Well, the first thing to note...

As the old aphorism goes... They say we make our own hell on Earth!

So if you hate a book, and find it painfully dry, and a plod to get through, and yet you force yourself to keep reading (and it's not for a school assignment or anything)... for 8 days...

Then... why you do that to yourself!?

Not only are you:

A) Torturing yourself by forcing yourself to read something painfully not to your liking for a full 8 days... wasting 8 days of valuable free entertainment time,

B) But then when you're done, you're now further flogging and beating yourself up, by insulting yourself for not liking it, and calling yourself shallow and a "manchild"!

I don't know...

But that's pretty much the definition of what they sometimes mean by: We make our own hell on Earth!

(I mean we all do it to ourselves to an extent, one way or another...)

SECONDLY,

I can ABSOLUTELY guarantee you that you'r not shallow.

I know for a fact that it's not just fun and exciting over the top action sequences that will grip you, and make you love a book, and make you stay up all night reading, unable to put it down.

Sure, action can certainly do that! And nothing wrong with that!

But it's not the only thing that will do it for you, so stop thinking you're shallow.

For example, other things that will do it for you very likely include drama. Tension. Suspense. Mystery. Intrigue. Romance.

Or simply a beauty of musical poetic language and imagery in a novel, that just makes you love reading that particular book.

In the end, if a novel doesn't have at least some of those elements, then whelp, that's going to be one dry book all right!

And in my opinion, life is too short to spend it reading dry books.

But I mean hey, if you want to continue purposely torturing yourself, by spending 8 days with a dull dry book...

And then beat yourself up some more for not liking dry books...

then be my guest!

As for me, I don't finish dry dull books. I cast them aside, or give them away as quickly as I can!

(NOTE: sometimes a novel will have a lot of great parts, with painfully bad and dry parts mixed in. So in that case I just rapidly skim the dry parts, and get back to the good parts!)

Also... since we're on the general topic of how to keep audiences gripped and interested...

Another element that can keep you engaged is simply loving, or being so fascinated with a character in the novel (or a movie) that you just have to keep reading/watching to see what that character does next, or what happens to that character.

One example that leaps to my mind right now is the Jessie Stone movie series with Tom Selleck.

It's based on a series of books (though admittedly I haven't had a chance yet to read the books).

When I watched the movie, I was like: wow: there is so little action, or so little heightened suspense and drama in this movie series. And I guess in a way it's actually a bit of a boring movie series in that sense, with no dramatic action involved...

But... dang... I LOVE it!

Why? I'm not sure, fully.

But I think it's mostly because of the richness and highly fascinating character "Jessie Stone" that the original author Robert B. Parker created, and that Tom Selleck just seems to portray so well.

Also, other movies that on the surface seem "boring" or highly slow paced, and yet still grip you, include things like "Cube 1", and "The Breakfast Club", and even "My Dinner with Andre".

I mean My Dinner with Andre is an ENTIRE movie that has 2 guys sitting down at an Italian restaurant, having a conversation. They finish talking. They leave the restaurant. The End. That's it!

And yet, My Dinner with Andre is a highly fascinating movie.

I bet it grips you!

And it will do so, without any car chases, or what not.

But hey if it doesn't grip you: DON'T force yourself to watch it!

So ya... overall...

I'd say:

Stop beating yourself up, and making yourself watch or read things you don't like!