The Silmarillion Ebook

[Ortiz Ullery]

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As brilliant as lovers of Middle Earth recognize that it is, there are few books as daunting as The Silmarillion. It is a dense and complex text of genealogies, places, and characters, each woven together with multiple names in multiple languages and tucked into mythic threads that go out in various directions. I was slain by the text a couple of times before I finally conquered it. At only 130,000 words, I marvel at the edition that Tolkien must have had in mind when he told publishers it would be 400,000-600,000 words!

Yet, despite its challenges, it is a rich reading experience for those who stick with it. Not only does The Silmarillion fill in the great mythic background behind LOTR and The Hobbit, but it is filled with compelling stories of beauty, longing, love and loss, great adventure, and heroes as they grapple with the meaning of mortality. And, more than anything else, J.R.R. Tolkien saw The Silmarillion as an integral part of his Legendarium. Finding a way to access the text puts us in fellowship with the man behind Middle Earth.

Among the difficulties of reading The Silmarillion, one of the key ones is that the language is so strange. It is evocative, calling us to greater appreciation of its breadth and grandeur. But there are many genres set within an archaic text and filled with difficult names and strange places. One of the ways that can strengthen our ability to enjoy The Silmarillion is to read the books that Tolkien loved and that played some part in forming the Legendarium.

Audiobooks are one of the fastest growing segments of the book world. While this can have a downside, think back to your earliest experiences of reading. For most of us, this was lap-reading, snuggling in to the warmth and comfort of someone we love and listening to a trusted voice read words on that page that are still black scribbles to us. We did not know all the words but we trusted the reading experience. As a result, our trust in the reader filled in the blanks in the story. Rereading those stories later when the black scribbles were words was a great delight.

While the deep and overly-dramatic voice of Martin Shaw is not the same as a warm lap and a homemade blanket, audiobook reading can bring new depth to the experience. I prefer to use audiobooks to reread rather than read the first time, but the audio can accentuate our first time in the text. Open up the book and turn on the audio. While narrators are going to be much slower than our silent reading would be, the professional reader never gets distracted. He will keep our eyes on the page, keep us moving forward.

This is what a friend of mine called The Silmarillion: the Bible for Tolkien geeks. It is an astute observation, I think. Like the Bible, The Silmarillion includes genres like myth, legend, history, genealogy, prophecy, and poetry. It is a text of texts from another culture based in other languages, but a text that is meant to inform not just the past but the present. Like the Bible, it better reread than read.

Unfortunately, like the Bible, we know that the discipline of reading a challenging text will pay off, but it is hard sometimes to stay motivated. So, like the Bible, perhaps we should bend our will to the task.

These are just a few tips that might help the reader who is ready for The Silmarillion. What about you? What has helped you finally get into the great texts behind texts like The Silmarillion? Please tell us in the comments below or by sharing this post on Twitter or Facebook.

This is such a great list! Several of your suggestions, including re-reading, using the Appendices, and reading a number of the books before Middle Earth were especially helpful for me when I was discovering the Silmarillion (a years-long process for me, too).

I also suggest writing a character list and tucking it inside the cover for a quick reference (and bookmark!). Hand writing it will aid memory, too. I found that I really gained steam on the Silmarillon when I purchased the lovely illustrated edition. The size meant it had to stay home, and coupled with the beauty of the illustrations this made me approach it as something to savor slowly instead of attempting to read at my normal breakneck pace.

Actually, this is a critical point. If you make a character list for yourself, you are likely to remember it. I have a few books with my own family trees sketched in them (I often get lost in the 19th c. novelists). I would love to get the beautiful version!

And another point I made that you emphasize here: The Silmarillion is a book that is made for great rereading.

Thank you, Brenton! The Silmarillion intimidates me, frankly. But you have given me hope that it is not a task beyond my reach. I know where to go when I feel up to tackling it. Before I felt a bit hopeless about it.

It's the first day of the Year of the Rabbit, and I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you who are celebrating this occasion. I wish you and your family wealth and health in the days to come.

In a first, I have set myself a lunar new year resolution to finally read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, thus ticking off a major item in my things-to-do-before-I-kick-the-bucket list. Year after year I have been intimated by the book's prose, and have never ever really got going beyond the first few pages.

Now, with the help of the audiobook version (as read by Martin Shaw) playing alongside while I read the illustrated ebook edition, I am finally reading The Silmarillion. And I am sure glad I decided to do so because I am loving this book so very much. It also helps that I saw Season One of Ring of Power, which was based on events of Middle Earth in the Second Age. This helped set up the mood for me to tackle reading events of the First (as well as Second) Age of Middle Earth. For context, The Lord of the Rings occurred during the Third Age of Middle Earth.

So that's it for this supremely short post. I am enjoying a bit of extended hobby downtime as I enjoy The Silmarillion as well as take up drawing again. For the first time ever I am attempting to draw digitally and am having a blast! More on that in the next post. For now, I wish you well. Cheers!

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