stuff of novels

I read a book by James Fenimore Cooper at uni, and I thought it was so boring and slow moving, but now I look back on it and see it as very earthy and deep - a fine work of literature, and I want to read more of him. 

There have been a few classic novels that I felt that way about, which isn't surprising. Life and the world were more slow moving in the past. It's surprising that I don't feel like that more often with old novels, but I don't. Reading Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, David Copperfield, etc...although they were written in the nineteenth century, they don't feel slow moving. 

Sometimes more modern novels seem very slow moving. Actually, they are very slow moving. I find that's the case with some of Thomas Mann's works. I started reading Joseph and his Brothers, and I just couldn't do it. It just refused to start. It begins with a kind of meditation the subject of which I can't remember. I just remember that nothing of substance happened and I kept reading - 10 pages, 20 pages - and still nothing definite. So, I gave up. 

It makes me think that maybe some literature from the past is lost to us. No one can read certain books because our minds don't work the way they did in the past.