My initial problem with the book was that Tolkien can at times be too descriptive. Between the singing, and incredibly detailed scenes, I would at times get lost in the story. The movie helped with that, by giving my mind somewhat of a reference to work with.

Once I got over that, the story is incredible. It starts of as a very simple tale of on Hobbit, and slowly adds on other elements till you get a classic Evil vs Good sort of thing. At no point in the story did I feel that something was being done to progress the plot along, or put in just as filler.

I'm not going to attempt to create a capsule version of the story, suffice it to say, it's a great story, and one I highly recommend you read.