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Post by Cuarlang / Legladhor on Feb 11, 2014 17:23:09 GMT -5
If you've ever tried to read The Silmarillion, chances are you found it a difficult read, perhaps so difficult that you (as I did) only got a few pages or chapters in before giving up. In my experience, The Silmarillion is, unfortunately, a book one can't simply pick up and dive into like one can with The Hobbit or even Lord of the Rings. What helps very much is to read about The Silmarillion before reading the book itself. With that in mind, I present The Silmarillion Reader's Guide (<---download link), created by the author of the blog Ask About Middle Earth. Although I had done a decent amount of reading about The Silmarillion before I happened upon this reader's guide, I found that said guide helped me get a grasp on the book's contents. My hope is that, thanks to this guide and to other resources (online and otherwise) for gaining knowledge about Tolkien's legendarium, you will (at least eventually) be able to appreciate The Silmarillion for the remarkable work that it (in my opinion, anyway) is. |
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Post by lornabel on Feb 11, 2014 23:46:04 GMT -5
Thank you for this, Cúarlang! The artwork in the guide is lovely, and it's helpful for keeping the characters sorted. I read The Silmarillion when it was first published, around 1978 (I'm older than an elf!), and have reread it many, many times. The early chapters *are* a bit of a slog, but once the Noldor arrive back in Middle-earth and the Men show up, then I think it's easier to read. Tolkien's prose reads almost like poetry, and the tales are strange or beautiful or sad, or all three... After falling in love with the back-stories in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, I was so happy to read more about the First Age. With that in mind, I present The Silmarillion Reader's Guide (<---download link), created by the author of the blog Ask About Middle Earth. Although I had done a decent amount of reading about The Silmarillion before I happened upon this reader's guide, I found that said guide helped me get a grasp on the book's contents. My hope is that, thanks to this guide and to other resources (online and otherwise) for gaining knowledge about Tolkien's legendarium, you will (at least eventually) be able to appreciate The Silmarillion for the remarkable work that it (in my opinion, anyway) is. |
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Post by Fordil on Feb 12, 2014 13:05:11 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing this, however I barely have any free time lately (and I spend most of it in-game or in bed), and since I'm already about halfway through the book now, I think I'll save it for later like you did. I've started and quit several times, it's quite possible that I've read the first few chapters about 5-6 times by now, but I've now reached the point where I'm about to read stuff for the first time in that book.
As Lornabel says, the first chapters are quite hard, mostly because of the giant load of names and descriptions, but it gets easier as you advance. Personally, a big map of Arda would help I think... Right now you get a lot of text describing places and where they're located, but after a few more names and descriptions it slips your mind again and you're thinking "great, I know I read about that place but I have no clue where it's situated..."
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Post by simera on Feb 13, 2014 20:52:42 GMT -5
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Post by ellahad on Feb 14, 2014 22:27:43 GMT -5
I just had a chance to look at this guide, thanks for posting the link, Cuarlang! I wish I had this when I first read the Sil back in the late '80s. I remember thinking then that it felt a bit like reading the Bible...but now I've read it many, many times; in fact my son and I just read through it (he's 11 - start 'em young!). I'm very interested in the subject of "canon", especially in this application of the Legendarium that Tolkien never suspected, a LOTR-based simulated RPG.
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Post by lornabel on Feb 19, 2014 19:56:23 GMT -5
This is very amusing, Simera, especially the little drawings. Will you add more entries? I especially liked the one "grad school" discussion.  For a while I was considering a project to bring The Silmarillion to Landroval. The idea would be to have player characters take on the various roles, perhaps wearing distinctive costumes and such, and then act out scenes-- with speech and emotes-- as a narrator told the tales. By linking the names in the tales to actual well-known role-players, it would (in theory) make the tales easier to follow. But it turned out to be far too ambitious! |
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