Hardest Book You Read?

The hardest book I ever read was A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, but it was well worth it. It is an excellent book, and Burgess' talent is shown by the fact that he can invent a new language (based on Russian) and write the dialogue in it. It takes some getting used to and there is a glossary you can get, but I would seriously recommend against it. It is much better to pick up the language as you read.
I also read another book by Anthony Burgess called The Wanting Seed (a dystopia where homosexuality and cannibalism is encouraged) and it had a vocabulary that was alot better than mine, so that made it kind of difficult.
The moral: If you are up to the challenge I would definitely recommend both of the books.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by DoNotTrip [/i]
[B]The hardest book I ever read was A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, but it was well worth it. It is an excellent book, and Burgess' talent is shown by the fact that he can invent a new language (based on Russian) and write the dialogue in it. It takes some getting used to and there is a glossary you can get, but I would seriously recommend against it. It is much better to pick up the language as you read.
I also read another book by Anthony Burgess called The Wanting Seed (a dystopia where homosexuality and cannibalism is encouraged) and it had a vocabulary that was alot better than mine, so that made it kind of difficult.
The moral: If you are up to the challenge I would definitely recommend both of the books. [/B][/QUOTE]

Irvine Welsh's novels are similar. Although it still is English the scottish slang can get hard but I picked up on it pretty fast without any glossary. Makes it more fun that way.

Irvine Welsh wrote 'Trainspotting' right?
that was the hardest book i've ever read.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by mr_gone [/i]
[B]Irvine Welsh wrote 'Trainspotting' right?
that was the hardest book i've ever read. [/B][/QUOTE]

Yes.

Germinal - Emile Zola

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (only read part I)

ps. I read them in original french version. Even though I'm French, some of the vocabulary used is complex "old french" which made it a bit tough to read at times. Some analogies were really beyond me.

fiction or non?

Yeah, Dantes Inferno is quite tricky at times, but it is worth it. Worth every hard word...

I think it was tiger lady or somethin

I had no problem with any of Irvine Welsh's novels. I'd have to say though that A Clockwork Orange was pretty tough at first, but the hardest book I've ever had to read would have to be Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck and Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Not that they were difficult to read, but they lagged in a lot of places and I had to force myself through them.

The Odyssey, the direct translation.

And to add insult to injury i thought it was terrible.

the scarlet fucking letter...i stopped reading at chapter 5 and then i failed the plot test on it. worst book i've never read

but then i got a 96 on the analysis a week later...go figure.

Yeah.. when I first started reading the Acid House.. The slang was kinda hard to read.. But eventually i got use to it, and I am flying thru Trainspotting.

The Kierkegaard Reader

"The Lord of the Flies"... his prose was very ambigous and loose, which does not mean that it wasn't great... believe me, it was. I liked the whole imagery thing too.

"The Sound and the Fury", I haven't been able to go past page 20. I always hear people saying it will get easier along the way, but I just haven't felt in the mood of going further.

Definetly "The Odyssey"

or maybe "The Old Man and the Sea" just because I hated it so much. And it was so wasteful. Such a waste of words and paper.

Trainspotting most definetly. I was disappointed by the novels beginning.

MOBY FUCKING DICK.

FUCK Herman Mellville. I'm glad that motherfucker died before anybody read his shit. It gives me great pleasure to know that he died a failure. Asshole.

Dante's "Divine Comedy" is complicated, since it's all "poetry".
But trying to keep up with "War and Peace" is a bitch.

[U]A Tale of Two Cities[/U]

I only understand every other word. The whole "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" is crap.

Great Expectations when I was 13 years old for English class. Ugh... the horror.

Hmm...how about any book that school forces me to read?

I mean, even if the book is the most amazing book ever, it will be hard to get through, and will end up sucking major ass, just cause school made me read it.

I dont know why...but its true...

