The problem with The Silmarillion is that it is a collection of stories from Middle Earth's early history, from the time of Creation and moving forward. It really is a history book. Because of this, there is very little dialog, and you don't get to know the characters in the same way that you do in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien created two languages, both elven, one based on Welsh and the other based on Finnish. He did this before he wrote any stories. Then, he didnt' know what to do with the languages. So he created a world (Middle Earth), and populated it with people to speak his languages. From this, he began writing his stories.
The stories that became The Silmarillion were his early stories, written much earlier than The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He was a young soldier fighting in the trench battles of WWI, while he was formulating these first stories. In a way, he intended for them to become something of an "English Mythology". I believe he was sort of lamenting the way many cultures have a deep creation mythology, but England did not. So he was kind of creating this, in a way.
Later, he wrote the Hobbit, published in the 1930s. Demand was high for a sequel, so he eventually started The Lord of the Rings, intending for it to be much shorter than The Hobbit. It was not published until tne 1950s, it just kept growing and it took him that long to complete it.
Much of what Christopher Tolkien has been publishing (some dozen or more volumes) are old notes of his Father's. They include stories that didn't make it into the Silmarillion, as well as early versions of the stories that did. That is one of the interesting things about JRR. He would write these stories, then rewrite them using a poetic medium, and then rewrite them again. So it is kind of interesting to see how some of these stories changed and grew into their "final" version that made it into the Silmarillion. The Silmarillion was very problematic for Christopher, as many of these stories were never fully "Finished" by his father. There were inconsistencies from story to story that just didn't add up, but JRR didn't live long enough to really complete them utterly. So Christopher did his best to pull them together and reconcilled them as well as he could, and published the work to get these stories out to the public.
The many subsequent volumes that Christopher has been publishing are mainly collections of these notes. They are not exciting to read, and are really rather dry and academic. For the most part, they should really only be attempted by hardcore Tolkien fanatics. All others will die of boredom long before you complete them.
I have noticed that in one of the later volumes, Christopher has published the beginnings of another sequel that was started by JRR. It goes on for I think about 20 pages, but that is all the farther he got. I haven't read it yet, being bogged down in one of the earlier volumes, but I did notice its existence. Maybe Christopher took this and expanded upon it. Maybe JRR left other notes outlining where he intended to take this story, and perhaps that is what Christopher has fleshed out.
At any rate, I look forward to anything that brings out more of Mr. Tolkien's work. I guess I'm one of the hardcore Tolkienophiles who is willing to wade thru just about anything that he has written.
