What is the most difficult thing you have ever read?

[Tracy]

Hmm probably tackling Lonesome Dove when I was in my early teens. Ambitious read but I loved it and went on to read most of the authors other books. I found the Kite Runner a tough read. Very visual and graphic violence stayed with me.

[[deleted user]]

i'd say "A Hundred Years of Slolitude" by Garcia Marquez, such a magnificent writer, great classic but hard to read!

[Robin]

I think Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I read it on holiday when I was 16 and it took all of my willpower to finish it. Even back then I just had to finish every book I started with. It was worth it though. A little more recent I read Midnights Children by Rushdie, which took a long time to finish as well. But it is such a rewarding feeling when you do finish one of those difficult books (at least for me)

[Freight]

Gravity's Rainbow was a no go after the first 100 pages for me. It didn't seem worth the effort in the end.

[Lothar]

Moby Dick is a pretty painful read. However, I keep beating myself up for not finishing The Count of Monte Cristo. I tried and tried. I made it about half way through and stopped with a scene in Paris. Just...well...meh!

[[deleted user]]

For me it has to be pretty much any Dostoevsky and Tolstoy books. Beside that, it Confession of An English Opium Eater - Thomas DeQuincey. I still read that book at times. The more I read, more I come closer to the new meanings.

[Eda]

Currently reading Moby-Dick and umm... I like it anyway :)

[[deleted user]]

Eda wrote: "Currently reading Moby-Dick and umm... I like it anyway :)"

This book is in my list from a long long time. Sigh,

[Eda]

Haha :) Difficult to read yet A-MA-ZING! Start as soon as possible

[George P.]

I still haven't started my copy of Moby D; I got a copy of Melville's novellas to try those 1st and see if I can read them. Struggling to read The Name of the Rose by Eco now. People say the 2nd half gets more interesting. I loved Heart of D & don't get why some don't. Loved Bleak House though it's very long.

[Powder River Rose]

Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner

just kill me.....

Rose

[Valerie]

George wrote: "I still haven't started my copy of Moby D; I got a copy of Melville's novellas to try those 1st and see if I can read them. Struggling to read The Name of the Rose by Eco now. People say the 2nd ha..."

I struggled with The Name of the Rose as well, which disappointed me because I have a friend who raved about it and thought it would be right up my alley! Somehow, I still rated it 3, but I won't read another Eco.

[Valerie]

Not surprisingly, the book I struggled with: "Gravity's Rainbow" is mentioned more than once here! I did finish it (and am glad I read it), but I can't tell you what it was about - ha, ha...!

[Travis]

I can't recall what I posted long ago but by far hardest is now The Divine Comedy even when read with a companion book to help there is a lot in this book. Good but ypu must work for it

[John]

For me, difficulty isn't established by language, dense terminology, or historical / contextual difficulties, it's simply this: Can it hold my attention? For that reason, the most difficult book I've ever read is Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." I've tried to read that thing three times since 2008 (because I recognize I'm in the minority), and have gotten to between 250 and 300 pages each time...but I just can't seem to keep the will to continue past that.

[Travis]

Difficult certainly is a fairly loose term for sure John

[LobsterQuadrille]

"Little Women" was a long and difficult read for me, not because the writing or plot was too complicated; I just kept losing interest in it. It took me months to finish the whole thing. "Poe: Poetry and Tales" was long and challenging to read too, but that was ultimately a more enjoyable reading experience for me.

I started reading Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" once, but gave up because the narrative was so incredibly confusing. Maybe I'll try it again some day; at least I will know what I'm getting into then!

[Terry ~ Huntress of Erudition]

Les Misérables
Les Miserables was wonderful, but overwhelming to me - all the themes going on, he wrote about everything under the sun...

[Alex]

darkness at noon by Arthur Koestler. Would like to re read after reading more about stalins show trials

[Eda]

Satre's "What is Literature?" as well.. It's so much philosophy instead of literature just because he studied philosophy :P

[Gaurav]

Conrad's Heart of Darkness--read two or three pages,and ruffled,yes I would say this.And from then(it was five or six months past) I never dared to pick up any of the other Conrad's work.
Nevertheless I would consider reading it afresh.

[Tee]

I read Heart of Darkness all the way through but struggled with it as well. It's a long winded one.

[Gaurav]

Kat wrote: "House of Leaves is hard but worth it, Took me six months to read it, though, because I was so scared."

