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This is fantastic! I read the Silmarillion when I was in high school, and while it was a bit difficult to get through at times, I was in complete awe of the world Tolkien had built. Seeing it all laid out like this is amazing.

(OT, but it looks like the page's character encoding is broken. And of course Firefox decided to ditch the ability to set the correct charset manually. The "Repair Text Encoding" button isn't working for me.)

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The trick to reading the Silmarillion is to not read it from front to back, but first part 3 (Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age), then part 2 (Akallabeth) and only then part 1 (Quenta Silmarillion). Part 3 is a super condensed version of LOTR.

I doubt I'll ever read it again, but if I do, I'll try to remember this :)

Would you still read the Ainulindalë and Valaquenta first, or would you save those for last?

I would also add that the chapter "Of Beleriand and its Realms" is OK to skip if it's not your thing, especially on a first read. It's mostly just describing what's on the map (of course it's still well written in Tolkien's prose). There are plenty of people that enjoy it, and there are plenty that don't.

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