I started studying history recently because, in all honesty, I don't want to look ignorant. So I read J.M. Roberts' "The New Penguin History of the World"; it's 1200 pages that starts at cavemen and ends in 2007. I also read Patriots' History of the United States up to the industrial era part.
But it's becoming a drag to plow through history books like this. I find reading fiction/literature, science, or biographies much more engrossing and memorable (e.g. Hemingway, Tolstoy, Paulo Coelho, Van Gogh). Though there was a historical fiction US Civil War book (House Divided) that was fun to read.
I want to be curious about history, but don't think it's worthwhile to force myself to read history books just to feel more informed.
What is it about history that stimulates your curiosity? Is there a different mentality about history that would be good for me to develop?
Let me start this off by saying I appreciate your zeal. I respect that you had the ability to recognize your own perceived ignorance and correct it.
You seem to be having a problem in terms of becoming interested in history as a whole. What makes a person interested in history is they have a passion for a certain aspect of it. No historian knows everything about history, and if the information was not chunked, every historian would probably die of exhaust due to the sheer amount of things that the discipline involves. For this reason, instead of trying to learn it all in one go, which I respect the heck out of by the way, try to dip your fingers in it's bits and pieces, then when something in particular catches your eye, continue going down the rabbit hole related to that specific thing. What makes history great is a lot of it is open to interpretation and things are still being discovered that challenge our beliefs about it today. It's also great because you never really will run out of things to learn because there is sooo much.
And to answer your question fully, most people develop an interest in history when they recognize an ignorance they have, so they try to correct it. So it seems you already are correcting one if you read through a 1200 page book to do just that. It takes time to figure out what aspect, or even aspects appeal to you.
A lot of history is answering how something came to be where it is today, so if you have something modern you like doing, such as reading books of a specific genre, research how that genre came about and what influenced what and so forth. History is about the realization that learning is a life process, and the process in itself is what is enjoyable, however you learn it.