I should start by saying I'm a huge Tolkien fan. LOTR is less daunting than it might seem. A friend of mine is going through it at only a chapter or two a night himself.
I'll list my recommendations first and then explain below.
- His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman.
- Redwall series by Brian Jacques
- Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
- Legends and Lattes
- The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin
- Howl's Moving Castle (book came first) by Dianna Jones
- Ludd in the Mist by Hope Mirrlees
- Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandemeer
- The Expanse series by James Corey
The Redwall series by Brian Jacques is more of the vibes; cozy, hero's quest, adventure. It just feels like a cozy evening read book. Yes there's a lot of them but they're all their own little story so you can pick up any and end whenever. Less fantasy but still relaxing read.
The Discworld books are also great. There's a lot again but there's sets, you can look up which ones are actually direct sequels or a reading order and many can be read standalone. His first few are much more "and stuff just keeps happening" but it felt like after the first few he started to plan and give characters drive (despite his protestations otherwise). These books are peak "imagination run crazy" for me. You should also know Pratchett's books don't have chapter numbers. I personally loved that, the story feels like it is one continuous story to me but I've known people who accidentally read a book in one sitting because they were waiting for a chapter break to put it down.
The Cozy Fantasy genre itself might be what you're looking for too. A lot of my friends lump The Hobbit into cozy fantasy. One of the recent runaway hits was Legends and Lattes. My wife and I read it together (she goes for cozy murder mystery and I go for weird books usually) and we both enjoyed it. It has a sequel we haven't read yet. Terry Pratchett's "Witches Abroad" is often recommended in this genre and also part of Discworld.
His Dark Materials I've only seen the show on BBC but I often hear it discussed in the same breath as Hobbit. Good story, fun adventure, some neat ideas.
I haven't read Ludd, Howl's or Earthsea myself either but they're all well respected authors and those books almost always come up while discussing Tolkien so worth looking into. Earthsea or some other Le Guin book is next on my reading list personally.
And now for the two oddball recommendations, Southern Reach and Expanse. For me, I loved Annihilation. It's one of two books that got me back into reading as an adult after not having done so since college (in my Tolkien seminar my final semester actually). I immediately remembered why I love reading and how words could take me places and make me feel things. It's weird and trying to obsesses over the story is the wrong approach. You can absolutely read it at only a chapter or two a night and just wonder what the hell is going on.
The second oddball, Expanse, is one of the few series my buddy picked up and enjoyed after reading The Hobbit (same guy working through LOTR now). It's relatively light easy reading sci-fi. We'd chew through a couple chapters together and theorize what was gonna happen. In many ways it's not The Hobbit but I dunno, it clicked for him right after for some reason so maybe same for you.
Hopefully one of those works, happy reading.