What's the most difficult book you've ever read, and how did you manage to stick through it?

Question

Right now I'm chipping away at Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, and it's very rewarding, but its pure abstractness and verbosity might get the better of me.

Answer 1

Congrats on tackling Pynchon.



One book that I've tried reading on and off for the last ten years is Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Talk about abstract and verbose!!! After reading 'A Portrait..' and 'Ulysses,' and gaining a fair understanding of them, I thought Finnegans Wake would be a breeze. Then I broke out in hysterical laughter after my first attempt to get through it. I gave serious thought to breaking out the smelling salts and the Ouija board, thinking maybe Joyce himself would contact me from beyond the grave and explain it to me. Ten years later, however, I have gained a greater appreciation for the novel but it's still as elusive and mind-boggling as ever.

Answer 2

Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. Sad to say, I got several hundred pages into it and gave up. Way over my head.



As far as the most difficult book I've ever made it through. Either the Silmarillion, or perhaps James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Answer 3

The most DIFFICULT book I've ever read was El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (more popularly known as Dox Quixote). Imagine reading a Shakespeare play when your command of English is moderate at best. That's what reading that book was like for me, as my Spanish is good but not perfect, and this was written hundreds of years ago. The idioms, usage, and general flow of the book were almost impossible. I had to keep a dictionary next to me, and I swear I read it as much as the book itself. I stuck with it because a teacher I greatly admired told me that my education was incomplete unless I had read this, and to truly appreciate the genius I needed to read it in the original Spanish. Turns out he was wrong, the translations I've read were much more worthwhile.



A Clockwork Orange is another difficult read, simply becuase it's written in the slang of the time. There are some sentences that you simply never really understand, even with the glossary at the end of the book. That one's easy to get through, however, because it's a good, fast moving story.



If you mean the book that's the toughest to get through I'd say Crime and Punishment. Talk about tedious. Nothing ever happens! Okay, Raskalnikov feels guilty, I get it! Feeling guilty sucks! It's not that hard for a Catholic to empathize with! I managed to stick through that book because the literature course I was taking had a weekly quiz on what was happening in the book. But I never took a course from that professor again.



Edit-

Looks like one person's pain is another's pleasure! I know people that enjoyed Thomas Hardy, and one person right here enjoyed Crime and Punishment, and that just boggles my mind. But I read the Fountainhead in less than a week and was captivated the entire time. Same with Atlas Shrugged. There's no accounting for taste, I guess.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

The Count of Monte Cristo. Great book but it had a lot of subplots and characters. Some of the wording was difficult too. Plus it's long and I read it as an e-book. Something like 1471 pages.

Answer 6

Wicked. It was difficult in the writing. It was so long, and the type was so small. There were words I had never even heard of. It was just a difficult book to read. The story, however was very good.

Answer 7

the fountainhead, by ayn rand- because of toohey(sp?) as the bad guy, hating all art and contributing to a majority of people believing that benign and unimaginative people are the most beautiful. made me want to throw the book across the room. several rooms. several times. i got through it because, though i disagree with the absolute selfishness of howard roarke et al- the ideas in the book hit me. art belonging to the person, not the public. the public preferring comfort rather than originality rang true. i think we as a species would be nothing if we based our lives on conformity. but dealing with the tooheys in-between, our doubts, our beliefs...the status quo and our own status quo we pretend don't exist but are always part of our decisions...guess it made me think. simply put. haven't read yours, sounds a bit interesting. recommend or no-?

Answer 8

The hardest book for me to ever finish was "The Golden Compass" An older friend of mine introduced it to me in 4th grade, and I couldn't get past 20 pages. Then just this year I read it, I finished it but it was so boring and complex that I didn't even know what was going on by the end.

Answer 9

Heller's Catch-22.



I just can't do it. I've tried so many times - every summer I pick it up again, meaning to get through it. This is my fourth summer to try, and I'm going to attempt it again sometime soon. Maybe this'll be the year. I just can't follow it. At all.



I hate giving up on books, especially because I'm an English major and I feel like I need to read this. I flew through Crime and Punishment and LOVED it, so I feel like I should be able to get through Catch-22.



Someday, someday.

Answer 10

well, i'm just going into high school this year so i havent' read too many hard hard books although, for me, the scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorn was very hard. it was boring and old, which made it hard for me to understand. usually if i read a book that's too hardf i quit it, but i had to read that book, for an english project thing. The only thing that helped me get through it was just looking things up about it and, if you're stuck with a concept or just a random part in the book, look it up on wikipedia, it gives you a long summary of the book,. that's what helped me a lot.

Hope i could help! Good luck with your reading!

Answer 11

The Host by Stephenie Meyer. It's obviously thesaurus-ed. The first 200 pages were dull - worse than Twilight.



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Answer 12

Probably the Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. It was published after his death, so it's incomplete, and it doesn't read like a novel. It doesn't exactly stick to a coherent plot... and all the NAMES!! ARGH!! I tried reading it a few years ago, but failed miserably. I might try plowing through it again when I have time.

Answer 13

Wordsworth's 'Prelude.' It was assigned my senior year of college in a Romantics class, right after Byron's 'Don Juan.' 'Don Juan' is hilarious and sarcastic, and the 'Prelude'--is not. It was a task. I read it in little chunks, as that was pretty much the only thing I could do. Reading it in one straight shot would've been suicidal.

Answer 14

the summer after 7th grade, i think, i tried reading a tale of two cities. at age 13, i got bored after the first 20 pages or so, because the beginning was slow. now i want to try reading it again, and will probably find it more enjoyable

Answer 15

Twilight was hard for me to get through, but it wasn't hard in the sense that I had to think. I read Brave New World in about 6th grade and that was a challenge at the time.

Answer 16

Manchild in the Promised Land was a horrible book that I had to read. I simply could'nt. I skimmed the rest and called it a day.

Answer 17

Lenz by Buechner

it is a great book, which describes schizophrenia (it is the first one where this can be also seen in its language).

Answer 18

"Twilight" because it's so freaking shallow!

I read it because, well, I was pretty much the only one who hadn't read it, and I wanted to see what the big deal was.

I got through it by reading "Pride and Prejudice" at the same time (which, I might add, Stephanie Meyer, the author of Twilight, tried to copy Pride and Prejudice in Twilight. Needless to say, it didn't work so well).

:)

Answer 19

grapes of wrath.



ugh.



the only reason i finished it was because it HAD to.

it was for school.