Reading, TV, Music (both listening and playing), Gardening, Computer games, Movies (too many to list here!) and exercise...
First Lord of the Rings reading experience:
Must have been about 12 and I just remember it being long. And I skipped all the songs and poems... Only when going back to it aged around 16 or 17 did I start to see the underlying themes and realised the songs tols the bits of the story I'd been missing. I even have a grudging admiration for the Bombadil poetry, as in a silly way it tells a lot of history.