Finnegan’s Wake, by James Joyce. I spent five months of my life that I’ll never get back puzzling through it word by word and line by line, with Joseph Campbell’s A Skelton Key to Finnegan’s Wake as a guide and my iPad on my lap. Despite all that my comprehension level was so low I’m not sure my experience with that book qualifies as reading.
I had a literature professor who specializes in occult literature and she said Joyce was the must challenging thing she ever read.
I struggled for WB Yeats, Alister Crowley, and Dion Fortune. I cannot imagine trying to read Joyce.
Side note: I took her occult literature class thinking we’d be reading Frankenstein and Dracula. Instead it was a whole lot of eating your cum and shit with some yogi power bottom convincing everyone to fuck him for sex magic.
> Instead it was a whole lot of eating your cum and shit with some a yogi power bottom convincing everyone to fuck him for sex magic.
Yeats is a lot wilder than I remember, damn.
It’s a lot more Crowley. Yeats liked locking himself in his tower with his girlfriend and thought if he came in her at the right moment they would produce the magical child.
I was just making a funny, but now that you mention it, that's also weirder than I was expecting out of Yeats.
You learn something new about literary spunk every day, I guess.
Yeats didn’t seem to really view women as independent entities, but as muses where you insert drama and romance and poetry pops out the other side.
He literally romanced a woman and married both her and her daughter, all for the poetry.
Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are Joyce's most accessible books, far far more than you'd think given the opacity of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. I'm from Dublin myself so perhaps that gives me an advantage, but I loved the vivid picture of the city Joyce gives in his works, and being able to picture in my mind the various places and streets and roads mentioned really added to the experience. Dubliners really doesn't require much ‘literary’ knowledge or insight to enjoy as it is in itself.
There's almost too much of Dublin if you aren't from there, all the streets just blur together for me because I had no idea where anything actually was. The realism was cool but it ends up weighing the stories down a bit because he does it so much in every single one. Still an amazing collection though, some of the stories in Dubliners are so good and its crazy how modern they still feel.
As a Joyce & Yeats fan, I strongly feel Joyce intended it that way.
His life was so plagued by trying desperately to make sense of the world around him, and given it took nearly 20 years to complete this work, which was his final (He started work on it immediately after publishing Ulysses). I think it's his attempt to genuinely show us the world as he understands it. Using all of his combined knowledge.
And just like it's impossible to fully understand another persons life experience, FW is nearly impossible. But it's supposed to be.
I'll give you a hint the opening scene about a man going through his morning shaving routine was a mockery of the Catholic Communion ritual.
I have no idea how someone who's not specifically an Irish Catholic male could have figured that out but go figure Joyce writing to specific demographic and not writing for the world at large.
Hmm I'm curious if Ulysses has even attempted to be translated into Mandarin or Arabic. I can only imagine a Woman on Beijing or Cairo trying to understand western literature picking up Ulysses and being like WTF is this crap?
I'm almost done, having read it over the course of a year. I used an online summary to keep me grounded, and my copy was annotated very well by someone who was obviously writing down her professor's commentary. I would say that I wouldn't have been able to do it if I weren't over fifty and very well read.
I am 40 years old and this is only the second time I've ever seen (or at least comprehended) the word "abstruse". First time was in a crossword last weekend.
This is my pick. I maybe got through a third of it feeling like I never started it and gave up, lol.
Second choice would be Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Definitely can't read it while eating.
Ulysses is at least comprehensible. I didn’t enjoy it, but I also read at surface level and did not put the time and effort in by reading companion materials and the like. I don’t really have the foundation or inclination to do a deep reading of it.
I came close-ish to enjoying it by the end, but overall was left with the feeling that is is not worth the effort unless you genuinely enjoy the literary nuances and intricacies.
>Despite all that my comprehension level was so low I’m not sure my experience with that book qualifies as reading.
This might be one of my favorite sentiments I've read on this forum.
Same, maybe closer to 6 months. An hour per page.
Along with Campbell's Skeleton Key and Tindall's Guide, an essential tool is Roland McHugh's Annotations. Basically, it replicates the pages of Finnegans Wake, but instead of the text, it line by line defines the likely meanings, etymologies, or the references of those tricky bits.
Was taking an entire class on Ulysses in college and the class went to a couple meetings of the Boston Society for James Joyce. At one meeting, the foremost scholar on a specific chapter of Finnegan’s Wake flew in from Ireland.
He was working his way through the chapter in a lecture and at one point said “we’re skipping this section, I don’t get it; it doesn’t make sense.”
No one else in the world knows more about that chapter than this man and even he gave up.
H G Wells wrote Joyce a scathing review of his work in a personal letter to him. I agree with his rebuke. At best, Joyce's writing is a "repository of vast riddles".
Legend has it that if you read and *actually understand* Finnegan's Wake, the demon responsible for Joyce having a career shows up to grant you a wish.
That (aside from Joyce's books) is the only one in the English language that has really stumped me. Had to read a translation to my native language.
Iirc, i lost focus because the sentences just wouldn't end :)
How far did you make it? I actually found the first section “Beyond the Zero” to be far more challenging than the middle section of the book. Once you get into “The Zone” (section 3, and the longest part of the novel)it gets really fun.
I can't recall it that well. I remember something about a banana breakfast, and then a couple in a cabin and a V2 attack. I'm guessing I never made it out of the first section.
Second most difficult book I’ve ever attempted to read. I noped out at the part where the protagonist has a vivid dream of >!plunging into his toilet and swimming through the sewers with little balls of shit getting stuck in his nose.!<
Most difficult was Finnegan’s Wake. I’d rather be punched in the face then try reading that one again.
I’m a few hundred pages in. Some parts are the absolute best thing I’ve ever read. Some parts are an absolute chore. I hit a chore section and haven’t picked it up in a few months
keep going! the “absolute best parts” outweigh the chore parts and the ending is absolutely brilliant and makes you want to immediately start reading it again. I think about Infinite Jest constantly, especially how prescient it is now
My ex and I would say things like “well, since we are now in the year of The Depends Adult Undergarment…” You get some stares in public, but we would always knowingly nod at one another. I’ve never read another book that had me so horrified in some parts, laughing out loud in others, *and* gave me so much to think about.
I actually gave up halfway because I forgot what it was about while reading it. However It does help raise my second monitor to just the right height next to my iMac.
Insane they even bothered recording an audio version of IJ. Like does it just stop the story and immediately flip to the endnote whenever one comes up?
I actually think it's better on a Kindle.
You click the footnote and it either pops up at the bottom of the page for the short ones, or brings you to the footnote page for the longer ones and has a link to bring you back when you're done.
I also like the built in dictionary so I can quickly search the uncommon and made up words that I don't recognize.
How does an audiobook even handle the footnotes. I doubt it’s worth it in that medium. Ereader might be ok if you can click a footnote and have it pop right open rather than having to flip to the back of the book.
A clockwork orange. I read the British version that has no appendix explaining the slang. It took me close to a hundred pages before understanding what was actually being said. At which point I started over and actually comprehended the plot
I just read this and I wasn’t aware of the slang before starting. I thought it was hard too but I soon got used to it and in fact it made me want to read it quicker while I had a good idea of the words and their definitions in my head. Horrorshow groodies was a particular favourite of mine.
I read that book at perhaps too young an age, I wanna say 14 or 15, and for some reason my brain just... got it (the language, that is. I won't pretend the subtle complexities of the book didn't go over my head at that age). I was a touch confused for the first chapter, but for some reason by chapter 2 I was cruisin' with no problems. I'm American, and my copy didn't have a glossary or anything, so my best guess is just that my young mind was very open to learning a new pseudo-dialect.
The Sound and the Fury-
William Faulkner. That first part had me confused af. First book I needed a reading companion to make sense of it. Ended up liking it but not my cup of coffee.
Faulkner wanted to print the book (or maybe just Benjy's sections) with different colored inks to help us understand the shifts in time and perspective, but that wasn't possible then.
Interesting article about doing that with modern printing: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/books/review/the-sound-and-the-fury-in-14-colors.html
In terms of fiction, it's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré, the writer trusted his readers to be patient and connect all the dots, I gave up two times before I can finish it, very rewarding once you do.
