What's the deal with modern "lore heavy" sf/fantasy, and why does it so often feel like a chore to read?

I'm thinking of books like Dune, LOTR, Wheel of Time, Malazan, ASOIAF, Three Body Problem, Le Guin, etc. For the last ten years, these books have been the only thing I really read, and it's gotten to the point where I feel like I'm only reading sf/fantasy because it's all I know how to read.<br><br>When I look at other fiction, I just can't seem to be interested. When I hear people talking about how great this new release of Gatsby is, or how wonderful this new release of Madame Bovary is, I'm just not interested. The idea of reading a book about "real life" people and their struggles seems incredibly boring to me, and it's to the point where I feel like I'm missing out by not being interested in other fiction.<br><br>Furthermore, it's gotten to the point where I'm starting to hate reading these kinds of books. Wheel of Time and Malazan were excruciatingly boring to read, and I've heard that if I thought those books were boring, I should avoid books like dune and Three Body Problem because "they're not for me". I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than I feel like I've been misled into thinking these books are as good as they are hyped to be.<br><br>I also feel like the current publishing industry is built around giving people books like this that are thousands of pages long. It feels like the industry is just feeding into people's obsession with these books that take a full work week worth of reading to finish, and that they're creating this idea of "fantasy books are really thick and long because they're really dense". I just don't think this is true anymore. If you told someone 20 years ago that one of the most popular books of this day would be a 5000 page high fantasy story, they would have thought you were crazy.<br><br>Forgive the rant, just feeling a little frustrated. If you have a suggestion of something else to read, please let me know. It can be real or fiction, it can be a short story, it can be literally anything. Thanks for reading.