I'm finally getting around to posting my initial thoughts on
Arda Reconstructed, which I received 2 weeks ago and read over the following weekend (about a week ago). I thought I would first give a brief description of my personal history with
The Simarillion.
LOTR became my favorite book upon my first reading as an adolescent in 1967 (as it remains to this day). So when
The Sil was published in 1977 I immediately bought it and read it. However, unlike Voronwë, I was not "hooked" at once. I found most of the book difficult to get through.
The Sil was quite different from
LOTR and I was disappointed. For over 20 years I never attempted to read it again, as far as I can remember, although I continued to frequently reread
LOTR and, to a lesser extent,
The Hobbit.
Then, in late 2001 I got access to the internet at work (didn't get a home computer until several years later) and FOTR the film was released shortly thereafter. I discovered a new world of Tolkien fans and their discussions on TORC and elsewhere. A large number of new Tolkien related books, games, soundtracks, etc., followed in the ensuing months. My Tolkien enthusiasm increased accordingly and I decided to read
The Sil again and this time to make a real effort to understand and enjoy it.
My reading this time was slow and involved taking a lot of notes and constant referral to the family tree tables and indexes in the back. I made sure I always understood who each character was and to whom he or she was related because at first it is not easy to remember the difference between Finwë, Fingolfin, Finarfin, Fingon, Finrod, etc. I treated this reading almost as a school assignment that I had to learn for a test. Well, this time I understood the book much better and I enjoyed it. So I read it again right away, this time in a newly purchased edition illustrated by Tim Naismith. I also got a small paperback to keep for reference at work. And finally I purchased the recorded book by Martin Shaw, which I have listened to on my commute about 6 times over the last several years. [I find that I love listening to audiobooks - they make my 40 minute commute much more enjoyable. I also find that my concentration while listening generally exceeds that of reading a printed page and if my attention drifts while listening I know it immediately].
I now enjoy
The Sil more than
The Hobbit (though not as much as
LOTR). So the next step was reading
HoME. It took me a couple years to get through
HoME. Some of it I really enjoyed and some of it was a slog. I occasionally wondered while reading
HoME why Christopher had left some parts of it out of
The Sil. Overall, I have always been impressed by the huge job Christopher had of taking all the material his father left and working it into a consistent whole.
I believe I know the published
Sil very well after about 10 reading/listenings. I am in no way any kind of expert on
HoME as Voronwë and Solicitr seem to be.
Well, this brief background on me and
The Sil turned out to be not very brief. If you are still reading, here are my initial thoughts on
Arda Reconstructed. Interestingly, my first thought was similar to someone else's (I forget whose) and that is - physically, the book is smaller then I was expecting, not that this means anything.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. I generally kept a copy of
The Sil with me while I read and referred to it occasionally to read the whole paragraph in
The Sil that V was talking about. However, this is not really necessary.
I really like the Tables showing the source(s) for each paragraph. In my opinion, it was a good idea to present this information in this form. One can tell at a glance at the table what were the sources for a particular chapter and a particular paragraph. Sooner or later, I hope to read the book again, much more slowly, and go through it while referring to
HoME to follow exactly where V found each phrase. By the way, V, you sure had to have put in a tremendous amount of time and effort to find the source of every single sentence/phrase in
The Sil. Thanks for all your hard work.

I found the book easy to read and follow.
Voronwë's main thrust seems to be that he wishes that Christopher had left in most of what he took out, and as V frequently says, it is hard to understand why a lot of the material was left out of the published
Sil. I too (after reading
Arda Reconstructed) would agree with V on almost all of his criticisms. I would enjoy the published
Sil even more if it were longer and included a lot of the detail that Christopher decided to leave out. And the majority of the omissions would not affect the consistency of the story anyway.