[HairOfTheDog]

It isn't the first time he will doze off!

He never should have started LoTR with Silmarillion!

[Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy]

Absolutely right. Tolkien's creation is something better absorbed gradually, rather than trying to study as though cramming for an exam. Read LOTR and The Hobbit, and you've got a lot of the background material that will make you go "ah ha, so that's where that comes from" or whatever, when reading The Silmarillion. Coming to The Silmarillion without this backgound familiarity with Middle Earth is just going to make for a very, very dry reading.