One of the better posts I’ve seen in my 22 years on FR. :-)
Thank you.
Reading the trilogy used to be an Autumn ritual for me. I lost track at 24 times. Now I just peruse passages; I have some of it effectively memorized.
One of the coolest things I found was to cross-reference themes from the Silmarillion and Akallabeth with TLotR and The Hobbit: The former were written first, but never published while he lived.
For example: Gimli the Dwarf asked Galadriel for a lock of her hair. This was a profound faux pas, but she granted this request to an honorable “enemy”; yet she had refused the same request from her own cousin, Feanor, in the First Age, because she saw the “darkness” in his soul.
The movie, Tolkien, was somewhat disappointing, since they (of course) diluted his Christian motivation, but it was otherwise interesting and well done.