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Originally Posted by Dentoman
Also now read the appendices to LOTR. Some interesting tidbits of info in those as well.
Is there any other Tolkien stuff I should read?
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Unfinished Tales is worth the read if you enjoyed the appendices. Basically a collection of stories and concepts that were somewhat fleshed out... like more detail on the Istari or Palantir, some interesting stuff about the early days of the third age, and the battle of the Gladden fields (where Isuldir died), and detail about Eorl and the founding of Rohan. Also has some more extended versions of the stories of both Tuor and the children of Hurin. However, it's all written from the perspective of Christopher Tolkien examining his father's material, and sometimes a story will just stop at an odd place, there will be an explanation that nothing was written about the intervening time, and then picked up later. There's a chapter on the backstories of Celeborn and Galadriel, and just how much their story had different versions, with no clear indication of which one Tolkien intended as canon. To me nothing is more emblematic of just how hard a second-age Tolkien adaptation is than that chapter.
Once you get beyond Unfinished Tales, everything becomes increasingly a literary analysis exercise, IMO. If you find yourself skipping ahead on the chapters that get deep into all the different versions, you've probably reached as far as you want to go; if you find it really interesting to learn all the details of Tolkien's writing process and conflicting versions and such, then you might try the History of Middle Earth.
I also enjoyed the recent Fall of Gondolin, at least as far as the main story. It's a great tale and is better-collected in that volume than anywhere else. But the main story is maybe half the book, and then the rest of it is notes and different versions. Cynically, I think that the Tolkien estate's reason for having retellings of three of the main first-age stories from the Silmarillion as standalone books is so that they can more easily chunk up the rights for them for licensing and have more control over how those stories are told. I never actually read the other two (about Children of Hurin and about Beren and Luthien) because I thought the versions of those stories told elsewhere already felt pretty complete.