The Marquis De Sade's "120 Days of Sodom", his supposed "masterpiece" written in prison... because as fascinating as it is in its volume and depth, it's basically just a badly-written encyclopedia of sexual perversion, torture and murder with chapter after chapter about the actual perversion or act except with the tiniest of differences, like one whole section will be about smelling farts and water sports, and the next whole section will be about smelling farts and water sports except this time while wearing a cape, and the next will be smelling farts and water sports while fucking someone wearing a cape... frankly there's no capes, but there may as well be... god-awful prose and arcane language, but a must-read if you don't mind being bored to a sick stomach... I mean, it does have it's moments of actual sadism... which completely reminded me of passages almost word for word from Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho", and sure makes you wonder about stolen ideas and such... I mean exactly the same ways of disemboweling and letting rats devour private organs, eating flesh, sex with orifices both natural and man made... etc... if you've read 'American Psycho' you know what I mean... and anyway, believe you me, De Sade had some interesting things to say in this and other books, but I must be a sadist, or rather a masochist to have made it through this one...

You know, you make a good point, rainman, I mean, some books are better in small doses, especially if the ideas expressed are difficult to grasp, for some of us.

Case in point, I love books like Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" or "Immortality", and some of Stephen Hawking's work like "The Theory of Everything" or books about philosophy like "Hagakure" or "The Art of War", or stuff like "The Powers That Be", etc... but for me and my rather inadequate mind, I often go into overload if I don't stop and go over fragments now and again, more again than now of course.

That's why I like difficult reading, it makes you not only think but it makes you feel like you're actually thinking. On the other hand that's why I like writers like Chuck Palahniuk... he takes these amazing concepts and ideas from some of times great thinkers [for example Kierkegaard] and makes them easily interpretable for modern readers, like myself. Sometimes I want to think, and sometimes I want to be entertained while I'm thinking... that's where I see a difference... that and the wholly original additions to his work...

If a book isn't at least somewhat challenging, I don't much see the point anymore. I've got enough fantasy in my head. I don't need romance spelled out for me. Sex... been there, done that. On and on... but often times it's the way in which it's presented, not so much the wham-bang "what the hell just hit me" stuff either, but more how it creates new thoughts in our own minds... that's what keeps me reading... just one more fix...

Brock, have you read "Philosophy in the bedroom"? It was the first de Sade book I read. I thought it was pretty good (and funny in a sardonic way), the only thing I didn't like was the political treaty: "Once more if you were to become republicans..." or something of the sort. I'm trying to finish "Justine", but I just can't seem to find the time.

Certain souls seem hard because they are capable of strong feelings, and they sometimes go to rather extreme lengths; their apparent unconcern and cruelty are but ways, known only to themselves, of feeling more strongly than others... De Sade being one of them, at least as a writer, his personal life somewhat questionable in terms of actual deviance... so yeah, Chencho, I believe I first picked up a small collection in a De Sade reader called "The Misfortunes of Virtue" and it includes several stories, and became my favorite to peruse in moments of weakness. Then came "The 120 days of Sodom" and I never finished the separate books I had sitting around of "Justine" & "Philosophy in the Bedroom" until the week following the release of "Quills", which sort of relit my fascination with the Marquis. Sometimes too much can bore a person, and i stress "some" as I can never get enough erotic lit, and I like to vary new stuff with older works in regard to all books, or at least several at a time in that regard. Much easier to stay focused unless something truly wonderful comes along, and then it's cover to back all at once. Like you mentioned there are some humorous parts in many of his stories, but often he gets caught up in cliches known only too well by us readers generations after the fact... plus besides the obvious acts of depravity and descriptions thereof, I really have to be in a certain mood to read his style of storytelling...

Silmarillion by J.R.R Tolkien
and
Bible by Whoever.

Didn´t finish either one.

"Fox In Socks" God, that book was hard. It even has a warning in the beginning. Every sentence I tried to read came out all jumbled.

i read a tale of two cities and great expectations in the sixth grade........a bit tricky at the time...........the first sentence in a tale of two cities was the first paragraph which covered the entire page............damn good book............

Other than books I read in school, like Shakespeare and all that...

I'm reading American Tabloid right now, and it was a little hard at first, I had to keep re-reading. But only because there was so much going on, and I had just read Dreamcatcher by Stephen King.

I've read about 1/6th of American Tabloid and there's already more happening than in the entire ridiculously huge Dreamcatcher book. (i like SK, but it's such a different style)

Sorry Nirvana, but I must speak up when someone brings up Dickens. I HATE Charles Dickens. I read Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations too. Easily the worst books I have ever read. The plot was excellent, but it was way too wordy for my tastes. I guess I am skeptical of a writer who was paid per word.

