Comment by milesrout

I had a very similar view to this for a long time. Then I sat down and actually read some difficult novels, but good ones. They are difficult to read but not in the same way that, say, bad social science research is--full of jargon and overly long sentences so the author looks smart. Good novels are difficult because they use language in interesting ways to convey more information than just a dry scientific description of how one event followed another towards the resolution of the plot, like you'd find in most crime novels for example.

It really is worth actually learning to read good books. They aren't hard for the sake of being hard. But they also aren't simple for the sake of being simple.