I was reading some discussions online about recommendations for vampire novels and a bunch of people recommended GRRM's Fevre Dream. I'd never heard of it so I read the description and it sounds... pretty bland? It's about a riverboat captain on the Mississippi River in the 1850s who gets hired by an aristocratic vampire. While I'm sure the description is avoiding spoilers, that all sounds very boring to me. Yet the amazon page proclaims it "A THRILLING REINVENTION OF THE VAMPIRE NOVEL" so I must be missing something.
I'm guessing this is one of those dramatic period pieces with thought-provoking conversations between well-defined characters. And maybe I'm just a simple-minded idiot who prefers action movies like Underworld, Blade, and Van Helsing and this novel simply isn't for me. That's fair. Or maybe that description is leaving out too much and it's actually an action-packed thrill-ride. I have no idea.
So If you've read Fevre Dream before, what's the appeal? What's so great about this novel? It seems highly regarded but that doesn't mean it's for me. I'm sure there are other people here who might enjoy it though, so definitely check it out if you're curious. Obviously the novel does something right, I just don't know what that is.
Yeah, it's fair to say you don't like Tolstoy. Every generation re-evaluates who they think of as geniuses and what the classics are. Every individual is free to say whether they agree with that or not. Personally I was forced to read Anna Karenina for school and I was kind of bored. Then I read War and Peace for fun and thought it was great, one of the best books I ever read.
But it's undeniable that Tolstoy was very influential both within Russia and in the general European intellectual community. Possibly you're right that this is because he was nobility and one of the few authors at that time. But having at least a familiarity with Tolstoy's writing is important for understanding European classical literature in general.