The Silmarillion

This audiobook is for fans of the print edition and likely few other people. If you like it in print, you'll love this reading/listening. The Silmarillion is the mythology of the Lord of the Rings world. The content is as dry as reading the old testament and I generally would not recommend it to anyone outside of the biggest, most dedicated Tolkien nerds. For the rest of us: consider your insomnia cured. Tolkien created tons of unique languages, evolution of languages, and internally meaningful proper names. You'll encounter them all here (and I mean all. So. Many. Names.) The narration is beautiful and all of the foreign words flow from the narrator as if he were a native speaker of each of these invented tongues. There's not a single moment where the speech feels labored or forced.

I greatly enjoyed listening to this, as any Tolkien fan will. His writing is beautiful. That said, I strongly suggest reading along and/or reading a full synopsis of each story because otherwise you will get lost and confused about what’s going on. The Atlas of Middle Earth also greatly helps. I had to go back and re-listen to multiple parts to understand fullywhat had happened and appreciate fully Tolkien’s beautiful prose.The performance that Martin Shaw gives is an achievement, especially given the difficulty and dryness of the text at times. I found myself coming to tears at the various climaxes in the stories. A worthwhile listen, if you’re willing to put in the work.