"I'm going to say something that won't make me popular - I don't like much classic literature.
I've read my share, but for me, every piece of classical literature commits a minimum of one fatal sin - they're not entertaining to read. They're effort. Not in the sense that you have to work to understand them (I don't mind being made to think), but rather in the words they're put together using. They don't flow well. They stuff descriptions down your throat in the least interesting way possible. They spend an inordinate amount of time describing the most boring things. I could tell you the most interesting story there's ever been, but it what's it worth if your eyes glaze over and you start thinking about what you had for lunch yesterday before I'm ten minutes in? Bugger all - that's what.
Modern writing, on the other hand, is about delivering the maximum possible amount of information in the fewest possible words. Modern authors are always looking to eliminate the flab that yesterday's authors had in abundance. You still get to know that Viktor Hark is a short, stocky man with black hair and an arm made of metal, but you don't have to read nearly as much to find it out, and what you do have to read will often advance the action at the same time. Unnecessary words get cut. No excuses. They waste the reader's time, and that's plain disrespectful."
Well said, that kind of verbosely painful writing is the reason why I hate a lot of fiction as well.