It seems there are a bunch of (both loosely and tightly) related books in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings genre:

Lord of the Rings

The Hobbit

The Simarillion

The History of Middle-Earth

The Fall of Numenor

Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth

The Children of Hurin

The Tale of Beren and Luthien

The Fall of Gondolin

Can anyone tell me whether these books can be read in -more or less- a chronological order (and if so, what the proper ordering from first to last should be)?

Personally, I would say to read The Hobbit then The Lord of the Rings and the appendices.  Then, the rest of the books can be read in virtually any order.  The books after The Hobbit and LOFR were not completed for publication by Mr. Tolkein but were edited for publication by his son, Christopher.  They are not as entertaining to read (I have not read all of them myself) and, in some respects, read more like histories or dry books of mythology.

Thank you, TKGS.

Question: I saw all 6 of the LOTR/Hobbit movies, and it seemed like they alluded to a lot of presumed knowledge/information not explicitly covered, which I hoped was covered in the books.  Is that so?

Also, regarding the appendices in LOTR: Are these extensive appendices which gie background information?

Thank you, TKGS.

Question: I saw all 6 of the LOTR/Hobbit movies, and it seemed like they alluded to a lot of information which I hoped was covered in the books.  Is that so?

Also, regarding the appendices in LOTR: Are these extensive appendices which gie background information?

Absolutely.  But when you read the books, try to put the movies out of your mind.  The movies are loosly based on the books and the overall goal in the stories is the same.  But they are not the same stories.

The Hobbit movies tried (poorly, in my opinion) to weave into them some of the background of the stories from The Lord of the Rings book that had been left out of the movies.  You'll find the books to be both entertaining and a credible story but very different from the movies.

You will find The Hobbit reads like a children's book in some aspects (though nothing like modern children's books), but it is still very good.  The Lord of the Rings reads like an epic adventure that follows up on The Hobbit.  Make sure that you read the prologue found at the front of The Fellowship of the Ring as it recaps The Hobbit but also provides more information to help understand the world of Middle Earth.

The appendicies were added for two reasons.  First, when the books were originally published in the United States, the publisher, thinking that they would not do well, did not bother to copyright the story.  When they sold very well, Penguin Books started publishing the books since they were in the public domain.  The British publisher then asked Tolkein to make a few technical corrections and then add the appendicies which include background information that fans were starting to ask about.  Because of corrections and the addition of the appendicies, they were able to copyright the new book and, with a forward by the author specifically asking people not to purchase the unauthorized versions, Penguin found much lower demand for their books and stopped publishing the public domain version.

While the appendicies give quite a bit of background, I don't think they would be easily understood without the general story of the books in mind.  They are not really overly extensive but they are definitely interesting.

If you enjoy reading stories set in pre-industrial ages where there are wizards, elves, dwarves, men, halflings, orcs, wargs (wild wolves), monsters, Trolls, royalty, commoners, swords and spears, battles, and intrigues, you will enjoy this story.

Knowing the geography of Middle Earth really does assist in following the story in The Lord of the Rings.  You really don't need a better map for The Hobbit than what is included in any publication of the book.  But when you get to The Fellowship, I recommend you have access to a good map.  You can find a good map of Middle Earth online at:

http://www.theonering.com/galleries/maps-calendars-genealogies/maps-calendars-genealogies/map-of-middle-earth-j-r-r-tolkien

Absolutely.  But when you read the books, try to put the movies out of your mind.  The movies are loosly based on the books and the overall goal in the stories is the same.  But they are not the same stories.

Having read The Hobbit and LOTR well before any of the movies came out, upon seeing the first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, and realizing how much of the story was left out, I couldn't stomach watching them any further.  On top of that, trying to get what little story was saved within two hours, it felt as if one was on a roller coaster ride as the hollowed-out plot moved along.  So fast that, as was alluded to earlier, one needed to know a lot of the background/character development from the books just to understand what was happening on the screen.  Not my cup of tea.

Also, recall that the movies came out in the early 2000's, which was a time when CGI was really coming into its own.  However, it was also a time when television series were just beginning to ramp up their productions as well.  IMO, The Hobbit and LOTR would have been much better served as a television series, with each season being a book (or possibly even several seasons covering a single book).  By doing so, each book could have been given 10 - 15 hours of screen time (20 - 22 hours if it were done by a network), as opposed to 2 - 3 hours it was given for the big screen. This would have allowed for much deeper character development, and a chance to tell a greater portion of the story.  

