you wish i were stalking you, dont you
ok you want me to show my geeky side, i will:
the prequel to LOTR would be The Hobbit, NOT silmarilion, despite it being set in a previous time and in the same world.
While LOTR is a novel, Silmarillion are Tolkien's NOTES for his own personal use, to have deep knowledge of the world he was writing about, and be able to use the songs and lays he uses to give a more real feel to the world. When he died, his little kid Christopher Tolkien took those notes, tried to make some sense out of them, and published them, to become even richer. Er, I mean, as a gift to literature.
Silmarilion is actually a description of the creation of the world and all its gods etc, so it resembles more a Bible than an encyclopedia. and it talks about Elves, not humans. its not even a long novel as is LOTR, but actually episodes of important events in elven history, sometimes with no connection to one another.