I agree with about everything Desdemona has said here. Here are a few comments I just posted to the other LOTR thread, before I saw this one.

"people have talked a lot about how this movie was so faithful to the book, but I didn't think so. In particular, people say the characters look exactly as one would expect from reading the books. Not so! All the Hobbits (barring Bilbo) look too young. Frodo is not a teenager, but a fifty-year old Hobbit--and Hobbits come of age at 33. The Hobbits should look like little 30 year old men, not young boys. To be strict, since the ring halts aging, Frodo should look as old as he does, while the other Hobbits should look older. As someone pointed out, they should have been hairier! (agreed, the movie did cut out the 17 years between Bilbo's birthday party and Frodo leaving on the quest, so their looks are internally consistent within the film. But they don't look like the characters from the book should look).

I defnitely agree with posters who say that the fight scenes were too close up and dark. They were totally confusing. I also agree that the loss of dialogue was regrettable. Not only between Gimli and Legolas, but (for example) between Boromir and Aragorn. Who, after seeing this movie, would understand the division between them at first, or how extraordinary it is to have Boromir call Aragorn his Captain and his King before dying? Indeed, most of the characters are shallow and stock beyond Tolkien's already rather shallow development. Merry and Pippin are interchangeable oafs, Jar Jar Binkses without the annoying speech pattern.

What I'd always hoped to see was a 20 hour TV miniseries rather than 9 hours of big screen LOTR, but I'll take this over nothin' any day! It ws a very good movie with lots to recommend it, but it's not a great film. Nor does it really capture the feeling of the books, which have a much slower buildup before there's any terribly bloody violence."

As you can see, i agree with a lot of posters to this thread; the books have a totally different feeling and mood.

On another tack, I have very much enjoyed the unabridged audiobook of the Fellowship. It's a way to let yourself absorb the story without the physical demands of sitting in one position, holding a book (I should say here I have a back problem). The reader is very good, though he does occasionally slip from voice to voice by accident...