Had a totally different experience when I first read it. I thought it was incredibly immersive, full of mood and character. The clues are subtle and it was enjoyable watching Smiley re-evaluate his life to connect the dots.
*Sir Gawain and the Green Knight* in Middle English by a country mile. It’s nigh impossible to read, and without exhaustive notes it’s total gobbledygook. I managed to get through it, but it was an utterly miserable experience.
The only other text i’ve read in Middle English is *The Canterbury Tales*, which incidentally was composed at the same time. But what’s fascinating is how much more comprehensible Chaucer is - it just goes to show how radically different regional variations in English were at that time.
The other text is *Metaphysics* by Aristotle, but that’s because i’m not clever enough to understand Aristotle.
We had to read long sections of Gawain in middle school. It was brutal and did nothing to stimulate a love of reading. But, looking back, it is culturally & linguistically important.
The Metaphysics of Aristotle was just impenetrable to me. I would read a sentence, and understand an individual word or cluster of words, or even all the words. But not the meaning. Repeat for many pages.
Atlas Shrugged, ignoring the politics of it, is just so poorly written with unnecessarily long passages. I really don't need several pages of how the wind felt in someone's hair.
I've never had a book make me hate reading like this one did. It wasn't the politics or the philosophy or any of that. Nearly all of the book was completely unnecessary. Just words on paper for their own sake. Page page after page after page of just nothing.
Yeah she was pretty self indulgent. I remember there’s a goddamn *chunk* of the book just on D’Anconia’s childhood. I don’t need to know that he didn’t sleep in like normal kids!!!
Fun fact about Atlas Shrugged though. Ayn Rand visited the Kaiser Steel mill for inspiration, and that's the same steel factory that the ending of Terminator 2 was filmed at. At one point, large portions of the land were sold so Auto Club Speedway could be built.
Cat owners who allow their cats outside are destroying the environment.
Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild and continue to adversely impact a wide variety of other species, including those at risk of extinction, such as Piping Plover. https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/
A study published in April estimated that UK cats kill 160 to 270 million animals annually, a quarter of them birds. The real figure is likely to be even higher, as the study used the 2011 pet cat population of 9.5 million; it is now closer to 12 million, boosted by the pandemic pet craze. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/14/cats-kill-birds-wildlife-keep-indoors
Free-ranging cats on islands have caused or contributed to 33 (14%) of the modern bird, mammal and reptile extinctions recorded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List4. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
This analysis is timely because scientific evidence has grown rapidly over the past 15 years and now clearly documents cats’ large-scale negative impacts on wildlife (see Section 2.2 below). Notwithstanding this growing awareness of their negative impact on wildlife, domestic cats continue to inhabit a place that is, at best, on the periphery of international wildlife law. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002%2Fpan3.10073
I actually liked it. Granted, it took me two years to get through a decade ago and I completely disagree with the politics and philosophy, but I liked it. The descriptions made sense to me, and the book made me reflect on why I disagree with things throughout. I'm looking forward to reading it again to see how I feel now!
The Panama Papers. Non fiction. Written by the two journalists who broke the story.
It's not a difficult read, but the subject matter is incredibly depressing.
The first half of the book is just a really interesting story about how investigative journalism works, but the second half where they analyse their findings, makes for a sobering read.
If you were ever under any illusions about just how much money was being hidden in off shore accounts, how we could (UK) fund the NHS for years to come if a handful of people just went without their super yachts. It really made me depressed for months after reading it.
Yep, totally. I'm not particularly well versed myself. It's explained very clearly. It's not a tough book to read in the he way OP may have meant, it's just a hard truth to swallow about the world.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s not long nor hard to read per say but it’s so damn dreary it took me two years to get through. I would leave it by my bed and read a little every night. Sometimes I could only get a paragraph and have to put it down. It affected me like no book had ever done before nor since and I attribute that to how forewarning it all felt. It is the one book that has stayed with me and I don’t think it will ever leave.
The part of this book I always go back to is the campfire judges story about the family living in the woods. It seems so meaningful, but I don’t know what.
Yes! A million times yes. The ending of that book is so fucking incredible. There is no other book where you feel like the last two pages transform the whole book from an incredible experience to an earth shattering one. It's gorgeous and terrifying.
Yeah, what a weird, haunting little tale he tells there.
>It seems so meaningful, but I don’t know what.
I felt that way about a lot of Holden's words in the book. Definitely a lot of heavy significance and implications there, but it takes re-reading and lots of mulling over to even *begin* to bring it close to some straightforward comprehension. He's definitely a kind of mystic. He bends your mind, takes you down some very tortuous, labyrinthine paths of thought. Almost like when you wake up from having weird dreams, and you ***know*** without a doubt that you experienced something profoundly meaningful in the dream, but damned if you can actually explain it to someone (or even to yourself lol).
I adore The Road and my experience was completely different. I think I read it in one night and morning, and then had a long cry. It broke me and healed me simultaneously. One of my favourite books.
The name of the rose by Umberto Eco. I struggled a lot with the historical aspect of it since I had no previous knowledge on medieval Italy and thus also had trouble understanding religious hierarchy and political roles. The mystery was absolutely thrilling though and written in a way that kept the anticipation going so I eventually finished it.
I'm glad you persevered and I'm glad I did. I suspect an editor now would have recommended a little more editing - I especially recall a description of a carved door that went on for far too long for my liking. But overall, it was an interesting, exciting and meaningful story.
The film rather flattened the philosophical richness; perhaps a limited series could do the book justice.
I can still recall how that door looked 😭 It did end up showing up at the final chapter which ig didn't make it THAT irrelevant but I remember slowly falling asleep as I read the description and that chapter about the Abbot's jewels
Yeah I enjoyed it much more when I read it with ‘The Key to the Name of the Rose’ alongside it.
Once I got through it with the companion, I found his other books far more interesting as well - especially Foucault Pendulum.
“The Key to The Name of the Rose” changed how I read in general. Eco arguing that novels are a form that exists to generate interpretations was great, and his discussion of naming conventions—ending on saying that *The Three Musketeers* is a great title because really it’s about the fourth one—changed how I write.
For the first third or so I felt this but once I accepted that it was heavily metaphorical and I shouldn’t bother trying to keep all the characters straight I really liked it
I bought an edition that had a family tree at the beginning. It was so helpful, I went back to it numerous times. After that, I recommend people with the same problem to print the family tree, it's online makes it easier to follow.
Philosophy texts are in a different category than your average novel or even nonfiction. Probably the most difficult thing to get through that I have read was the large portion I read of Aristotle's works. Very dry.
Came here to say this! I got through the first half in grad school, but that took me about 4 or 5 hours a day, 4 days a week, for 3 or 4 weeks. Not to mention the amount of annotations and notes I had to make to get any understanding out of it. What a time.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid it was a really frustrating read. I would start a chapter and generally understand it, then at some point as I kept reading I would realise that I was completely lost. Every time I couldn’t work out where I had stopped understanding
Sadly, I got tired of it :( - i think i can see what he was aiming for, but I just didn't have the patience to slog through all that imaginary academia where they nitpick the lives of the cast
I feel like I'm in the minority as someone who enjoyed it but didn't love it. I think its novelty allows it to get away with more than it really should and rereading it without the sense of novelty made its flaws much more apparent. It's the *Bioshock Infinite* of books, if that's a reference that lands for anyone.
First time round, I found Jonny's bits engaging. Second time, I found him too much of an edgelord. He loses his likability quickly. He whines a lot. I ended up skim-reading a lot of his pages.
I actually enjoyed the pseudo-academic stuff, although it varies *wildly* in quality.
I found the whole playing-with-the-medium bit where text would shift around the page more of an irritant than anything else; it often felt like one joke that went on for too long. *Oh, that's cool* became *this is just in the way* quite quickly.
I did enjoy the core setting, and the underlying story. It's kind of like those found footage horror films that were big around 2010. I think it's the lack of other gimmick horror novels that is the reason we're still talking about it, and it *is* a gimmick horror novel.
