Yesterday, I finally finished The Tale of Tinuviel. Because the HoMe summaries are coming along so slowly, and I really want to move ahead with my research projects, then I've been trying to catch up on the essays and HoMe books that I haven't read yet. Currently, I'm wading through The Book of Lost Tales 2. As with BoLT1, I love it. The relative whimsy of the BoLT compared to The Silmarillion makes it a lot of fun, and the level of detail is simply astounding. And, as Christopher Tolkien takes care to reiterate every now and then, it's not so much that many of these details were rejected from The Silmarillion as they were condensed to make many long stories into a single book of a manageable length. And so every detail that seems intriguing and hasn't been rejected elsewhere in the canon suddenly takes on the possibility of becoming canon itself. And as one who loves her canon as messy and complicated as possible, the idea of this delights me to no end.

( *waves to Silmgeeks* )