An Introduction to Reading the Silmarillion (Guest: John Carswell)
Because our book club is beginning our read-along of The Silmarillion in a little less than two weeks (September 9th), I wanted to have my friend John Carswell on the show to chat about The Silmarillion as well as tips and resources for those of you who might be reading this masterpiece for the first time.
John is the co-host of the first Tolkien podcast I ever got really into, The Tolkien Road, as well as the author of two books on The Silmarillion -- Tolkien’s Requiem and Tolkien’s Overture. Both of these have been incredibly helpful for me personally in the past few years as I read The Silmarillion for the first and second time. I’ll add links to both in the show notes so you can order copies for yourself.
I also wanted to let you all know that if you do want to join in on the book club, there’s still time to grab your copy of The Silmarillion and get ready. We will begin discussing Ainulindalë on September 9th in our free Discord server -- if you’re unfamiliar with Discord, it’s basically a group chat so you can jump into the discussion whenever you’re able throughout the week. If you’d like to download our Silmarillion reading schedule and get the link to our Discord server, you can sign up using your email address at www.teawithtolkien.com/silmarillion. And if you’re listening to this episode way in the future, you can go to www.teawithtolkien.com/book-club to see what we’re reading next.
