Classics Without All the Class discussion
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What is the most difficult thing you have ever read?
The Sound and the Fury was a chore more than anything else but I am glad to have accomplished it with at least some understanding of what Faulkner was trying to relay.
Ulysses was by far the hardest book I've ever read. I tried reading it and gave up twice, then I heard a dramatization of it (like a reader's theater) on BBC. It loved it, and it was enough of a key to help me understand what was going on. I can totally see now why it is so highly regarded, and why Joyce is so revered.
Nancy wrote: "Ulysses was by far the hardest book I've ever read. I tried reading it and gave up twice, then I heard a dramatization of it (like a reader's theater) on BBC. It loved it, and it was enough of a ..."I was put off reading Ulysses after I saw someone calling James Joyce,a drunk Dostoevsky! :3
I'd have to say at this point that Anna Karenina is probably the hardest one I've read. Talk about plowing through a book! And I've never wanted to slap a character as much as I did Anna by the end of the book. Probably the second toughest would be The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
Amanda wrote: "I'd have to say at this point that Anna Karenina is probably the hardest one I've read. Talk about plowing through a book! And I've never wanted to slap a character as much as I did Anna by the e..."Anna Karenina might be one of the easiest books I've ever read.I was stunned by how easily readable it was and totally revelled in reading it.For me,every page was perfection! Sometimes just for pleasure I would re-read the pages I've already gone through.Reading this book is one of the best experiences I've ever had.
Maybe the Maude translation has something to do with it!
The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner was pretty difficult.I also tried reading Mrs Dalloway which I gave up on.I just found it such a bore.
I see so many people on here want to read Moby-Dick. Do it! I finished it last week, and a day has not gone by that I do not think about the story. The cetology/whaling chapters are more than encyclopedia entries. It is in these chapters that science meets philosophy. So great! I do recommend that you participate in a read-along. I did, and it motivated me to finish.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. The story itself's pretty engaging, but it's got a TON of footnotes throughout, as well as really long descriptions of things. Plus, have you seen the book? It's over 1000 pages. You could probably kill someone with it.
Jeane wrote: "Martin wrote: "Jeane wrote: "Shanea wrote: "This might be cheating. As a major fantasy fan, the fact that I fell asleep reading the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and never completed them has been held..."I'm still wrestling with the Sound and the Fury!
Michelle wrote: "The only book I have not been able to finish (yet!) is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. It just seemed to go on and on and on..."I tried to read Mann's Doctor Faustus a few years ago. I found it virtually impossible, the long involved discussions made me feel like I needed a music degree to understand it!
There is about a 150 page stretch in the middle of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee that seemed like Agee took a time out from what is really an incredible book and went off on a little mind trip. Unfortunately my brain stays on earth, so I could not follow him. I was very happy when he finally came back down and finished the book he started, the one that is beautifully written and earthly.
Doctor Zhivago was a tough one for me. My reading level wasn't up to at that point and the historical and political parts of it just went over my head. Plus Russian names are always a sticking point! and this was my first massive Russian book. I did end up finishing it and quite enjoyed myself, I just wasn't up to it yet.
Les Miserables and The Count of Monte Cristo are two of my favorite books, but they are both ridiculously long. Both were challenging to get through, but definitely worth the time and effort.
Naked Lunch and On the Road are the two books I have read that were extremely difficult. I am currently reading Visions of Cody, but I put it down a couple of months ago and haven't gotten back around to it. I need to finish..
Ulysses and Anna Karenina come to mind, but I might actually vote for Tristram Shandy—not that it’s hard, precisely, but I kept trying to force it to make sense! (Just as I want jazz to go somewhere already, stop wandering around.) The perils of having a copyeditorial mind, I suppose.
Abigail wrote: "Ulysses and Anna Karenina come to mind, but I might actually vote for Tristram Shandy—not that it’s hard, precisely, but I kept trying to force it to make sense! (Just as I want jaz..."Hmm,reading Anna Karenina was a sublime experience for me.I didn't find it hard at all.Maybe you didn't go for the Maudes translation?
