[Mithalwen]

I own all of HoME and I would say that the Lord of the Rings volumes are to my mind the most approachable - I have read them through whereas I tend to "dip" into some of the others. It is fascinating to see how the story developed and expanded moving from the Hobbit sequel to being also a sequel to the Silmarillion. Obviously some people don't want to know this kind of thing and prefer to take the finished work as it is, but I really enjoyed them.

As for the Children of Hurin, you will find parts of it in HoME but since it was published later you won't find it referred to there as a single volume work.

A short version of the story was published in the Silmarillion, more was included in "Unfinished Tales" and some fragments appeared only in HoME. I seem to recall this was partly because Tolkien wrote many drafts, and moved house and office and was generally somewhat disorganized and as a result some things went to the US university that had bought a lot of his manuscripts while others were left in the care of Christopher Tolkien.

Therefore last year The Children of Hurin was published as a single volume novel.