Reading The Silmarillion

As you have probably figured out from the title of this post written by yours truly, I am reading The Silmarillion by one of my best friends Mr. Tolkien.

For those of you who aren't familiar with The Silmarillion/Middle-Earth/Tolkien, The Silmarillion is a bit of history about Middle-Earth, the setting of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which are arguably three of the bestest books on the planet.

So far, it's rocking my socks. The only thing that bothers me a little is that there's too many names. A sentence will often go like this:

"There was Bob, who was called George by the Indians and the people of Nazareth called him Henry."

Now substitute the words "Bob," "George," "Indians," "Nazareth," and "Henry," with words you've never heard before and aren't familiar with, so you didn't really know whether they were people, places, or things, until now. That's all right; I don't mind learning new words. But when there's so many at once, it's hard to keep track and I keep forgetting whether "Eru" and "Valar" are people or places.

It's also a little intimidating having so many weird names in one sentence. They take up about half the sentence, and the only words that can be processed through the brain are "there was who was called by the and the people of called him." That is not a sentence, unless we make some of those words proper nouns like so: "There was Whowas, called Bythe, and the people Of called him." but even if you chose to interpret the sentence in this way, you still have three strange words in one sentence.

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the book so far. But thank the Lord there's a Glossary in the back, otherwise I might just go read Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which I'm told is much easier to understand.

Anyway, if you know anything about the Greek gods and Greek mythology and stuff and are a Tolkien nerd, I highly reccomend The Silmarillion. So far I've encountered the Middle-Earth version of Zeus, Ares, Hades, Poseidon, some other god-dudes whose names I've forgotten, and the Three Witch Dames who weave the thread and cut the string when you die. I think those were the same witches who had one eye and one tooth for all three of them, but correct me if I'm wrong.

I got to wonder, why the one tooth? You can't chew with one tooth. That's like trying to grab something without a thumb, or using a scisors that only has one blade. Maybe it's a Special Tooth that works like a blender, so you just put the food into the tooth and it blends it up and spits it back into the mouth.

Anyhoo, I'm not far enough into The Silmarillion to say much more about it, and I just heard my aunt say the words "ice" and "cream" in the same sentence, so I'm off.

Laters :]