My foray into high fantasy
did not start with Tolkien. I suspect if Hobbit was a better read it may have... alas it was a dreadful way to be introduced to his world.
For me, it was Robert Jordan and the Wheel Of Time series. The guys in my old band were into it. When I bought the first book, #7 had just been released. Good series. Quirky. But highly enjoyable.
A good friend passed the first Erikson book on to me and I was completely enthralled. I think the fact he wrote it with a screenplay in mind made for an exciting read. The following books ballooned to over 1000pgs by the time he was wrapping the main story. His colleague picked up and started writing some interesting side stories that helped flush out the universe even more.
In terms of High Fantasy with an epic scope... I have not read better than the Malazan books. My appreciation only deepened when I learned it was all based on role playing! I used to be an avid gamer, enjoying Vampire in the White Wolf canon and then D&D around the time they rewrote it all as v.3 or whatever. (All the gaming started with the same crew from my band, too.)
Audible was a great way for me to get my literary rocks off. It got to the point where I couldn't read more than a few pages before falling asleep, back when I was in Kitchens. Even after... I would need to be on vacation and sleeping through two days before I could sit and read... and then I could pound through a novel pretty quickly, but taking naps in Hawaii isn't a very sustainable method for reading!