Have you read other Tolkien books....

[Rider]

I've read the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit (which is extremely cute for a book), the Silmarillion (Ainulindale, Valaquenta, Quenta Silmarillion, Akallabeth and the On the Rings of Power and the Third Age), The Book of Lost Tales 1; The Unfinished Tales, The Shaping of Middle-Earth and the War of the Ring.

I've outlined in bold the ones I consider best of these...

For all you 'Narn i Hin Hurin' readers, is it more in depth than the passages in Quenta Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales?

[Menion]

I've read Lotr (duh!) The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and The Childen of hurin, wich is just an extended version of one part of the Silmarillion.

Im looking for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and some of the lost tales books.

[WanderingWind]

I started reading the Silmarillion, but it wasn't as interesting as the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit.

[Snowdog]

Just finished The Children of Hurin, which as Menion said, expanded on the tale told in The Silmarillion, and written in the same detached style. I really enjoyed The Silmarillion, but after that book and The Hobbit, I think the best book is Unfinished Tales, because it gives a history of the Second Age, as well as more background information relating to LotR. That was the first book I read outside the three main works and still the most interesting, in my view.

I'd also recommend Tolkien's volume of letters, which are quite illuminating. He seems to have put as much effort into writing his letters as he did his other writing.

[Bella Donna]

Many people I know don't like the high style because it's not everyday speech, which makes it a bit of a slog to read. I rather like it, though. I've read LOTR, The Hobbit, Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin, and really, I can't get enough.

The stories are so layered and the plots are so complex and intertwined that, when you've finished the Silm and go read The Hobbit or LOTR, you find it's a different experience because you know more about where the Elven and Men characters are coming from.

I love the Silm because its themes of jealousy, sex, death and betrayal have consequences that trickle down through the ages. That, and the snippets of "history" that make you wonder more about what happened, why and when in the gaps between "recorded" events.