I feel like everyone has a special memory of how they first learned about Lord of the Rings. For me it was right around when the first movie came out. I watched it non-stop with my sisters friend’s elder sister. Anytime my sister would go over to play I’d be watching. I ultimately got the books but it was a huge undertaking for my age and never actually read it for an embarrassing long time. I did memorize the dwarvish rune alphabet in the appendix of my copy. Drove my teachers nuts writing with it.
For me it was after reading Dune. I was looking for something similar in terms of world building, and the librarian told me to read LotR.
I read everything failry quickly, putting a few all nighters while listening to Rachmaninoff, so I actually have two soundtracks in my head for this story, Rachmaninoff and the movie one :-)
Shortly after, I read about the movies being in the work and they are just perfect.