If you've made it to this last book of the trilogy, it's clear you are hooked on Middle-earth and longing to know the outcome of its struggles and fates of its characters. The sense of peril is high in this adventure and we see that Tolkien, as an author, doesn't love his characters enough for us to feel confident he will preserve them all. Tolkien's willingness to sacrifice the good, beloved and noble gives the story a weighty feel. Furthermore, the enduring impact of the struggle with evil on our beloved characters, particularly Frodo, speaks to Tolkien's personal experience with war. 
 If you have seen Peter Jackson's version of the movie, you might recall it as the movie of numerous endings. It is true that Jackson's indecision made the film feel even longer than it's already considerable 3.5 hour running time. On one level annoying, as a true admirer of Middle-earth I think it is testament to the superiority of the trilogy in developing many themes, leaving many loose ends to tie up. Of course, the book does this more effectively than the movie, but the book is always better, right? 
 While I highly recommend reading the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy as superlative literature, and have savored each of the Peter Jackson movies in this series (though not The Hobbit productions), I stop short of the immersive scholarship that some apply to these books. If I'm going to work that hard on tracking revisions, learning languages, synchronizing timelines and memorizing history, it's going to be about the Bible or at least historical fact, not a fictitious world. But maybe you can bring to Tolkien's work what he brought to Beowulf, a fresh academic appreciation of a classic work. In that case, your next step would be to conquer The Silmarillion. 
 The Silmarillion, Tolkien, 1977 
 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7... 
 Looking for another classic trilogy that combines strong themes, characters and adventure? See, 
 The Hunger Games (Hunger Games #1), Collins, 2008 
 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...