I was 12 years old when I read LOTR for the first time. It took six months, as I was too young to appreciate the masterfulness of the book. Some years later, I read/devoured it again in four days during a holiday, just pausing when eating and sleeping. Since then, over the years, I have probably read it 8 times (every time you find something new to appreciate). The same goes for Hobbit, which I just recently re-read. I think it's time to pick up the "main course" from the bookshelf!
I really liked the Silmarillion as well, and also other Tolkien's posthumously published books (edited by his son Christopher), for example "The Children of Hurin" and the "The Fall of Gondolin". The former is a more complete book, the latter is a collection of Tolkien's different versions of the story. The beginning of the "final" version is included, but unfortunately Tolkien was unable to finish it; it would have been an amazing book if completed!
Tolkien was planning to write a sequel to The Lord of the Rings, but eventually abandoned the project as it was becoming "too dark".
No doubt it would have been great writing, but if it would have "tarnished" the original, I think he made the right call.
As for the movies, I should try watching them again. I haven't seen them since they came out... I liked the first one but not the next two. (Haven't seen The Hobbit ones).
I thought that the first movie was somehow lacking when I saw it at the cinema. I take it didn't match with my imagination "completely" (later on I realised that they have to make certain shortcuts and detours, when adapting a book to a movie).
Pretty soon after seeing the movie, I moved to another country to work there for a couple of years. During the first weeks, I was very homesick. I noticed that FOTR was playing at the local cinema, and went to see it again, I guess to ease the homesickness. I appreciated it much more this time, and when the extended edition was available in late 2002, I bought the DVD. Oh boy: it was almost a different movie, with all the extra scenes and nuances adding depth!
If you are planning to rewatch the movies, I highly recommend going for the extended editions
@Brandon!
About the Hobbit movies: the first one was ok, but the second was quite poor, in my opinion (haven't seen the third one).
There are theories about "what went wrong": they unnecessarily stretched the shorter book into three movies, Peter Jackson's heart was not in it (initially Guillermo del Toro was going to direct the films), etc.
Perhaps Jackson used "all he had" when directing the LOTR trilogy: it was a truly challenging ordeal, as they were making 3 movies at the same time, shooting scenes in random order. I don't know how he and the whole production team were able to pull it off, but thank goodness they did!
Touching clip about Elijah Wood's final day on set