The Hardest Book You've ever read [Archive]

roger

30th January 2010, 07:47 PM

The Man Without Qualities was up there, maybe more for sticktoitiveness than comprehension difficulties. The Interpreters was pretty challenging, but then I didn't really understand Nigeria all that well in the first place. With that said, I read the latter several times, but the former only once.

I've put several books aside, absalom, Absalom among them. Some books just seem to kind of 'bounce off' - you can read each individual sentence and understand them just fine, but by the time you are at the 5th sentence the previous 4 have evaporated. A reading form of Alzheimers. I used to make the effort, but now don't bother.

bethysunport

30th January 2010, 08:01 PM

I keep trying Don Quixote, need to restart it I think.

aggle-rithm

30th January 2010, 08:08 PM

I've been working on "Domain Driven Design" for quite some time. The last several times I tried to read it, I actually went backwards and ended up at an earlier point from where I started.

Wowbagger

30th January 2010, 08:11 PM

Don't have any fiction books to offer.

Consciousness Explained, by Daniel Dennett, is the closest one that qualifies, for me. It presents a good theory, but in a very obtuse, hard to follow manner. I had to read through it twice before I was able to completely grasp the theory.

SRW

30th January 2010, 08:21 PM

Fitter

30th January 2010, 08:48 PM

Same author, different book. Cancer Ward is so depressing I kept forcing myself to carry on.

Dats

30th January 2010, 08:55 PM

Telephone, lots of characters and settings not much plot.

EeneyMinnieMoe

30th January 2010, 09:18 PM

Well, I tried to read some of Sylvia Browne's books and, well, they are embarrassing to read. I know it's wrong and snobbish but as I was reading- rather skimming- them, I couldn't help but think "Adults believe this?!". As I said, I made zero effort to actually read them, though, so they don't count for this question.

Dan Brown's books were really bad but not so bad as to be unreadable.

The Godfather was terrible trash but not to the point of being absolutely unreadable.

I tried reading David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Vanity Fair and a few other classic 19th and 18th century novels as a teenager and heroically got about halfway through all of them before just throwing up my hands. Not cause they were bad- they were pretty great- but because they were so, so, so long. The enormous length of novels written in that time is a big challenge for the modern reader.

One time, I was in a hotel in upstate New York that had a Gideon's Bible in the drawer and I picked it up and started to read it. Being raised Catholic, I had obviously heard parts of the Bible read in church. I also had religion as a subject in Saturday school when I was a child and attended C.C.D on Wednesdays (we were either told the stories verbally by the teacher, given aimed-for-children materials on it- like coloring books based on Biblical stories- or had a retold-for-kiddies version of it in our textbooks. A few times, we were given the actual texts but edited for modern speakers to read and study and go over.) I also had a children's illustrated Bible I read voraciously when I was a child. And in literature class in high school, the Bible was studied as a work of literature and so I had read texts taken from it. And I also knew some Bible stories second hand and third hand (the story of Lazarus explained in Crime and Punishment, the story of Job referenced in South Park, the story of David and Goliath in Wishbone, the story of Noah's Ark referenced so many times in pop culture, etc.)

So I knew the Bible pretty well and had read it in fragments. I knew it in bits and pieces from many sources and had read and heard retellings of it and sometimes retellings of retellings. However, I had never actually read the Bible or even attempted to do so. So I started to do so, from the very first page. I had to shut it after a chapter. Because, though I was already a lapsed Catholic at that time, I could almost feel the last remnants of my faith leaving me at actually having to read this stuff. Scary feeling and one I couldn't really deal with.

Dorian Gray

30th January 2010, 09:23 PM

The hardest book I ever read was The Joy of Sex.

Oh, wait, you meant the most difficult book you ever read, didn't you. Okay, then it's a tie: Goedel Escher Bach by Douglas R Hofstader, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, neither of which I have ever finished ever. And, of the two of them, the Hofstader book is actually slightly easier to understand.

Orphia Nay

30th January 2010, 09:47 PM

What is the hardest book you've ever read?

I have been reading Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitzyn for fifteen years. It has got to the point where I have to drink upwards of a bottle of spirits before I can even approach a new chapter.

I'm on chapter fifteen of part three. There are seven parts in total.

I feel a humanitarian responsibility to read and emphathise(if not understand), but it's bloody hard. Have you had a similar experience?

When I saw this thread's title, the first book that came to mind was The Gulag Archipelago. Snap! It is one tough read, and very depressing.

The second book that came to mind was Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I loved his Snow Crash and thought I'd give another one of his a try, but it jumped around all over the place, introducing too many characters for me to keep up with, so I gave up. I must try it again, though, because I have a feeling it would be worth it in the end.

MG1962

30th January 2010, 09:53 PM

Emotionally 1984 was the hardest...My first attempt was at 14 - finally read it to the end at age 19

Skeptic

31st January 2010, 01:50 AM

Ulysses is the hardest book I ever finished. Finnegan's Wake was inpenetrable.

I actually finished both. I loved Ulysses. But Finnegans Wake took me five years (on and off) and I still have no earthly idea what's it about.

Professor Yaffle

31st January 2010, 02:08 AM

I tried to read Jose Saramago's Death at Intervals. The theme of the book looks really interesting, but I just couldn't cope with the length of the sentences and paragraphs. By the time you got to the end of a sentence, you had forgotten how it began. I might give it another go when I have more time to get my brain around it.

Brian-M

31st January 2010, 02:33 AM

The "AS/NZS 3000:2000 -- Australian/New Zealand Standard Wiring Rules"

4.9.3 Earthing contacts

Every socket-outlet except as provided for in Clauses 1.7.4.5.5 and 7.7.11, shall be provided with an earthing contact. (see Clause 5.7.3.2 for earthing requirements).

4.9.4 Switching device

4.9.4.1 General

In general each socket-outlet shall be individually controlled by a separate switch complying with Clauses 4.9.4.2 and 4.9.4.3.

This requirement need not apply where--

(a) two socket-outlets are located immediately adjacent to each other, on which case one switch complying with Clauses 4.9.4.2 and 4.9.4.3 may be used; or

The damn thing is full of references to other clauses, references to other books and vague wording. You actually have to pass a class on how to read it as part of getting an electrical license. (The newer version -- AS/NZS 3000:2007 -- is slightly better.)

ETA: Of course, I do realize that this isn't the kind of book you were talking about. :)

pnerd

31st January 2010, 02:59 AM

"The Emperor's New Mind" by Sir Roger Penrose.

sdt23107

31st January 2010, 05:29 AM

The Silmarillion due to the authors writing style and Les Misrables due to length.

The Silmarillion was as dry a read as any high school history text book yet I read the thing twice. Les Misrables was a complet and unabridged copy and after reading 2000 Plus pages I decided to bend my rule about having to read every book in my home library at lest twice.

I might have to add the complet works of Chaucer once I get through it (found a copy for $10 at a used book store) havent ready any thing by him since high school and then only parts of The Canterbury tales (the Knight's tale and one other one I can't remember). The difrences in the english language then and now is going to make this an intresting read.

Bikewer

31st January 2010, 05:59 AM

figarot

31st January 2010, 06:06 AM

Many mentioned already, i.e. Finnegan's Wake, Don Quixote, Blood Meridian...

Would add The Source by James A. Michener, but reckon I ought to crack it till the end some day.

A writer whose work I never seem to get to the last page of, and I've started a number of his books yet finished none is JG Ballard. Don't exactly know why but after any number of pages I always felt like reading something else.

I finished The Voynich Manuscript in less than 20 minutes however. Can't say it lost me totally, for that to have happened I might have had to first understood the language it was written in...

tyr_13

31st January 2010, 06:44 AM

The Koran, (yeah I know the spelling is not current however the one I own is a 1932 translation). Written by the prophet Mohammad (I think).

The biggest problem I had was having to jump to the SAQ (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/) every so often to see if I was not alone with a WTF feeling.

You're not alone. I recently finished my re-reading of the Bible and Quran, and my first read through of the Book of Mormon, and other Mormon texts. Yes, they are all pretty crazy if taken litterally, but I found the Quran and the book of Mormon similar in how transparent they were as justification for personal power.

Anyway the hardest book I've read has to be one of the ones on Heigl, Hediger, or Kant (pardon my non-ability to spell any of those names).

alfaniner

31st January 2010, 07:22 AM

The second book that came to mind was Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I loved his Snow Crash and thought I'd give another one of his a try, but it jumped around all over the place, introducing too many characters for me to keep up with, so I gave up.

This is the first book that, as disciplined as I am about my reading, made me say "Hey, I don't have to finish a book that is wasting my time." I skimmed through the rest of it (after fully reading several hundred pages) and found that the payoff was pretty lame.

Denver

31st January 2010, 07:31 AM

In grade 6 I took Uncle Remus from the library and returned it unread the next week. When asked why I explained that half the text consisted of apostrophes.

Luckily I didn't come across this book until later in life, and really enjoyed it. I expect I would have given up on it in 6th grade too.

I keep trying Don Quixote, need to restart it I think.

This was my first answer too. I did finish it (both books). But it took a lot of fortitude to keep going. For me, it's the Divine Comedy I've dropped off a couple times and need to restart (I'm somewhere in Purgatory: which I suppose is appropriate).

The second book that came to mind was Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I loved his Snow Crash and thought I'd give another one of his a try, but it jumped around all over the place, introducing too many characters for me to keep up with, so I gave up. I must try it again, though, because I have a feeling it would be worth it in the end.

I thnk you're right: it was a bit hard to make it through, but overall, I'm glad I did.

The Silmarillion due to the authors writing style and Les Misrables due to length.

The Silmarillion was as dry a read as any high school history text book yet I read the thing twice.

I've heard many people polarized on this one. I was so into Tolkien at the time, that I loved the Silmarillion: every chapter was like discovering a new secret for me.

You're not alone. I recently finished my re-reading of the Bible and Quran, and my first read through of the Book of Mormon, and other Mormon texts. Yes, they are all pretty crazy if taken litterally, but I found the Quran and the book of Mormon similar in how transparent they were as justification for personal power.

