I also never connected with the characters in LOTR, so that made it challenging. The only character I liked was Aragorn. He was cool. But I preferred the movies, though even then I still liked Aragorn best. (To be fair, he also made me think of Sirius, and I was pretty obsessed with the Marauders at that point in my life...)

I've heard she didn't really like Pride and Prejudice as much, though I don't remember the source, so it'd be interesting to see her response to that being the best known work. (I can sort of see why, if that's true - I like P&P very much, but it's definitely on the idealistic side, and I can see her being a little put off by that in hindsight.)