Loved this post! The Jackson movies are definitive for me as well. It's been fun reading through the Fellowship with my wife, but I agree the pacing can be a little daunting. For reference, you don't get to the encounter on Weathertop until more than halfway through the book. There are things I like that are book exclusive (like Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-wights) and I was also pleasantly surprised to see how much dialogue the movies lift directly from the source material, albeit placing it in different contexts occasionally.
Loved this post! The Jackson movies are definitive for me as well. It's been fun reading through the Fellowship with my wife, but I agree the pacing can be a little daunting. For reference, you don't get to the encounter on Weathertop until more than halfway through the book. There are things I like that are book exclusive (like Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-wights) and I was also pleasantly surprised to see how much dialogue the movies lift directly from the source material, albeit placing it in different contexts occasionally.