I understand. It's like reading thru a history textbook about a country about which you only know a few recent stories, and the fragments of some old stories. The Silm is where it all comes together.
The first time I read it I felt like I was back in my gr 10 english class, where I had to look at all of these creation myths, and this was just the same. But if you can link it to some of the things in LOTR...for example, the Balrog in FOTR (extremely well done in the movie, I was impressed) was one of the lesser spirits who sided with Melkor (later Morgoth) in the beginning, or that Shelob is the last child of Ungoliant, who drained the light from the Two Trees, which had lit the world back then. Also, you can follow how Sauron got to where he was from the beginning. A point I found especially interesting was that in the very beginning, both Sauron and Saruman served Aule, whose sense of ambition has been noted as somewhat similar to Melkor's. (Hmmm...)
The Silm is better read as a reference. Tolkien had wanted it published before LOTR, but the sheer volume of history made it difficult to do so until after his death. I was not able to read the whole thing all at once, and left a few chapters to read for later, or skipped ahead to look at something else.
If you still can't get thru it, there are two other books I know of that summarize most of it pretty well. Unfinished Tales gives you some of the more dramatic stories of the Elder Days, and descibes certain points of interest (Istari, palantari, Numenor) in more detail. The Lost Road has TWO timelines that summarize the parts that you seem to be stuck in. However, the Silmarilien is the complete story of Middle-earth, and is really worth the read. (I swear, as soon as they take the focus off Valinor and focus on the elves and men and battles it'll lose that whole textbook feel to it. However, the index is ther for a reason. The book was probably written in the knowledge that not all of the readers would speak elvish.)
Enojy! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
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