Cármen Veloso
asked:
My friends, I have on my shelf The story of Kullervo, The silmarillion, The children of Húrin, The hobbit, the trilogy of The lord of the rings and Unfinished tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth. In what order should I read them? Am I missing any book in the series?
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SummerLily
Well, quite frankly, The Silmarillion is really boring. I highly suggest you read The Hobbit and LOTR first, to see if you even like his writing style. Then, if you decide you are interested enough in Middle earth, go ahead and tackle the rest ;)
Bart
The decision is of course still yours to make but let's see:
"Kullervo" has nothing to do with the world of Middle Earth, it's part of the Finnish epos "Kalevala", so just set this one aside for now.
The Hobbit is a nice simple story, a kind of fairy tale if you look at it on its own. Inside the history of Middle Earth it comes before The Lord Of The Rings so it would make sense to start out with The Hobbit. But it's a children's story after all, so you might want to start with the "real deal" which is The Lord of The Rings and read The Hobbit afterwards as a kind of "prequel".
The Unfinished Tales were written long before both of those books as part of the lore Tolkien created for the World of Middle Earth. Same thing with the tale of The Children of Hurin. Characters in The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings sometimes mention those tales, but even for them it is all ancient history already.
So my advice - read The Ring Trilogy or The Hobbit first and if you like it, keep reading all those other books published posthumously, starting with The Silmarillion.
"Kullervo" has nothing to do with the world of Middle Earth, it's part of the Finnish epos "Kalevala", so just set this one aside for now.
The Hobbit is a nice simple story, a kind of fairy tale if you look at it on its own. Inside the history of Middle Earth it comes before The Lord Of The Rings so it would make sense to start out with The Hobbit. But it's a children's story after all, so you might want to start with the "real deal" which is The Lord of The Rings and read The Hobbit afterwards as a kind of "prequel".
The Unfinished Tales were written long before both of those books as part of the lore Tolkien created for the World of Middle Earth. Same thing with the tale of The Children of Hurin. Characters in The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings sometimes mention those tales, but even for them it is all ancient history already.
So my advice - read The Ring Trilogy or The Hobbit first and if you like it, keep reading all those other books published posthumously, starting with The Silmarillion.
Noor Al-Shanti
Start with the Hobbit then Lord of the Rings before going near the rest. First of all, the Silmarillion and others were edited and published from Tolkien's notes later on by his son who doesn't have his writing talent and it really shows. The only reason I finished the Silmarillion was because I had a cold at the time and just didn't want to move and it was there... Children of Hurin was more interesting than Silmarillion but again it doesn't have the same "complete story written by a pro" feel to it.
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