I found the Quran interesting from an historical/cultural perspective, but I would add the Book of Mormon as a hard one to get through. I didn't find much in there to hold my interest

Another one that I had a hard time finishing was Metamagical Themas by Hofstader. Maybe it just required too much concentration on topics that went on too long to keep me interested.

crackpot

31st January 2010, 07:32 AM

Tertium Organum by P.D. Ouspensky

quadraginta

31st January 2010, 07:35 AM

<snip>

Oh, wait, you meant the most difficult book you ever read, didn't you. Okay, then it's a tie: Goedel Escher Bach by Douglas R Hofstader, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, neither of which I have ever finished ever. And, of the two of them, the Hofstader book is actually slightly easier to understand.

I found Hofstader to be really tough, also. However I never could shake the nagging sense that it was because what he was trying to say was just out of my reach, and if I keep trying I'd get it. I still try. Sometimes I feel like I 'get it' a bit more than the last time.

This is in contrast to McLuhan's Understanding Media, which I tried to finish more than once because it overwhelmed so many conversations at that time. It seemed I must be missing something, since everyone else seemed so impressed.

I started out with a sense similar to the one Hofstader instilled in me, but persistent, repeated efforts led me to believe I was hunting for something that just wasn't there. The words were strung together in a fashion which mimicked sentences in a remarkable way, but in the final analysis they were largely content free.

I ultimately decided that a lot of other people pretended to be so impressed because they couldn't get anything coherent out of it either. They were just afraid of the ridicule they'd endure by admitting that in public. Sort of a literary "Emperor's New Clothes".

roger

31st January 2010, 07:48 AM

It only occured to me to answer with novels, for some reason. In non-fiction, I'd have to say Satre's Being and Nothingness. Somebody should have told that boy to define his terms. Well after reading it I read people extolling how you had to devote 30 years to stuying Satre, and that it took a monumental effort to cope with his shifting meanings, never explicated, for the same term both in and across his books. That never seemed like a virtue to me.

I've been forced to read multiple linear feet of po-mo literary criticism and then summarize it for a book I was co-authoring (never ended up being listed as author, but that's a different story). that stuff is impenetrable, but what's worse, it's clearly meant to be word salad. So I can't quite count that stuff somehow - you can call 'indelicate popcorn engine whithers the canine blossom" poetry, but it aint.

Beanbag

31st January 2010, 08:02 AM

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It's really tragic no editor could stand up to her, because there are some really lyrical passages buried in that landslide of words, if you are just willing to dig them out.

Unfortunately the ratio of chaff to wheat is about 6:1. I had to force myself to read through it all.

Beanbag

shemp

31st January 2010, 08:09 AM

I tried reading the original Homer's Odyssey, but it's all Greek to me.

Denver

31st January 2010, 08:25 AM

Pardalis

31st January 2010, 09:16 AM

"Madame Bovary". Literally nothing goes on in the story, and Flaubert takes a heck of a long time to describe it not happening, in excruciating detail.

EeneyMinnieMoe

31st January 2010, 10:11 AM

I tried reading Anna Karenina when I was 13. I actually loved it but gave up about halfway through because it was so amazingly long.

Hmm, hardest book I ever read...it took me two tries to get through the first Lord of the Rings when I first picked it up at about age 13 or 14 because it was so long and nothing happened for so long.

I once picked up a novel by Elie Wiesel- don't remember which one- and found it really hard to read because of the rambling stream of the consciousness writing and so I dropped it after a page.

I have a feeling that it was nowhere near as bad as I thought, though. If I picked it up again, I'd probably find there was nothing wrong with it.

stup_id

31st January 2010, 10:23 AM

What about War and Peace?, not only a long long list of developing characters, but huge empires clashing history, some Masonery and a little bit of seed of revolution trough its pages.. I hated when they killed the Gerassime character so fast... but later I appreciated that since it is indeed what happen at wars...

Wowbagger

31st January 2010, 12:46 PM

Cainkane1

31st January 2010, 01:02 PM

War and Peace

tyr_13

31st January 2010, 01:46 PM

Wowbagger

31st January 2010, 02:59 PM

Didn't someone say that the best way to increase the number of atheists was to make people read the bible?

Pretty true.Well, it sure wouldn't decrease the number of atheists.

EeneyMinnieMoe

31st January 2010, 03:08 PM

Didn't someone say that the best way to increase the number of atheists was to make people read the bible?

Pretty true.

Penn Jillette said that on his Showtime show.

In my case, it proved true. Reading the Bible shook whatever was left of my faith so much that I had to put it down.

jhunter1163

31st January 2010, 03:17 PM

"Madame Bovary". Literally nothing goes on in the story, and Flaubert takes a heck of a long time to describe it not happening, in excruciating detail.

I don't read fiction, but I just had a very similar experience with "Final Voyage" by Peter Nichols. On the surface it looked interesting, kind of like "Moby Dick" except a true story*. It ran to 250+ pages, and nothing happened for about the first 200. Then, the actual action (such as it was) lasted about five pages, then the remaining 45 pages followed the characters' lives after this lengthy bout of nothing. I heartily dis-recommend this book.

* - I know about the Essex, but I haven't read that book yet so don't spoil it for me. Thanks.

fleabeetle

31st January 2010, 03:31 PM

Les Misrables due to length. [ snip ]
Les Misrables was a complet and unabridged copy and after reading 2000 Plus pages I decided to bend my rule about having to read every book in my home library at lest twice.

Concur about Les Miserables -- which I'd heard good things about, plus they made it into a musical... I gave up on it; as you say, sheer length -- IMO largely because the author goes into so many, very long and wordy, seemingly irrelevant digressions from the story -- about highly devout religious orders, about the horrors of the battle of Waterloo, about Paris street-urchins... I longed to say, "Victor, has no-one ever told you that the majority opionion is that succintness and keeping to the point, is the most 'key' thing in literary art? -- I thought you Frogs were the world's foremost exponents of that ideal"...

EeneyMinnieMoe

31st January 2010, 03:57 PM

Oh yeah, I also read Moby Dick about one thirds of the way through and abandoned it because it was so long.

There are a lot of great books that I've abandoned and should get back to one of these days.

MikeSun5

31st January 2010, 04:00 PM

The Bible. I've tried to read it in order, but there's no way I'll ever get past the book of Numbers. I'll be happy if I never see the word "begat" again.

fleabeetle

31st January 2010, 04:19 PM

I actually read through the entire King James Bible a couple of years ago. Took me roughly eight months, reading a few chapters a day.

I did not find most of it difficult to read, probably because I was only going through it in very small chunks at a time.

But, I did find it more difficult to believe people actually think this could be an inerrant source of history and morality.

I've always liked the World War 2 story, involving an ill-assorted bunch of Brits sent to Yugoslavia to help Tito's Partisans. This company included Evelyn Waugh; and Randolph Churchill, Winston's journalist son. Things so worked out that they had to spend very many days in hiding in the Yugoslav outback, waiting for their contacts to show up. Randolph suffered extremely badly from verbal diarrhoea, and talked and talked until -- forestalling the rest of the group murdering him -- Waugh had an idea. Randolph had grown up in scorn and ignorance of the Christian religion, and had never read the Bible. Waugh, a devout Catholic, had a Bible with him, and proposed a deal: that Randolph should, in a spirit of enquiry, read the book concerned, and basically shut up until he'd finished it; and then be free to express his opinions ad lib.

This was accepted, and there were a few days of blissful "hush" while Randolph ploughed his way through from Genesis to Revelation. With mission finally accomplished, he remained quiet, pondering, for a while; then broke silence, succinctly: "God's a s**t, isn't He?" (Sorry if this violates posting guidelines.)

arthwollipot

31st January 2010, 04:38 PM

There are several. They are divided into books I have finished and books that I haven't.

Of all of them, the one that stands out the most is Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach. It was hard to get into and it took me many tries before I finally grasped what it was all about and finished the entire book in sequence. But it was satisfying in the end - I can definitely recommend perserverence in this case.

Of books that I was forced to read in high school, Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One was a killer (har har). But I think that one book deserves special mention: Mudrooroo Nyoongah's Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the World. Yes, the whole book is like that. I think I might have died a little inside when I finally finished the damn thing.

Voluntarily I have tried and failed to read Moby Dick. I have tried and succeeded in reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea which I got through due to sheer bloody-minded determination. Non-fiction wise, there's a book called World Within the World, author I can't remember, which is all about epistemology and science philosophy, which I ususally get bogged down in several chapters through.

Anything else I don't finish I usually just put aside and forget about.

Oh, and I wasn't able to finish Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, but it wasn't because it was a hard book. It was because the very first time I opened it, all the pages fell out.

Wowbagger

31st January 2010, 05:41 PM

In high school, I was supposed to read all sorts of painful books: Charles Dickens books, for example. And many others. But, I didn't bother doing so, even if I started on them. So, I don't think they should count, for me.

RedIbis

31st January 2010, 06:32 PM

todd

31st January 2010, 07:01 PM

On The Origin of Species was rough for me. the difficulty was the "flowery" language of the time more than the content. he goes on and on and on

whatnot

31st January 2010, 08:36 PM

"Les Chants de Maldoror" by Lautréamont. One long fever dream. I picked it up after William Vollman praised it in an interview. Shoulda known, Vollman's books are endurance tests.

Molinaro

31st January 2010, 09:23 PM

Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought. I started it in 1989. I just checked and my bookmark is still on page 45. It's the only book I've ever started and not finished.

arthwollipot

31st January 2010, 09:28 PM

This is on my shelf, read about 100 pages, skipped around, but never managed to finish it. I liked what I read, but this is really a tough one.You do really have to concentrate. It gets really hard starting from symbolic logic and his made-up number system, (SS0 + SS0 = SSSS0) but if you can get your head around that, he explains Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem very elegantly, and the entire rest of the book follows from it.

Like I said, it's very well worth the effort. Also check out his other books, including but not limited to Metamagical Themas (one section of which was my first introduction to skepticism) and I Am A Strange Loop.

CriticalSock

1st February 2010, 01:27 AM

You do really have to concentrate. It gets really hard starting from symbolic logic and his made-up number system, (SS0 + SS0 = SSSS0) but if you can get your head around that, he explains Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem very elegantly, and the entire rest of the book follows from it.