That being said,Borges' Tlon,Uqbar & Orbis Tertius was very hard to get into,but Borges ended up being one of the influential persons in my life! And then,there is Camus' Myth of Sisyphus.I couldn't finish it in French! Maybe I will buy the English translation one day!
Kaiznow wrote: Hmm, reading Anna Karenina was a sublime experience for me . . .I think my problem was that I was twelve years old. I was really absorbed by the first half, and then started losing track of who some of the characters were and the lines of some of the subplots. Had no background in the historical or cultural setting, either.
Like most I'd have to say Ulysses, which I finished (admittedly with some skimming)and Finnegan's Wake, which I stopped after about five pages.Also, The Handmaiden's Tale. Still trying to get through it. Really depressing.
I find Dickens very difficult. I'm not sure why - he has a very pleasant prose style. So far I've only gotten through A Christmas Carol, which I loved. My goal for 2015 is to make it through a monster Dickens read!
I finished Dombey and Son and few days ago and once I managed to get going with it, it was a really good read. Not my favourite but definitely worth persevering with
First Night of Summer
And what I mean by difficult is the most challenging, disturbing yet captivating book I have read in a long time. :) A must read for crime mystery readers!!http://www.amazon.com/First-Night-Sum...
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WHEN TRAGEDY STRIKES, a father discovers that a journey of misfortune is sometimes the path to deliverance.
The quaint mountain town of Ruidoso, New Mexico, is the perfect place for Isaac Snow to raise his family. But when eight-year-old daughters, Caroline and Josie, commit an innocent act of heroism, media coverage attracts the wrong kind of attention. Soon, their life unravels, leading them to the crossroads of love and hate, forgiveness and retribution.
In the dark hours of a drizzly morning, Isaac, an ex-air force pilot, wakes to find a masked intruder cradling one of the twins in his arms. Before he can react, the man in black leaps through the nearest window, plummeting in a tangle of body parts and glass. Isaac charges in pursuit, but is suddenly faced with a new dilemma. Caroline is unconscious, lying facedown in the lawn, cuts from the shattered window saturating her pajamas. If he gives chase, his little girl will surely bleed to death.
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I would say Ulysses by James Joyce. It took me two months! But I also found Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte to be quite tedious and since I didn't enjoy the plot, writing style, or reading experience at all that one became quite difficult for me.
Yes, a lot of people find Wuthering Heights quite different to what they expect. The dialect bits don't help either.For me, it's anything by Dostoevsky. I can't seem to keep a grip on who all the characters are and what they're doing.
Thanks, Nancy, on the idea of hearing Ulysses performed. That might help. Because Ulysses was declared the most important book of the 20th century, (somewhere here on GR, maybe?) I feel that I must, somehow, MUST get through it. That and seeing a photo of Marilyn Monroe holding the book. I really hope she didn't come away from it thinking that she wasn't clever enough for literature in general.
I tried to read Ulysses, when I was around 12. Tried to read The Dubliners a couple years later. Neither worked. Haven't gone back... but I will. I'll crack that nut.And yes, I get the irony.
I tried Ulysses just last year but it was extremely difficult for me. I couldn't get through the the first 3 chapters! Also not having read Homer's Odyssey didn't help. But I'll read that this year and try Ulysses soon after.Hopefully! :P
On the other hand, Wuthering Heights is my favorite book. I found it extremely enjoyable and I just could completely take it all in.. Yes, it was a little gothic but I think it only added to my enjoyment of it. No, I'm not a sadist but the tragedy was just too sweet! Lol, maybe I'm just a romantic.
There's so many books to pick from but Middlemarch by George Elliot definitely comes to my mind immediately. Ah, pretty much anything by James Joyce.
Of the reads recently, I just could not get into at the mountains of madness and middlemarch. Just couldn't get into them. Hope to revisit and check out the discussions. I don't like to be beaten.
Team Of Rivals was the most difficult for me but I am glad I finished.
