Question on Tolkien Reading Order

I read The Hobbit every 5-6 years. One of my favorites. I refuse to watch the movies after seeing the 1st segment. LOTR would be the way to go after that before Silmarillion.

Exactly my feelings on this. Read the Lord of the Rings many times over the years and when I heard about the Silmarillion I wanted to know more of the lore because of what I had already read. Having said that, I never finished Silmarillion as it was just too much, I guess. Now that I’m much older I may try again.

I read the novels straight through years before the movies came out, but I never really was interested in the Silmarilon. I did try to read it after my son raved about it, but I couldn't get past the first chapter. It was about as interesting as Numbers. He said that after that it has some pretty good stories, so I might try it again and start later in the book.

While the movies were entertaining they changed the storylines to fit the medium. For example, in the Hobbit book there is no romance between an elf maiden and one of the dwarves. In the LOTR movies, Peter Jackson also seemed to cherrypick parts of the books and changed or left out other pieces. In the final movie he completely left out the battle for the Shire at the end. 

I and my now ex-friends consider ourselves the biggest Tolkien fans in the world. I first read The Hobbit when I was fifteen, and remember the great sadness when it was over, followed by great shock when my sister told me there were THREE! more, and was very disappointed when I finally realized they weren't going to be about Bilbo, but this Frodo guy, who was probably the weakest character in the series.

I had the second half of the Beren and Luthien chapter memorized, but never got to tell it to a girl. Did learn Elvish script, and would write letters to a buddy in Oklahoma City. Sometimes I wouldn't understand certain words he wrote, because he wrote with an American accent!

One of my friends actually took a jewelry class, so he could make us magic rings. He had each of us secretly describe the rest of us with one word (they had to be complimentary), then wrote that word in Elvish on the rings, but the script wasn't visible until he heated the ring in the fireplace. His wife got the first ring and I got the second. They were silver, not gold, but he showed us the ring and asked if we could see any writing - we could not. Then he carefully heated the ring in the fire and the script literally glowed; it was awesome.

It only worked the once, and was visible from then on, but still really cool. Said his teacher didn't know how he did it.

Sounds a lot like my experience.  I was bummed out when I realized Bilbo wasn't a major character in the Lord of the Rings - but Frodo soon grew on me.

I bought a leather bound, gilt edge paged, hardcover version of the Hobbit, with huge fold out maps of Middle Earth - and one day I realized I could "decode" the Middle Earth runes that appeared on the cover and book spine - and on the maps, by comparing the runes to the "translations" in the story.
I figured out that this rune was an "a", and that rune was a "b" and another rune was "ie", until I had the whole alphabet. I ended up creating a custom font on my computer - which at the time was an Apple IIc (circa 1982). Then I could print or display any text using the "Tolkien" font and it would display or print out in the Middle Earth runes.
Of coarse, once I completed this little project, I never used it again.

Then I could print or display any text using the "Tolkien" font

That's awesome. Sounds like you went more Dwarvish and I Elven. It was cool to find out the reasons Dwarves and Elves were the way they were from The Silmarrilion. Samwise was essential, even being a ring-bearer for a critical save after Frodo was captured, but so was Gollum.

I have an autobiography of Tolkien I thought would suck (I don't care where he taught or lived), but found some interesting trivia in there. When the Black Riders showed up, he had no idea who or what they were, and why they were quite plainly seeking the hobbits. It was only on the way to Bree that he wrote in the margin, 'Make it about the Ring'.

He killed Gandalf in Moria because he got stuck and had writer's block for a while, which is why the Balrog seemed to come out of nowhere to kill one of the main characters. Fortunately, in a fantasy setting, death doesn't necessarily write you out of the story and he got sent back.

Calling it a writing system is a bit of an overstatement. At the period of use of the Elder Futhark, 2nd to 6th century, it's believed the runes were a closely held secret of tribal priests, and used for mystical worship. They are not really letters but symbols of natural elements, so really couldn't be used for communication as we know it. That's why they disappeared with the introduction of Christianity and Latin. 

I came across this and thought it was interesting.
A short video about the origin of pipe weed in the Shire.

In my humble opinion...

Read The Lord of the Rings first, from front to back. Then re-read every 5-7 years. It is a treatise on the nature of Good and Evil, and on this subject it is as good as anything that has been written in the history of humankind.

Read the Hobbit as a fun side-quest, at will.

Read the Silmarillion when/if you're interested enough in the back story of LOTR.