The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

[Joel_Kirk]

I hope I spelled that correctly....

This book is in my personal library, but I probably won't get to reading it for some time.

I would like to ask the posters if they had read it, and did they understand it?

As much as a Lord of the Rings fan, I actually never really read the trilogy (Fellowship, Towers, Return)....but I did read the 'prequel' The Hobbit several times in elementary school.

I know Silmarillion involves elves (which should be interesting) but I just wanted to get some thoughts, opinions, rants...etc....

 

[ITL]

I love The Silmarillion, but it is a very different book to The Hobbit or LoTR. For a start, it covers literally thousands of years (and even the period before the counting of years started, really) and has so many characters that you have trouble remembering their names. It's written in a more distanced, "This is the 'Tale Of....'" way - at times like a history lesson colliding with Epic Drama.

It was actually compiled by Tolkiens' son, Christopher, from Tolkiens' unfinished writings. The history of Middle Earth was a neverending project for Tolkien, and he revised it many times over the years (The Book Of Lost Tales I&II are early, different versions of the tales that form The Silmarillion).

I would recommend reading LoTR first, however - and pay attention to the chronology in the Appendix! Then read The Silmarillion. It'll make more sense if you do it that way. But it's worth a read. Or several.

 

[Roshi]

I love it too. But it took me years to get into it. It went better when I finally understood that the universe was created by a song...

 

[Joel_Kirk]

I love The Silmarillion, but it is a very different book to The Hobbit or LoTR. For a start, it covers literally thousands of years (and even the period before the counting of years started, really) and has so many characters that you have trouble remembering their names. It's written in a more distanced, "This is the 'Tale Of....'" way - at times like a history lesson colliding with Epic Drama.

It was actually compiled by Tolkiens' son, Christopher, from Tolkiens' unfinished writings. The history of Middle Earth was a neverending project for Tolkien, and he revised it many times over the years (The Book Of Lost Tales I&II are early, different versions of the tales that form The Silmarillion).

I would recommend reading LoTR first, however - and pay attention to the chronology in the Appendix! Then read The Silmarillion. It'll make more sense if you do it that way. But it's worth a read. Or several.

I love it too. But it took me years to get into it. It went better when I finally understood that the universe was created by a song...

Interesting....interesting...

 

[Count Zero]

I've read and reread The Silmarillion years ago. I really liked it, maybe more than Lord of the Rings. It feels like old epics and ancient stories.
But you should read Lord of the Rings first and maybe reread The Hobbit before that.

 

[AJBryant]

I love the Silmarillion. And the Book of Lost Tales. And the Children of Hurin. And the whole History of Middle Earth series.

 

[john titor]

I prefered it to the hobbit which was crap. Its like the bible of Tolkiens universe.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Definitely read LotR first. If you have trouble getting though it, then you're going to one hell of a time getting through "The Silmarillion." But, I would encourage to try, they're both excellent.

 

[Dream]

The Silmarillion is a history book. I don't understand why fans want it to be made into a movie.

 

[Kegg]

^
You don't like movies based on history?

Seriously though, there are a dozen of condensed and summarized stories that have real cinematic potential. The problem is they're summarised and condensed so you'd have to be expanding them, naturally.

I would like to ask the posters if they had read it, and did they understand it?

Yep. It's not that hard to understand, though it is a rather dense read - there may be more worldbuilding in that comparatively slim volume than the considerable LOTR tomes.

And Feanor Kinslayer is probably one of my favourite Tolkein elves, right up there with Galadriel. An honest to goodness interesting life that guy.

I know Silmarillion involves elves (which should be interesting) but I just wanted to get some thoughts, opinions, rants...etc....

It's got some of the most interesting information on elves around. But it's also got dwarves, balrogs, the creation of the world, the great Numenoreans, and so on. Who is the King and to what was he returning, anyway? You'd get a sense of that from this text.

It even covers the events of LOTR, though briefly, from a historian's perspective.

 

[mythme]

The first few chapters deal with the "gods" of Middle Earth, the Valar, which makes this section read like the Bible; with the envy of Melkor, the destruction of "paradise" and all that sort of thing.

The bulk of the Silmarillion is the history of the Elves. The most difficult part of this is the large number of names and Elvish families to keep track of. The Elves sunder into different groups and family subgroups which are at odds with each other and how they deal when men come into the picture. If you're good at reading, say, Norse sagas this should be right up your alley.