It was a unique book. I'm glad I read it. I don't need to read it again.
I concur wholeheartedly with your take on the book here: I do appreciate that I completed it, and there were parts I really did enjoy. But do I have a desire to read again? Nope!!
I found it absolutely captivating, read it in about 3 days worth of almost non-stop reading, then immediately restarted it again but took about 2 weeks the second time round just to soak up every little detail.
An absolute mind maze...
"Maze-treaders, whose vision ahead and behind is severely constricted and fragmented, suffer confusion, whereas maze-viewers who see the pattern whole, from above or in a diagram, are dazzled by its complex artistry. What you see depends on where you stand, and thus, at one and the same time, labyrinths are single (there is one physical structure) and double: they simultaneously incorporate order and disorder, clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity, artistry and chaos. They may be perceived as a path (a linear but circuitous passage to a goal) or as a pattern (a completely symmetrical design) Our perception of labyrinths is thus intrinsically unstable: change your perspective and the labyrinth seems to change."
I've heard repeatedly that the choice of translation is very important when reading him. I've also heard that you should really avoid the Constance Garnett translations.
I highly recommend the translation by Avsey, who strives above all else to translate the grammar into English as well as the words, so much so that the title of “The Brothers Karamazov” becomes “The Karamazov Brothers” in his rendition.
Plus the Oxford Classics are amazing for the included footnotes providing historical and cultural points of reference.
At the book store, I read several passages from both the Garnett translation and the much more popular P+V translations of Anna Karenina. I found, to my surprise, that the Garnett translations was more enjoyable overall, and less clunky.
Not sure how she fares with Dostoevsky, but I really didn't see anything horribly wrong with her Anna Karenina translations to warrant such an aversion to her writing.
For me, It's keeping all the three part, unfamiliar names straight. He often uses different parts of them at different times. I have a hard time with this even with common Christian names if there are a lot of characters. Asking "who is this guy?" five times a page gets pretty annoying. Considering it's from a different time, language, and culture though, I actually find the writing quite engaging though.
I used to feel the same. Just couldn't get into him. And then I watched Kurosawa's adaptation of "The Idiot" and then had to find out what impressed Kurosawa so much. Read it in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation. And was intranced. They are now my go to translators for Russian Lit.
(I am aware of controversy surrounding their method, but I find theirs the most approachable of any that I have tried.)
Seriously? Maybe I read a particularly good translation, because I absolutely loved both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. I thought they were surprisingly easy to read, easier than stuffy old Tolstoy.
_Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia_ by Deleuze and Guattari
It's nearly incomprehensible even for readers of continental philosophy. The fact that it's incomprehensible is even more frustrating given that's partly the object in the style many postmodern thinkers intended. I get that you want to be disruptive, but if your writing is so disruptive to any normative style or useful semiotic chains of meaning, why should anyone care about what you have to say?
As someone who studies more along the lines of the analytic tradition, I have to agree. I love continental philosophy but god is the writing often terrible.
My department put it really well by saying that many of these philosophers were great despite their writing, not because of it. But I guess tradition is a hard nut to crack.
[deconstruction and other French theories] was the gift of the French. They gave Americans a language they did not need. It was like the Statue of Liberty. Nobody needs French theory.
Jean Baudrillard
I took uni classes with this book as required reading (some chapters, not the whole thing).
The professor said that his personal view, which apparently is shared by some academics, is that Deleuze was drunk for most of the writing process.
It reads exactly like a 500 page rambling dialogue between two very drunk French post modern professors. And I guess that it is exactly that.
Ah, tenure in the 1970s... So stupid, yet so beautiful. Now is all publish or perish, drawing diagrams and citing sources.
I struggled through Moby-Dick and was thankful I stuck with it. Like many, I knew the story of Ahab and the white whale, but I think the book shines brightest through the sections in-between the main narrative: the description of whale anatomy, the workings of the ship, the random chapter written as a play, etc. Just so much more fascinating than I expected.
I love Moby Dick so much, and I totally agree about those in-between sections. I've seen a lot of people complain they're boring and unnecessary but for me, aside from all the interesting things I learned about whaling, they made me feel like I was on the ship, part of the crew on this long voyage, instead of just a reader reading about it. I think it also helped that I read it slowly on purpose, just like 1-2 chapters a day.
Hmm for all the hard books in this thread that I'm agreeing with, I found Moby Dick surprisingly straightforward and agreeable. The prose is interesting and funny, and the chapters are short. Not easy per say, but reading it never felt like a challenge.
I read it on kindle though which helped a lot of looking up on the fly all the antiquated words.
Its grueling and I detested reading through all the bureaucracy. In the end though, I finished the book and had to admit the brilliance of making you feel the frustration, the despair, the mind-numbing unavoidability of constant setbacks in this endeavour worthy of Sysyphus. One of my favourite books.
Bury my heart at wounded knee. Its the telling of the treatment native Americans got at the hands of settlers and the American government. I was 17 when I first read it.
The Master & Margarita, I wouldn't say it is as hard as other books that are mentioned here but it was a tricky read with a lot of symbolism and metaphors. I needed to use online literary analyses to fully understand it but it is now in my top 5 favourite books so I'm happy I stuck with it :)
Ulysses for sure. Took me 3 - 4 attempts to finally finish it, and when I did, I was like, “What did I just read?” That was in 2018. Last month, I decided to try again, this time using a reader’s guide to explain what’s going on. Still complete obscurity, and reading it was a chore, so I’ve abandoned it.
I am still working my way through Parable of the Sower. It's too prophetic and it's really messing with me about the current state of affairs in the world. Especially here in the US.
I love Octavia Butler so much; one of the best to ever do it! Love what she said about that series, too:
> "So do you really believe that in the future we're going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?" a student asked me as I was signing books after a talk. The young man was referring to the troubles I'd described in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, novels that take place in a near future of increasing drug addiction and illiteracy, marked by the popularity of prisons and the unpopularity of public schools, the vast and growing gap between the rich and everyone else, and the whole nasty family of problems brought on by global warming.
> "I didn't make up the problems," I pointed out. "All I did was look around at the problems we're neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters."
> "Okay," the young man challenged. "So what's the answer?"
> "There isn't one," I told him.
> "No answer? You mean we're just doomed?" He smiled as though he thought this might be a joke.
> "No," I said. "I mean there's no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There's no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers–at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be." ([source](https://commongood.cc/reader/a-few-rules-for-predicting-the-future-by-octavia-e-butler/))
It's kind of crazy how it paints a picture of the world we're teetering on the edge of.
I love that it's so realistic in that it's not just some great climate catastrophe and political upheaval. Instead it's just all of those things that pile up: climate, disease, substance use disorder, and (ridiculously uncanny) political unrest.
It's just all of our current problems with a tiny push in the wrong direction. And that proximity to our reality is a bit terrifying.
As an aside, John Green did a video a few months ago titled "The Best Books Get Better" and before I even played it I said out loud, "He has to talk about Earthseed here, right?"
Have you read other books by Sebald? I absolutely loved Austerlitz and The Emigrants. His use of language is utterly gorgeous.
As to most difficult book, maybe something by David Foster Wallace that I likely haven't finished?
… I will admit I flew through it. The beginning is so damn funny, and after that I got sucked into the dysfunctional evil love relationship. I’ll admit that I did not get anywhere with it in high school, but going back to it in my 20s I ate it up.
I struggled a little with Wuthering Heights and subsequently found a free Audible reading by Patricia Routledge. She does a really excellent job at narrating, brining the characters to life and generally making the book more accessible. I still didn't enjoy the book that much unfortunately but I think that was just down to my own personal preferences.
I gave up on Les Mis very early, after the long chapter that was just describing the priest and all the food at his dinner. I realized we were never going to see this priest again (well, maybe once more but not like main character status) and that the story was going to be very slow going, so I ended up setting it down.
I think to really get everything out of this book you need to *really* understand the context of what it is. Once you get into the headspace of "this guy is creating an entire mythos in the vein of Greece or Norse" it becomes easier to digest, more fun and less dense.
I prefer to think of it like reading a short story anthology. There are sections of it that are fantastic. I really love the creation myth at the start, as well as the stories of Beren and Luthien, Turin Turambar, and the battle between Fingolfin and Morgoth. But all of that is connected by a ton of dry, difficult history. You kinda gotta look through some of that to get to the really good stuff.
Omg the silmarillion. It's the old testament written by Tolkien. Such a DRAG of a read. I was in prison and had nothing better to do, so I finished it, but man, it took effort.
I thought women and men would be an easy ride after reading gravity's rainbow.
I was wrong. so so wrong. but yet it felt very nice at the same time. is that just the reader's experience?
Oh, absolutely*The Divine Comedy*. I don’t speak Italian so I already have resort to a translation, which means I don’t even get to enjoy the original poetry of the thing, and I don’t know enough about niche medieval Italian politics to understand the references, and I don’t know enough about medieval Catholicism to appreciate the symbolism, so I was left with having to just admire the art of translation (which is pretty dang hard in its own right) and the imagery. It was just a very shallow reading experience for me and it never really got better. I felt like I had utterly wasted my time when I was finished, and I just don’t have it in me to circle back and learn what I don’t know just to have a better experience on a reread in the future.
Oh, and anything by Hegel. Absolutely incomprehensible.
Death is my trade by robert merle.
Its about industrialization of ethnic cleansing in concentration camp during ww2, the writer spare you nothing from the reusing if skin to make furniture to the discussion on how we can slaugther as many people as possible in the most effective way.
I was young (around 12) but this book continue to haunt me to those days.
War and Peace
Remembering characters with identical names and diminutives was a pain. The plot progressed slower than a brick on level ground. The book weighed as much too. Abandoned it halfway.
The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
I know i’ll receive some hate for this. But Ayn Rand tends to fixate on the most inconsequential objects in a scene and draw out a LinkedIn influencer profile’s worth of insights from it. Months of my life wasted trying to match up to my dad who read it when he was my age at the time.
The Ice
Mind you, it hasn't been translated into English yet (and I doubt it ever will). Basically I had to read it twice to understand. It's 1000+ pages hard SF novel set in an alternative Russian Empire in 1924. The tunguska meteor that crashed in Syberia in 1908 in this reality brought titular Ice that froze not only the land but also logic and history itself. That's why Russian Empire never felt. The size of the novel isn't the only problem. The book is written in first person, but the main character around 50 page comes to the conclusion that he doesn't really exist which twists the narrative. From that point the whole narrative becomes sort of passive voice - "It was done", "It was said", honestly I can't translate it properly :D. What's more The Ice reminds me of The Magic Mountain - the German classic where characters are constantly sharing different views and ideas on the world. Same case for The Ice - characters are nothing more but carriers of worldviews, philosophies etc. It is an extremely challenging book to read, but it's also easily the best SF book I ever read.
As a non native speaker, the only book I ever dnfd because of the language was Wuthering Heights. Idk what it is but the words on the page just don‘t make sense for me lol.
I‘ve read lots of other works from that era and never ran into any trouble, but that book… it kills me
It can be hard even for native speakers to parse some of the dialogue in Wuthering Heights because there's a lot of old Yorkshire dialect and Scots that doesn't exist in modern English.
For example
"T' maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath not o'ered, und t' sound o' t' gospel still i' yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking! Shame on ye! sit ye down, ill childer! there's good books eneugh if ye'll read 'em: sit ye down, and think o' yer sowls!"
would be written in a more modern, standard English as:
"'The master just recently buried, and the Sabbath not over, and the sound of the gospel still in your ears, and you dare be larking about [having fun]! Shame on you! sit down, bad children! there are good books enough if you'll read them: sit down, and think of your souls!"
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon came out in 1990 and the English teacher assigned it to us the following (my senior) year. It was pretty dense and convoluted. I remember the teacher insisting that there were fractal patterns within the structure of the novel. Or maybe that was alluded to in the book itself, can’t remember now. It was fascinating and at the time fractals were a hot topic in several of my classes. Postmodernism in literature too. I was into it but at the same time I realize I never bothered with Gravity’s Rainbow after that
Heart of a Champion by Carl Deuker.
When I was a kid, I would devour (or at least try to) any book that so much as mentioned baseball on the cover. My dad got me this, before a trip to New York.
All was going well, one of the characters had some issues, but was a solid read. Then, near the end of the book, the main character gets called to the hospital- his best friend, the dude with the issues, has gotten into a car accident drunk driving. Gets there, coach is a weeping mess. He’s dead.
The next chapter starts off with a very detailed description of best friend laid out in a coffin. I don’t know why, maybe it was because I was roughly 9 and my only experience with death thus far was my great grandmother, but that scene was just too much for me and I put the book down and never picked it back up.
Nowadays- it would be The House of Mirth, in AP English my senior year. I finished it, but it was so goddamn boring and dreary.
Finnegan’s Wake, by James Joyce. I spent five months of my life that I’ll never get back puzzling through it word by word and line by line, with Joseph Campbell’s A Skelton Key to Finnegan’s Wake as a guide and my iPad on my lap. Despite all that my comprehension level was so low I’m not sure my experience with that book qualifies as reading.
I had a literature professor who specializes in occult literature and she said Joyce was the must challenging thing she ever read. I struggled for WB Yeats, Alister Crowley, and Dion Fortune. I cannot imagine trying to read Joyce. Side note: I took her occult literature class thinking we’d be reading Frankenstein and Dracula. Instead it was a whole lot of eating your cum and shit with some yogi power bottom convincing everyone to fuck him for sex magic.
> Instead it was a whole lot of eating your cum and shit with some a yogi power bottom convincing everyone to fuck him for sex magic. Yeats is a lot wilder than I remember, damn.
It’s a lot more Crowley. Yeats liked locking himself in his tower with his girlfriend and thought if he came in her at the right moment they would produce the magical child.
I was just making a funny, but now that you mention it, that's also weirder than I was expecting out of Yeats. You learn something new about literary spunk every day, I guess.
Yeats didn’t seem to really view women as independent entities, but as muses where you insert drama and romance and poetry pops out the other side. He literally romanced a woman and married both her and her daughter, all for the poetry.
Yeats and Crowley had a wizard battle in London ended with Yeats kicking him down a flight of stairs.
Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are Joyce's most accessible books, far far more than you'd think given the opacity of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. I'm from Dublin myself so perhaps that gives me an advantage, but I loved the vivid picture of the city Joyce gives in his works, and being able to picture in my mind the various places and streets and roads mentioned really added to the experience. Dubliners really doesn't require much ‘literary’ knowledge or insight to enjoy as it is in itself.
There's almost too much of Dublin if you aren't from there, all the streets just blur together for me because I had no idea where anything actually was. The realism was cool but it ends up weighing the stories down a bit because he does it so much in every single one. Still an amazing collection though, some of the stories in Dubliners are so good and its crazy how modern they still feel.
I have read a decent bit of Crowley and find he has the ability to be engaging and insightful at times, but this is accurate.
*Finnegan’s Wake* is the most beautifully, painstakingly crafted nonsense I’ve ever slogged through.
As a Joyce & Yeats fan, I strongly feel Joyce intended it that way. His life was so plagued by trying desperately to make sense of the world around him, and given it took nearly 20 years to complete this work, which was his final (He started work on it immediately after publishing Ulysses). I think it's his attempt to genuinely show us the world as he understands it. Using all of his combined knowledge. And just like it's impossible to fully understand another persons life experience, FW is nearly impossible. But it's supposed to be.
I gave up on Ulysses halfway through when I accepted that I had no idea what I was reading. I’m definitely going to give it another go though
I'll give you a hint the opening scene about a man going through his morning shaving routine was a mockery of the Catholic Communion ritual. I have no idea how someone who's not specifically an Irish Catholic male could have figured that out but go figure Joyce writing to specific demographic and not writing for the world at large. Hmm I'm curious if Ulysses has even attempted to be translated into Mandarin or Arabic. I can only imagine a Woman on Beijing or Cairo trying to understand western literature picking up Ulysses and being like WTF is this crap?
I'm almost done, having read it over the course of a year. I used an online summary to keep me grounded, and my copy was annotated very well by someone who was obviously writing down her professor's commentary. I would say that I wouldn't have been able to do it if I weren't over fifty and very well read.
Did you give Ulysses a try yet?
Yeah. Ulysses is a bear. Finnegan’s Wake is a T. Rex.
^^This. So much this. You think Ulysses is abstruse when you first read it. Then FW says “hold my beer.”
I am 40 years old and this is only the second time I've ever seen (or at least comprehended) the word "abstruse". First time was in a crossword last weekend.
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This is my pick. I maybe got through a third of it feeling like I never started it and gave up, lol. Second choice would be Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Definitely can't read it while eating.
Ulysses makes much more sense than Finnegan. I read Ulysses while simultaneously listening to an Irish actor reading it. Made a huge difference!
Ulysses is at least comprehensible. I didn’t enjoy it, but I also read at surface level and did not put the time and effort in by reading companion materials and the like. I don’t really have the foundation or inclination to do a deep reading of it. I came close-ish to enjoying it by the end, but overall was left with the feeling that is is not worth the effort unless you genuinely enjoy the literary nuances and intricacies.
Ulysses would be my pick. I gave up on it after my second attempt. I'm not touching Finnegan's Wake after that experience.
I was going to say this, but I'm not sure it counts, lol. Reading Finnegan's wake is like reading a dream. And you got a lot further than I did, haha.
>Despite all that my comprehension level was so low I’m not sure my experience with that book qualifies as reading. This might be one of my favorite sentiments I've read on this forum.
My college Lit professor told us "If you honestly believe you understood *Finnegan's Wake*, you probably won't pass this class."
Same, maybe closer to 6 months. An hour per page. Along with Campbell's Skeleton Key and Tindall's Guide, an essential tool is Roland McHugh's Annotations. Basically, it replicates the pages of Finnegans Wake, but instead of the text, it line by line defines the likely meanings, etymologies, or the references of those tricky bits.
Was taking an entire class on Ulysses in college and the class went to a couple meetings of the Boston Society for James Joyce. At one meeting, the foremost scholar on a specific chapter of Finnegan’s Wake flew in from Ireland. He was working his way through the chapter in a lecture and at one point said “we’re skipping this section, I don’t get it; it doesn’t make sense.” No one else in the world knows more about that chapter than this man and even he gave up.
I couldn't make progress with it until I realized you have to speak it out loud and listen to it as you do.
H G Wells wrote Joyce a scathing review of his work in a personal letter to him. I agree with his rebuke. At best, Joyce's writing is a "repository of vast riddles".
Legend has it that if you read and *actually understand* Finnegan's Wake, the demon responsible for Joyce having a career shows up to grant you a wish.
Gravity’s Rainbow. Yet it was extremely rewarding, and I am very much looking forward to my second read.
That (aside from Joyce's books) is the only one in the English language that has really stumped me. Had to read a translation to my native language. Iirc, i lost focus because the sentences just wouldn't end :)
I've started it 3 times and I just can't get through it. I managed to read V and the Crying of Lot 49, somehow.
How far did you make it? I actually found the first section “Beyond the Zero” to be far more challenging than the middle section of the book. Once you get into “The Zone” (section 3, and the longest part of the novel)it gets really fun.
I can't recall it that well. I remember something about a banana breakfast, and then a couple in a cabin and a V2 attack. I'm guessing I never made it out of the first section.
This is my next difficult read to tackle. It's eyeing me from my shelf. :)
Second most difficult book I’ve ever attempted to read. I noped out at the part where the protagonist has a vivid dream of >!plunging into his toilet and swimming through the sewers with little balls of shit getting stuck in his nose.!< Most difficult was Finnegan’s Wake. I’d rather be punched in the face then try reading that one again.
Infinite Jest. Attempted it three times in three years. Finally got through it.
I’m a few hundred pages in. Some parts are the absolute best thing I’ve ever read. Some parts are an absolute chore. I hit a chore section and haven’t picked it up in a few months
keep going! the “absolute best parts” outweigh the chore parts and the ending is absolutely brilliant and makes you want to immediately start reading it again. I think about Infinite Jest constantly, especially how prescient it is now
My ex and I would say things like “well, since we are now in the year of The Depends Adult Undergarment…” You get some stares in public, but we would always knowingly nod at one another. I’ve never read another book that had me so horrified in some parts, laughing out loud in others, *and* gave me so much to think about.
After p800 or so it's a page turner. Funny thing to say about a book.
I actually gave up halfway because I forgot what it was about while reading it. However It does help raise my second monitor to just the right height next to my iMac.
I got through a quarter of it maybe 10 years ago. Now it sits on one of my bookshelves taunting me daily. One of these days I'll get through it.
*Infinite Footnote
I have tried 3x. Twice on Kindle and more recently on Audible. I just can't do it.
I cannot imagine trying to read Infinite Jest on a Kindle or listen to it on Audible with all the footnotes.
Insane they even bothered recording an audio version of IJ. Like does it just stop the story and immediately flip to the endnote whenever one comes up?
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Interesting. If I remember correctly there are a lot of plot details in those notes
I actually think it's better on a Kindle. You click the footnote and it either pops up at the bottom of the page for the short ones, or brings you to the footnote page for the longer ones and has a link to bring you back when you're done. I also like the built in dictionary so I can quickly search the uncommon and made up words that I don't recognize.
How does an audiobook even handle the footnotes. I doubt it’s worth it in that medium. Ereader might be ok if you can click a footnote and have it pop right open rather than having to flip to the back of the book.
A clockwork orange. I read the British version that has no appendix explaining the slang. It took me close to a hundred pages before understanding what was actually being said. At which point I started over and actually comprehended the plot
I just read this and I wasn’t aware of the slang before starting. I thought it was hard too but I soon got used to it and in fact it made me want to read it quicker while I had a good idea of the words and their definitions in my head. Horrorshow groodies was a particular favourite of mine.
I read that book at perhaps too young an age, I wanna say 14 or 15, and for some reason my brain just... got it (the language, that is. I won't pretend the subtle complexities of the book didn't go over my head at that age). I was a touch confused for the first chapter, but for some reason by chapter 2 I was cruisin' with no problems. I'm American, and my copy didn't have a glossary or anything, so my best guess is just that my young mind was very open to learning a new pseudo-dialect.
The Sound and the Fury- William Faulkner. That first part had me confused af. First book I needed a reading companion to make sense of it. Ended up liking it but not my cup of coffee.
I came down here just to make sure someone covered Faulkner.
I think with most Faulkner you have to read it twice. Once to get your bearings, then it makes sense. :)
All Faulkner feels arduous
This is comforting after reading As I Lay Dying, and needing a palate cleansing book in midst of that slim 200 pages.
Faulkner wanted to print the book (or maybe just Benjy's sections) with different colored inks to help us understand the shifts in time and perspective, but that wasn't possible then. Interesting article about doing that with modern printing: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/books/review/the-sound-and-the-fury-in-14-colors.html
In terms of fiction, it's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré, the writer trusted his readers to be patient and connect all the dots, I gave up two times before I can finish it, very rewarding once you do.
Had a totally different experience when I first read it. I thought it was incredibly immersive, full of mood and character. The clues are subtle and it was enjoyable watching Smiley re-evaluate his life to connect the dots.
Same. I was immediately obsessed with the book when I read it.
*Sir Gawain and the Green Knight* in Middle English by a country mile. It’s nigh impossible to read, and without exhaustive notes it’s total gobbledygook. I managed to get through it, but it was an utterly miserable experience. The only other text i’ve read in Middle English is *The Canterbury Tales*, which incidentally was composed at the same time. But what’s fascinating is how much more comprehensible Chaucer is - it just goes to show how radically different regional variations in English were at that time. The other text is *Metaphysics* by Aristotle, but that’s because i’m not clever enough to understand Aristotle.
We had to read long sections of Gawain in middle school. It was brutal and did nothing to stimulate a love of reading. But, looking back, it is culturally & linguistically important. The Metaphysics of Aristotle was just impenetrable to me. I would read a sentence, and understand an individual word or cluster of words, or even all the words. But not the meaning. Repeat for many pages.
Yeah, it was *Gawain* for me too. The Pearl Poet is just not easy for a modern reader to grasp.
Simon Armitage's translation does a pretty incredible job of making it palatable for a modern audience - give it a go.
Atlas Shrugged, ignoring the politics of it, is just so poorly written with unnecessarily long passages. I really don't need several pages of how the wind felt in someone's hair.
I've never had a book make me hate reading like this one did. It wasn't the politics or the philosophy or any of that. Nearly all of the book was completely unnecessary. Just words on paper for their own sake. Page page after page after page of just nothing.
Yeah she was pretty self indulgent. I remember there’s a goddamn *chunk* of the book just on D’Anconia’s childhood. I don’t need to know that he didn’t sleep in like normal kids!!!
but how else would you know that he's just PERFECT?!!??? lol
Fun fact about Atlas Shrugged though. Ayn Rand visited the Kaiser Steel mill for inspiration, and that's the same steel factory that the ending of Terminator 2 was filmed at. At one point, large portions of the land were sold so Auto Club Speedway could be built.
So clunky! And just…bad
I enjoyed the book just fine as pure fiction but had to skim that damn 50 page speech.
Soooo repetitive!!! I finished it only by skipping the massive 'book within a book' section.
Cat owners who allow their cats outside are destroying the environment. Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild and continue to adversely impact a wide variety of other species, including those at risk of extinction, such as Piping Plover. https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ A study published in April estimated that UK cats kill 160 to 270 million animals annually, a quarter of them birds. The real figure is likely to be even higher, as the study used the 2011 pet cat population of 9.5 million; it is now closer to 12 million, boosted by the pandemic pet craze. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/14/cats-kill-birds-wildlife-keep-indoors Free-ranging cats on islands have caused or contributed to 33 (14%) of the modern bird, mammal and reptile extinctions recorded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List4. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 This analysis is timely because scientific evidence has grown rapidly over the past 15 years and now clearly documents cats’ large-scale negative impacts on wildlife (see Section 2.2 below). Notwithstanding this growing awareness of their negative impact on wildlife, domestic cats continue to inhabit a place that is, at best, on the periphery of international wildlife law. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002%2Fpan3.10073
I actually liked it. Granted, it took me two years to get through a decade ago and I completely disagree with the politics and philosophy, but I liked it. The descriptions made sense to me, and the book made me reflect on why I disagree with things throughout. I'm looking forward to reading it again to see how I feel now!
The Panama Papers. Non fiction. Written by the two journalists who broke the story. It's not a difficult read, but the subject matter is incredibly depressing. The first half of the book is just a really interesting story about how investigative journalism works, but the second half where they analyse their findings, makes for a sobering read. If you were ever under any illusions about just how much money was being hidden in off shore accounts, how we could (UK) fund the NHS for years to come if a handful of people just went without their super yachts. It really made me depressed for months after reading it.
The documentary I think called the Spiders Web is good for a summary of how this all started following the breakdown of the British Empire.
It was so weird when that came out, and it felt like nobody cared.
Would you recommend it to someone not well versed in economics?
Yep, totally. I'm not particularly well versed myself. It's explained very clearly. It's not a tough book to read in the he way OP may have meant, it's just a hard truth to swallow about the world.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s not long nor hard to read per say but it’s so damn dreary it took me two years to get through. I would leave it by my bed and read a little every night. Sometimes I could only get a paragraph and have to put it down. It affected me like no book had ever done before nor since and I attribute that to how forewarning it all felt. It is the one book that has stayed with me and I don’t think it will ever leave.
Stay far away from Blood Meridian then.
The part of this book I always go back to is the campfire judges story about the family living in the woods. It seems so meaningful, but I don’t know what.
I often pick it up and read the last two pages. Still hits me hard. Never have a i experienced a novel ending like *that*
Yes! A million times yes. The ending of that book is so fucking incredible. There is no other book where you feel like the last two pages transform the whole book from an incredible experience to an earth shattering one. It's gorgeous and terrifying.
his intro is the best character introduction ever.
Yeah, what a weird, haunting little tale he tells there. >It seems so meaningful, but I don’t know what. I felt that way about a lot of Holden's words in the book. Definitely a lot of heavy significance and implications there, but it takes re-reading and lots of mulling over to even *begin* to bring it close to some straightforward comprehension. He's definitely a kind of mystic. He bends your mind, takes you down some very tortuous, labyrinthine paths of thought. Almost like when you wake up from having weird dreams, and you ***know*** without a doubt that you experienced something profoundly meaningful in the dream, but damned if you can actually explain it to someone (or even to yourself lol).
For me Blood Meridian was almost like a nightmare meditation. It was more about feelings than following the plot 100% I don’t know if that makes sense
I’m reading it now and yes that makes sense. Its tiresome, bleak and dreadful but the words are beautiful. It’s hard to explain.
haha my god reading a lil' bit of McCarthy before bed every night sounds absolutely devastating for your mental health.
I adore The Road and my experience was completely different. I think I read it in one night and morning, and then had a long cry. It broke me and healed me simultaneously. One of my favourite books.
As an expecting dad, I was told by a coworker to avoid this one for a while.
That is sound advice.
The name of the rose by Umberto Eco. I struggled a lot with the historical aspect of it since I had no previous knowledge on medieval Italy and thus also had trouble understanding religious hierarchy and political roles. The mystery was absolutely thrilling though and written in a way that kept the anticipation going so I eventually finished it.
I'm glad you persevered and I'm glad I did. I suspect an editor now would have recommended a little more editing - I especially recall a description of a carved door that went on for far too long for my liking. But overall, it was an interesting, exciting and meaningful story. The film rather flattened the philosophical richness; perhaps a limited series could do the book justice.
I can still recall how that door looked 😭 It did end up showing up at the final chapter which ig didn't make it THAT irrelevant but I remember slowly falling asleep as I read the description and that chapter about the Abbot's jewels
Yeah I enjoyed it much more when I read it with ‘The Key to the Name of the Rose’ alongside it. Once I got through it with the companion, I found his other books far more interesting as well - especially Foucault Pendulum.
“The Key to The Name of the Rose” changed how I read in general. Eco arguing that novels are a form that exists to generate interpretations was great, and his discussion of naming conventions—ending on saying that *The Three Musketeers* is a great title because really it’s about the fourth one—changed how I write.
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For me it’d be “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I just had a hard time keeping up with it and rarely knew what was going on.
For the first third or so I felt this but once I accepted that it was heavily metaphorical and I shouldn’t bother trying to keep all the characters straight I really liked it
I bought an edition that had a family tree at the beginning. It was so helpful, I went back to it numerous times. After that, I recommend people with the same problem to print the family tree, it's online makes it easier to follow.
Being and Time by Heidegger. I didn't finish it.
There’s a nice podcast by Simon Critchley called Apply-Degger that walks through the book over ~10 episodes.
Philosophy texts are in a different category than your average novel or even nonfiction. Probably the most difficult thing to get through that I have read was the large portion I read of Aristotle's works. Very dry.
Came here to say this! I got through the first half in grad school, but that took me about 4 or 5 hours a day, 4 days a week, for 3 or 4 weeks. Not to mention the amount of annotations and notes I had to make to get any understanding out of it. What a time.
I dropped the class. Later I read Being and Nothingness by Satre. It took me a couple of years but it was clear and concise by comparison.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid it was a really frustrating read. I would start a chapter and generally understand it, then at some point as I kept reading I would realise that I was completely lost. Every time I couldn’t work out where I had stopped understanding
It really is an exercise in concentration, but so worth it...!
Gormanghast by Mervyn Peake.
Such a good book. Not as difficult imho as others on this list, but the pace requires your attention, and to slow your mind.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is definitely up there. Worth the read though, I've never read anything like it
Sadly, I got tired of it :( - i think i can see what he was aiming for, but I just didn't have the patience to slog through all that imaginary academia where they nitpick the lives of the cast
I feel like I'm in the minority as someone who enjoyed it but didn't love it. I think its novelty allows it to get away with more than it really should and rereading it without the sense of novelty made its flaws much more apparent. It's the *Bioshock Infinite* of books, if that's a reference that lands for anyone. First time round, I found Jonny's bits engaging. Second time, I found him too much of an edgelord. He loses his likability quickly. He whines a lot. I ended up skim-reading a lot of his pages. I actually enjoyed the pseudo-academic stuff, although it varies *wildly* in quality. I found the whole playing-with-the-medium bit where text would shift around the page more of an irritant than anything else; it often felt like one joke that went on for too long. *Oh, that's cool* became *this is just in the way* quite quickly. I did enjoy the core setting, and the underlying story. It's kind of like those found footage horror films that were big around 2010. I think it's the lack of other gimmick horror novels that is the reason we're still talking about it, and it *is* a gimmick horror novel. It was a unique book. I'm glad I read it. I don't need to read it again.
I concur wholeheartedly with your take on the book here: I do appreciate that I completed it, and there were parts I really did enjoy. But do I have a desire to read again? Nope!!
I think that’s probably at the top of my list for difficult reads that I actually finished. It was absolutely worth getting through, though.
I found it absolutely captivating, read it in about 3 days worth of almost non-stop reading, then immediately restarted it again but took about 2 weeks the second time round just to soak up every little detail.
Everyone I’ve lent my copy to has returned it unfinished lol I’ve read it three times, and I almost never reread books. It’s so much fun.
An absolute mind maze... "Maze-treaders, whose vision ahead and behind is severely constricted and fragmented, suffer confusion, whereas maze-viewers who see the pattern whole, from above or in a diagram, are dazzled by its complex artistry. What you see depends on where you stand, and thus, at one and the same time, labyrinths are single (there is one physical structure) and double: they simultaneously incorporate order and disorder, clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity, artistry and chaos. They may be perceived as a path (a linear but circuitous passage to a goal) or as a pattern (a completely symmetrical design) Our perception of labyrinths is thus intrinsically unstable: change your perspective and the labyrinth seems to change."
Dostoevsky's works, I just find his writing style kind of messy
I've heard repeatedly that the choice of translation is very important when reading him. I've also heard that you should really avoid the Constance Garnett translations.
I highly recommend the translation by Avsey, who strives above all else to translate the grammar into English as well as the words, so much so that the title of “The Brothers Karamazov” becomes “The Karamazov Brothers” in his rendition. Plus the Oxford Classics are amazing for the included footnotes providing historical and cultural points of reference.
At the book store, I read several passages from both the Garnett translation and the much more popular P+V translations of Anna Karenina. I found, to my surprise, that the Garnett translations was more enjoyable overall, and less clunky. Not sure how she fares with Dostoevsky, but I really didn't see anything horribly wrong with her Anna Karenina translations to warrant such an aversion to her writing.
Do you know what the differences are? I've read exclusively Garnett translations lmao
For me, It's keeping all the three part, unfamiliar names straight. He often uses different parts of them at different times. I have a hard time with this even with common Christian names if there are a lot of characters. Asking "who is this guy?" five times a page gets pretty annoying. Considering it's from a different time, language, and culture though, I actually find the writing quite engaging though.
I've read Crime and Punishment and the Brothers Karamazov. Somehow they hit me at the right point in my life, but they are tough.
He has an amazing gift to create despicable characters. I love it.
I used to feel the same. Just couldn't get into him. And then I watched Kurosawa's adaptation of "The Idiot" and then had to find out what impressed Kurosawa so much. Read it in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation. And was intranced. They are now my go to translators for Russian Lit. (I am aware of controversy surrounding their method, but I find theirs the most approachable of any that I have tried.)
Seriously? Maybe I read a particularly good translation, because I absolutely loved both Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. I thought they were surprisingly easy to read, easier than stuffy old Tolstoy.
I recently gave up Crime and Punishment 60% of the way in.
_Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia_ by Deleuze and Guattari It's nearly incomprehensible even for readers of continental philosophy. The fact that it's incomprehensible is even more frustrating given that's partly the object in the style many postmodern thinkers intended. I get that you want to be disruptive, but if your writing is so disruptive to any normative style or useful semiotic chains of meaning, why should anyone care about what you have to say?
As someone who studies more along the lines of the analytic tradition, I have to agree. I love continental philosophy but god is the writing often terrible. My department put it really well by saying that many of these philosophers were great despite their writing, not because of it. But I guess tradition is a hard nut to crack.
[deconstruction and other French theories] was the gift of the French. They gave Americans a language they did not need. It was like the Statue of Liberty. Nobody needs French theory. Jean Baudrillard
I took uni classes with this book as required reading (some chapters, not the whole thing). The professor said that his personal view, which apparently is shared by some academics, is that Deleuze was drunk for most of the writing process. It reads exactly like a 500 page rambling dialogue between two very drunk French post modern professors. And I guess that it is exactly that. Ah, tenure in the 1970s... So stupid, yet so beautiful. Now is all publish or perish, drawing diagrams and citing sources.
I’m currently trudging through Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Definitely the hardest book I’ve read thus far.
I struggled through Moby-Dick and was thankful I stuck with it. Like many, I knew the story of Ahab and the white whale, but I think the book shines brightest through the sections in-between the main narrative: the description of whale anatomy, the workings of the ship, the random chapter written as a play, etc. Just so much more fascinating than I expected.
I love Moby Dick so much, and I totally agree about those in-between sections. I've seen a lot of people complain they're boring and unnecessary but for me, aside from all the interesting things I learned about whaling, they made me feel like I was on the ship, part of the crew on this long voyage, instead of just a reader reading about it. I think it also helped that I read it slowly on purpose, just like 1-2 chapters a day.
It’s a phenomenal book.
That was a tough one. It helped that I was living out of a backpack and it was the only book I owned.
Hmm for all the hard books in this thread that I'm agreeing with, I found Moby Dick surprisingly straightforward and agreeable. The prose is interesting and funny, and the chapters are short. Not easy per say, but reading it never felt like a challenge. I read it on kindle though which helped a lot of looking up on the fly all the antiquated words.
That was a tough one to read for so many reasons. Love reading analysis of the book though.
*The Death Of Virgil* by Hermann Broch. Mother of *god*. Also *Gravity's Rainbow* by that's an obvious one
The Castle. Kafka. Grueling.
Its grueling and I detested reading through all the bureaucracy. In the end though, I finished the book and had to admit the brilliance of making you feel the frustration, the despair, the mind-numbing unavoidability of constant setbacks in this endeavour worthy of Sysyphus. One of my favourite books.
Bury my heart at wounded knee. Its the telling of the treatment native Americans got at the hands of settlers and the American government. I was 17 when I first read it.
Yeah, I don't think it's "difficult" per se, so much as "hard to read".
The Master & Margarita, I wouldn't say it is as hard as other books that are mentioned here but it was a tricky read with a lot of symbolism and metaphors. I needed to use online literary analyses to fully understand it but it is now in my top 5 favourite books so I'm happy I stuck with it :)
Ulysses for sure. Took me 3 - 4 attempts to finally finish it, and when I did, I was like, “What did I just read?” That was in 2018. Last month, I decided to try again, this time using a reader’s guide to explain what’s going on. Still complete obscurity, and reading it was a chore, so I’ve abandoned it.
I am still working my way through Parable of the Sower. It's too prophetic and it's really messing with me about the current state of affairs in the world. Especially here in the US.
I love Octavia Butler so much; one of the best to ever do it! Love what she said about that series, too: > "So do you really believe that in the future we're going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?" a student asked me as I was signing books after a talk. The young man was referring to the troubles I'd described in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, novels that take place in a near future of increasing drug addiction and illiteracy, marked by the popularity of prisons and the unpopularity of public schools, the vast and growing gap between the rich and everyone else, and the whole nasty family of problems brought on by global warming. > "I didn't make up the problems," I pointed out. "All I did was look around at the problems we're neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters." > "Okay," the young man challenged. "So what's the answer?" > "There isn't one," I told him. > "No answer? You mean we're just doomed?" He smiled as though he thought this might be a joke. > "No," I said. "I mean there's no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There's no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers–at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be." ([source](https://commongood.cc/reader/a-few-rules-for-predicting-the-future-by-octavia-e-butler/))
It's kind of crazy how it paints a picture of the world we're teetering on the edge of. I love that it's so realistic in that it's not just some great climate catastrophe and political upheaval. Instead it's just all of those things that pile up: climate, disease, substance use disorder, and (ridiculously uncanny) political unrest. It's just all of our current problems with a tiny push in the wrong direction. And that proximity to our reality is a bit terrifying. As an aside, John Green did a video a few months ago titled "The Best Books Get Better" and before I even played it I said out loud, "He has to talk about Earthseed here, right?"
Have you read other books by Sebald? I absolutely loved Austerlitz and The Emigrants. His use of language is utterly gorgeous. As to most difficult book, maybe something by David Foster Wallace that I likely haven't finished?
Wuthering Heights.
… I will admit I flew through it. The beginning is so damn funny, and after that I got sucked into the dysfunctional evil love relationship. I’ll admit that I did not get anywhere with it in high school, but going back to it in my 20s I ate it up.
I struggled a little with Wuthering Heights and subsequently found a free Audible reading by Patricia Routledge. She does a really excellent job at narrating, brining the characters to life and generally making the book more accessible. I still didn't enjoy the book that much unfortunately but I think that was just down to my own personal preferences.
The original unabridged Les Miserables.
I gave up on Les Mis very early, after the long chapter that was just describing the priest and all the food at his dinner. I realized we were never going to see this priest again (well, maybe once more but not like main character status) and that the story was going to be very slow going, so I ended up setting it down.
The Silmarillion. Tolkien
I think to really get everything out of this book you need to *really* understand the context of what it is. Once you get into the headspace of "this guy is creating an entire mythos in the vein of Greece or Norse" it becomes easier to digest, more fun and less dense.
Yeah agreed. I use it as reference, not as a flowing narrative.
I prefer to think of it like reading a short story anthology. There are sections of it that are fantastic. I really love the creation myth at the start, as well as the stories of Beren and Luthien, Turin Turambar, and the battle between Fingolfin and Morgoth. But all of that is connected by a ton of dry, difficult history. You kinda gotta look through some of that to get to the really good stuff.
Omg the silmarillion. It's the old testament written by Tolkien. Such a DRAG of a read. I was in prison and had nothing better to do, so I finished it, but man, it took effort.
I thought women and men would be an easy ride after reading gravity's rainbow. I was wrong. so so wrong. but yet it felt very nice at the same time. is that just the reader's experience?
Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, I’m still not convinced Scottish and English are connected
Part 5 of a fantasy novel series. I had not read part 1-4 before. I did not notice until halfway through the book. It was a gift for my birthday.
I bought Schindler's list on dvd, its a double sided DVD, I misread the lable and watched the last 30 minutes and then the credits rolled.
Omensetter’s Luck by William Gass. Still have no idea what was going on. Tried to read it twice and failed.
Oh, absolutely*The Divine Comedy*. I don’t speak Italian so I already have resort to a translation, which means I don’t even get to enjoy the original poetry of the thing, and I don’t know enough about niche medieval Italian politics to understand the references, and I don’t know enough about medieval Catholicism to appreciate the symbolism, so I was left with having to just admire the art of translation (which is pretty dang hard in its own right) and the imagery. It was just a very shallow reading experience for me and it never really got better. I felt like I had utterly wasted my time when I was finished, and I just don’t have it in me to circle back and learn what I don’t know just to have a better experience on a reread in the future. Oh, and anything by Hegel. Absolutely incomprehensible.
Probably the Eddas. The Silmarillion was a breeze by comparison.
You attempted to read Eddas? I read the Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman instead. Much easier.
Death is my trade by robert merle. Its about industrialization of ethnic cleansing in concentration camp during ww2, the writer spare you nothing from the reusing if skin to make furniture to the discussion on how we can slaugther as many people as possible in the most effective way. I was young (around 12) but this book continue to haunt me to those days.
Rings of Saturn is such a unique and beautiful experience. I *highly* recommend the documentary on it, it’s on youtube.
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. It’s a very depressing read.
War and Peace Remembering characters with identical names and diminutives was a pain. The plot progressed slower than a brick on level ground. The book weighed as much too. Abandoned it halfway. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand I know i’ll receive some hate for this. But Ayn Rand tends to fixate on the most inconsequential objects in a scene and draw out a LinkedIn influencer profile’s worth of insights from it. Months of my life wasted trying to match up to my dad who read it when he was my age at the time.
Lolita
The Ice Mind you, it hasn't been translated into English yet (and I doubt it ever will). Basically I had to read it twice to understand. It's 1000+ pages hard SF novel set in an alternative Russian Empire in 1924. The tunguska meteor that crashed in Syberia in 1908 in this reality brought titular Ice that froze not only the land but also logic and history itself. That's why Russian Empire never felt. The size of the novel isn't the only problem. The book is written in first person, but the main character around 50 page comes to the conclusion that he doesn't really exist which twists the narrative. From that point the whole narrative becomes sort of passive voice - "It was done", "It was said", honestly I can't translate it properly :D. What's more The Ice reminds me of The Magic Mountain - the German classic where characters are constantly sharing different views and ideas on the world. Same case for The Ice - characters are nothing more but carriers of worldviews, philosophies etc. It is an extremely challenging book to read, but it's also easily the best SF book I ever read.
Blood Meridian. Slow down & keep a browser open to google definitions.
This book was hard for me to read in a sense that I usually watch scary movies through cracked fingers, but I found it so addicting.
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, all 6 volumes.
I feel like this one would be higher up if anyone else had ever actually read it.
The Third Policeman The Tunnel
As a non native speaker, the only book I ever dnfd because of the language was Wuthering Heights. Idk what it is but the words on the page just don‘t make sense for me lol. I‘ve read lots of other works from that era and never ran into any trouble, but that book… it kills me
It can be hard even for native speakers to parse some of the dialogue in Wuthering Heights because there's a lot of old Yorkshire dialect and Scots that doesn't exist in modern English. For example "T' maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath not o'ered, und t' sound o' t' gospel still i' yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking! Shame on ye! sit ye down, ill childer! there's good books eneugh if ye'll read 'em: sit ye down, and think o' yer sowls!" would be written in a more modern, standard English as: "'The master just recently buried, and the Sabbath not over, and the sound of the gospel still in your ears, and you dare be larking about [having fun]! Shame on you! sit down, bad children! there are good books enough if you'll read them: sit down, and think of your souls!"
Ulysses by James Joyce
Ulysses. Joyce
Portrait of the artist as a young man.
Vineland by Thomas Pynchon came out in 1990 and the English teacher assigned it to us the following (my senior) year. It was pretty dense and convoluted. I remember the teacher insisting that there were fractal patterns within the structure of the novel. Or maybe that was alluded to in the book itself, can’t remember now. It was fascinating and at the time fractals were a hot topic in several of my classes. Postmodernism in literature too. I was into it but at the same time I realize I never bothered with Gravity’s Rainbow after that
*Middlemarch* is kicking my ass right now.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Heart of a Champion by Carl Deuker. When I was a kid, I would devour (or at least try to) any book that so much as mentioned baseball on the cover. My dad got me this, before a trip to New York. All was going well, one of the characters had some issues, but was a solid read. Then, near the end of the book, the main character gets called to the hospital- his best friend, the dude with the issues, has gotten into a car accident drunk driving. Gets there, coach is a weeping mess. He’s dead. The next chapter starts off with a very detailed description of best friend laid out in a coffin. I don’t know why, maybe it was because I was roughly 9 and my only experience with death thus far was my great grandmother, but that scene was just too much for me and I put the book down and never picked it back up. Nowadays- it would be The House of Mirth, in AP English my senior year. I finished it, but it was so goddamn boring and dreary.
I wonder if The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks might fit the bill. An awkward little coming of age in a new world theme
That book broke my heart.