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Hi! This is my first time posting here, I`m Swedish so grammatical errors may occur

I`m a loremaster for The one ring and sometimes I find myself lacking in Middle earth knowledge. I have read the hobbit, the lord of the rings trilogy and silmarrillion. The lotr trilogy and the Silmarrillion I haven't read for maybe ten years, and only once. So my question is basically this. To increase my knowledge, what books or other sources should I obtain? Should I re-read Silmarrilion or is there something else I should read?

Thanks!

Aside from the core 3 Stories: I would recommend the "extra stuff" such as:

Other Stories in the ME Univers:
- Unfinished tales of Middle Earth and Numenor;
- Children of Hurin;

Backgrounder:
- Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
- The History of the Hobbit
- History of Middle-Earth (All 12 volumes);

Grab a copy of "The Complete Guide to Middle Earth" by Robert Foster. Fantastic resource.

The lectures of the Tolkien Professor (Prof. Corey Olsen) can give deep insights into the feeling and motifs of Middle-earth.

http://tolkienprofessor.com/

Read again LotR trilogy (appendix also are very important) and Hobbit. And again. And again. And again.

So I have basically some work ahead of me Thanks for the information!

If you just want some quick background and inspiration for the RPG the Peter Jackson movies are also a fun way to brush up.

The real problem with Tolkien Lore is that neither of the two main novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, were originally intended by Tolkien to be part of Middle Earth. He made constant revisions to the text of both novels after publication to bring them more closely in line with his developing Middle Earth mythology.

This there are many seeming contradictions between these two novels and the rest of Middle Earth lore. An example is the "problem" of the two Glorfindels. One Glorfindel is killed at Gondolin in the Silmarillion, the other rescues Frodo at the Ford in Lord of the Rings. The easiest solution to this is two elves named Glorfindel, but not everyone is satisfied by this.

The place I've always overlooked is actually the Appendices for The Lord of the Rings - so much of the history and culture and so on is in there.

DavetheLost wrote:An example is the "problem" of the two Glorfindels. One Glorfindel is killed at Gondolin in the Silmarillion, the other rescues Frodo at the Ford in Lord of the Rings. The easiest solution to this is two elves named Glorfindel, but not everyone is satisfied by this.

Indeed. Like Tolkien himself

Cheers
Tolwen

The "History" section in MERP supplements can be good reading. The supplements themselves have a lot of invented (non-Tolkien) material, but the History sections seem to be mostly canon. They're nice because they pull everything about a particular locale into one place.