Six months! I'm afraid how you'd have kept yourself reading it for such a enormous time.Ain't you bored or pretty tiresome?

[Gaurav]

Tanya-Marie wrote: "I read Heart of Darkness all the way through but struggled with it as well. It's a long winded one."

That's true! And maybe I should go for his short stories to make myself well aquainted with him.
Thank you Tanya!

[Glendapearl]

For me, without a doubt, it was Ulysses by James Joyce. I read it right after undergrad, before grad school, heard so much about it in lit classes, was determined to get through it and made myself do it over an entire summer, which is extremely slow reading for me.

I haven't picked it up since, but just now downloaded a pdf and browsed through it, and I'm wondering why I found it so extremely difficult! I think I'm going to try to read it again and see how it goes this time...

I really like this question, by the way, and find the different answers very interesting.

[John]

I have three books for this list. I could not finish reading them.
The Sound and the Fury
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22

[Jeff]

The Count of Monte Cristo unabridged or Les Miserables, both were a huge challenge and each of them took an entire summer to finish. Loved them.

[Jeff]

The Count of Monte Cristo unabridged or Les Miserables, both were a huge challenge and each of them took an entire summer to finish. Loved them.

[Alana]

Gaurav wrote: "Kat wrote: "House of Leaves is hard but worth it, Took me six months to read it, though, because I was so scared."

Six months! I'm afraid how you'd have kept yourself reading it for such a enormou..."

Took me that long to get through the last of the Song of Ice and Fire books, but that's hardly classic literature, so I give myself a pass on that one :)

[Beth]

To date, I would have to say I had the most trouble getting through Robinson Crusoe. I wanted to read it because it is one of the first novels, some claim it is THE first. I thought it would be a fun adventure story but I found it tedious and as so dated that I had trouble appreciating the writing. Robinson Crusoe was a jerk, I'm thinking even in the 1700s he might be annoyingly self centered. I finished the first book. I have no desire to read the "further adventures.". This not particularly hard to read but it WAS hard for me to endure.

[Benjamin]

The most difficult read in prose for me has to be 'Ulysses'. But I have'nt attempted 'Finnegan's Wake' which is supposedly even more highbrow. Haven't finished it yet, but every time I put it down to leave it for a couple of weeks I can't let myself pick up from where I left off. I insist for some neurotic reason that I need to refresh my memory of what has gone before and start all over again. In terms of Poetry I think Milton is the hardest just in terms of the frequency with which he uses references. So anybody without a dense Bible knowledge has to spend a lot of time double checking the significance of his references. I am talking about 'Paradise Lost' here. Though I've also got to say, that is why I love reading challenging texts because you just keep on learning. Then for Philosophy it is 'Being and Time' by Heidegger, but reading it brought me the closest I've ever come to experiencing revelation from a reading experience. And as for religious texts the hardest I've tried is the Bible. To properly gain an insight into the meaning of certain stories within the Bible I find it is best to take notes, deconstruct and thoroughly analyse even the most banal of passages. It is also the most challenging just in terms of how colourfully fantastic it is and the way in which it reveals the dark truth of human nature.

[Janet]

Probably the most difficult book I slogged through was Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Maybe if I had read it as part of a course it would have made more sense to me, but whatever it was trying to accomplish did not resonate with me.

[Gio]

Beth wrote: "To date, I would have to say I had the most trouble getting through Robinson Crusoe. I wanted to read it because it is one of the first novels, some claim it is THE first. I thought it would be a f..."

Robinson Crusoe, for the same reason you mentioned.

[Barbara]

Probably Moby Dick. I've always wanted to read Ulysses, but after reading some of these comments scares me, lol!!

[Abigail]

Life’s too short to waste it reading Ulysses, Barbara! The original (The Odyssey, I mean) is great, but Joyce’s book is flabby and self-indulgent and apparently written so that English majors would have an endless source of essay topics.

[Barbara]

Abigail wrote: "Life’s too short to waste it reading Ulysses, Barbara! The original (The Odyssey, I mean) is great, but Joyce’s book is flabby and self-indulgent and apparently written so that English majors would..."

Thank you SO MUCH for that review, Abigail!!!! Maybe I'll try and attack Heart of Darkness instead
! :-)

[Abigail]

Well, at least Heart of Darkness has some provocative themes. And it’s pretty short!