Like I said, it's very well worth the effort. Also check out his other books, including but not limited to Metamagical Themas (one section of which was my first introduction to skepticism) and I Am A Strange Loop.

I started Godel, Escher and Bach and never finished it either. Not because I was struggling with it (although I was), but because my brother stole it! He also stole my Baudelaire. By the time I discovered the theft he'd emigrated to Australia! Typical! :)

In the drink sozzled OP I was talking about books which are emotionally hard to get through. As for books which are hard to finish, I've never got all the way through "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf, which is a shame because I loved Orlando.

Damien Evans

1st February 2010, 04:16 AM

Being a science-fiction fan from an early age, I suffered through much of the high school required reading.
Among the worst, as I recall, was Heart Of Darkness. Silas Marner as well...How could I care about silly old misers when there were princesses to rescue on Mars?

:boggled:

ETA: It's a novella. How hard could it be? I can rattle off hundreds of harder books off the top of my head, and at least 5 of them are by the same author.

Ambrosia

1st February 2010, 04:35 AM

EvilSmurf

1st February 2010, 05:08 AM

Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reasoning.

Worm

1st February 2010, 07:01 AM

I've always found GEB and Metamagical Themas to be wonderfully easy books to read - although I'm not quite sure that I could explain why this is the case.

I think I simply find them to flow very well.

My hardest would probably have to be 'Gulag Archipelago' as noted by a few others, or possibly 'Shirley' by Charlotte Bronte, which is the only book I have completely given up with through being completely fed up with it.

Wowbagger

1st February 2010, 12:25 PM

Hmmm.... I wonder how difficult it would be for me to get through Mein Kampf. Never read it. But, I keep hearing nasty, nasty things about it. Ugh.

RandomJSF

1st February 2010, 01:37 PM

Unfortunately, I do not have the background in classical and/or foreign literature that others in this thread do, much to my chagrin... I can, however, weigh in on a significantly more modern book.

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson, definitely rates rather high on my list of difficult books. To be brutally short with one of the major concepts... The main character, and the group to whom he belongs, essentially dedicate their lives to the study of science and arithmetic to the point of living a monastic life in pursuit of it. They basically converse in math, at length, at many points in the book. And forget the idea of knowing where the book is headed until you're almost done with it.

That being said, it was a FASCINATING book, one which I endeavor to read again when I have the time.

I tried my hand at Stephenson's Baroque Cycle of books, as well, but I have yet to read very far into them. His Cryptonomicon is basically a primer for Anathem; if you can get through Cryptonomicon, you have a fair shot at Anathem. :)

As for my rather limited experience in classical literature... Les Miserables took a great deal of time when I was in my early teens. I found the chapters detailing the history of M. Thénardier (the nasty innkeeper) to be particularly cumbersome.

I never could finish House of the Seven Gables... I abhor Hawthorne and most authors of his ilk. He seemed to operate under the assumption that the readers have no imagination and need absolutely everything described for them; as I have an active imagination, this bores me to tears.

arthwollipot

1st February 2010, 06:49 PM

Another one I had a lot of trouble with was Rupert Sheldrake's The Sense of Being Stared At. I got about halfway through it before hurling it across the room.

I haven't tried yet, but I may be interested in trying to read Dianetics too, and I can't imagine that being an easy read.

PrettyKitty

1st February 2010, 06:53 PM

House of Leaves by Danielewski

tyr_13

1st February 2010, 06:54 PM

I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier!

The hardest book I ever read was Basic Gemology, in real wood hardcover of course. :D

Smackety

1st February 2010, 07:30 PM

I vote for Silmarillion. Anything else as difficult to read I simply would not have bothered. (not that I know why I bothered)

Freddy

1st February 2010, 07:31 PM

Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.

Jeff Corey

1st February 2010, 07:37 PM

Skinner's Verbal Behavior, it was worth it.

Smackety

1st February 2010, 07:42 PM

Skinner's Verbal Behavior, it was worth it.

Awesome...I never made it through.

arthwollipot

1st February 2010, 10:14 PM

Oh, here's another one: Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype. Again it was sheer bloody-minded determination that got me through it, and boy was I relieved when I finally did!

CriticalSock

2nd February 2010, 12:38 AM

I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier!

The hardest book I ever read was Basic Gemology, in real wood hardcover of course. :D

Genius! :D

bluesjnr

2nd February 2010, 01:08 AM

Not fiction but I only got 3/4 of the way through, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: By Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

I would hate to bump into Nassim at a dinner party.

Jono

2nd February 2010, 02:34 AM

It would have to be the three-part work "The Guide for the Perplexed" by Maimonides. I only read it once though, and that was many years ago so I might be giving unfair credit of complexity.

Jono

2nd February 2010, 02:35 AM

I vote for Silmarillion. Anything else as difficult to read I simply would not have bothered. (not that I know why I bothered)

When I worked as a librarian I decided to read that one, and it's definently up there as it is 'out there'.

gambling_cruiser

2nd February 2010, 05:41 AM

Immanuel Kant. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Never again.

HarryKeogh

2nd February 2010, 05:53 AM

Hmmm.... I wonder how difficult it would be for me to get through Mein Kampf. Never read it. But, I keep hearing nasty, nasty things about it. Ugh.

I heard the author of that was kind of a prick.

I couldn't get through The Satanic Verses. I tried and tried but would read a page and have no idea what I just read and gave up around the 100-page mark.

Damien Evans

2nd February 2010, 08:14 AM

I vote for Silmarillion. Anything else as difficult to read I simply would not have bothered. (not that I know why I bothered)

Because it's like the bible, only really awesome?

I mean really, how can you not love the way Tolkien writes about the fall of Fingolfin?

Damien Evans

2nd February 2010, 08:16 AM

When I worked as a librarian I decided to read that one, and it's definently up there as it is 'out there'.

The only really difficult thing about it is the way it was edited, which was unfortunately necessary.

Mind you I just finished re-reading it for at least the dozenth time, so I may be biased.

Eskarina

2nd February 2010, 10:18 AM

I haven't tried yet, but I may be interested in trying to read Dianetics too, and I can't imagine that being an easy read.

I implore you: DON'T READ IT! A working mind is a terrible thing to waste. :covereyes

I dragged my sorry behind all the way through it - with a jaundiced eye, admittedly. So take that into account when I say it is BAD; REALLY, REALLY, REALLY BAD. It is incredibly badly written, misogynist, completely devoid of science, let alone mental health (I did learn the term "exodontistry", though). Only the German translation of "Scientology: Fundamentals of Thought" was worse. That deserves the term "abysmal".

Having said that, if you enjoy the absurd and ridiculous, go for it. ;)

The hardest book I ever read was Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason". I don't have a philosophical bent to begin with and his tapeworm sentences don't help.

Smackety

2nd February 2010, 04:48 PM

Because it's like the bible, only really awesome?

I mean really, how can you not love the way Tolkien writes about the fall of Fingolfin?

yes, because large parts of it read like the bible. Awesome? not those parts, no.

arthwollipot

2nd February 2010, 09:14 PM

I tried to read the Silmarillion several times, but the first time I actually got all the way through it was when I was world-building for a roleplaying campaign. All you need is the proper context - once I'd got that first one down, I've re-read and enjoyed it many times.

Akhenaten

3rd February 2010, 08:57 AM

I haven't tried yet, but I may be interested in trying to read Dianetics too, and I can't imagine that being an easy read.

Geez Arti, I wouldn't bother. It's utter garbage, and doesn't have a single redeeming feature to it.

The only reason I read it was as know-your-enemy research and unless you're thinking of taking up the cause, it's time you'll truly regret wasting.

Whatever else you do, please get it from a second-hand book store rather than paying 'them' for it.

You can have my copy if you like.

Finster

3rd February 2010, 09:27 AM

Akhenaten

3rd February 2010, 10:16 AM

Finster

3rd February 2010, 10:51 AM

Have you read "Time Enough for Love"? It's a big read, but I loved it from cover to cover, and I'm not a huge fan of Heinlein's.

Not when I have my Michael Moorcock collection to keep me off the streeets.

I don't think so, it's been at least 12 years since I've picked up anything by Heinlein and honestly I don't remember which ones I've read.

Akhenaten

3rd February 2010, 11:07 AM

There are a couple of other fans of TEFL here, but I can't recall who they are. I'd be interested to know if they think it was his best work, as I do.

ugot2bekidding

3rd February 2010, 02:53 PM

In grade 6 I took Uncle Remus from the library and returned it unread the next week. When asked why I explained that half the text consisted of apostrophes.

Hhmm...Frank Zappa has a song called Uncle Remus...from the album Apostrophe...coincidence?

edit: Yea, The Silmarillion was a bit daunting to me when I first read it in high school.

dudalb

3rd February 2010, 03:23 PM

Ulysses: The James Joyce novel, not the story about the guy with the boat.

dudalb

3rd February 2010, 03:25 PM

dudalb

3rd February 2010, 03:28 PM

Oh, here's another one: Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype. Again it was sheer bloody-minded determination that got me through it, and boy was I relieved when I finally did!

A lot of Dawkins books are highly technical works really aimed on other biologists. A great many specialist write two types of books:One aimed at the general reader and the other at fellow specialists.

dudalb

3rd February 2010, 03:32 PM

I was probably too young the first time I read the Silmarillion. After pushing through it I realized I had absolutely no idea what it was about or who the characters were. I read it again a few years later and enjoyed it very much.

I never made it through Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast" it was like walking through waist deep mud.

I am normally a big Heinlein fan, but the quality of his novels fell off the earth after Time Enough For Love.
Also, his tendacy to stop the story to preach at the reader, which was always present, went crazy in his last few books. I think the problem was he became so popular that he had the power to ignore his editors, and Heinlein needed a good editor to tell him when he was going overboard with the preaching.

quadraginta

3rd February 2010, 04:23 PM

I am normally a big Heinlein fan, but the quality of his novels fell off the earth after Time Enough For Love.
Also, his tendacy to stop the story to preach at the reader, which was always present, went crazy in his last few books. I think the problem was he became so popular that he had the power to ignore his editors, and Heinlein needed a good editor to tell him when he was going overboard with the preaching.

