I agree about Nikolai Tolstoy, I usually love Arthurian stories & it did not work. C.J. Cherryh hit me the same way with her Russian tale: Rusalka.

I could not go beyond the 1st book of the first of Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series. I gathered I'd missed something so I re-read it years later & still could not stand it.

I recentley read The Hours & at the same time re-read Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf's is much better. It was not an easy read, but I quite enjoyed it.

Also disliked Watership Down.

Brideshead Revisited is by Evelyn Waugh. I read almost everything he wrote 25 years ago.