It's fun to go back, but for me what stops me doing it more often is the first half of the FOTR, it's so much more dense that mentally it makes going through the story a bit more of a chore, it's no coincidence that's where most of the cuts in the film trilogy came from.
Yeah, some of Tolkein's writing can be quite dense. It was written a long time ago, to be fair. The background Tolkein put into it is amazing too. The Simarlillion is hard to get through, but interesting.
Adaptations in general can be pretty bad though, comparisons will naturally happen because of the source material, and some of the stylistic choices made miss the mark badly. I'm yet to see the final Hobbit film, but the first two (in particular #1) could have easily been done better. Harry Potter is another of recent times where the films were incredibly hit and miss from film to film, the 6th book was one of the best in the series, but the equivalent film was the worst of the 8 made.[/QUOTE]
They also went through a few directors there if I remember correctly. Chris Columbus lol.