This book is a bit too hard to read at times...

[Peter_20]

The Silmarillion is indeed a great book, but personally I think Tolkien goes way too much in-depth into details, languages, races, family trees and so on and so forth.
This is not a very good idea, because it scares away at least 75% of the potential readers.
I've told a bunch of friends and acquaintances about details in this book, and they seem to find it interesting; but whenever they try reading it, they find it way too hard and confusing.

I mean, take chapters like "Of Beleriand and its realms" - I fear that chapter every time I re-read the book, because it's sooo boring.
Tolkien also exaggerates names and families' relations to each other, and this is a very common style used in this book:

"X was the father of Y and Z, the cousins of W and Q, sons of X's brother.
Their sons were known as GG and GR, but later they came to be known as GT and GQ, which signifies DDD and DDS.
Now these sons were indeed with close kinship to the king of REE, as they were descendants of X's eldest sister..."

...and so on.
This is really annoying at times, and it's a shame, because the actual story IS extremely good.
I wish this book were re-released in a more reader-friendly version in the future, because right now it's not exactly something you casually pick up and read.