Pride and Prejudice: That Book Everyone Else Loves

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There's something special about Pride and Prejudice. For reasons I can't quite fathom, people love this book. They adore it. They re-read it every year. They quote it. They have it on t-shirts and tote bags and cocktail napkins. They've seen every movie adaptation ever made. They can't imagine anyone but Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy (though to be fair, neither can I at this point). 

Pride and Prejudice is a book that people adore--loudly, from the rooftops, singing its praises--but it's a book I just don't like. While I can appreciate it as an important work of literature, appreciate Austen's wit and power with words, it fell flat for me as a story, failed to give me characters in which I felt invested, and ultimately proved to be a disappointment.

Not for lack of trying, mind you. I read it as an assigned title in high school (didn't like it). Because I try not to form permanent opinions of books I've only read as assigned reading, I re-read it just after college (didn't like it). I picked it up a third time and read the first thirty pages or so (didn't like it).

Maybe, I thought, Pride and Prejudice is just not the right Austen novel for me. I'll try Emma!
Bad idea. Where I mildly disliked Pride and Prejudice, I really, truly did not like Emma. I suppose I liked it in theory, with Austen driving home the point that the mundane details of everyday life are actually what make life interesting, but liking something in theory and actually liking it are two different things. I like kale in theory. I like vitamins in theory. I like going to the gym in theory. I like jumping in the ocean in the wintertime in theory.

I tend to shy away from voicing my Austen opinions. Every time I mention to someone that I don't like Pride and Prejudice, I'm urged to read it again. Or, even worse, I'm given the cliche statement that just because something is cliche now doesn't mean it was cliche when it was first done:

"It's not overdone when it's never been done before when it was first done that time before it was ever done before anyone else had done it."

Yes, thank you, I get that.

But I don't get Austen. I didn't like Pride and Prejudice any of the three times I read it, but I read Middlemarch earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed it--and there are some definite thematic similarities between Middlemarch and what I know of Austen's works. So if it's not the subject matter or time period that's throwing me, it must be something else. Maybe it's the hype. Maybe I'm missing something. Or maybe it's my own pride and prejudice (I made a pun).

This is where I need the hive-mind help. Should I re-read Pride and Prejudice (perhaps as part of a readalong, supported by the wisdom and love of others as I read)? Should I try yet a different Austen novel (I've been told Mansfield Park is decidedly different from her other works)? Or should I just give up the ghost, declare myself a non-Austen fan, and move on to other authors?

People of the bookish internet, please help.