The Master and Margarita-Bulgakov. I have apsolutely no idea what I read. I googled it. Still no idea at all.
Pretty much anything by James Joyce and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Allie wrote: "I second Kathleen but I'll go farther and just include everything he's ever written!Moby-Dick; or, The Whale comes to mind...
I'm not a fan of Ernest Hemingway either. The ones I'v..."
I agree with Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. I had to read it for an English course in college over the Thanksgiving weekend. Needless to say, I skipped over a few sections. My husband loves it.
I recently bought moby dick from a charity shop despite everything I've heard about it. Hope to give it a go soon.
Dostoevsky...and not easy to spell eitheralex
The Brothers Karamozov was hard to get through some parts, not so much other parts, and quite long. I would say Henry James' The Turn of the Screw was the toughest to stick with overall (even though it's not especially long) because of his torturous sentence structures- sometimes I would read half a page and realize it was all one sentence with multiple commas, semicolons and dashes. This happens again and again. Made me long for a Hemingway! I have a copy of Moby Dick which many have mentioned, that I have not yet begun!
Alice wrote: "I would say Nadja by Breton because of its extra-long sentences and the fact that there is no real point to this novel(surrealism and all that jazz). But in English I would say Dickens is giving..."
Alice wrote: "I would say Nadja by Breton because of its extra-long sentences and the fact that there is no real point to this novel(surrealism and all that jazz).
But in English I would say Dickens is giving..."
There are a couple of BBC video productions of Bleak House that are both quite good, one older and another newer. Perhaps watching one of those would help you understand the story and characters better. I am just about to begin to read the book. The newer video has fancier cinematography but I liked them both.
I'm going to put a whole categories out there:- really abstract studies, texts and articles on theatre theory
- philosophical works (I had to take two courses of philosophy, even though none of my university majors had to anything with philosophy THAT closely)
As for a work of fiction, maybe Heart of Darkness... may I mind you I read that as a non-native speaker and I was tired when reading it :D.
House of Leaves is hard but worth it, Took me six months to read it, though, because I was so scared.
Without question, "The Faerie Queene" by Edmund Spenser. I haven't finished it yet. I can only hack away a canto at a time. Pretty much every word is the same as we would use now, but is spelled differently. I find myself checking the spellings rather than reading the story.
Christine wrote: "Heart of Darkness was absolute torture for me in college. I'm open to re-reading almost any book, but this is one I will never again pick up to read."I only read about twenty pages of it. I've read some 1000+ page books and I couldn't get through that little thing. I didn't finish "Moby Dick" either, so I decided I must not like boats. I'll try both again, some day, but for now, I have too much good stuff to waste my time with.
Dawn wrote, “I decided I must not like boats” . . .Haha, let me guess how you feel about “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”! I’m totally with you on all three.
I quit The Brothers Karamazov because I could not understand why I would care about the things that seemed like a big deal to the characters of the novel. I was happy to stop reading.
wings of a dove by henry james (yes, no caps is rebellion)
Lindsey wrote: "I would say my most difficult was North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell. It wasn't hard like Finnegan's Wake which is tied. It was more difficult for me in the sense that it had a lot of description..."North and South felt like a really long one for me as well. I still liked it, but I never enjoyed it, if that makes sense?
I just finished "One Hundred Years of Solitude"-oh my, my brain is so tired after that one! But, I still loved it go figure...
What helps me sometimes when I am struggling with a book is to change the medium. If I had tried to listen to "One Hundred Years..." on audible, I would have gone mad, but Simon Vance makes so many classics readable and enjoyable. And Faulkner, I just have to have the audible and print author to stay engaged and to keep up.
Classics Without All the Class
Books mentioned in this topic
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (other topics)One Hundred Years of Solitude (other topics)
The House of the Seven Gables (other topics)
Les Misérables (other topics)
The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso (other topics)
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It certainly is one of my favourites and I reckon that Possession is definitely one of the best of all time,as I haven't seen many books of such magnitude!