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So, uh, why are you reading? Like what are you reading for?
You should read what you like if it's for enjoyment. Whether that's Tom Clancy(RIP) or Jane Austen(also RIP), or in your case Cormac McCarthy(RIP again). If you're trying to become well read, then read Shakespeare. If you just want to blend in with a certain crowd, well, that's going to entail plenty of other things you wouldn't necessarily choose to do, I'm not sure why the modern equivalent of Dickens is a bridge too far.
I have never understood the appeal of Shakespeare at all and I’ve tried to grasp it. Although the one book I suspect that has a chance at making me like him I haven’t got around to yet.
Are you not getting it because of the dialect issues, or because of something else? I find his plots very funny, but with writing that requires some footnotes(and of course, it often doesn't have a deeper meaning, it's entertainment)- but, the first folio and the KJV are, literally, the defining core of modern English literature, and if you want to understand literature in modern English, you have to read those two things.
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Does this come from trying to read Shakespeare? I feel like Shakespeare is best enjoyed in performance form, and trying to enjoy his works from reading them is like trying to enjoy The Godfather from reading the script. There's enjoyment to be had, likely, but there's a lot to the experience that's missing, because the target audience for the script wasn't readers, but rather actors and directors and such, for the purpose of informing them on what to perform for viewers. Personally, my favorite Shakespeare experience is the 90s film Twelfth Night starring Ethan Hawke and Helena Bonham Carter.
The first time I ever enjoyed Shakespeare was in a tavern that served food and booze while putting on the performance. Can't recommend highly enough (no tomatoes thrown, alas).
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I don't like Shakespeare either.
But to give him credit, I'm sure he was exceptionally talented in his time. I think it's like criticizing Newton because he only discovered classical physics: we've progressed not only material and objective knowledge but changed taste.
Likewise, I read Lovecraft and his depiction of eldritch horrors is tame compared to what he inspired.
(Although unlike material and knowledge, whether our culture's taste "progresses" is debatable. Especially because sometimes "what's old is new again". I do think it progresses in that some concepts, like tropes, are discovered then always remain in style; at least until we undergo change as radical as an apocalypse that destroys material and knowledge progress.)
Part of the criticism I have for him lies on me. How can I say I don’t like him if I don’t understand what he’s about? I just don’t see the appeal at all. I’m not sure if Newton is a good parallel case. And actually in his case, Newtonian Mechanics still has a ton of practical applicability today, specifically in fluid dynamics.
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