Heinlein had a number of medical issues in his later years which may have contributed to his less than stellar efforts towards the end of his life. I started reading him when I was eight, and 'caught up' with him when I was nine, so after '64 it's fair to say that I grew up reading him. I finished Number Of The Beast out of loyalty as much as anything else.

I suspect that by the time he got around to that book even his editors would have been too intimidated by his legend to browbeat very many changes out of him.

Elizabeth I

3rd February 2010, 08:30 PM

I couldn't finish Wuthering Heights, but that was just because I thought Cathy and Heathcliff were a pair of drips.

I have tried on a couple of occasions to read Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God but have never gotten anywhere with it.

Praktik

3rd February 2010, 09:21 PM

Worm

4th February 2010, 12:47 AM

I really like Time Enough for Love and Number of the Beast. Might go back and re-read them actually. My favourite remains The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress though.

I never find Heinlein hard to read - maybe I've missed the hard ones :)

RedIbis

4th February 2010, 05:18 AM

Ulysses: The James Joyce novel, not the story about the guy with the boat.

If anyone is planning on reading Ulysses, I highly recommend another book as a study guide, Richard Ellmann's James Joyce's Ulysses.

He breaks down each chapter. This was the only way I was able to get through the novel. It took all summer to read both books, but it was worth it.

Orphia Nay

4th February 2010, 07:36 PM

It took me ages to get through this, but I have read it several times now and it's a great book.

If you read and enjoyed Snow Crash the next best book he wrote in a similar vein was "The Diamond Age (A Young Ladies Illustrated Primer)" I also really enjoyed Zodiac and Interface, both of which are much easier to get your head around than Cryptonomicon.

Thanks for the recommendations!

The hardest book I have read so far was Trainspotting. I haven't touched any of his other work as I found it dam near impossible to read stuff written in a dialect and not in English. Iain Banks does the same thing though and I can read those OK :confused:

I quite enjoyed Trainspotting, and I will have to check out some Iain Banks now you've said that.

Unfortunately, I do not have the background in classical and/or foreign literature that others in this thread do, much to my chagrin... I can, however, weigh in on a significantly more modern book.

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson, definitely rates rather high on my list of difficult books. To be brutally short with one of the major concepts... The main character, and the group to whom he belongs, essentially dedicate their lives to the study of science and arithmetic to the point of living a monastic life in pursuit of it. They basically converse in math, at length, at many points in the book. And forget the idea of knowing where the book is headed until you're almost done with it.

That being said, it was a FASCINATING book, one which I endeavor to read again when I have the time.

I tried my hand at Stephenson's Baroque Cycle of books, as well, but I have yet to read very far into them. His Cryptonomicon is basically a primer for Anathem; if you can get through Cryptonomicon, you have a fair shot at Anathem. :)

Thanks for the anti-recommendations! ;) :)

Damien Evans

4th February 2010, 10:05 PM

I haven't tried picking it up again since high school, and it wasn't so challenging I gave up on it (pretty sure I had to write some stuff about it), but Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness was slow-going for me for sure.

Come to think of it, now that I've ma-tewered, I should probably give it another go.

Its not that long a book really...

We did Heart Of Darkness for year 12 English Literature, the first time through I must have skipped 5 pages or something because I completely lost the plot, but the second time through was much better. I think of Conrads works the hardest are Nostromo and The ****** Of The Narcissus.

Pinkymcfatfat

5th February 2010, 04:39 AM

I have been reading 'Gravitys Rainbow' for almost 5 years...I don't know if I'll ever complete it.

quadraginta

5th February 2010, 05:56 AM

I have been reading 'Gravitys Rainbow' for almost 5 years...I don't know if I'll ever complete it.

If you want to save some time you can skip Finnegan's Wake and Gravity's Rainbow.

Just rent Finian's Rainbow instead and watch that, and whenever anybody starts talking about either of the books you can tell them how much you enjoyed Petula Clark. That usually will quiet them down.

Basilio

5th February 2010, 06:33 AM

"The Worm Ouroboros," without a doubt, but I've read it twice, followed by "A Fish Dinner in Memison". Eddison is not easy, but the overall story is great fantasy.

quadraginta

5th February 2010, 06:52 AM

"The Worm Ouroboros," without a doubt, but I've read it twice, followed by "A Fish Dinner in Memison". Eddison is not easy, but the overall story is great fantasy.

I had been thinking about this one, but wondered if it might be a bit too obscure. I had to work to get through it, but I enjoyed the work. After that the Zimiamvia trilogy ("Fish Dinner" was the middle one) were a piece of cake and very enjoyable.

That was many years ago, back when TLOTR was getting its big '60s resurgence. Might be time for a re-read.

Akhenaten

5th February 2010, 07:34 AM

Ignorantbystander

5th February 2010, 09:42 AM

A Clockwork Orange; English is not my native language and I didn't have Urban Dictionary at that time, let alone a future Urban Dictionary.

120 days... by De Sade ; Writing style (it's like a summary of cruelties) and disgust.

Can the topic starter explain why Gulag archipelago is so hard to read? because it is on top of my 'to read' list

commandlinegamer

5th February 2010, 09:55 AM

Thomas Marlory, Le morte d'Arthur, part 1. Lots of knights in green fields, but the action seems to be a tad repetitive. Maybe part 2 will be a bit more exciting. Oh, and there was a dolorous stroke which I'm thinking was either an earthquake (richter 10) or medieval English for someone getting some action in.

Vorticity

5th February 2010, 10:54 AM

Goedel Escher Bach by Douglas R Hofstader

I consider this the single greatest book, fiction or non-fiction, I've ever read.

sdt23107

5th February 2010, 03:48 PM

If you are going to read CHaucer in the original, I suggest you spend some extra dough and get a good annonated version.

It is annonated. I would have left it in the store otherwise.

catsmate1

6th February 2010, 03:59 AM

Peig. A nightmarish, awful book. For those of you not educated in Ireland before the curriculum revisions I offer this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peig

Orphia Nay

7th February 2010, 02:04 AM

Peig. A nightmarish, awful book. For those of you not educated in Ireland before the curriculum revisions I offer this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peig

It led, for example, to this comment from Senator John Minihan in the Irish Senate in 2006 when discussing improvements to the curriculum:

“No matter what our personal view of the book might be, there is a sense that one has only to mention the name Peig Sayers to a certain age group and one will see a dramatic rolling of the eyes, or worse.”

—Seanad Éireann - Volume 183 - 5 April 2006[4]

:newlol

luchog

7th February 2010, 03:01 AM

I mean really, how can you not love the way Tolkien writes about the fall of Fingolfin?

I never found any of Tolkien's fiction writings to be in any way difficult; even the posthumous stuff.

For myself, I need to make a distinction between works I found difficult mechanically, due to the structure and language style; vs. works I found difficult simply because of the content.

Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment was easy enough to read the language (at least in translation); but I found it difficult due to the sheer level of self-indulgent whinging (and this from a Goth, no less). I guess it would be better to describe it as "uninteresting" rather than difficult.

I still haven't manage to finish James Joyce's Ulysees, let alone Finnigan's Wake; due to the highly idiosyncratic language and grammatical structure (I've heard both are much easier if read aloud, especially allowing for a strong Dubliner accent).

I found Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago to be a little difficult, because of how dry and inconsistent it tended to be in spots. First Circle and [/i]The Cancer Ward[/i] were less so, because they were more... traditional narrative I guess.

Shakespeare can be difficult because of the language drift. When I'm in practice and can remember my Elizabethan English well enough, I can fall into the rhythm of it and be carried along quite effectively.

I was unable to read more than a couple hundred pages of Korzybski's General Semantics; in part because of the density of his language, but mostly because that's all the time it took for me to realize that his entire premise was flawed.

For those who have complained about the Bible being difficult, that's due to reading it in the archaic KJV. Due to language drift and vastly differring idioms, that's roughly the equivalent of attempting to read Don Quixote for the first time, in the original Spanish, after having completed only a high-school-level study of the language. It can be done, but won't really give an appreciation of the language or content. For ease of reading, a more modern translation like the New International Version is far better; and for a better understanding of the scripture, an annotated translation such as the Amplified Version is far preferable.

arthwollipot

7th February 2010, 03:43 AM

Geez Arti, I wouldn't bother. It's utter garbage, and doesn't have a single redeeming feature to it.

The only reason I read it was as know-your-enemy research and unless you're thinking of taking up the cause, it's time you'll truly regret wasting.

Whatever else you do, please get it from a second-hand book store rather than paying 'them' for it.

You can have my copy if you like.You think that with a library like this (http://www.arthwollipot.com/photography/books/) that I wouldn't already have a copy?

arthwollipot

7th February 2010, 03:56 AM

I couldn't finish Wuthering Heights, but that was just because I thought Cathy and Heathcliff were a pair of drips.Funny - I've heard that a lot. :rolleyes:

Akhenaten

7th February 2010, 04:07 AM

You think that with a library like this (http://www.arthwollipot.com/photography/books/) that I wouldn't already have a copy?

That big building by the lake across the road from DFAT has nothing on you.

Awesome.

arthwollipot

7th February 2010, 04:15 AM

That big building by the lake across the road from DFAT has nothing on you.

Awesome.I worked at the National Library for some time.

The creepiest time I ever spent was when I was doing overtime in the stacks. LG2-C (Lower Ground 2 Central) - two levels underground. A concrete-walled room filled with row upon row of shelves. A desk, a hanging lightbulb, and a pneumatic tube delivery system. I had to wait until a request came down the tube, then go get the book and put it on the booklift.

Dark, dusty. Totally silent.

Then suddenly the whoosh-BOOM of a cylinder coming down the tube. I've only jumped higher once in my life.

Elaedith

7th February 2010, 04:28 AM

What is the hardest book you've ever read?

I have been reading Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitzyn for fifteen years. It has got to the point where I have to drink upwards of a bottle of spirits before I can even approach a new chapter.

