Yeah, "Beren and Luthien" definitely strikes me as the most commercially viable of the Silmarillion stories. It's even got Sauron as one of the chief antagonists.

Actually, though I haven't picked up this new edition yet, I think it is a prose text and I expect it will not include the Lay of Leithian. I honestly think it's worth picking up The Lays of Beleriand just for that, though. (Though the other long poem included in that is the alliterative "Turin", which is not as…

Giant eagles are the best eagles.

I love the unfinished "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin" in UT. So very good, even though it breaks off long before we get to the really good parts.

Tinfang Warble from the Lost Tales also deserves mention as one of Tolkien's worst names (and characters).

Huh, I could have sworn Trotter had wooden shoes, not wooden feet - but The Return of the Shadow is not one of the HoMe books I delve into all that often.

But he's a merry fellow!

I think the fact that my mother read the Silmarillion to me as a bedtime story when I was little may explain a lot about how I turned out. (Don't get me wrong, I requested the Silmarillion after she'd read me The Hobbit and LotR).

Perhaps you're thinking of Maedhros, who was chained to the side of a mountain by his right hand by Morgoth. Fingon, who rescued him, couldn't get his hand free, so he had to cut off his hand to free him.

I agree completely. Found in The History of Middle-earth volume III, The Lays of Beleriand in case anyone wants to know. I was working on a completion of the Lay a while back, which was fun. I should go back to it.

A Silmarillion adaptation could work in either of two ways. It could be a series of films covering the later tales only (a Beren & Luthien film, a Turin film, a Tuor film, and Earendil film). It could also work as a TV series. Each of the later, long tales could be an 8 or 10 episode season. The earlier parts…

It's definitely not new material, per se. All the really substantial versions of the story were published in The History of Middle-erath. I expect that it is much like the standalone version of the Narn i Chin Hurin published a while back - there are some sentences and wording here and there taken from alternate…

It's worth noting that this is not really a new book. It was compiled from texts that were pretty much all available in the '77 Silmarillion and the twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth.

Consider yourself threatened with death.

Much like Trump's presidency.

Lions and Geigers and bears.

Wait, do people have a problem with that Vreenak scene!? I know it's become a meme, but I thought it was just because the scene is so memorable, not to deride the line reading.

Yeah, serialization can have benefits, but I wish they hadn't passed that law that all drama must be heavily serialized. (That's a law, right? That's the only explanation.)

As they say, if it doesn't have Abraham Lincoln in space, it's just not good television.

Buy more. Buy more now and be happy.