@shootingnova: As a collective lore, I've dedicated far more time and reading to SW but not because I consider it better written necessarily, just with more material in it; as a composite world, I think the LotR-universe is probably better constructed because it was written as more of an epic mythology and was written over several decades.
Regarding LotR's EU, I never finished The Unfinished Tales when I was younger, though I still have it lying around. I actually haven't read through a Tolkien novel in a long time, and I forgot about many of the precise details of the universe, which prevents me from debating it in threads very much. The last Tokien novel I touched was The Hobbit some months ago, just skimming; I read it twice (IIRC) when I was younger. Overall, no, I don't know much about LotR's larger history, just about the most well-known stories (Hobbit, Fellowship, Towers, King). Most of my exposure to the legendarium is limited to those, even though the rest of the books have caught my attention in book stores more than once.
As far as how much I like it, I actually like it a lot. LotR's lore is just as or more fascinating to me as SW's is, but somehow, I got too lost in SW's EU and never made the time for extra-LotR lore pieces, which is regretful. Just haven't gotten around to it yet. Some of Tolkien's lesser known works are on my list of classic literature that I need to read at some point and have been for a long while.
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