I'm on chapter fifteen of part three. There are seven parts in total.

I feel a humanitarian responsibility to read and emphathise(if not understand), but it's bloody hard. Have you had a similar experience?

Hard in what sense? I didn't find the Gulag or any of Solzhenitzyn's works difficult to read in terms of writing style; in fact, I couldn't put them down and got through them very fast, although they are emotionally draining. Never had a problem with Tolstoy either.

On the other hand, I don't think I've managed to finish anything by Dickens even though I don't dislike them - I just lose the plot and give up. The same with some of Graham Greene (not the 'entertainments' but the 'serious' stuff like 'The Man Within'). I just get lost and it all fizzles out. I haven't managed to finish Joyce or Proust either.

RedIbis

7th February 2010, 06:11 AM

Hard in what sense? I didn't find the Gulag or any of Solzhenitzyn's works difficult to read in terms of writing style; in fact, I couldn't put them down and got through them very fast, although they are emotionally draining. Never had a problem with Tolstoy either.

On the other hand, I don't think I've managed to finish anything by Dickens even though I don't dislike them - I just lose the plot and give up. The same with some of Graham Greene (not the 'entertainments' but the 'serious' stuff like 'The Man Within'). I just get lost and it all fizzles out. I haven't managed to finish Joyce or Proust either.

How about Greene's The Quiet American? Great book, very readable.

Akhenaten

7th February 2010, 08:39 AM

I worked at the National Library for some time.

The creepiest time I ever spent was when I was doing overtime in the stacks. LG2-C (Lower Ground 2 Central) - two levels underground. A concrete-walled room filled with row upon row of shelves. A desk, a hanging lightbulb, and a pneumatic tube delivery system. I had to wait until a request came down the tube, then go get the book and put it on the booklift.

Dark, dusty. Totally silent.

Then suddenly the whoosh-BOOM of a cylinder coming down the tube. I've only jumped higher once in my life.

Have we had this conversation before? It's eerily familiar.

In any case, my Missus used to work at the Library too. She managed both Chapters and the cafeteria upstairs. Lot's of lovely 'long lunches' at Chapters.

:)

Marduk

7th February 2010, 08:40 AM

I'm definitely going to try that. For years I've been noticing oblique references to something called 'Ouroborus' in everything from video games to fantasy art to forum screen names and I've never bothered to look up the source of them.

Now I don't have to. Cool.

TY

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/enigmatic6.jpg
Tutankhamen, Ouroborus x2
;)

arthwollipot

7th February 2010, 07:32 PM

Have we had this conversation before? It's eerily familiar.I have related the story in various ways previously, yes.

bpesta22

7th February 2010, 08:19 PM

I heard the author of that was kind of a prick.

I couldn't get through The Satanic Verses. I tried and tried but would read a page and have no idea what I just read and gave up around the 100-page mark.

I was gonna mention this. I had the same feeling! The only famous author I've ever met and been photographed with. He is one cool dude in person, or so it seems, but I cannot get my head around his writing.

Orphia Nay

7th February 2010, 11:12 PM

I was gonna mention this. I had the same feeling! The only famous author I've ever met and been photographed with. He is one cool dude in person, or so it seems, but I cannot get my head around his writing.

I loved his Midnight's Children, and read it twice, but then I'm an India/Kashmirophile.

But The Satanic Verses stumped me, and I gave up after about 50 pages.

DevilsAdvocate

8th February 2010, 12:33 AM

1) "Critique of Pure Reason" - Kant

There are probably a few other philosophy texts I can't think of right now that would be next. Then a few computer programming books.

After that would be religious texts:

2) Bible
3) Quaran
4) Bhagavad Gita

I thought they were important to read. They weren't. Complete waste of time. I can't even remember most of them now. Same with the Book of Mormon, although it isn't hard to read. Tao Te Ching is easy and a good read.

A couple books that were not really hard but still took a long time were Dante's Divine Comedy and Hess's Glass Bead Game.

I read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values" in my late teens and it proved to be a hard read in a psychological, philosophical, metaphysical sense.

I loved Silmarillion and A Clockwork Orange and can't imagine how they are difficult read at all.

I gave a shot but never even got close to getting through Gravity's Rainbow or anything by James Joyce.

Bluto

8th February 2010, 03:08 AM

"Genji Monogatari" was simply impenetrable for me. Being a student of Japanese culture and art, I felt like I should broaden my understanding a little more. There's some things that gaijin will just never get, I'm afraid.

I also had a tough time with "The Closing of the American Mind". I dunno, his syntax and just basic vocabulary were just a little too professorial for me. A "light" read it was not...

Wudang

8th February 2010, 05:38 AM

There are a couple of other fans of TEFL here, but I can't recall who they are. I'd be interested to know if they think it was his best work, as I do.

Yes. He hit his peak there then basically recycled from then on. A far better book than SiaSL.

Define hardest? I stopped reading Finnegan's Wake when I spotted a pun in German and realised I'd probably missed lots more.

I've read this from cover to cover as I was reviewing it (well an earlier edition)
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=pub1ly33610700

Wudang

8th February 2010, 05:47 AM

Hmmm.... I wonder how difficult it would be for me to get through Mein Kampf. Never read it. But, I keep hearing nasty, nasty things about it. Ugh.

I read an annotated edition as a teenager which was interesting for a while due to the sheer number of errors of fact the editor noted on each page.

Kotatsu

8th February 2010, 06:18 AM

I'm definitely going to try that. For years I've been noticing oblique references to something called 'Ouroborus' in everything from video games to fantasy art to forum screen names and I've never bothered to look up the source of them.

It's a great book, however the edition I have (Fantasy Masterworks) doesn't contain chapter 13 or 14 (I can't remember which), in which some fairly important plot points occur. Instead, it has an upside-down repeat of the chapter before it. This upset me, especially as I had bought the book on a different continent, and couldn't very well just go back an exchange it...

Wudang

8th February 2010, 06:36 AM

Oh, and there was a dolorous stroke which I'm thinking was either an earthquake (richter 10) or medieval English for someone getting some action in.

No it occurs in a few legends, in Arthur it is delivered by Sir Balin. Logres is then turned into a wasteland as punishment for using a holy item as a weapon though some cite the traditions of the king being united to the land and the stroke rendering the King (and through him the land) unfertile. Ouch.
I cite in evidence the lyrics from Rick Wakeman's Myths and Legends of King Arthur
"the Dolorous Stroke it once struck with pride,
the sword that once hung by Sir Balin's side."

whatnot

11th February 2010, 12:07 AM

A Clockwork Orange; English is not my native language and I didn't have Urban Dictionary at that time, let alone a future Urban Dictionary.

Cripes, in highschool I crawled my way through this one not knowing it had a glossary.

Ignorantbystander

11th February 2010, 07:09 PM

Cripes, in highschool I crawled my way through this one not knowing it had a glossary.

Glad to hear that, i was already feeling stupid being the only one :)
And yes I also missed the glossary (don't even remember if my version had one)
The only thing I do remember that it was hard in the beginning, but after reading a while and having read the odd expressions in different contexts I was able to figure out what they meant. Loved the book btw. and I got an A (a 9 here in Holland) for my test on it. And it was the day I found out how naughty and dirty-minded teachers can be ;)

Pure Argent

11th February 2010, 07:22 PM

Crime and Punishment. I never bothered to finish it.

bignickel

12th February 2010, 12:20 PM

Daniel Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea".

I'm glad I read it, it was very thought-provoking. That said, it assumes the reader has already read a certain amount of Gould, Chompsky, et al. I hadn't, and there were many parts that I struggled with the book to understand what Dennett was talking about.

SusanB-M1

14th February 2010, 03:15 AM

The Aesthetics of Music by Roger Scruton, about 20 years ago. I'd heard about it, so ordered a copy from the Library. They bought a copy because I'd requested it, if I remember correctly, so I was morally obliged to read it all! Actually, I think I picked up the gist of it, and enjoyed playing the music references in the text, which ranged from a few bars to a page.
The Phenomenon of Man by Teilhard de Chardin, which I read about 35 years ago. Even when I'd read some pages several times, I still hadn't a clue what he was talking about, but I'd started so of course had to finish. By the time I did come to the end, I had an interesting list of words for Scrabble.

Wudang

14th February 2010, 12:39 PM

The Phenomenon of Man by Teilhard de Chardin, which I read about 35 years ago. Even when I'd read some pages several times, I still hadn't a clue what he was talking about, but I'd started so of course had to finish. By the time I did come to the end, I had an interesting list of words for Scrabble.

Tielhard de Chardin's noosphere totally copied The Force.

Walrus32

14th February 2010, 02:01 PM

The Riemann Hypothesis - I read it three times, enjoyed it immensely, and hardly understood it at all.

xXMoshtradamusXx

14th February 2010, 02:24 PM

Didn't someone say that the best way to increase the number of atheists was to make people read the bible?

Pretty true.

"Properly read the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."-Issac Asimov
I have to agree, I took the Bible and binned it in 6th grade after I read Genesis.
My willing suspension of disbelief wouldn't take the level of crap...
Deism from then until I stopped believing.

negativ

14th February 2010, 02:40 PM

The only book I've ever found completely unreadable was A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. No, I wasn't 'expecting' the movie, but I kept thinking I needed a special slang decoder ring to figure out wtf the various characters were saying. I think I read about 15 pages before giving up.

I liked Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow", but I couldn't slog through more than a couple of chapters of "Mason and Dixon".

I found "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett very hard to read. It wasn't necessarily that the subject matter was difficult, but it had mostly to do with his writing style. I've read "Breaking the Spell" and I didn't find it similarly difficult. It's probably Just Me.

negativ

14th February 2010, 02:45 PM

I should also add "The Worthing Chronicles" by Orson Scott Card. It started out pretty good, but eventually there were about 32 million characters, and I was too dumb to keep track of it all.

arthwollipot

14th February 2010, 10:44 PM

ChompskyI've got nothing to add here, I just wanted to giggle at the mis-name "Chompsky".

