I’m going to admit something that may be shocking, particularly since I’m a writer.
I don’t like Shakespeare. There I’ve said it. I’ve tried, really I have. I saw a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream once that was okay, but overall I find my mind wandering. In fact, I watched a BBC production of The Tempest this week because it’s referenced in the book I’m writing and I’d never read or seen it, and it literally put me to sleep. When the phone rang, I about fell out of the recliner. The Tempest was still going on the TV. So how could I use this to my advantage? I made one of the characters in my book dislike Shakespeare and call him the “sure cure for insomnia.” 
Shakespeare isn’t the only “classic” I don’t like. Remember those required reading lists from high school? While I tended to like the more modern writers like John Steinbeck and Willa Cather, earlier ones made me want to poke my eyeballs out. I had to read The Great Gatsby twice — once in high school, once in college. Hated it both times. And being a lover of nature, I thought I’d read Walden by Henry David Thoreau. When I was quite a ways into the book and he hadn’t even managed to get to the dumb pond yet, I gave up. Same with James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. LOVED the movie. The book? Zzzzzzzz. Didn’t finish it either.
Maybe I just don’t appreciate what others are seeing, or maybe I just like a more modern voice, perhaps a more popular culture voice. After all, I like Jane Austen, but at the time she was writing she wasn’t considered a high-brow or classic writer. Only years later was she deemed so. She was the Nora Roberts of her day.
What writers of today do you think will show up on those high school reading lists in the future? My guess is that writers such as J.K. Rowling and Stephen King will be there.
And what classic writers/books are snoozers for you?