Ahh...Lord of the Rings. A favorite of mine. I generally dislike fantasy, but the complexity and depth of the series captured my attention, and I found the appendices interesting. The 'Sherlock Holmes' series by Sir Conan Doyle was engaging, but it took very little time to zip through it. Now am on the look out for 'The Lost World'. Too bad our library is so poorly suppeditated.
For non-fiction, "The Piltdown Man: Unraveling the Scientific Fraud of the Century" was well done ( I would not trust my memory of the exact title, though).