:newlol

SusanB-M1

14th February 2010, 11:10 PM

Tielhard de Chardin's noosphere totally copied The Force.
I hadn't heard of those, so did a quick google. Did you read them? What did you think?
The Riemann Hypothesis - I read it three times, enjoyed it immensely, and hardly understood it at all.
:D So I am curious to know why you enjoyed it!!

TX50

14th February 2010, 11:13 PM

Daniel Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea".

Yes, I've had a few tussles with that one myself. One day I'll get through it all.

I tried to like Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" but it was as dry as a boot, and somewhat depressing too. I guess I'm just not cut out for stoicism.

bignickel

15th February 2010, 08:46 AM

I've got nothing to add here, I just wanted to giggle at the mis-name "Chompsky".

:newlol
In my mind, it'll always be Chompsky. Even if he emails me to tell me how to spell it properly.

I Ratant

15th February 2010, 09:06 AM

Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought. I started it in 1989. I just checked and my bookmark is still on page 45. It's the only book I've ever started and not finished.
.
I picked up Gould's "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" on June 7, 2002... (I put the purchase dates on most books).
It's still today pretty much unread. Got a start into it back then, but haven't felt like trudging through more of it.
Rare, that is.
I generally polish off most books quickly, with some few becoming "wall bangers" when tossed upon finishing.

Damien Evans

16th February 2010, 01:16 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-American_Cataloging_Rules

Currently going through this in class. Damn, it's badly written. It's not unclear exactly, but they don't mind using 50 words where 5 will do

GreyICE

16th February 2010, 10:44 AM

For fiction, I've never encountered something more convoluted and more interestingly formed than House of Leaves, (http://www.amazon.com/House-Leaves-Mark-Z-Danielewski/dp/0375703764/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266345721&sr=8-1) which literally has between two and four concurrent narratives, not to mention other oddities. A very, very hard read, though rewarding (as opposed to something like Great Expectations or The Old Curiosity Shop, which are much 'harder' reads in that they made me hate them from pretty much page 1, but are not actually thematically, philosophically, or linguistically difficult).

For nonfiction, put a list of Kant's works on the wall and throw a dart. The man is interesting, but impenetrable doesn't begin to describe it.

Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' is also very interesting, and although it's designed to be readable, you keep coming back and wrestling with what he presents.

P.S. I don't actually consider books that are just awful, badly written, or deliberately stupid as 'hard.' Ulysses isn't a 'hard' book, it's a bad book. Similarly, I don't think it's possible to read Kent Hovind's dissertation without crying or eye bleeding, but that doesn't mean it's 'hard.'

Moss

16th February 2010, 10:56 AM

For nonfiction, put a list of Kant's works on the wall and throw a dart. The man is interesting, but impenetrable doesn't begin to describe it.
'

Kant is intricate, but at least he knew how to write.
Hegel on the other hands makes me want to wring his latin teacher's neck. Why? Because he somehow inspired him to write tons of run on sentences but didn't instill in him the need to conform to syntactic rules.

Finster

16th February 2010, 11:08 AM

alfaniner

16th February 2010, 12:54 PM

This may be sacrilege but...
Phil Plait's Death From the Skies.
Now, I love seeing and hearing Phil talk, and I visit his blog almost every day. But this book I've kept in the car for reading during lunch hours and such, and after a long time I feel like I am slogging to get through it. Maybe after seeing similar scenarios done up with elaborate SFX on the Science Channel and such, it is more difficult to just read about them.

SusanB-M1

17th February 2010, 12:18 AM

Yes, I've had a few tussles with that one myself. One day I'll get through it all.

I tried to like Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" but it was as dry as a boot, and somewhat depressing too. I guess I'm just not cut out for stoicism.
About twenty years ago Penguin brought out a set of 100 mini books, amongst which was Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. Just the right size (about 6 inches square and, oh, about 100 pages!

Spindrift

17th February 2010, 08:30 PM

I finished Atlas Shrugged only because I was trapped in the delivery room with my pregnant non-dilating wife for 13 hours. It was our first child and she wouldn't let me leave. Thank FSM there was a bathroom in there. As someone else said if Rand had a good editor it could have been a really good read, the basic story itself was intriguing even though I think the whole Objectivism stuff is hooey.

A book I could never finish was Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Over my head.

In high school we had to read Ethan Frome and I simply could not get anywhere with it. A friend gave me a 5 minute synopsis before we walked into the test on it and I managed to creatively write my way to a B+ on a book I didn't read.

JoeTheJuggler

17th February 2010, 08:45 PM

I think I told this story on this forum once before. I won an essay contest as an undergrad, and part of the prize was the right to take a graduate seminar (while still an undergrad). It was a seminar in epic literature. At one point, each of us chose an epic to do a report on.

I chose Orlando Furioso--a massively epic epic.

I knew there were prose translations, but I really wanted to try to read the Harrington translation. It was the only one in the school library. I was tickled that the book which was printed in the late 19th century had never been read all the way through. (The last time it was checked it out of the library was something like 1940.) I knew this because most of the pages were still connected.

The translation, done in Elizabethan times, preserves the ottavo rima, and is extremely unpleasant to read.

Unfortunately, I got a nasty case of the flu right when I started trying to read it. I was feverish, and that made for a strange experience. The first scene in the story describes a maiden chained to a roc about to be killed by a monster (an orc or dragon or whatever). She is rescued by a knight, who then decides he deserves a reward, and intends to rape her. However, it takes him so long to get out of his full armor, that she sneaks off.

So. . .imagine that scene played out over and over in feverish dreams!

When I got better, I gave up on that translation and read a modern prose translation. (It's actually a fun book to read.)

As far as I know, that old book still sits unread in the library.

SusanB-M1

17th February 2010, 10:25 PM

Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge by A C Grayling
I heard this talked about on the radio last year so bought a copy. My Wednesday reader has read the Introduction and most of the first section (about Russell) and dipped into a paragraph here and there, but we have, I regret to say, given up! Even after listening to some sentences several times, I really couldn't make out what he was talking about. Anybody read it?

sackett

18th February 2010, 07:15 PM

Gone With the Wind. I was 16. At the fortieth "Lan' sakes, Miz Scollet!" I flung it across the room and never retrieved it. Maybe the dog ate it.

ElMondoHummus

18th February 2010, 08:12 PM

angrysoba

21st February 2010, 07:08 PM

Whoever said, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, I can't agree more. I never managed to read the whole thing but spent months trying to understand what he was talking about using secondary texts written by authors who also seemed to be at a bit of a loss. I bought his Prolegomena later as it is supposed to be a clearer exposition of some of his main ideas but never read it as I decided life was too short.

His Groundwork for a Moral Framework - I think it's called - is actually very clear and well-written. I think the Critique needed a good editor.

Similarly, Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations are pretty nightmarish and again, there seems to be no real consensus about what he was talking about most of the time.

Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea was a great book, but like the poster before wrote, it was difficult and I probably would have benefitted more if I'd been familiar with more Gould and Chomsky too.

Also, I have more books by Michel Foucault than any other author I've never read. I say, "never read" because I've never managed to get through the whole of one of his books. I find him to be deliberately obscure and irritating. I once bought the "Foucault Reader" and kept falling asleep trying to read the opening chapters. Figuring that I could only do his writing justice if I read one his entire works from beginning to end I picked up I tried again with Discipline and Punish but couldn't get much further than about 20 or 30 pages.

Like a few other people here, I really couldn't get into Satanic Verses. I was bed-ridden in hospital and had to give up after a few days. I think the Ayatollah probably over-reacted to it but it was almost unreadable!

Polaris

1st March 2010, 05:23 PM

Joseph Ellis' Founding Brothers. I forced my way through this one a few years ago only because it was short (304 pages). I admit that the Revolutionary era isn't my favorite topic, but if a book on the subject can win a Pulitzer Prize while remaining dry as a sandbox then I'm willing to give up hope.

Soapy Sam

3rd March 2010, 01:14 AM

I have yet to finish a Dickens novel.
I just want a panzer division to appear and shoot everybody to lighten the whole mess up.

Technically, the same ones others have mentioned- I was fascinated by GEB, but know I missed much of what Hofstadter was trying to say. Penrose's "Emperor's New Mind" baffled me even more. I still have no idea where I stand on AI, but arguing with Pixymisa is a damn sight more informative than I found either book.
Sometimes the answer with complex ideas is to run them through a smarter brain first.
The problem is that you are then likely to accept the smarter brain's conclusions unless you go very cautiously.

dogjones

3rd March 2010, 11:58 AM

Hmm. Toss-up between Spinoza's Ethics and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I had the help of lecturers and seminar tutors with those though.

Didactylos

3rd March 2010, 12:23 PM

The second book that came to mind was Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I loved his Snow Crash and thought I'd give another one of his a try, but it jumped around all over the place, introducing too many characters for me to keep up with, so I gave up. I must try it again, though, because I have a feeling it would be worth it in the end.

To me, Cryptonomicon is the hardest book NOT to read. Time and again, I'll buy a new book or fixin' to watch a DVD, but the insidious power of this book will grab me, and I will curl up in a chair rereading a favorite chapter. Just one. I can give this up any time I want. Oh, end of chapter, I'll just check out what happens at a random page. Hey, I remember what happens next, I'll read on just to be sure ...

I am specially fond of Shaftoes adventures in Italy and on the atlantic, but then there's also the zen of eating Captn Crunch, the boilerplate IT-startup manifesto, dividing heirloom in a family of engineers and mathematicians, the Mary *********** campaign of '44 .. the list is endless.

Sorry, that was not just off-topic but anti-topic. Ehrrmmm. The hardest book to read I actually finished must be "System of the World", but all of The Baroque Cycle was a tough slog. I read about halfway through Quicksilver and bogged down for some reason. Both the Waterhouse and Shaftoe/Elisa threads lost my interest. Took it up some years later, zipped through the rest of it, and Confusion. Bought System of the World as soon as it was in paperback. Had the hardest time getting through, and really only finished it out of a stubborn sense of duty.

BaaBaa

3rd March 2010, 02:48 PM

JZ Knights' autobiography...

