I tried reading the hobbit when I was a teenager, but I just really couldn't get into it. Perhaps it was because it was a paper back and thick as fuck, or maybe JRR's writing style. Haven't watched the movies either, so I guess I'm not a great nerd in that aspect.
Sometimes that just kills it for authors.
Great, wonderful, fantastic, horribly written stories.
The original 3 movies (Fellowship, Two Towers, and Return of the King) are good enough representations, from what I understand.
I'm reminded of a D&D joke flowchart, where it kind of showed the "path of a typical adventure". After the "get the quest" thing, it went down to "travelling" and broke off into two branches with the question "How much do you like J.R.R. Tolkien?" The two choices were "not so much", which brought you to the destination, and "A lot", which sent you to "travelling time!" and then looped back to the question of Tolkien again.
When I was running my "main game" back in the day with my friends, I joined in as the GM at level 7 or so. I knew they were close to getting teleportation magic, so I decided to send them across the nation of Varisia (fairly size-able), and make travelling there take something like 4-5 sessions, almost like LotR, where the journey is a big deal. I had a bunch of side-quests, weird to-dos, and other things along the way. They eventually hit level 9, and the wizard took Teleport, as I expected; they never walked anywhere again. :p
whenever i think about reading LotR, i layout more of a fantasy world of my own. one of these days i'll have to start a novel because i'm nearing Silmarillion amounts of detail.
It is one of the most beautiful books written. Tolkien stands alongside London or Steinbeck.
I like the books, but if you're not very interested in the ins and outs of tiny bits of lore, they can get pretty boring. I only read them once when I was 14-15 and never bothered with them again.