Tolkien has nothing on Robert Jordan when it comes to descriptive writing, to name one other fantasy author. As for some points in this thread:
1. LotR is not the best fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire series is indeed better, but it's still better than Eragon
2. Heath Ledger dying has nothing to do with the fact that he was amazing as the Joker. Even if he hadn't died, I would still say that
3. I don't find Lord of the Rings hard to read at all, and being easy to read doesn't necessarily make a book better
as far as i've seen, the specific people that hate Eragon think that Wheel of Time and A Song of Fire And Ice are both better series than Tolkien's middle-earth, most of the people that i've found that think "LOTR is the greatest book of all time" are people that read romances or whatever where LOTR is the only book that they've read that's actually in the "high fantasy genre"
heath ledger's death increased the amount of money TDK made at the box-office, period. trying to debate that is wasting your breath
i don't understand why people seem to hate the books that are easier to read than LOTR
also
Tolkien spent his entire freaking life doing the world-building for middle-earth and people use that as an excuse to say it's good
that it must be good because tolkien spent so much time making it
but really
i feel the opposite way
a book should flow out of you onto the paper
a book should be written because the story and characters are swimming incessantly in your mind and you'd go crazy if you didn't write it out on paper
i remember in the 90s when they had these horror books that had the
month in the copywrite date where each author was contractually obligated to write 3 books a year
and they were able to make those deadlines!!!
that's how books should be written