...it did make good tinder for the wood stove, however.

dakotajudo

7th March 2010, 04:39 PM

This,
On The Origin of Species was rough for me. the difficulty was the "flowery" language of the time more than the content. he goes on and on and on,
this,
.
I picked up Gould's "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" on June 7, 2002... (I put the purchase dates on most books)., and this,
Nobody's mentioned Foucault's Pendulum yet?

'cause Gould seems to be borrowing a lot of his style from Darwin, and Eco is closest I've read to this magnum opus (no, magnum-***********-opus).

Loved Gould's shorter works, though.

I don't care much for adverbs and adjectives when I'm reading science. Just the facts, ma'am. But Dickens, that's a different story.

TX50

8th March 2010, 03:45 AM

About twenty years ago Penguin brought out a set of 100 mini books, amongst which was Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. Just the right size (about 6 inches square and, oh, about 100 pages!

In Greek?

Angus McPresley

8th March 2010, 05:49 AM

It took three attempts for me to get through Joseph Heller's "Something Happened" - not because it was inaccessible in the slightest, but just because it's depressing as hell.

I'm still about 2/3 of the way through Crime and Punishment, but haven't touched it in two or three years. It's in the bookshelf with the bookmark still in place.

Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" is a science book that defeated me, despite having studied computer science and math, and being a physics dilettante.

headscratcher4

8th March 2010, 12:42 PM

Foucalt's Pendulum was a slog...I thought Ada by Nabokov pretty hard going as well...not to mention Proust's Rememberance of Things Past.

But the worst are political tracts...especially the Communists...Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin are all incredible bores. I seriously doubt that anyone ever really reads them.

Doctor Evil

8th March 2010, 12:45 PM

Nobody's mentioned Foucault's Pendulum yet? The book who's author admitted that he made the start difficult to read because he wanted the reader to expend some effort as well as the author? Well, that's my contribution.

It is one of the hardest books I have heard. Very interesting one, but it takes an effort to read.

jadebox

8th March 2010, 02:38 PM

I started to read Catch 22 several times but didn't get far into it. I wish I was able to figure how to make a joke about I wasn't able to read it because of some "Catch 22," but I just couldn't "get into" it. It stills seems like the kind of novel I would enjoy, though.

I gave up on Dune after discovering that you have to keep looking up stuff in the glossary.

Even though I love many of the adaptations and follow-ons of the King Arthur stories, I've never made it far into Le Morte. I just couldn't handle the medieval English.

The Silmarillion also defeated me. I couldn't get more than a few pages into it before I felt like I was swimming upstream through molasses.

-- Roger

tyr_13

8th March 2010, 02:59 PM

Helen

9th March 2010, 03:00 AM

This is probably going to make me persona non grata to the Australians here (seems more or less everyone in here is Australian sometimes), and bring down the wrath of a few assorted Egyptian gods, but I have tried to read Patrick White, and it seems I can't. Usually, I struggle my way through most books, on the principle that it is good for your soul to suffer sometimes. Besides, the relief once you're done and can move on to something completely frivolous makes it worth it. But not Patrick White. I can't even remember the title of the book. There was a lot of desert in it. A LOT.

Does anyone have any favourite Patrick White to recommend? Preferably with small to moderate amounts of desert. I would like to give it one more try.

quadraginta

9th March 2010, 03:32 AM

Helen

9th March 2010, 05:34 AM

Any other continent, unless you count frozen wasteland as desert. :)

I don't call frozen wasteland a desert. I call it home.

(Yes, winter in Sweden this year is uncommonly cold and long...)

alfaniner

23rd March 2010, 07:58 AM

Gah. Just finished Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain by Isaac Asimov. It was in my garage sale stack and now I remember why. (I thought it was a different story). 140 pages of people arguing, then they get shrunk and argue some more. Each person has a single defining character trait, if that. The scientific explanations, while undoubtedly accurate, were tedious and constantly explained to the "cabbagehead" of the group. Memes were used often enough to be irritating ("bad old days", "good new days").

Between this one and the later Foundation books it reminded me that I don't care ever to read an Asimov book again, unless it's one of the Black Widowers or some such.

BaaBaa

23rd March 2010, 05:57 PM

It took me almost twenty years to finish 'Immortality', by Milan Kundera and I have to say that beyond the first scene ,which inspires the rest of the story, it was dry as toast. The only part that I found any interest in was a scene in which one of the characters is driving somewhere to kill herself and ends up dying in an auto accident.

I can't imagine how that image never ended up in the Alanis Morrisette songbook...

Simon39759

23rd March 2010, 06:10 PM

I can't imagine how that image never ended up in the Alanis Morrisette songbook...

Too cheerful?

eddyjoke

24th March 2010, 05:22 PM

I've been meaning to read Gulag Archipelago for a while but I guess I'm also having a hard time going and picking it up.

Also, anything by Tolstoy I generally love but sometimes its hard to wade through.

Complexity

6th April 2010, 07:12 PM

Ulysses is the hardest book I ever finished. Finnegan's Wake was inpenetrable. Absalom, Absalom was very difficult.

Best advice I've heard on how to read Finnegan's Wake is to read it out loud, exactly as written. Turn off the part of your brain that tries to make visual sense of the written words.

Turns out you'll be reading with a wonderful Irish accent and will be saming some very funny things. Joyce worked hard for this effect.

Orphia Nay

7th April 2010, 02:06 AM

There is this book called Hog about a professional rapist, written after the author had a conversation in a bar with one. It's hard to read for a different reason than most listed here. I advise avoiding it.

For similar reasons, I advise avoiding Hubert Selby's "The Room". It's about a horrible man in prison, and it describes his sadistic fantasises over what he'd like to do to the people that put him in prison. It's truly revolting.

It's a dilemma to me whether to destroy the book, which goes against my principles, or sell/donate it to a used book seller, which would then mean its horrors would be passed on. :boggled:

cienaños

7th April 2010, 03:03 AM

In college, after about one semester of intense study, I learned how to approach Shakespeare. But once you're in, there's nothing that compares. Not for me at least.

Another one (I have to revisit) is Marquez' 100 Years of Solitude. My first have at it, also in college, I just know I missed so much stuff. Cool thread. I like learning about new literature. Peace Love bookworms!

Oystein

8th April 2010, 12:31 AM

Thomas Mann's "Joseph und seine Brüder" (Joseph and his Brothers) is 4 volumes, 2800 pages of long winding sentences full and ripe with deep and fascinating philosophy and contemplation. I thoroughly enjoyed maybe half of it, but gave up somewhere in volume 3.

I gave up "Ulysses" even faster, after maybe 100 pages, because I was given a German translation which I found disappointing. I gave up at a point where I felt there must have been a pun in the English original, which did not translate recognizably. Which later lead to one of the few quasi-religious experiences in my life: Some months or so later, I visited a friend in Normandy, France, where I read about Marcel Proust, a Normande author said to write in a style similar to Joyce. I commented to my friend about the supposed pun that made me give up the Ulysses translation, and he said well, we can look it up, here's the English... So he plucks his copy from the shelf, and he opens it at a page where, coincidentally, a letter was stuck which I had written to him many years ago, and yes, it was the exact page we were looking for, and yes, it was a nifty pun! :D

Salman Rushdie's "The Ground beneath her Feet" is a tough read for two reasons: One of course is Rushdie's brilliant and educated language. The other: 2/3rds through the book, it is a wonderful, fascinating story, high flying imagination, outrageous portrait of exceptional characters, and then ... he starts deperately looking for an end and the remainder of the book becomes an illogical, long-winded effort. I found the same climax-anti-climax weakness also in his "Fury".

An absolutely impossible read is the "Einigungsvertrag" (Contract of Unification) between East and West Germany in 1990, which attempted, on more than 500 pages, to smooth differences of administration of a zillion little things, from required qualifications for driving schools to the proper names for medical equipment to hygenic treatment of meat and poultry. It is basically a long list of how the wordings existing laws and regulations in both countries shall be changed. I guess many legal texts theses days are of this tedious nature - I won't touch any of that again :rolleyes:

I sometimes engage in disussions with neonazis on a German social network forum aimed at youths, basically to expose them and drive them away. Mostly, these people are a dumb as cliché would have them, but I ran into two who were well-versed and apparently also well-read. Each recommended a book to me by neonazi authors, one on race, the other on "western values". Both were tough reads because they contained hardly a single paragraph that did not merit annotations. The race-book was simply factually wrong on pretty much everything. The values-book however was sinister: It argued for the abolishment of individual rights (to everything from free speech to life and dignity) and in favor of "Volk's rights". The author (Jürgen Schwab) is actually quite influential with the higher-ups of the neo-nazi party NPD which has MPs in a couple of German state parliaments, and my discussion partner (Michael Schäfer) has in the meantime become the head of the NPD's youth organization, JN.

Tacita

9th April 2010, 04:56 PM

I found Confluence by Paul J. McCauley to be pretty hard to get through (it was the compilation of the entire story, which I think is three books). I didn't finish it because every other word was one I didn't know (and I have a degree in English). At the point where I stopped, it just seemed like the plot was going absolutely nowhere, although according to online reviews it's apparently pretty good. But the whole setup is that the main character is a Marty Stu.

I also couldn't finish Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. I read and read and looked up the plot online, and read some more, and the actual plot never showed up. I'm not reading more to finally get to the point. Also didn't appreciate the vivisection of a dog without anesthetic described in harrowing detail.

Snowcrash by the same author wasn't bad though.

Complexity

9th April 2010, 08:14 PM

Must think about books in other genres, but the only science fiction book that I ever started repeatedly without finishing was Gravity's Rainbow.

No idea why.

funk de fino

11th April 2010, 05:38 PM

Hmm, hardest book I ever read...it took me two tries to get through the first Lord of the Rings when I first picked it up at about age 13 or 14 because it was so long and nothing happened for so long.

Not the hardest book I ever read but exactly the same thing happened to me with this book. My English teacher knew I was into SF and fantasy stuff and gave me this. Couldnt get through the first part at all.

Only went back to it prior to the release of the films and loved them all.

Hardest for me would be the later Dune books. So very crap compared to the original but I kept reading hoping they would come good.

Orphia Nay

13th April 2010, 02:02 AM

Not the hardest book I ever read but exactly the same thing happened to me with this book. [...] Couldnt get through the first part at all.

