Most Difficult Book You've Ever Read?

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Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey.

Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe...yikes.

The Silmarillion - you really had to be in Tolkien-Mode to appreciate it.

After reading it I was so "in-Tolkien mode" that I wrote Goldilocks and the Three Bears Tolkien style...

If you're a JRR fan, you might find it funny - and even perhaps if you're not.

http://groups.msn.com/ThePenguinKnights ... bears.msnw

Tolkien is difficult because of the amount of detail in his books, IMO. I mean, he constructed a whole world with thousands of years worth of history, mythology and a few semi-elaborate languages. It's dense.

LOL - I loved your parody!

catch-22 took me a while because of the way it was written(I had to read it twice to understand it.) but it was a funny book.

I tried to read Catch-22 but couldn't get into it. You're a brave soul.

Jan Eyre? Couldn't get through the first 10 pages.

Reading Middlemarch was a bit like giving birth. It was a long and arduous process throughout which I had to be told to "push. . .PUSH!" while I was screaming "Oh somebody make it stop! Anesthesia! Anesthesia!"

Probably Atlas Shrugged, it was very tedious, very long winded, never did get to finish it. I did finish Dhalgren a science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany, one of the most convoluted books I have ever read.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhalgren

Last edited by spudnik on 16 Mar 2008, 12:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

I loved Atlas Shrugged! It was nonstop unintentional hilarity from start to finish! It's the 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' of novels: So bad it's GREAT!

I should look for another copy, the last one I had fell into the bathtub

Lenin is a sure cure for insomnia...
I'm glad to see someone finished Dahlgren...I thought it was about a cannon...
I read Atlas Shrugged...can't remember a thing about it.
Read the Silmarillion...sort of a convoluted Cook's tour of Middle Earth. Only to say that I had read it..

Tried reading Mein Kampf once....once... got 700 pages into it, and gave it up. He should have died just because he wrote it...the things people do when in prison...

When I first went to Uni, I got it into my head that this was a must-read. Took me ages to read it, and I never did pick up on the parallels to the classic Ulysses. Fascinating, though. I remember rather early on the story is following one character who goes into a pub, but then switches to following another character who leaves the pub. I stopped, backtracked to make sure I was reading it correctly, and thought WTH?

Okayy... literature rant:

For the guy who said there was too much description in the Wheel of Time series... try Terry Pratchett - fantasy written by someone who might as well be an aspie!

Umm... Harry Potter. Well. I'm sorry... I really am. The whole "bespectacled kiddie wizard" idea just makes me cringe from the beginning. I can't see how the baddies are bad for bullying him - he deserves it for being an awful character in an awful story. If I could descend far enoughinto insanity to actually read the books, I'd find myself skipping through to find the "Harry gets bullied" scenes just the same as someone might flick through Gladiator to find the action scenes.

ANWAY! I must now apologies for being an awfully un-accepting reader.

Hardest thing I've ever read would be Lord of the Rings because it is just page-after-goddamn-page of useless description. If you need that much description, you shouldn't be reading a book! Find a TV - it's easier.

Jealousy and In the Labyrinth by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Modernism to the 100th degree.

Ulysses was tough, but I got through it. Finnegans Wake would be the toughest I read hands down, but I never got past more than a dozen pages. It's unreadable.

Lord of the Rings was pretty easy. I did get tired of some of the drawn out descriptions and the poems/songs, but I never wanted to throw the book through a window or put it down for a really really long time.

Harry Potter was also easy, too easy. If it weren't I could never have read one of her books within a day, reading for about 8 hours straight.

And Terry Pratchett is easy. I really don't think there is too much description in his Discworld books at all. I'm really enjoying them.

But whatever.

The most difficult book for me to read, that I want to try to read again...someday, is Gardens of the Moon: A Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson.