wash over you. What's important will stick.
@@Trowa71 I would say that it is important to remember names (it wasn't easy but it wasn't toooo hard as well), because you have to know whom the text is talking about
😄😄😄
We forget when we read The Hobbit & LOTR that Tolkien didn't write all these stories through to their completion or even in a 'sequence' as such.
He seemed to have similar to an ADH type brain that couldn't resist having to jump off into multiple 'backstories' so that mentions of a linear Elven, Dwarf, Man and Orc history would appear like 'natural linear history'.
In essence, Tolkien told these stories to his son, he didn't read them from a finished manuscript as such.
My understanding of The Hobbit & LOTR was that they were finished works from Tolkien's lifetime, but people loved the books so much that posthumously his son (Christopher) decided to compile stories from his Dad's voluminous notes - either editing them & including them in various other publications or having to finish writing them after his Dad's death, using his memory and his Dad's notes.
The Silmarillion in that context makes sense to me. It is not a story - it is a compilation of the notes & individual backstories Tolkien envisaged when writing his 2 main works.
So in the Silmarillion we get to read the stories of where the poetry, elven songs & references in The Hobbit & LOTR 'originated' in the histories of Elves, Dwarves & Men.
I specifically loved the first chapter of The Silmarillion - a description of creation. And the concept of an 'Elbereth'. My house in the country in the forest on top of a hill which had a great view for 240⁰ around I named Elbereth.
This is soooo accurate 😭😂
i just finished reading the silmarillion and it's good to know i'm not the only one that felt this way
Most relatable video 😂😂😂 and most accurate depiction of everybody I know ( myself included) after reading the silmarillion 😂😂..
About the Silmarillion. Just take your time, and look at tables and maps. It is honestly deeply fascinating even if you just get a little of it.
end of second reading of the Silmarillion: [sobbing over Beren and Luthien]
This is what going from The Children of Hurin to The Fall of Gondolin felt like as well.
For years I didn't read the Silmarrilion. Now I can't stop reading it. It's become my go to comfort book.
I agree, the silmarillion is a way better read over and over again because you understand it more when you know the ending.
I've only read the Hobbit. I love it cause it's not complicated. I will read Lotr and Silmarillion in the future but right now I'm still savoring Hobbit
I know very smart well read people who find Lord of the Rings a difficult read. Yes the Simarillion can be a tedious read but essential if you are a Tolkien geek and reading it totally transforms your understanding of The Hobbit and LOR. For example when the elves are passing through the Shire singing about Snowwhite you know who it is they are praising and why, etc. Plus the origin of the Dwarves, so cool. It helps to have a good Tolkien encyclopedia handy when reading it so you can tell all the elves whose name starts with "Fin.." apart. I recommend reading only what interests you at first and go from there. More than one read is necessary. My personal alternate title for the Simarillion is "Elves Behaving Badly" as they really aren't all that high and mighty after all
I practically read the Silmarillion twice the first time. I would read 2-3 pages, go look at the family trees at the back and then read again the same 2-3 pages.
You might well say "You can't read the Silmarillion only once" 😄
"And Morgoth came." One of the most badass lines ever put on paper. Fingolfin is the most badass elf of all time.
I read The Silmarillion when I was 12 and I'm sure my brain imploded.
The big advantage was friends were reading it around the same time too, so we quickly got to know stuff and you'd re-read sections. Then it began to make sense.
Some 40 years later it's still my favourite of Tolkien's works.
I read more Tolkien as they got released, so read Lays Of Beleriand when I was about 16.... now that is demanding.
The beauty of this video is that I first saw it without sound and still completely understood it. Using the phone as a reference is so true.
I love when a charater has 3 names called by 3 different kind of creatures or whatever
I started reading Tolkien's works in the 70's when I was a kid. Our school library had a copy of The Silmarillion. Truth be told, after struggling through it twice, I got mad and read it, chapter by chapter, in reverse. From back to front. It made more sense that way. Many, many years later, I came to understand two things about the book. That, in truth, it was an Omnibus of many smaller stories with varying threads connecting them. And that it was, in many ways, an incomplete book; a sort of third draft, not quite yet meant for consumption by the writer who died before it was properly finished. This, of course, is just my opinion.
I read The Silmarillion(excluding the Children Of Hurin) to my sister when she was in second grade. She read it herself in sixth grade. Was really proud of her, given that she got all the questions right on her reading comprehension test for it despite not reading The Children Of Hurin yet. Used the process of elimination because she knew everything else to get the question right.
It makes your head spin at times, but is definitely worth reading.
I have been a fan of Tolkien for over 30 years.
I first started reading The Silmarillion when I was about 22. After reading a few dozen pages, the book threw me off. I was overwhelmed by the huge amount of names and land names.
At that point, I decided not to read any further. I put the book aside for a few years, then picked it up again. I guess I had to grow up to it, because the second time the number of proper names didn't bother me at all. And at that moment I felt more or less as if I had been run over by a road roller and pressed into the ground. My mind refused to accept that a single person could come up with something so brilliant. The world he created struck with its vastness, but also with details that worked together perfectly. Even then I knew that I had just read the greatest story ever created by man in history. In my opinion, there are two factors that make The Silmarillion so great. It is the coherence of the created world and the Tolkien dry and sparing prose style that gives the reader a lot of room for imagination. It's hard to find at least two people who imagine the same way the Music of the Ainur, the creation of the two Trees, the birth of the Elves, the creation and appearance of the Silmarils, the duel of Fingolfin with Morgoth, the War of Wrath, and especially the duel of Earendil with Ancalagon the Black. All these events stimulate the reader's imagination and this is the greatest joy and reward that the reader gets after reading this book. Throughout the reading of The Silmarillion (especially the part concerning the struggle of Elves and Men with Morgoth in the first era) there is an indefinable sadness, a sadness into which Tolkien has wove an undying hope for a good ending. And even though Morgoth is finally defeated, the sadness of the lost things does not leave us.
well put
The Silmarillion starts off really rough, but once you get to the main story with the silmarils themselves, it gets more clear.
I first listened to the Silmarillion audiobook, which was amazing for spelling and getting into the story. Since then, I have gone through it again, and through Unfinished Tales. There are some great TH-cam channels that explain characters and aspects of the Silmarillion so well for further understanding. Plus, there are several podcasts of folks going one chapter at a time and discussing it. It's my favorite Tolkien book.