Ignore, just trying to make this work...

i just appreciate dickens' writing, that's all..............i'd get in a rampage about mark twain, please god, there better not be any mark twain fans here.........

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by NirvanaPunker13 [/i]
[B]...please god, there better not be any mark twain fans here......... [/B][/QUOTE]

What if there is?

My hatred of Stephen King's theory of "More is more" and tendency to go on and on and on like diahrea of the keyboard...

so i'll add one more much-loved name to my list

i can not stand The Lord Of The Rings books. I have tried, so many times, to read them and just can not get it up to care. Actually, I'm not being fair. Almost ANYTHING in the sci-fi / fantasy genre leaves me cold and uninterested. i think I could list the books in this genre that I liked enough to re-read on one hand with fingers to spare. Not. My. Thing.

I guess it's not surprising I mostly read nonfiction for over seven years, huh?

I like Ayn Rand, but I have to admit it takes me very long to get through her books, largely because I tend to reflect so much on everything that's going on... i'll read like, thirty pages in a sitting, but then go for weeks or even months before picking it up again... I've been working on Atlas Shrugged for over a year because of this... I like it though.

the hardest book to read would have to be one that is on fire... makes it a bitch to flip the pages.

sorry, sleep deprivation.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Odd-Reigh [/i]
[B]My hatred of Stephen King's theory of "More is more" and tendency to go on and on and on like diahrea of the keyboard...

so i'll add one more much-loved name to my list

i can not stand The Lord Of The Rings books. I have tried, so many times, to read them and just can not get it up to care. Actually, I'm not being fair. Almost ANYTHING in the sci-fi / fantasy genre leaves me cold and uninterested. i think I could list the books in this genre that I liked enough to re-read on one hand with fingers to spare. Not. My. Thing.

I guess it's not surprising I mostly read nonfiction for over seven years, huh?

I like Ayn Rand, but I have to admit it takes me very long to get through her books, largely because I tend to reflect so much on everything that's going on... i'll read like, thirty pages in a sitting, but then go for weeks or even months before picking it up again... I've been working on Atlas Shrugged for over a year because of this... I like it though. [/B][/QUOTE]

Well done. I understand your disliking of Lord of the Rings and am glad you didnt simply cast it off with "sucks" or "most boring thing I read"

It's funny, dakini09, but you reminded me of the first time I was reading Vladimir Nabakov's "Lolita". It was many moons ago and I was a school child and I remember at the time I felt sort of like I had to hide it, as it was deemed pornographic by the school library and they had no copies as a result. Luckily my father was very open-minded and would allow most anything, so he bought me a copy which I still have to this day. Then some years later I was reading A.M. Homes' "The End of Alice", which is a particularly brutal and honest book about a sexual predator and the object of his desire, and I had the same feeling of fear of being caught reading it. What ties those two things together, "Lolita' and "The End of Alice" I mean, are they are almost exactly the same-style book, both about older men and young girls, and told from the highly literate voice of the older sexual predator... think Humbert Humbert, although in "The End of Alice" the story is laid out from a prison cell after some rather bloody occurences. Also, A.M. Homes is a female professor of literature at a prominent college yet she was highly criticized for the storyline in her book, as was Nabakov, and some banned it's production on account of what it contained, thereby making it a book that makes you feel like when you are reading it that you wouldn't want to be caught with it... if you can dig what i'm sayin'... nowadays, I don't much worry about anything I read, as the world is so tolerant of obscenity and perversity... tolerant may not be the right word, but it's the first that comes to mind...

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by twosmokingbarre [/i]
[B]Well done. I understand your disliking of Lord of the Rings and am glad you didnt simply cast it off with "sucks" or "most boring thing I read" [/B][/QUOTE]

Thank you.

For the record, I think prize for "most boring thing I read" would go to the first book in Anne Rice's "Sleeping Beauty" trilogy.

Yeah I'd say 'the Odyssey', or 'the Illiad'. Pretty boring it was too, as it was the old version, unibridged. Another boring book-Prozac Nation, stupid author just whined the whole time.

I haven't had trouble reading any books because of slang but
the fucking "House of Leaves" has got to be the hardest book I've ever read. In the end it was well worth it though. I re-read Choke in two sittings after reading it. It's like literary steroids.

