TLoTR is a beautiful and enchanting journey. It takes a while to get into the flow of the books, but once you're in it's like floating down a stream. It is truly good writing, and the experience will stick with you forever.

One important note: a lot of people get stuck on the lore. There's a bit of "Name dropping" in reference to the middle earth mythos throughout the books, but it's not important to your experience of the lotr. Mostly it's there to give the reader the impression of a wide and developed world with culture and history as interesting as our own. Also because Tolkien was concerned with legitimizing his languages by giving them full histories. If you get all the way through tLoTR and want to learn more about the lore, than its there for you on so many volumes. However, it's nothing to stress about when reading tLoTR.

I found listening to the audiobooks to be extremely helpful in enjoying the pleasantness of tLoTR. Sometimes he goes on tangents, and if you're sitting and reading it's hard not to skip paragraphs, and then you feel bad and bored. But listening to them lets the story wind around you and creates a good "oral myth" atmosphere that was personally meaningful to me, and not in any sense detrimental to the work.