1.5 stars.

Yes, I understand this is a classic, and I'm giving up my nerd cred by not liking this, and how can I possibly be a fantasy fan if I don't like this, etc.

But I just didn't like it. It was long and boring and tedious and I kept trying to skip the 20-page descriptions of the history of a single field only to discover a few pages later that somewhere in that 20-page history is one essential piece of information critical to the plot so I'd have to go back and re-read the 20-page history.

I appreciate that Tolkien was a genius who invented languages and built a rich, complex world, and that he was attempting to imitate medieval writing (I can't say whether he was successful -- I've not read much medieval literature). But it wasn't my cup of tea.