[iopuy]

I read an average amount as a child and frankly I found books such as "The Count of Monte Cristo", "The Red Badge of Courage", "Great Expectations", etc to be absolutely mind-numbingly boring and would have to force myself to finish them. As a young adult I actually picked up some books I found interesting (i.e. nonfiction) and became a voracious reader. It was like an entire new world had opened up that wasn't constrained by the boundaries of some form of supervision. Admittedly, most of my reading as a youngster came in school and you were either reading fiction, or nonfiction that had to do with the holocaust or WWII. My advice to young people struggling with books is to find a genre that interests you, and dive in.

[RugnirViking]

I mean those books you listed as examples are not aimed at children at all and indeed in the modern era are not really particularly good in a modern cultural context. That does not mean that they are not worth reading, but if they were the things that you thought most worth reading as a child it's not a surprise you were dissapointed.