Having read The Hobbit and LOTR well before any of the movies came out, upon seeing the first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, and realizing how much of the story was left out, I couldn't stomach watching them any further.  On top of that, trying to get what little story was saved within two hours, it felt as if one was on a roller coaster ride as the hollowed-out plot moved along.  So fast that, as was alluded to earlier, one needed to know a lot of the background/character development from the books just to understand what was happening on the screen.  Not my cup of tea.

Also, recall that the movies came out in the early 2000's, which was a time when CGI was really coming into its own.  However, it was also a time when television series were just beginning to ramp up their productions as well.  IMO, The Hobbit and LOTR would have been much better served as a television series, with each season being a book (or possibly even several seasons covering a single book).  By doing so, each book could have been given 10 - 15 hours of screen time (20 - 22 hours if it were done by a network), as opposed to 2 - 3 hours it was given for the big screen. This would have allowed for much deeper character development, and a chance to tell a greater portion of the story.  

Completely agree!  I did watch the extended versions of the movies and they still remove so much of the story.  The only part of the movies my wife likes are the battle scenes.  The rest of the movies she'll skip over.

1) The Lord of the Rings films should not overall be taken as an honest or even adequate approximation of the contents of Tolkien's books, still less as a guide to their aesthetic, mythic, psychological, and moral content. The film Fellowship of the Ring is the only one of the three Ring films to which a person could apply the description "faithful to the source" without branding himself a fool or a liar. (I have not seen the Hobbit films, nor would anything other than a gun pointed at my head induce me to see them.) As others have said, put the damn films out of your mind. Nor should it be forgotten that Tolkien disliked drama as a form (not excepting even the Greeks and Shakespeare) and utterly despised movies.

2) The primary thing to be clear about with regard to The Hobbit is that it is a children's book. Failing to understand this fact has led many adults to frustrated disappointment. Of course, in narrative terms, The Hobbit provides essential story and character background to The Lord of the Rings, but as is true of any other successful children's book, The Hobbit is a freestanding work. That is to say, while LotR depends upon The Hobbit for its character groupings and its fictional venue, its "secondary world" (the term is W. H. Auden's),* the arrow of dependence points in one direction only.

3) Unless you are the sort of literal-minded reader who can make no sense of a story unless its narrative unfolds in strict chronology, the best way to read Tolkien's literary œuvre is in its published order: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The Book of Lost Tales (in 2 vols.). Except for those whose interest is primarily philological—and I have no reason to think yours is—there is effectively nothing of literary interest in the subsequent ten volumes of The History of Middle-Earth, all of which are, of course, posthumous collections by Christopher Tolkien of things written in notebooks and on countless scraps of paper by his father over the course of sixty-some odd years. Indeed, it needs to be recalled that all the books listed above after LotR are editorial assemblages, and each owes its final form and usually much else to Christopher's organizational and editorial skills and decisions. Unrelated (or only marginally related) to the Middle-Earth cycle is a lovely volume called Poems and Stories (the edition I own has ISBN 0-395-68999-6). Aside from the material's literary value, a very attractive feature is that every word and punctuation mark in the book is the master's own unredacted work.

4) Last but not least, if you are planning to read Tolkien's work not for its storytelling or mythic qualities but for its religious or moral content, you ought to know that Tolkien himself would tell you in no uncertain terms that you would be doing neither him nor yourself a service. His own favorites among his readers and fans were those with no interest whatsoever in LotR's massive appendices, which contain the backstory of his secondary world and the various languages he invented for its peoples.** Indeed, his failure to bring to final form a Creation narrative and a potted history of Middle-Earth's first and second ages—that is precisely what The Silmarillion is—testifies to his great reluctance to open the closet door of his inspiration, as it were, and reveal its workings to all and sundry. All that notwithstanding, there is something gravely ennobling in reading his mythic description of God's Creation of life and matter through the modality of music. Once read, all the passages in LotR that refer to characters who live on in song take on an extraordinarily vivid new dimension of significance, especially for those who, like me, think of a life without music as a life without fulfillment.
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* It was Auden, once Tolkien's pupil, who more than anyone else brought Tolkien's imaginative work to wide public notice. Once or twice late in his life, when Tolkien felt especially put upon by obsessive fans and scribblers, he grumbled half in earnest that he wished that Auden had kept his praise to himself and thereby left him and LotR in their welcome and near-complete obscurity.

** Tolkien frequently said and wrote that he completed LotR to satisfy the urgent requests of the many readers of The Hobbit who wanted to hear more about hobbits.