Only went back to it prior to the release of the films and loved them all.

Ditto. I gave up reading the first book half way through when I was 18, because it just seemed to drag on and on.

I read them all before the first film came out when I was 34, and devoured them. They weren't bad for Fantasy. ;)

Soapy Sam

13th April 2010, 04:05 AM

Interesting that some folk report finding a book impenetrable at first go, but easy later.
I didn't finish "The Silmarilion" first time around and flagged it in memory as unreadable, but recently , checking a comment by Lord Muck o' Gentry about the ancestry of Aragorn, I picked it up and read it in a day, with considerable enjoyment.

So it's not just the book but the reader, as I'm sure we all know.

Hutch

13th April 2010, 06:55 PM

I tried reading Mein Kampf in High School, at a time when I was reading and finishing almost 3-4 books a week. But that one broke me, I slogged about 2/3 of the way through it and gave up, defeated not by the horrible politics (which is why I picked it up in the first place, to see what made him tick) but buried under the sum total of words....

Darth Rotor

14th April 2010, 11:43 AM

Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.

First time through, yes. It was obscure.

I waited a week. Read it again. It began to make more sense. Senior Year in High School.

Tried to read Count of Monte Cristo at age 11. Halfway through lost interest. Finished it years later. Lots of words, OK story.

DR

Checkmite

14th April 2010, 11:51 AM

Sun Myung Moon's Divine Principle. Give it a try.

RhodyDave

14th April 2010, 12:04 PM

It's interesting seeing some of the books listed. I have read or attempted to read a number of the books previously mentioned, with varying degrees of success;

Cryptonomicon - nope, gave up about 1/3 in.
Blood Meridian - I liked this a lot actually.
Ulysses - I think I've tried this 4 times over the last 20 years. I can't do it...
Lord Of The Rings - Love it, read it 3 times so far.

Now for my own -

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking - I want to like this, and to actually finish it someday, but man, something about it puts me off.

The Number of The Beast - Heinlein - probably the book I despise most of all books I've ever plowed through to the bitter end. Wow, do I hate this book. Terrible writing, awful characters, boring, repetitive, tortuous...

Brown

14th April 2010, 12:25 PM

I've tried looking at a number of books like the Book of Mormon, Dianetics, and stuff by Billy Graham and CS Lewis. In every case, I was able to weather the first few assaults on my intelligence, but after a while, I found myself forced to conclude that the contents of the publications were utter nonsense.

Yes, I include CS Lewis as one of those authors who insults the intelligence of his readers. How he got the reputation of being a religious intellectual is a mystery to me.

I cannot seem to enjoy anything by Dickens (although I wonder if I should try again). Jane Austen likewise bored me silly. But the one who took the cake was an author whose name I have forgotten. The title of the story I've forgotten as well. But if need be, I know that I still have this "work" somewhere on my bookshelf and I can find it. In this story, literally nothing happens. A man is standing in a dark room, thinking. That's it. He doesn't do anything, he doesn't go anywhere, and none of this thoughts make any sense. There is no point to the story, no moral, no plot, no narrative, no resolution. And yet the tale drags on for page after page after page after page ....

The closest thing that I can think of to this story is in the works of Rabelais, in which Gargantua (I think) acts as a judge in a dispute between two nobles: Lord Kissarse and Lord Suckpoop (as they are identified in the Thomas Putnam translation). The judges who have previously heard the case say that they cannot make head nor tail of it, and so they ask Gargantua to hear the case.

Lord Kissarse then lays out his case in detail. It is totally incomprehensible, and it goes on for page after page after page. Gargantua interrupts periodically saying things like, "Yes, yes, I understand completely. Please continue." Eventually Lord Suckpoop tells his side of the story, and it too is page after page of incomprehensibility. Each clause makes sense on its own, but together, they add up to nonsense. After both lords plead their cases, Gargantua gives his decision, and it too is page after page of incomprehensible nonsense.

But at least Rabelais (unlike the other un-remembered author I mentioned) actually goes somewhere with his story! At least Rabelais has a punch line of sorts. After Gargantua finishes giving his ruling. Lords Kissarse and Suckpoop agree that the ruling was incredibly wise, and they walk away as fast friends. It's a long way to go for that punch line, but at least there is SOME redeedming value in Rabelais's tale.

The True Scotsman

15th April 2010, 04:32 PM

"The Wealth of Nations" -Some parts are rather boring and at times Adam Smith can be hard to follow; also it's (at least my edition was) over 1200 pages.

"Leviathan" -Thomas Hobbes is a pretty clear thinker and writer, but the book is written in 17th century English.

NotJesus

15th April 2010, 04:52 PM

BardKesnit

17th April 2010, 12:56 PM

Red Badge of Courage. I ended up having to read it twice in high school, and I felt like I was being tortured.

Anything by Jane Austin or the Bronte sisters. Reading their books puts me in sugar shock (and I'm not diabetic).

Skeptic

18th April 2010, 03:29 PM

Gravity's Rainbow was very hard, but boy, was it worth it. That Pynchon still hasn't won the Nobel while all kinds of mediocrities who aren't fit to tie his shoes did is a mystery to me.

StrangeLoop

30th April 2010, 06:47 PM

Tackling Kant's Critique of Pure Reason unaided is like trekking into a syntactical Sahara.

CORed

1st May 2010, 07:11 PM

I have been reading 'Gravitys Rainbow' for almost 5 years...I don't know if I'll ever complete it.

I've never read "Gravity's Rainbow", but Pynchon's "V" was the first book that came to mind when I saw the thread. I managed to get all the way through it, and I was glad I did. I was almost to the end of it when I finally realized how it all fit together.

Nursedan

1st May 2010, 07:59 PM

It's my understanding that Gravity's Rainbow was given good reviews when it was released, but upon further questioning it turned out that some of the reviewers hadn't actually finished it!

I did try to read that book and got about 200 pages in, and I couldn't tell you today what it is about on any level at all.

Atlas Shrugged is, in my mind, as perfect as a book can be, and reading it was time consuming, but well worth it. The book does have passages that deviate from the story as a whole, but if you allow yourself to be immersed in the world the book contains, it doesn't matter and it doesn't feel like a chore to read it.

Another book I tried to read but didn't finish was a biography on Cleopatra. Why I chose that 500 page book for a 9th grade book report is beyond me.

Skeptic

2nd May 2010, 09:07 AM

Gravity's Rainbow -- very hard, but worth it.
Ulysses -- very hard, but worth it.
Finnegans Wake -- very, very hard, not worth it. The whole book is a private joke.

HonestConman

3rd May 2010, 07:43 PM

The Secret.

funk de fino

4th May 2010, 01:26 AM

The Secret.

C'mon then, spit it out?

W.D.Clinger

4th May 2010, 09:03 AM

It's my understanding that Gravity's Rainbow was given good reviews when it was released, but upon further questioning it turned out that some of the reviewers hadn't actually finished it!

I did try to read that book and got about 200 pages in, and I couldn't tell you today what it is about on any level at all.
When I finished Gravity's Rainbow, I sat for a few minutes pondering whether it would make more sense on a second reading. My conclusion? Probably, but it hadn't been worth the first reading so I wasn't going to give it a second. I also resolved to give up earlier when reading bad novels, even if they be famous or widely praised.

Atlas Shrugged
I started that one shortly after Gravity's Rainbow, so I never finished it.

Aurelian

4th May 2010, 11:51 AM

Absalom, Absalom...oh the sorrow.

Dragonrock

4th May 2010, 12:10 PM

Anything by Shakespeare. I know it's the peak of writing, but to me it was torture. The only ones I've managed to finish were R&J and Hamlet.

I have ADD so reading them required that I read a line, pause for a moment to translate it into sensible english, read it again to make sure I got it right, repeat with next line. Doing that for long paragraphs was difficult as it took so long that I would get distracted and forget the point of the paragraph, thus requiring me to start over. It would take me hours to read a couple pages.

Now they have these fancy books that have Shakespeare's text on the left hand page, then the same thing in plain english on the right hand page. Basically a line by line translation for idiots like me.

Yogzotot

10th May 2010, 02:47 PM

Anything by Umberto Eco. Amazing books, but he just loves to show off how many languages he speaks, and most of the time there is no translation provided.

Myriad

16th May 2010, 03:44 PM

Sex by Madonna was the hardest book I've ever read. It had a steel cover.

Respectfully,
Myriad

marplots

16th May 2010, 09:48 PM

"Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking", 1975. Buckminster Fuller.

By far!

jwalker1960

17th May 2010, 10:14 AM

Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Harding. I had to read it for a college course I was taking. It was hard to read because it was so much a book of it's place and time, which was 19th century England. I had to read several other of his books for the course and they got easier because I became accustomed to their settings. I suppose it works the same way for reading Shakespeare or Chaucer. You just need to get used to the style.

BaaBaa

22nd May 2010, 05:06 PM

Hardest for me would be the later Dune books. So very crap compared to the original but I kept reading hoping they would come good.

I'll buy that for a dollar-the first book is wicked awesome, the next slightly less so and onward.

The worst has to be the various 'House' books, although I found that Baron Harkonnen being cursed (for want of a better term) by a Bene Gesserit into becoming, from a handsome athletic rakish bastard to a big fat piewagon of a bastard to be rather amusing. So, mentally, he looks like Hermann Goering to me now...

John Jones

22nd May 2010, 06:52 PM

I can't remember the title, but it was a textbook on quantum mechanics.

BaaBaa

23rd May 2010, 06:15 AM

Are you sure?

steph

5th June 2010, 02:04 AM

I cant seem to remember the author but the name was "the last witchfinder" it was about England back when they were going nuts with the witchhunts (right before they brought it to america) but the girls dad was a witchfinder who would torture and mutilate women until they admitted that they were witches or he killed them. Even with that kind of intrigueing (i didnt spell that right did i? how do you spell it?) plot i still couldnt get into it. It was written in someone's bad interperetation of old english (please just ignore the spelling now, my vocabulary is shot at 4 am).

wow that post was a bit longer then i had anticipated....