I read the books of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, consistently voted as the greatest books ever written, next to the bible, years ago, including The Hobbit and The Silmarillion- Professor Tolkien's first and last book of the history and peoples of Middle Earth.
If you do not like the easy pace of the filmed version, I very much doubt whether you would be able to understand or take in the long and deliberate pace of the chronology and detailed mythology of Middle Earth which the great man wrote very much like a historical thesis and factual documentary of events in his imaginary world.
It is no surprise to me that most people who do like appreciate the films have never read the books and even if they did, or at least try to, they would clearly not understand anything contain in them.
It is simply too complicated to grasp, and this is not surprising, giving the fact that that it took Tolkien about 12 years to finish the essential trilogy on which the films were based.
Peter Jackson did the best that anyone could humanly do to bring these books to life on the cinema screens, hence the reward with Oscars across the board. Hollywood bigwigs recognised the monumental tasks involed in the filming process and the time and efforts required and rewarded him accordingly at the end of the trilogy.
If anyone even struggles with these, there is simply no hope to expect that they would fare better with the really long books.
I bought the extended versions of the DVRAB, nothing else would possibly do.
In my opinion, the movies were not even long enough and I thoroughly enjoyed the extras crammed in the DVRAB.
Now I can hardly wait for Peter Jackson to film The Hobbit. What a treat awaits us (well the "us" that love the History of Middle Earth).