I think this exercise will help with being specific, but at the cost of straying from your TRUE reasons for liking/disliking. i.e. in order to think of specific things to list, you will rationalize.

This seems extremely likely.

There's a book called How Fiction Works-- I wouldn't say it actually explains how fiction works, but it does include a fair amount about how our ideas of literary fiction (well-rounded characters and a lot of visual detail, for example) developed, and examples from classics that don't match what's considered literary.