This is one reason why the typical teaching methodology of a US high school English class typically has the effect of blunting the enjoyment of classic literature - students are not usually given the chance to read the story in its entirety before it is dissected to death, chapter by chapter.
I certainly read all of my assigned texts an din the case of classical studies several other books and plays in the cannon.
Because they're teenagers with better things to do with their time than reading old 'boring' books by a bunch of pointless dead people.
It means I read a lot of great books, for example. I used to read them and then write about them. I'd spend almost as much time writing and thinking as I did reading the books. I'd make notes, quotes, and tie things in with other literary works.
If I'd had computers and the Internet, I'd have spent that time watching porn and posting fart jokes.
That was the reasoning for my pointing out that it may sound strange.
Even as a well-grown adult, I still go outside and play, sans any compute devices at all. I often hike, snowmobile, ski, snowshoe, ride an ATV, etc and don't even bother with a GPS unit or bring a cell phone. Mentioning this sometimes nets some responses expressing everything from curiosity to suggesting that I'm recklessly endangering myself and others.
Yes, yes I have had (online) people tell me that my doing so is actively endangering others who may need to come rescue me. I'm never quite sure how to respond politely to those types of comments. I guess it is difficult for some people to understand that life existed before the ubiquity of communication devices and always-on networks. They sometimes express more dismay when I point out that, in some locations, not even cellular service is available.
Ah well... But, yeah, it sounds strange to some folks - given the responses I've had to similar commentary.
So, it's not just if a book is good or not; it's also if it finds you at the right time. I don't just mean maturity; I also mean what big ideas are swirling around your head at the time.
For example, I read One Hundred Years of Solitude in HS and hated it. I read it again several years later, having mostly forgotten it, and I loved it, thought it was a masterpiece. I recently reread it, several years passing and having mostly forgotten it again, and I couldn't finish it, just didn't resonate the same way and moved too slowly to keep my attention.
If you try reading a classic and are still hating it after 50 pages or so, I recommend just putting down and trying again later in life. Of course, that doesn't work so well for required reading when a teacher wants everyone in the class to discuss the same book.
Because not everyone has that sort of luxury. Pre-college, I never had an actual syllubus detailing such things. Sometimes we'd get told we'd start a book every x weeks or something, but we never actually knew.
Most common method of introducing books was to hand them out in class, giving a reading assignment for that night with discussion beginning the next day.
I didn't even realize the picked books might have any value until I accidentally read 1984 on a friend's recommendation, not realizing I'd have it for class the following semester.
And I still couldn't stand the class discussion of it.
So if I was going to do any reading, I had more incentive than not to avoid anything the school recommended: they'd kill anything I liked about the book anyways.
I think my worst experience was being assigned voltaire (candide iirc), and realizing no else one was laughing, not even the teacher
And then they have assignments that assume that you have not read the book and that you will fail if you have, unless you carefully disguise this fact.
I'd contend very few teenagers are really ready to enjoy Sense and Sensibility or similar texts anyway because of their different and short experience of life, but they are in a position to learn some of the techniques and vocabulary used.
Maybe, but I think the bigger reason is just that teenagers have generally not developed the kind of maturity where reading a classic work of literature is very enjoyable.