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" comes in second because it has a few sections that draaaaaag, great book/plot/philosophies, just slow in areas.

I can't believe so many people are saying "A Clockwork Orange". I found it pretty easy to decipher the slang by what context it was being used in.
I just downloaded the UK version with the final chapter so I'll be givin it one more viddy.

I too attempted to read "Dante's Inferno" twosmokingbarre, but unfortunately I put that shit right back on my shelf. It's not too hard to read, it's impossible!
Not really, it's just that I just have a couple Vonnegut books sitting around. Vonnegut being the opposite of the spectrum, I mean he could write a 700pp novel about grass growing and I'd read the shit out of it.

I went to the library today to pick up a few books as Glamorama's-pages-left slowly dwindles. And completely forgot about getting Inferno. I did though begin my assault on Shakespeare with the random Macbeth and I ran into another book I sort of recongnized sort of didnt but it sounded incredible: Doctor Faustus(any takers?).

[I]Ulysses[/I] and [I]Finnegan's Wake[/I] are both notoriously difficult reads. And absofuckinglutely worth the effort. Two of my all-time favorite works. [I]Wake[/I] is hysterical (and easier) if you read it out-loud (Joyce [B]wrote[/B] with an Irish accent...)

And I really enjoy Dickens, Twain, and Melville, but maybe there's just something wrong with me.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by SnowWhite [/i]
[B] Another boring book-Prozac Nation, stupid author just whined the whole time. [/B][/QUOTE]

Worse is Bitch by elizabeth wurtzel. If you read her book on addiction, she talks about what she was going through while writing Bitch, and you can see why it's so unfocused and 85% worthless rambling. Writing a huge book, just trying to get it finished, doing endless/pointless research while on drugs? Doesn't work.

Prozac Nation was okay. She was whiney but i think that was the point. At the end she acknowledges that she was a whiney brat. I thought she did it intentionally because that's how she was at the time.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Odd-Reigh [/i]
[B]For the record, I think prize for "most boring thing I read" would go to the first book in Anne Rice's "Sleeping Beauty" trilogy. [/B][/QUOTE]

I forgot about that one, it was annoying. I didn't even finish it, and never tried the other two thinking they were just as bad. I've never seemed to get into her books that aren't the vampire chronicles...especially that one.

The vampire chronicles and some stephen king books are my guilty pleasures. somewhat-mindless entertainment keeps my brain from exploding.

Oh, yes, Anne Rice... Seventeen consecutive freaking paragraphs describing the freaking lace on someone's freaking collar. I mean, freak!

I can't read her crap.

But now we're in the "Worst Book" category as opposed to "Hardest".

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by decalogue [/i]
[B]Oh, yes, Anne Rice... Seventeen consecutive freaking paragraphs describing the freaking lace on someone's freaking collar. I mean, freak!

I can't read her crap.

But now we're in the "Worst Book" category as opposed to "Hardest". [/B][/QUOTE]

I actually find terrible books take longer to read and are harder mentally rather then books that use a lot of words i dont know or writen in a strange way like a lot of older books.

American Tabloid by James Elroy. I haven't finished reading it yet, I'm still in the process because I am reading other books for class right now. It is really intersting and the only reason I say it is difficult is that there is so many people to keep track of, that I get people confused. But I WILL finish. I want to.

Totam and Taboo-Siggy Freud
It's non-fiction, but hey.

still haven't gotten through unabridged les miz...have been strongly recommended irvine welsh...but by far the hardest book ever was the original text of robinson crusoe, complete with ye olde stoopide misspellinges. it SUCKED.

hey lloyd, is that michael jackson on your icon?

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by R0BB23 [/i]
[B]I actually find terrible books take longer to read and are harder mentally rather then books that use a lot of words i dont know or writen in a strange way like a lot of older books. [/B][/QUOTE]

Aggreed!

I think it's because you're trying so hard to not a) gouge your eyes out at the thought of reading any more of it, set the damned thing ablaze and use it to start a nice little bonfire, or c) fall asleep.

Exactly!!!!!!!!

I swear, if I had to read ONE more repetition of the phrase "her mouth formed a little 'o'", I would have taken out my wrath on every hula hoop, life preserver, and donut unfortunate to cross my path. :mad: