5 most difficult books to read

[Comshaw]

This video details 5 difficult books to read. I tried "Ulysses" once. I made it through 10 pages, got a raging headache and stopped. I can't imagine trying "Finnigan's Wake".

so tell me, any of you read any of these? My undying admiration for anyone who has.

Comshaw

 

[AwkwardlySet]

The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann.

I tried reading it like two decades ago but I only managed to reach page 150 before finally giving up. It was an incredibly slow and tedious read. For example, I remember going through five large pages of pure tedious description, where Hans Castorp, the main character, went from sitting in an armchair or something like that, then brushing his teeth, and then lying down, all without any inner thoughts or any plot happening. There were some great moments, but...

 

[karina_jayde]

I read Ulysses in college and remember quite liking it, but that was in a sort of aimless, meandering time in my life, when I had a mindset suited to that particular novel.

In terms of books that I found difficult to read, House of Leaves is up there, but in a good way. I liked that the book was almost a sort of project to read.

 

[Paul_Chance]

I've read all five, though I agree with the lady in the video about all of them. It was part of a graduate seminar in Literature by a truly sadistic professor.

Of the ones mentioned here, Faulkner is the worst. On the other four, there is a trick to it that the professor taught and that works. Stop thinking. Stop trying the make them make sense. Consider them as rollercoaster of language in a lightning storm and just go along for the ride.

Personally, I consider Gravities Rainbow to be the most accessible because, at least to me, Pynchon has a point he's trying to make as he contemplated quantum reality.

I've got a personal recommendation for weird, difficult to read books:

Robert Anton Wilsons "Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy (The Universe Next Door, The Trick Top Hat, and The Homing Pigeons). They literally gave me headaches. There were points where I could only read a few pages and then I had to stop because my brain was oozing out of my ears. They're brilliant (again, dealing with quantum physics is a fictional story-telling way) and they're worth the effort, but it will be an effort.

 

[UnquietDreams]

This video details 5 difficult books to read. I tried "Ulysses" once. I made it through 10 pages, got a raging headache and stopped. I can't imagine trying "Finnigan's Wake".

so tell me, any of you read any of these? My undying admiration for anyone who has. View attachment 2318787

Comshaw

If you want to take a second bite at Ulysses, here is what I found. Find a good translation of Homer's The Odyssey. I absolutely fucking love Emily Wilson's translation. It is brilliant, and if you don't want to read Joyce, you should read hers. It opens up Homer in a way that is amazing.

Sorry, back on track.

Step one: Find a translation you like, like Wilson or Lattimore. Step two: Get your copy of Ulysses. Step three: read a chapter of Homer. Step 4: Read the same chapter number of Joyce.

They correspond. You can find out what Joyce is getting at by reading the influencing material. It makes it far more accessible.

 

[SmokingFap]

A Tale of Two Cities was absolutely the most brutal book I ever had to read. From the longest opening sentence in publishing history, it only got more boring for me. I might appreciate it more as an adult, but there's no way in hell I'm going to try to read it again to find out.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've started Ulysses three times in as many decades, and can't get through it.

Took three goes to finally finish Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet, but have failed so far to crack The Avignon Quintet or The Revolt of Aphrodite.

I think I finished Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, but I'm not sure.

And Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I cannot get out of the fucking orchard!

 

[SmokingFap]

Here's my impression of me trying to read A Tale of Two Cities again.

(ahem) "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it--" (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

 

[SimonDoom]

That was entertaining.

I've never read or attempted to read Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, or Finnegan's Wake. I've read David Foster Wallace's New Yorker essays about tennis, and he was an extremely gifted writer, but I've read too much ABOUT Infinite Jest to have wanted to take it on. I read Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49, and that was enough to dissuade me from Gravity's Rainbow. Not my cup of tea.

I LOVED James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I read in high school, and it's easily on my short list of favorite novels. I've enjoyed his Dubliners stories. But despite a number of attempts over the last 40 years, I've never completed Ulysses. Someday I will--probably around the time I complete the majority of the stories on my "Literotica stories I must write" list, which I think is somewhere around 60, although I think EB is keeping better track than I am. The opening phrase of the novel--"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan"--will always be burned into my brain as a reminder of my failure to get much past 10 pages most of the time. It's a surprise to me, because I can be a real masochist when it comes to trying to finish books, and I enjoy Joyce's other stories a lot.

There's no way I will ever attempt Finnegan's Wake.

I read Faulkner's Sound and the Fury and enjoyed it, but I was a college student at the time, and my brain could absorb stuff far faster then than now. I don't know if I could manage it now.

Some other books I have read that I considered "difficult" in different ways:

Moby Dick: It's a Great Novel, and it's not that hard to understand, but you have to wade through chapter after chapter on whaling practices. After a while, the chapters make you want to stab your brain with a harpoon and say, "Just leave the whale the fuck alone."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: This story makes the story of Clint Eastwood's film Unforgiven look like Mary Poppins. It's that dark and that twisted. I generally like dark and twisted, but this story tested even me. It's a story of the American West on an acid trip. Dense and difficult, but one of my favorite books because he's such an amazing wordsmith. The Judge is one of the greatest, most memorable villains in the history of literature.

Neal Stephenson, The Baroque Cycle trilogy. I'm a big Stephenson fan, but this story trilogy is difficult for the simple reason that it's so long: it's three super-long books and it goes on and on and on and it doesn't end satisfactorily.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

The Bible. Mostly very poor prose, many flatly boring chapters, and filled with completely absurd ideas., though it is open to interpretation.

Btw, I did find Joyce's Ulysses an enjoyable read back in high school, but then I've always been fond of parallelism. And Finnegans Wake is my favorite fun book. I read it in whole or in part every year, and each time I find something new to enjoy. If you want to get started right on it, I'm sure you know it begins at its end with "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs . . ." If you start at Howth Castle, you can follow the Dublin ring road right around and back again, crossing and recrossing the River Liffey. Part of that road is the Via Vico, named after the Italian historian, Vico, the scholar who gave us the circular theory of history. Now, at least you know where you're going. Enjoy the trip, and be sure to bring along your handy universal phrase book.

 

[sister jenny]

I read Ulysses. Had a teacher in school that told us that you don’t read Ulysses like a normal book. You read one chapter, then something, then the next chapter then something else, and so on. It worked and I liked it.

House of Leaves was tough, but worth it. I will not pretend I understood it, but it was a fun experience.

Infinite Jest, I hated it and gave up. Tried it again a few years later, hated it and gave up. Tried a third time and yes, you guessed it.
Will not try again.

Gravity’s Rainbow kinda never got going. Read a bunch and still waited for it to start. Stopped. Never picked it up again.

Sound and the fury. Read it. It was ok. Won’t read it again.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Of course, one can always turn to the Cliff Notes' Notes - a National Lampoon piece many years ago "for people who don't have time to read the Cliff Notes." I do remember a few of them:

Metamorphosis - a man turns into an insect, and his family gets upset

Moby Dick - a whale bites off a man's leg and the man can't forget about it.

The Bible - God creates man; everything man does get God angry.

 

[UnquietDreams]

Okay, I have chewed on most of these. I liked Gravity's Rainbow, but I failed the first time I read it. Then I read Inherent Vice, which is probably Pynchon's most accessible book (and I recommend it). Then I took another bite and it worked for me.

Ulysses, I first read but didn't really comprehend. Then I found the Odyssey trick I posted above, and I read it again. I understood more. Not all, by any means, but more.

Finnegan's Wake? Forget about it. I started it, and I have read passages, but as a novel, or whatever the hell it is, no.

The Sound and Fury I read as a dare from a creative writing teacher. I survived, and appreciated the Shakespeare reference of the title. That is all.

I have tried to read Infinite Jest three times so far. I may try a fourth, or I may just give up.

Also would make my list for hardest to read:

Underworld, by Don DeLillo. Dense. Nonlinear. A lot of references to the 1930's I had no access to.
In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, as much on volume as anything. I pick it up every few years, and it is worth reading.
Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes. Dense. So fucking dense. Felt more like poetry that had been encased in concrete.
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. There are 70 pages spent on one speech. Or maybe I just hated it.

 

[sister jenny]

Okay, I have chewed on most of these. I liked Gravity's Rainbow, but I failed the first time I read it. Then I read Inherent Vice, which is probably Pynchon's most accessible book (and I recommend it). Then I took another bite and it worked for me.

Ulysses, I first read but didn't really comprehend. Then I found the Odyssey trick I posted above, and I read it again. I understood more. Not all, by any means, but more.

Finnegan's Wake? Forget about it. I started it, and I have read passages, but as a novel, or whatever the hell it is, no.

The Sound and Fury I read as a dare from a creative writing teacher. I survived, and appreciated the Shakespeare reference of the title. That is all.

I have tried to read Infinite Jest three times so far. I may try a fourth, or I may just give up.

Also would make my list for hardest to read:

Underworld, by Don DeLillo. Dense. Nonlinear. A lot of references to the 1930's I had no access to.
In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, as much on volume as anything. I pick it up every few years, and it is worth reading.
Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes. Dense. So fucking dense. Felt more like poetry that had been encased in concrete.
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. There are 70 pages spent on one speech. Or maybe I just hated it.

I hate Ayn Rand. Bad author, awful opinions.

 

[sister jenny]

That was entertaining.

I've never read or attempted to read Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, or Finnegan's Wake. I've read David Foster Wallace's New Yorker essays about tennis, and he was an extremely gifted writer, but I've read too much ABOUT Infinite Jest to have wanted to take it on. I read Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49, and that was enough to dissuade me from Gravity's Rainbow. Not my cup of tea.

I LOVED James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I read in high school, and it's easily on my short list of favorite novels. I've enjoyed his Dubliners stories. But despite a number of attempts over the last 40 years, I've never completed Ulysses. Someday I will--probably around the time I complete the majority of the stories on my "Literotica stories I must write" list, which I think is somewhere around 60, although I think EB is keeping better track than I am. The opening phrase of the novel--"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan"--will always be burned into my brain as a reminder of my failure to get much past 10 pages most of the time. It's a surprise to me, because I can be a real masochist when it comes to trying to finish books, and I enjoy Joyce's other stories a lot.

There's no way I will ever attempt Finnegan's Wake.

I read Faulkner's Sound and the Fury and enjoyed it, but I was a college student at the time, and my brain could absorb stuff far faster then than now. I don't know if I could manage it now.

Some other books I have read that I considered "difficult" in different ways:

Moby Dick: It's a Great Novel, and it's not that hard to understand, but you have to wade through chapter after chapter on whaling practices. After a while, the chapters make you want to stab your brain with a harpoon and say, "Just leave the whale the fuck alone."

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: This story makes the story of Clint Eastwood's film Unforgiven look like Mary Poppins. It's that dark and that twisted. I generally like dark and twisted, but this story tested even me. It's a story of the American West on an acid trip. Dense and difficult, but one of my favorite books because he's such an amazing wordsmith. The Judge is one of the greatest, most memorable villains in the history of literature.

Neal Stephenson, The Baroque Cycle trilogy. I'm a big Stephenson fan, but this story trilogy is difficult for the simple reason that it's so long: it's three super-long books and it goes on and on and on and it doesn't end satisfactorily.

Didn’t like Moby Dick. Never understood the obsession with it.

Loved Blood Meridian. But it’s a tough read for a lot of different reasons.

Huge Stephenson fan and really liked The Baroque Cycle. The “follow-up” Cryptonomicon was great too.

 

[UnquietDreams]

I hate Ayn Rand. Bad author, awful opinions.

Me too. I lost a really good job over her. I was doing some IT work, along with some consulting stuff. I was interviewed by a politician, actually made it as far as being interviewed by her directly. Big deal, really good money. In passing, she asked me what I thought of Rand. I told her honestly that she was a fifth-rate novelist and a seventh-rate philosopher. Turned out the politicain was a big fan. The money would have been good, but I don't regret not having to work with a self-proclaimed Objectivist.

 

[NotWise]

I liked Gravity's Rainbow. The beginning was hard to follow, and the end trailed off, but in between it was a lot of fun.

 

[UnquietDreams]

Didn’t like Moby Dick. Never understood the obsession with it.

Loved Blood Meridian. But it’s a tough read for a lot of different reasons.

Huge Stephenson fan and really liked The Baroque Cycle. The “follow-up” Cryptonomicon was great too.

Blood Meridian gave me a headache because McCarthy hates punctuation.

Moby-Dick I love. There are so many reasons I could list. The imagery is incredible. The themes timeless and relevant. It has obvious queer themes in time that was not allowed. It had a well-rounded, multinational crew that would have never made it as characters in novels elsewhere in 1851. But for me, it comes down to one quote:

"There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he forever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar. "

I read that for the first time in high school. It has been probably twenty years since I read it last. But I can quote that section verbatim to this day. There is a magic in the power of that language.

 

[yowser]

First time with Ulysses, 20 pages in. Second time 50 pages. Then I encountered an essay by Borges who said (roughly): 'Let's face it, Ulysses is unreadable.'

That was good enough for me, not trying again.

Both Pynchon and Wallace demand a lot from the reader, and they're both worth it.

 

[UnquietDreams]

(snip)

Moby Dick: It's a Great Novel, and it's not that hard to understand, but you have to wade through chapter after chapter on whaling practices. After a while, the chapters make you want to stab your brain with a harpoon and say, "Just leave the whale the fuck alone."

Read every other chapter of Moby-Dick. You will end up with a smashing, larger than life yarn, with mythic characters and themes; or a treatise on whaling, depending on which chapter you start on. Two books for the price of one!

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Well, I’m glad Simon opened for Moby Dick. Yes, a classic, but that’s three days I’ll never get back.

I thoroughly enjoyed R.A. Wilson’s trilogy.

My nomination for most unreadable is anything by Dostoyevsky. I’ll leave those for those brighter and more patient than I.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

My nomination for most unreadable is anything by Dostoyevsky. I’ll leave those for those brighter and more patient than I.

Honestly, I wish I could unread Dostoyevsky's books just so I could enjoy them fully once again. De gustibus, I guess

 

[Codoc24]

Moby Dick - been a long since I tried to read it, but from what I remember, it was just hard to understand. I gave up pretty quick.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Read every other chapter of Moby-Dick. You will end up with a smashing, larger than life yarn, with mythic characters and themes; or a treatise on whaling, depending on which chapter you start on. Two books for the price of one!

I should try that trick with Moby Dick. I could write a treatise on urban transit systems and railroads but I wouldn't put it in fiction. As it it, I have to be careful not to overdo that kind of thing

However, Bartleby, the Scrivener is an excellent short story. It still holds up as an examination of white collar angst. And if I may drop names, Melville is buried about a mile from where I live.

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

Gravity's Rainbow for me every time. Tried five times back in the day and never got close to finishing it.

I managed the The Atrocity Exhibition and The Naked Lunch but wish I hadn't.

Also ashamed to say I completed Atlas Shrugged but I did skip the 4,342 page Galt radio diatribe.

My five would probably be made up with the manual for my Kurzweil synthesiser. Utterly unfathomable.