The last final chapters of the Silmarillion proper, and the shorter Fall of Numeneor section, read a bit like a medieval legend. Understandably since its Tolkiens version of Atlantis.

Took me years to grasp the Silmarillion completely, and required several re-readings. I found keeping notes and family trees was helpful in keeping track of everyone. Christopher Tokien has often said that he wished he could re-do the Silmarillion to make it more "complete" and readable since so much of his father's writings had been unearthed since its publication (hence the exhaustive History of Middle Earth series). But the demand for a book shortly after J.R.R.'s death drove Christopher to be hasty in its release.

There are large chunks of the Silmarillion which seem totally complete and smaller ones that obviously needed more fleshing out. These are sometimes connected in an awkward and confusing way to make an uninterupped narrative. It might have been better to have cut it appart into sections with a predominate storyline. Still, if you can get past some of its shortcomings, there is some gripping drama and beautiful imagery to be found.

Should it be made into a movie? sections of it could work such as Beren and Luthien. Turin Turambar was recently published as a more complete, stand-alone volume, so that's possible. But as a whole, it would be unweildly and probably confusing.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

To really enjoy The Silmarillion, you really need Karen Wynn Fonstad's "The Atlas of Middle-Earth", in my opinion. It makes everything much easier to understand.

 

[InklingStar]

I read the Silmarillion before I read Lord of the Rings back in high school. I figured I may as well start at the beginning. I absolutely love history though, and can read history texts for weeks on end. If you like history, you will like the Silmarillion. Going back to the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings afterward, they have so much more weight and gravitas than before. Middle-Earth is not just a generic fantasy setting for Tolkien's stories, it is a "real" world in which stories naturally flow.

Spoiler: Spoilers for the later stories

How awesome is it to read in The Hobbit where Elrond tells Gandalf about how the sword, Glamdring, was once wielded by the king of Gondolin? After reading The Silmarillion, you know that not only was that king Turgon, son of Fingolfin, but that Turgon was Elrond's great-grandfather!

How awesome is it reading about Aragorn singing the Ley of Leithian, to know the whole story of Beren and Luthian, their adventures, and even their encounter with Sauron in the form of a vampire?

This is from the Unfinished Tales, another necessary read. But how awesome is it to read of the Ride of the Rohirrim on the Pelannor, led by Theoden, knowing that centuries earlier, Eorl led the Rohirrim on the Field of Celebrant in the same way to save Gondor then?

How awesome is it to know that Gwaihir, the eagle lord who pals around with Gandalf, is a son of Thorondor, the great eagle from The Silmarillion? And Shelob, who poisons Frodo, is a descendant of the evil Ungoliant who struck fear in the heart of Morgoth?

The scene in the movie with Gandalf on the Bridge of Khazad-dum is amazing. Imagine the scene of Feanor's death, surrounded by Balrogs? Or the Fall of Gondolin, where Tuor, Turgon, Glorfindel, and Ecthelion all battle Balrogs?

How about the role of the Ents in The Silmarillion? They are mentioned but briefly - when the Dwarves steal the Silmaril from King Thingol, Beren waylays them and the Ents finish them off. Fangorn was lenient with Gimli!

Bilbo shows some chutzpah in crafting a poem about Earendil in the House of Elrond. How awesome is it that Elrond Halfelven, the lore-master in The Hobbit, is the son of a freaking star?

Again, from the Unfinished Tales. It's a mighty gift for Galadriel to gift Gimli with three strands of her hair. How awesome is it to realize that Feanor, her uncle, three times requested a lock of her hair for his crafting - and she refused him?

I could go on for pages. Suffice it to say, reading through The Silmarillion is definitely worth it, even the slow dry parts. Pick up Unfinished Tales too. The stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are so much deeper afterward.

 

[Agenda]

I think the Sil could conceivably be made into a great series of movies. Of course, the script would practically have to be written from scratch, as the book has little actual dialogue to go on.

 

[23skidoo]

I think the Sil could conceivably be made into a great series of movies. Of course, the script would practically have to be written from scratch, as the book has little actual dialogue to go on.

Didn't they use a bit of it in the LOTR movies, too?

But yeah, people think the Silmarillion is a novel. I remember when LOTR came out people said "Ok, what about Silmarillion as a movie?" and most of them had never read it. If you read it you'd know it's not something that, as a whole, can be adapted as a movie.

