Well, I've read all the books you brougt up, and the first two stories you mentioned, at least, are really not that complex: a guy gets injustly imprisoned and takes revenge, a captain really wants to kill this one whale. The next hardly even HAS a story: a guy gets his soul put into a picture (that's about it--the entire book hardly has any plot, it's essentially all about Dorian the character himself). The story of LOTR is pretty basic as well--it's the context the story is put in that provides the excitement. Great Expectations is perhaps the exception to the books you listed--it was originally published in serialized form (how coincidental, given this thread
), so the whole point was to have a rapidly evolving story that would keep readers' interest from months to month.
It's very possible I could have just misunderstood what you meant in the first place, though; if so, feel free to ignore me
