For all those who have offered good advice to the Silmarillion newbies, here is a link to the thread that shows you how to more or less double the size of your next Silmarillion read.
You will also need UT, HomE 10 and 11, and issue 39 of the jornal Vinyar tengwar.
These are all writings of JRRT, no fan-fic.
'How to read a longer Silmarillion'
http://forum.barrowdowns.com/cgi-bin...c&f=1&t=002217