Most Difficult Book You've Ever Read?

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Readers' Indigestion topic

I. Kant--very Kantegorical, anal, full of syn. Took me months to figure it out. I am a visual reader, and only of average ability, so it took longer. Years ago there was no internet to get other interpretations. We had Coles notes and few books written on how to understand him. I nit picked all 800 pages. Lately they have other learning sources such as Kant for Dummies. Now you can read a one sentence sum-up to get the gist, from WIKI. A real Brain gym, this guy. Full throttle workout.(':tired:')

I could name a dozen philosophers that are even more nebulous in the writing style of their thoughts. (':tired:')

Meh, I couldn't speed read if my life depended on it...

The Deathly Hallows took me about ten hours. Speed reading isn't my bag.

Feersum Endjinn by Ian M. Banks. I find Banks' work incomprehensible at the best of times, but Bascule's phonetic speech drove me half mad with frustration.

Example from the wikipedia article:

'Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agreed & that woz how we decided we otter go 2 c Mr Zoliparia in thi I-ball ov thi gargoyle Rosbrith.'

Imagine entire chapters of that.

You should read The Bridge (under the plain old Iain Banks name). I remember flicking Feersum Endjinn and thinking he pretty much did that style over again. (Partly as a consequence of that, I never did read Feersum Endjinn)

Incidentally I don't find Banks that difficult but The Bridge is probably his most "out there" novel, at least among those he actually got published.

Hey Odarp, check out

- The Wasp Factory
- The Bridge
- Use of Weapons

Has anyone read Joyce's Ulysses?

A while ago I wanted to give it a try. Never got round to it though.

The first couple of chapters of Ulysses I found fine, and beautifully-written, but after that it became impenetrable. I aim to get through it eventually, especially considering how much I like Joyce's style, but my telling people I am reading Ulysses these days is code for saying I'm not reading anything at all.

I read The Sound and the Fury earlier, and as people who read it would know it's divided into four parts. The first two I read over four weeks, the last two over four hours. Though I still didn't find it as difficult as I find Ulysses right now, especially given Joyce's odd tendency to slip into different languages.

One thing I've heard about Kant is that many German philosophy students buy the English translations because they find them easier to read than Kant's original (German) text.