I have an experience that seems relevant.

I was assigned several chapters of the high-status The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War for a class, and fell in love with it, reading it over and over. I don't say status had nothing to do with it, for every effect has multiple causes (and every cause affects multiple things).

When the translator finished the similar-status and somewhat similar content The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories, I bought it and began reading it with the expectation I would find it stimulating on multiple levels. I found it very boring and randomly meandering, in the same way so many people say they find all of history, which I was finally able to relate to.

Perhaps I was sabotaged by high expectations that I only noticed not being met, but on the other hand I was primed to consider the book favorably and confirm that opinion.

Regarding your point 5., these are two of the earliest works of the art form, which is also a mark of something one is "supposed to like".

A meta-status theory would be that I validated my appreciation for Thucydides by disparaging Herodotus.

As for the Fugue, it was quite pleasant, though I thought the thirty seconds after 11:48 were silly.