It's not a book to read if you're not intimately familiar with the Middle Earth universe. That goes for any book with Christopher Tolkien's name on it. I'm sure a few people have picked up some of the History of Middle Earth books expecting new tales and being quite disappointed that most of them are documentary-style discussions of Tolkien's ideas. In my opinion these books should be in the Literary Criticism sections for the most part, not SF/F.

All that said, Silmarillion, being the first, certainly has the more cohesive and complete storylines, and I could see someone taking ideas from the book and expanding upon them for movies. Purists will scream, though -- if you consider they still haven't forgiven Peter Jackson for leaving Tom Bombadil on the cutting room floor and shoehorning Arwen into the films so there could be another major female LOTR character for marketing, imagine if a film inspired by a Silmarillion story, yet otherwise a more or less original work, was attempted.

Alex

 

[Dale]

I started reading it more than 25 years ago as a teen, but accidentally dropped it in the pool and it swelled up to the size of a pillow. I never tried again.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I read it when I was seven.

I loved the Rankin-Bass Hobbit. I was young, and I wanted more.

Little was I to know...

The Silmarillion warped my mind at an early age. I haven't been able to get it flat since.

 

[Skywalker]

Any successful adaptation of The Silmarillion would probably have to concentrate on probably five major storylines, such as Fëanor's feud with Morgoth, Beren and Lúthien's quest for the Silmaril, the Children of Húrin, Tuor's adventures in Gondolin, and Eärendil's journey to Valinor and the War of Wrath. Even then, it'd be difficult. There's so much going on that it'd be hard to compress all the important stuff even into five movies.

 

[Scott Delaney]

I've felt, since the film trilogy, that The Silmarillion could only really work as a high budget tv series or miniseries - a format that would allow them to really stretch their legs.

 

[AJBryant]

The Silmarillion is a history book. I don't understand why fans want it to be made into a movie.

Because there have been some WONDERFUL films based on historical books.

I read the Silmarillion before I read Lord of the Rings back in high school. I figured I may as well start at the beginning. I absolutely love history though, and can read history texts for weeks on end. If you like history, you will like the Silmarillion. Going back to the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings afterward, they have so much more weight and gravitas than before. Middle-Earth is not just a generic fantasy setting for Tolkien's stories, it is a "real" world in which stories naturally flow.

Spoiler: Spoilers for the later stories

How awesome is it to read in The Hobbit where Elrond tells Gandalf about how the sword, Glamdring, was once wielded by the king of Gondolin? After reading The Silmarillion, you know that not only was that king Turgon, son of Fingolfin, but that Turgon was Elrond's great-grandfather!

How awesome is it reading about Aragorn singing the Ley of Leithian, to know the whole story of Beren and Luthian, their adventures, and even their encounter with Sauron in the form of a vampire?

This is from the Unfinished Tales, another necessary read. But how awesome is it to read of the Ride of the Rohirrim on the Pelannor, led by Theoden, knowing that centuries earlier, Eorl led the Rohirrim on the Field of Celebrant in the same way to save Gondor then?

How awesome is it to know that Gwaihir, the eagle lord who pals around with Gandalf, is a son of Thorondor, the great eagle from The Silmarillion? And Shelob, who poisons Frodo, is a descendant of the evil Ungoliant who struck fear in the heart of Morgoth?

The scene in the movie with Gandalf on the Bridge of Khazad-dum is amazing. Imagine the scene of Feanor's death, surrounded by Balrogs? Or the Fall of Gondolin, where Tuor, Turgon, Glorfindel, and Ecthelion all battle Balrogs?

How about the role of the Ents in The Silmarillion? They are mentioned but briefly - when the Dwarves steal the Silmaril from King Thingol, Beren waylays them and the Ents finish them off. Fangorn was lenient with Gimli!

Bilbo shows some chutzpah in crafting a poem about Earendil in the House of Elrond. How awesome is it that Elrond Halfelven, the lore-master in The Hobbit, is the son of a freaking star?

Again, from the Unfinished Tales. It's a mighty gift for Galadriel to gift Gimli with three strands of her hair. How awesome is it to realize that Feanor, her uncle, three times requested a lock of her hair for his crafting - and she refused him?

I could go on for pages. Suffice it to say, reading through The Silmarillion is definitely worth it, even the slow dry parts. Pick up Unfinished Tales too. The stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are so much deeper afterward.

I love you. In a totally hetero-normative, testosterone-laden, manly-man sort of way.