It was a bit hard to differentiate between Merry and Pippin in terms of personality and who-said-what, though it did get a little easier to tell once Gandalf started his hate campaign against Pippin's existence.

I cannot be objective about this, but also it is just so good. The feeling of grief for the times long past, and the things they must do. 

Serkis is of course an excellent narrator as well.

Bilbo's parting song, Gimli leaving Lorien, Boromir's moment of temptation, Sam... just Sam... I love it and I definitely am not crying.

I remember reading this a long time ago. I'm pretty sure I finished it that time around, but I can't quite remember. (And this was well before my usage of Goodreads.) I started this back in November with my family - every other Sunday, we meet over Zoom and read for about an hour. We started our Zoom reading with The Hobbit earlier in 2021 and then moved on to The Fellowship of the Ring. My family Zoom read is still in Fellowship (about to start Book 2), but I decided to read ahead since, thanks to my recent reading surge (or "reading high"). And boy oh boy, am I glad I began reading this. For my The Lord of the Rings reading, I am counting both the individual "books" (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) and LoTR as a whole. (Tolkien originally intended it to be published as one whole book with six sections, or "books", but the publisher said that would be too expensive and had him divide it into 3 books, each with 2 sections/"books".) I will be doing an overall review for LoTR once I finish The Return of the King.
"'I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.'"
As someone already attached to the characters within Middle Earth thanks to growing up on the Rankin & Bass animated Hobbit movie, Peter Jackson's live-action Lord of the Rings trilogy, and then from 2012-2014, falling in love with Jackson's live-action Hobbit trilogy (I have my issues with it, but I overall love it). This is definitely something everyone should read at least once, or at least try to read. Hell, Sir Christopher Lee (may he rest in peace, power, and magic) read this trilogy once a year and met Tolkien. (I 100% intend to follow in his footsteps once I finish it up this year.) This is one hell of a book to get through, but it is a cornerstone and the precursor of modern fantasy as we know it today. The world is so magical and wonderful. Although lengthy, Tolkien does a fantastic job in creating this world, its story, and characters for all readers.
And to those of you who argue the <i>Harry Potter</i> wizards could beat Gandalf in a fight: no they can't.

Andy Serkis' performance really gives a new experience of the text- his ability to accent characters and differentiate voices is helpful, and his emotional reading- tense when action is at its height, smooth when the story flows unharried- is one I found myself thoroughly enjoying. 

Getting it out of the way, the big thing that might put you off Lord of the Rings is that it's slow reading. It's long, and filled with references to names and histories which don't directly affect the main plot. But even if that doesn't sound like your thing, I'd still recommend giving the book a try, because what's important isn't the names or the histories, or the detailed world building, or the other aspects that have been copied ad nauseam by fantasy writers for the last 60-something years. What matters is the ~vibes~.

The books feel so slow because Tolkien really gives the story time to play out. He includes whole songs in the text, he spends ages describing the landscape and the weather, and characters speak for paragraphs. In contrast, the characters, whether they appear in one scene or are a major focus of the book, get about two sentences of introduction and almost no description of their appearance. Almost everything else is told through their actions and interactions with other characters.

For me, this deliberate slowness and the focus on environment and tone creates an exceptionally memorable vibe. It's pastoral at times, and it can be an escape into another world in a way that only the best books are. I don't have a very good memory for all the details in the books—the names, the histories, and the songs—I don't think Tolkien expect readers to memorise that sort of thing (after all, one of the songs in the book is written in an invented language). What I do remember is the moments and the moods. I remember what the weather was like in a particular forest in autumn, or the feeling of darkness in the mines below a mountain, or the atmosphere of celebration at a hobbit's birthday party.

There are still all the epic fantasy tropes which have been endlessly copied by others (and which Tolkien himself copied from the sagas he was imitating), but I think the softness and slowness of these books are often forgotten, or remembered only as a negative. Anyway, if you aren't sure whether you'd enjoy Lord of the Rings, but this sounds like something you could read, pick up The Fellowship of the Ring and give it a go.
:-)