[Cindy]

The House of the Seven Gables By Nathaniel Hawthorne. It took me three tries but I finally finished it.

[Glendapearl]

Barbara wrote: "Abigail wrote: "Life’s too short to waste it reading Ulysses, Barbara! The original (The Odyssey, I mean) is great, but Joyce’s book is flabby and self-indulgent and apparently written so that Engl..."

Don't give up too fast, Barbara: like all great literature, Ulysses has its cheerleaders and its detractors. If you're at all curious about the book, it's a good idea to read it for yourself, then read a variety of opinions and reviews both pro and con, and make up your own mind. Here's an easy place to start:
http://classiclit.about.com/od/joycej...

[George P.]

Beth wrote: "To date, I would have to say I had the most trouble getting through Robinson Crusoe. I wanted to read it because it is one of the first novels, some claim it is THE first. I thought it would be a f..."
I thought R Crusoe had some boring parts, but not really hard to get through for me. For me: my 1st and LAST Henry James, The Turn of the Screw.

[Rob]

I enjoyed Defoe, and have also read Roxanna and the Journal of the plague year. I have tried several times since high school to get through Ulysses by Joyce. Never made it. At this point I have read so many digests, readers aides, and textual companions for the novel, that I know it's plot its course through the day, the characters, their adultery, their drinking holes, and who Joyce based the characters on as well as the resolution.
I think it odd I'm so familiar with a text I actually haven't read. It's embarrassing to admit you haven't read this text if you were an English major.

[Tia]

The most difficult for me so far would be Brave New World. I keep restarting it because I want to read it... But I'm not sure if the voice was off or if I just wasn't paying attention. Any one else feel the same?

[Rob]

Haven't read Brave New World, although I've read quite a bit of Huxley, I'm curious about it now. I'm reading A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess right now, and evidently Brave New World was one of the books that inspired it. Clockwork isn't easy to read either with its own invented language, but worth it.

[Josue]

I would mention Conversation in the cathedral. It took me 50 pages to get into the story. Anyway that's one of the best novels I've ever read. the complexity on the dialogues where several character talk at the same time, jumps time... Vargas Llosa remind me Faulkner.

[Pepperpots]

I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to read more classics having enjoyed Pride & Prejudice. He recommended Tom Sawyer and loaned me his copy. It took me months to read and I skimmed parts of the book. Such a chore for me.

[Goreti]

I've tried 2 major classics long ago.
Os Lusíadas, by Luís Vaz de Camões.
Divina Commedia, by Dante Alighieri

Couldn't Dinis.

[Goreti]

*finish them.

[Vavita]

One Hundred Years of Solitude was too long. I could not follow even though I tried to read it in Spanish which is my mother language

[Leo]

"Ulysses" by James Joyce is the hardest book I've completed because it jumps about in style near the end. But I loved the book, and found myself laughing my arse off once I grew accustomed to Joyce's style in parts. And saddened by others.

But I have to say that I am still finding Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" just bad, and have never found it worth getting past the first hundred or so pages.

"Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon is another one that takes some doing to read. It's like WW II on an acid trip. But I was a math major, and able to follow Pynchon's mathematical puns and allusions throughout, so was able to follow the book where many humanities-focused people would get lost.

But I found William Gaddis' "JR" the second hardest book I've ever finished. It's written in a "stream of dialog" style with neither dialog attribution nor action description. It takes a while to figure out who is who and what they are doing due to the style. But when you grow accustomed to what Gaddis is doing, the story is a true riot. Since it tells the story of a clueless teen who makes billions on the stock market by making up sham shell companies and buying up real companies with zero capital.

[Leo]

Leo wrote: ""Ulysses" by James Joyce is the hardest book I've completed because it jumps about in style near the end. But I loved the book, and found myself laughing my arse off once I grew accustomed to Joyce..."

Oh. And I forgot Russel Hoban's "Riddley Walker," set in a post-Apocalyptic Great Britain. Hoban develops a linguistically-consistent pidgin-English that is hard to follow at first. But if you tackle that, you'll end up with what may be the best post-apocalyptic tale ever written.

Hoban leads me to another tough one -- David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas." Most of the book is easy to read, until you meet the central chapter, titled "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After." Which reminds me a lot of Hoban, who I am sure Mitchell used as a model here. The section tells the second-best post-apocalyptic tale I've ever read. And is part of a wonderful book.