Furthermore - there are more than enough novels that grip you immediately, to spend your whole life reading them and avoiding the rest.
"The rest" tend to come in two categories. Books I lack some experience for to be gripped by - which I may come back to in future. And bad books - which I will not. YOLO.
To be clear, I am in favor of giving books time to grab you. Long-term, this will give you more and deeper enjoyment. Some genuinely life-changing books really do need that time to get you up to speed. They're worth it.