I actually liked The Two Towers the best of the three, I think-- Fellowship starts off soooo slowly that it's annoying, and Return of the King has both the utterly miserable slogging-through-Mordor bits and the tedious, drawn-out denoument. The middle book hits the ground running, and there aren't any really dull part.

I didn't like the movie as much as Fellowship, but then, the cinematic world wasn't new the second time around, which cuts the impact a little. I didn't think it was awful, though, and the changes that were made weren't to parts of the book that I particularly hold dear, so I'm not bothered by them.