Big Books

[stewamax]

The softback that I first read never had the appendices.
I much later bought the third hardback of the trilogy that has the appendices, and - yes - they are very informative.
And some of it is memorable: for example, the one moment in the entire 'legendarium' where the Valar themselves cry for help:
[Ar-Pharazôn] prepared then the greatest armament that the world had seen, and ....he broke the Ban of the Valar, going up with war to wrest everlasting life from the Lords of the West. [Then] the Valar laid down their Guardianship and called upon the One....