After thinking about it some more, I did hit a snag with Lord of the Rings when picking it up the first time in 1999.
I was playing city-building games such as Caesar and Simcity (and adventures before that), but one of my fellow students suggested I'd try Baldur's Gate. My first RPG ever. I loved it, and it got me hooked on the Forgotten Realms and Fantasy forever.
He also told me:
"It (Dungeons and Dragons/Forgotten Realms) is based on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings."
- "Uh. What? Who?"
He freaked out and told me I should read it NOW! because it was SO! EPIC!. Thus, I started reading... and thought it epic indeed. Epic Slowness. Is SOMETHING going to happen?! WTF!! I put the book away until the next day.
When I picked it up again, I skipped forward, and landed in the middle of the Weathertop fight, and somewhat further read of the flight toward the bridge of Khazad-dum.
Damn. That WAS epic. So I restarted the book, and read the entire trilogy back to back, then read the appendices, and The Silmarillion. Now, almost 15 years later, I'm still re-reading
