The Best Middle-Earth Related Book?

[Bowmaster]

What's the best Middle-Earth related book of Tolkien? Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Children of Húrin, one of Lord of the Rings, or the Hobbit?

[DrDragun]

Fellowship no doubt, although The Hobbit is a close 2nd for me since it introduced me to Tolkien reading it in 5th grade.

[Arvedui01]

I like the Children of Hurin... it seemed like more of an adventure to me because I didn't know the story as well XD

[Feanaro Curufinwe]

It is sad that most people will vote for the Lord of the Rings. While it is a great book no doubt, the Silmarillion exceeds it.

[DrDragun]

It is sad that most people will vote for the Lord of the Rings. While it is a great book no doubt, the Silmarillion exceeds it.

It is a matter of taste I suppose. I find LOTR and The Hobbit to be much more immersing and engaging. The Silmarillion to me reads like a combination of The Iliad and the Bible. The amount of detail in the histories is fantastic, but the reader is detached from the stories as if reading history rather than participating in an adventure.

I like Fellowship the best because there is a very high amount of exploration and discovery in this book. It is the reader's introduction to hobbits and elves, Rivendell, orcs, wizards, and the powers of the Nazgul. There is also a mystery element to it. The later books have more epic battles involving the nations of men, but I like the beginning sections of mystery and danger the best.

[Zimmy]

The Silmarillion, hands down.

[Gallus]

I'm really surprised Silmarillion is winning. It's a great book but the first 100 pages can drag forever.

[Arǭmēz]

I vote for the Silmarillion though it is just a shadow of what it would have been had Tolkien finished it...

[Bowmaster]

Read all the books, please, if you want to vote.

Children of Húrin is nice, but it jumps too much across the years, I think.

[ajak60]

unfortunately, havent been able to read all of the Unfinished Tales, but have read everything else... Silmarillion is the best of what ive read so far

[gaunty14]

The Children of Hurin was perhaps the most mentally exhausting and depressing books I've ever read, I lovd reading it my god the language is archaic .
Consequently I probably shouldn't have read it over a weekend.

[luckybeaver]

Voted Silmarillion. While LOTR holds a special place in the heart, I have actually read the Silmarillion more times than any other book I own (and I own many). The Silmarillion is written in such a way that my imagination is able to recreate a truly epic, special place that cannot be matched by Tolkien's other works. I don't know if the movies ruined this imaginative aspect of LOTR for me, but I do find that, as I interpret it, the events that occur in the Silmarillion are bigger, bloodier, more epic and more extreme (as far as tragedy and victory go).

Also, I was a history major, and love history in general, so the style in which the Silmarillion was written really appeals to me in a way the other novels and works cannot.

[Mikail Mengsk]

Can't decide.

LotR is the most immersive, by far. The appendix also covers a good amount of background and history of the countries.

Silmarillion is the most "historical" one, and explains almost everything someone has to know. I find the first 100 pages or so, as Gallus said, to be horribly boring.

Children of Hurin is the most tragic and epic.

[SRACon17]

The Unfinished Tales is good for extra knowledge of Middle Earth, the Hobbit is quite light and pleasant reading, the Lord Of The Rings is very rich and immersive, the Children Of Hurin is very tragic(which i enjoyed a lot), and the Silmarillion is truly epic. Personally, the Silmarillion is the best for it's epic scope, but The Children Of Hurin comes close, because of the tragedy there which for me is quite touching. Of all the books listed above, it stirred in me the most emotion

[crawfs]

I went for Both the Silmarillion and The Hobbit. Mainly because while LOTR is a good one, I doubt I'd be able to choose a best of the three and also I prefer the lore that is included in The Silmarillion. I also chose the hobbit because it's just a very fun book, the nature of it is just silly and it's a really great read.

EDIT: It's interesting that UT has the least votes I found that one near impossible to read through, to me it was just boring, I'll probably go back to it in a few months and enjoy it, but I got about 50 pages in and couldn't really read any more of it.

[stoogeofstooges]

The trilogy takes the cake, but I really enjoyed Unfinished Tales. Its pretty cool to finish the other literature, and then go back to see some of the parts that were not included and have this epiphany like "OMG I know how this part fits in" or "WTF SO THATS WHY THAT HAPPENS"