And I am thinking of starting the books with Silmarillion. Do you think it's good to start with?
And I am thinking of starting the books with Silmarillion. Do you think it's good to start with?
Well, in my opinion, I think it may be better to start with The Hobbit, or the trilogy. Just because there is a lot of complicated lore in the Silmarillion. It's your call, of course, and there wouldn't be any harm done, but it's a pretty hard read... And welcome to the Fandom! :)
I wouldn’t start with the Silmarillion. Its definitely worth reading, but it is very dense, and you don’t need to read it to understand The Hobbit or LotR. I’d read the others first, and if you enjoy them, try the Silmarillion.
This is not what I would recommend. However, if you are dedicated, there can be a way to make this work. To do so, you have to understand a few things.
1: The Silmarillion, unlike LOTR and the Hobbit, was not published during Tolkien's life. Tolkien had been working on it for decades, but never finished it. What we have is a combined work edited by Christopher Tolkien (His son), and Guy Gavriel Kay. This means that Tolkien did not nail down the final details. It is often contradictory.
2: The Silmarillion in a very significant way, does not follow any traditional story components. It is not one story, but many smaller ones in one big book. There is an overarching plot. This plot, however, does not have a) a main character or b) a "quest".
3: While with LOTR and The Hobbit, I would encourage avoiding spoilers at all costs, with The Silmarillion, welcome them with open arms. In my first reading of the book, I used outside resources to understand the plot. Consult pages on this Wiki.
The Youtube channel Aelfwine's road makes summary videos for various chapters of the Silmarillion, and I would encourge watching Nerd of the Rings' 3-part series on Morgoth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuHLyviVamA
Godspeed, my friend. I salute your bravery for diving into the fire before the frying pan.
"Out of the frying pan..." "And into the fire! RUUUN!!"
(I had to...)
I did wouldn’t recommend it tho.
I would read the hobbit first in my opinion
No. start with hobbit or lotr
I would not recommend it, it's too heavy of a read. Some parts more of a lexicon than a story. Packed full with crazy amounts of information.
It's much easier to get into The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings. The Similarion is just written much differently.
The Hobbit was the first book published, and perhaps the quickest and easiest read. The Silmarillion is my favorite of Tolkien’s books, so I will not tell you that you shouldn’t start there. However I must warn that if you try to read the books chronologically, there are spoilers in the Silmarillion, especially for the other FA stories published near the end of Christopher Tolkien’s life. It might be better to start off with Beren and Luthien, Children of Huron, and the Fall of Gondolin, which didn’t exist when I started reading Tolkien.
What do you think?