Tolkien's scattered notes are the marks of brilliance. < the most blah blah english bullshit il do

The first 200 pages are a boring rehash of volume VI. Things get better as the rest of the book depicts Tolkien's struggle with the plot of LOTR.

Galadriel’s song:
I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew;
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.
Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,
And by the strand of Tirion there grew a golden Tree.
Beneath the stars of Evereve in Eldamar it shone,
In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion.
But far away and far away beyond the Shadow-meres
Now long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,
And Lórien, O Lórien! the river flows away
And leaves are falling in the stream, and leaves are borne away;
O Lórien, too long I dwell upon this Hither Shore
And in a fading crown I twine the golden elanor.
But if a ship I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a sea?

This will be my 12-volume write-up of the entire series "The History of Middle Earth".
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This series is ONLY for the hardcore Tolkien fanatic. Predominantly written by
JRR's son, based on JRR's notes on the creation of The Silmarilion and
The Lord of the Rings (much less on The Hobbit). It is somewhat interesting to
see the evolution of the story (for example, "Strider" was originally conceived as
a Hobbit (one of those who "went off into the blue with Gandalf" as alluded to
in The Hobbit).

But the downside to this is that it isn't very fun to read. You can only read yet
another version of Beren and Luthien so many times before you're tired of seeing
the miniscule changes from one version to the next.

So, overall, I slogged through this over about a year. I'd say it was worth it
in the end for someone like me who loves Tolkien and his entire created world
of Arda (and Ea in general). But I'll never re-read them. They come off too much
as seeming like Christopher Tolkien just bundled every scrap of paper he could find,
rather than thinning them down into a logical consistency.

Great and in trigging story

4.5

If you are not a fan of Tolkien or haven't read or didn't like "The Lord of the Rings": Do not read this book, it's going to bore you or it just won't make sense.

This book is basically the first versions of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" and parts of "The Two Towers" with a bit of commentary by Christopher Tolkien. So if you don't have a good understanding, or don't really remember the story of the published "Lord of the Rings" you are going to get horribly lost and you will probably end up mixing the first versions of the story with the published one.
It is definitely worth reading, all the ideas for the story that you find in the book are brilliant and it's a great experience to see how the story evolved.

The only thing I do not like about the book is that at times it's frustrating to read the same story various times, but in different versions.

If you feel that the commentary is just too much analysis for you, skip it! And only read the drafts that come in the book, if you don't know the final version of the stories by heart you'll mix up some information, but overall, you'll be able to see some differences.
If you don't feel like reading the story over again but still want to know how the story evolved, read the commentary! In some parts it'll be a bit confusing, but overall you'll get to know how the story essentially evolved.

“all that can be done is to do one deed at a time and go forward and not look back.”

2nd most favorite of the Lord of the Rings 7 parts...War of the Ring is #1

Unless you are certain you are familiar with the Lord of the Rings plot, I wouldn't pick this one up. Mostly Tolkien's drafts for LOTR from the council of Elrond up until the Sam rescues Frodo from (in this version Minas Morgul) the guard tower in Cirith Ungol. *Spoiler alert* Aragorn was originally a hobbit named Trotter?

A fascinating look behind the writing of LOTR for the person who wants to see the thought process behind the creation of a masterpiece. Some notes: Despite its title, half of this book discusses events in the Fellowship before turning to the Two Towers. I was intrigued to discover that originally Tolkien thought that Aragorn would marry Eowyn, hence the romance that began blossoming between the two. That is one of many examples in which one can see that earlier decisions sometimes retain a shadow in the final work. Tolkien apparently played with names a great deal. Hardly any name stays as originally conceived. For example,only towards the end of this book do we see a decision to put a G in front of the name Ondor to become Gondor, a much nobler sounding name in my opinion. Strider remains Trotter through this whole volume. See my review of the first volume in the series, The Return of the Shadow, for a fuller analysis.

More in the detailed background of how the Lord of the Rings was written. You have to be really into it to care about all of this, but I love getting the background to how things were created. I will be reading Vol. 8 at some time in the future, but no rush at this point.