Back in the summer I was at a yard sale, and the lady was selling a thick volume of all three LOTR books for a dollar. I got it and didn't start reading it til late October and I just finished Return of the King this morning.
I really enjoyed it and I feel that even though the movie took some things out (like the battle for the Shire) they did a good job following the spirit of the story. It also reminded me the importance of a story being timeless vs being topical with a lot of messages specific to the time we are living in now.
I remember reading where Peter Jackson said that his goal was to present Tolkien's vision and not his own. I really wish the moronic showrunner for Wheel of Time had the same philosophy but he seems obsessed with lgbt representation amongst other things. I have reached a point now where whenever I hear that a new show is adapting a book series, I just buy the books. As a life long comic book reader, I am more than happy to stick with the comic books from decades past. I plan on buying the Witcher series sometime next year as well.
I remember watching the movies as a kid (fell asleep through most of the climax at Amon Hen in LOTR 1 when it was in theaters ;_;) and thinking they were great, tried reading the book series but a lot of it just went over my head and 4th grade me got bored by about 1/2 way through book 2 lol. Years go by and I get to thinking Tolkein's overrated, "Oh he's just some old guy that wrote some fantasy books." Course, fantasy wasn't really my thing either, but still. Got into GRRM in college, really enjoyed that and thought "fantasy" needed to be ReALiStIc and not silly wizards, ChOsEn OnEs, and other generic fantasy tripe.
in 2017 I decide to read the series and ohhh man what a ride. It took me the better part of a year but by the time I was finished I understood just why Tolkein is so highly esteemed. TIt turned out that what I'd thought was "typical" fantasy was simply the shoddy knockoffs eked out by people who can't even hold a candle to the merest hint of Tolkein's shadow. Honestly, calling Tolkein's work "fantasy" is probably an insult to his corpus more than anything. Such a wonderful story and it's amazing the movies followed it and turned out so well as they did. They're the quintessential lightning in a bottle.
I remember reading that GRRM wanted to subvert Tolkien’s tropes. In LOTR you can see a lot of the themes that seem to be in every fantasy novel. Also Tolkien completed his work. I love the Ice and Fire books but GRRM is taking his sweet time
For what it's worth, I think GRRM started dragging his feet to stick it to the showrunners when they said that they were the reason it was so successful, and not the source material.