Classics Club September Meme: Favourite Review by Member

This is a meme held by The Classics Club, an awesome club dedicated to classic literature.

Pick a classic someone else in the club has read from our big review list. Link to their review andoffer a quote from their post describing their reaction to the book. What about their post makes you excited to read that classic in particular?

I choose for this meme a review of Silmarilion by Amanda, a very nice one, I must say. I personally like the book, and I agree to what she says about it:

When considering Tolkien’s achievement, I am stunned. Not only did he conceive of an invented mythology spanning thousands of years—I would consider The Silmarillion closer to mythology than fantasy—but he created several languages for this world, even to the point of working out how they would have evolved over time. All those “unpronounceable” names? Not just random strings of letters, but names with careful meaning and origin in his invented languages. An appendix at the back provides “elements” of the names, so that I can see that the alqua in Alqualondë is “swan” and derives from the root alak-. Not necessary for the casual reader, but all this background informs the larger works with a depth rarely encountered.

She makes me want to read Silmarilion again (but for the present I have plenty others to read).