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Friendly advice , if you want to read LoTR please start with the Silmarillion. Then do the Hobbit followed by the trilogy.

I promise that doing it this way makes the most sense out of the trilogy.

I'll throw in my two cents, and recommend Fletcher Pratt's Well of the Unicorn. Like Tolkien, Pratt was a famed historian. Unlike Tolkien, Pratt deals with real people in a real world with an eye to some historical detail, and the added touch of working magic (for those who have spent many long, hard hours studying it). Pratt also based his setting on Medieval Denmark (that was one of his historical specialities), which should be a plus to those of us who live in Scandanavia or know it well.

His prose isn't as musical as Tolkien's, but he isn't trying to make it so, while his characters and tale are as fascinating, and his grasp of battle strategy far greater.

(This was one of Tolkien's weaknesses. He only saw battle through generic "epic" eyes, as a broad tale of brave deeds requiring no detail. That may work for some readers, but a lot of us, I think, want to a situation where it takes more than just a Nameless Evil standing up for a king to die: we want to know how a shrewd commander can make a difference, using all the tools at his or her disposal.)

fable; have you read the Silmarillion? I think Tolkien's epic deals with a more generic concept of 'good v. evil' and he didn't think he needed 'battle strategy' to be able to tell that tale. Besides he was a linguist and the whole exercise was designed to 'invent' the language of the Elves. He just carried to the extreme .

Anatres writes:
have you read the Silmarillion? I think Tolkien's epic deals with a more generic concept of 'good v. evil' and he didn't think he needed 'battle strategy' to be able to tell that tale. Besides he was a linguist and the whole exercise was designed to 'invent' the language of the Elves. He just carried to the extreme.

Yes, a long time ago, and I'd agree with both your statements. I'm really not bashing Tolkien (as some people have thought, over in the BG2 area) for ignorance of battle strategy. Instead, I'm pointing out that people, like myself, who want battle strategy, will find it lacking in Tolkien. He can't be blamed for not achieving what he didn't seek, at least, not since that quality of understanding war is hardly a requisite of good fiction.

I do fault him more seriously for some literary flaws, such as the use of deus ex machinae repeatedly to save his main characters. And I have a real problem with his truly Edwardian notions that some races are inherently superior to others, and that there is a clear dividing line between The Great Ones and all The Little Folk who need to be kept from thinking about death, politics, and tragedy.