Yeah I feel the same way. The LotR books were extremely painful to get through, and I didn't read them until I was 25 or so, and only because I thought I'd have my nerd card revoked if I didn't. The Hobbit was short enough that it wasn't as bad and having read it as a kid and seeing the Ralph Bakshi movie made it much more tolerable. I saw the LotR movies when they came out, and they were good...once, but got somewhat ponderous by Return of the King. I bought the DVDs and I'm not even sure if I watched all 3 of them. Now I couldn't imagine a reality where I read or watched them ever again. I certainly pass right by them if they are on TV. The new Hobbit movies were terrible to say the least, I walked out about 30 minutes into the 2nd one.