How to simplify the Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion?

[Pervinca Took]

I'd start with LOTR, which is more accessible and less distant. And I'd start with the hobbits, who discover their wider world as we do. Probably with a passage from "The Shadow Of The Past," in which Gandalf introduces, really, what the story is going to be about.

Or play her that passage from the BBC dramatisation.

Welcome to the Downs, Mornorngur.

[Mornorngûr]

Or possibly the last part of the Silmarillion: 'Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age'; its only about 20 pages and reads quite nicely.

Greetings Pervinca Took, thanks for the welcome , glad to be aboard.

[Thinlómien]

Honestly, I think you should just hand her the Lord of the Rings and tell her to read it. There's no way to really describe it.

Or if she's not a massive reader (and to be fair, LotR is a massive book), why not make a shared project out of it. Listen to the BBC adaptation or an audiobook version together, or maybe you could read the book to her as bedtime-stories.

If this still seems too much, read her your favourite poems, show your favourite pieces from Tolkien illustrators and if you fancy the PJ or the Bakshi movies, watch them with her. Most importantly, don't flood her with information and names of people and places, and stick to LotR first. If she reads it and gets enthusiastic, then you can start talking about the Silmarillion, but mind you there are many people who love LotR but don't really care about Sil.

All in all, if she's already curious about it, it shouldn't be too difficult. Don't stress about it!

[Mornorngûr]

Honestly, I think you should just hand her the Lord of the Rings and tell her to read it. There's no way to really describe it.

Or if she's not a massive reader (and to be fair, LotR is a massive book), why not make a shared project out of it. Listen to the BBC adaptation or an audiobook version together, or maybe you could read the book to her as bedtime-stories.

If this still seems too much, read her your favourite poems, show your favourite pieces from Tolkien illustrators and if you fancy the PJ or the Bakshi movies, watch them with her. Most importantly, don't flood her with information and names of people and places, and stick to LotR first. If she reads it and gets enthusiastic, then you can start talking about the Silmarillion, but mind you there are many people who love LotR but don't really care about Sil.

All in all, if she's already curious about it, it shouldn't be too difficult. Don't stress about it!

I would also add that to make her read the Hobbit first would be a bad idea; great book and story, but is nothing like LOTR and is rather childish in general.

[Belegorn]

The Hobbit got the whole thing started for me 16 years ago and is an excellent read.

[Mornorngûr]

Well the Films got everything started for me, but now that I have actually read the books untold times, I can see how poor the films actually are and would never watch them again.

I am not saying the Hobbit is a bad story, I also love the story. However compared to LOTR, it is rather childish and for me does not display the true beauty of Middle-Earth.

[jallanite]

There is no one way to turn people onto Tolkien.

I recall some years ago stumbling on a long discussion in a forum about getting people into jazz. The forum went on for pages. And the methods of persuading people was varied. But every so often a post would appear something like:

I want very much to get into jazz and have tried. I have many friends who are very enthusiastic about jazz. I understand what people get out of it. But I still just find myself not very interested in it despite my attempts. I guess I am simply not interested in jazz though I would like to be.

The same goes for everything. People just aren’t all interested in the same thing. What turns on one person simply doesn’t turn on another.

I got some email about the time the first Jackson film on The Lord of the Rings from a woman in Indonesia who had seen the film and was totally entranced by it and wanted to read the books, and to read them properly in English as she did not think much of many Indonesian translations of English and could read and write English, though her native tongue was Indonesian. Her credit cards did not work in foreign countries so she wondered if I would be willing to purchase the book version of The Lord of the Rings for her from amazon.com and exchange them for something I would like from Indonesia. I suppose she had got my email from some web-forum.

We discussed CDs. During the exchange of conversations, which went on for some days, I got the impression this woman was very much interested in reading works in the right order. So I suggested she also order The Hobbit. She thought that reading the first book first made complete sense. Then I suggested The Silmarillion as the real first book. She thought that also made sense.

We agreed on editions, and I mailed the books to her. The CDs came to me from Indonesia shortly. Then she wrote me that the books had finally come. About a month later I wrote asking how she had found them. She told me that she was still on The Silmarillion and loved it. She was so busy at work she had not had time to read all of it. But she enjoyed The Silmarillion so much that every time she had reading time, she would start it again as she just loved reading it so much. She had at one time got up to the story of Beren.

Soon after the shopping center she managed was destroyed in a riot and she lost her job. I have not heard from her since.

Here was someone who was obviously perfect for the books as they were written.

For TheLostPilgrim’s case it is obvious that excerpts from The Silmarillion won’t do. As Christopher Tolkien has mentioned, The Silmarillion has a reputation for being “strange and inaccessible in mode and manner”. Many people who love The Lord of the Rings just can’t get into The Silmarillion. Excerpts are likely to be worse.

Tollkien’s style in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is very different. IF that doesn’t impress her, she may simply not be able to be impressed by Tolkien, at least at this stage in her life.