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I first read LOTR when I was maybe 12/13, and read it about once a year for the next couple of decades-- there were parts I could almost recite, and some of my adolescent fantasies involved elf maidens. [For some reason, hobbit maidens didn't do it for me.]. It took me years to be bothered by the dearth of female characters.
I read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged but was so disgusted by the selfish and individual-over-community political bent that I never touched one of her books again.
Moby Dick I finished, albeit with difficulty... Nothing like having a course grade depending on my knowledge of more than just the first few chapters. I tried The Brothers Karamazov and felt I SHOULD like it, but couldn't, and have spent fifty-some years avoiding the Russians.
Essentially, I'm too lazy to work that hard. I read for pleasure and to escape the real world, and not to better myself. I'd become a better person by reading those serious tomes, I know, but since I haven't read them, I'm not a better person, and thus won't read them. Or something like that.
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