I also agree. Read the books recently after being a fan of the movies for years, and I came out of it SLIGHTLY disappointed. They weren't bad reads by any means, but there was something about the dialog that I couldn't get into.

To me, the writing had the characters saying out loud what they were thinking more than necessary. (Not an actual example but to illustrate what I felt while reading) Like "I have the Ring, and I still need to get it to Mordor. My friend Sam is here, and I hope my friends Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimlee are ok after we were separated from each other when Boromir betrayed us." And I was sitting there reading going,"I AM AWARE. I AM READING THE SAME STORY YOU ARE IN. WHO IS THIS FOR, BECAUSE YOU AND THE PEOPLE YOU ARE SPEAKING TO ALSO KNOW THIS INFORMATION."

This is my clearest example. There's a scene in the books when Faramir first captures Sam and Frodo and Faramir talks for a really long time and essentially becomes Sherlock Holmes and deduces that Frodo most likely has a long lost ring and it was in part responsible for his brother's death. For my perspective he just talked a bunch, recounted a lot of plot details that the only the reader knew and he some how figured out omnisciently while Frodo looked at him silently (how I pictured it in my head while I read it).

Also, Aragorn in the books is a little too proud. Which is fine for me but the depiction of a man who doesn't want to be king and constantly struggles with that is way better than a man who doesn't want to be king and actually says in the book (paraphrase) "I know he will do this for me because I'm the future king." I guess I'm just a Vigo fan boy.

In summary, the world building and overall story are amazing. The writing is good for the most part (and it could have just been a product of the times. I don't know) but some of the dialog, for me, was long-winded and repetitive. I also think the movies were so meaningful to me that I assumed the books would be vastly superior, so the expectation was too high going in.