Hardest books to read.

Thank you for the advice on Faulkner. I was sort of heartbroken in a way when I didn't like As I Lay Dying. Because I'd heard so much about Faulkner and how important he was, I felt like I [I]should[/I] like him, and the fact that I didn't was a sign of my bumpkin inability to appreciate sophisticated art.

I'd never given the thought of a process of [I]getting into[/I] a certain author, as if he's a pool of hot water you must ease into or risk scalding. But it makes sense. That said, maybe Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man would be a shallower, cooler end to dip into than Ulysses. That's what I read first and thought it was no more difficult than something like Mrs. Dallaway.

[QUOTE=Maddetchke Malorkus]Thank you for the advice on Faulkner. I was sort of heartbroken in a way when I didn't like As I Lay Dying. Because I'd heard so much about Faulkner and how important he was, I felt like I [I]should[/I] like him, and the fact that I didn't was a sign of my bumpkin inability to appreciate sophisticated art.

I'd never given the thought of a process of [I]getting into[/I] a certain author, as if he's a pool of hot water you must ease into or risk scalding. But it makes sense. That said, maybe Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man would be a shallower, cooler end to dip into than Ulysses. That's what I read first and thought it was no more difficult than something like Mrs. Dallaway.[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't think someone who didn't like Faulkner was a bumpkin. In away, he's an Überbumpkin. But to at least one of us, 'As I Lay Dying' seems a difficult start. Of course one never knows. You could say 'Of Mice and Men' or 'Red Pony' is where to start with Steinbeck, but I started with 'Grapes of Wrath.' Of course, Steinbeck was never as tricky as Faulkner got to be.

Other 'southern' writers might be an inroad to Faulkner's world, for that matter. Harper Lee, Edward P. Jones, John Kennedy Toole, are more accessible Southern writers. Toni Morrison almost counts, though Ohio isn't really the South, she has a Southern flair to her approach and often her settings. Though depending on the book, Toni isn't necessarily more accessible than Faulkner. Plainer language, but not necessarily plainer meaning/structure.

And yes, Faulkner can be very hot water. I'm glad I didnt' start with 'The Unvanquished,' also. Not that it's really that much harder than the Sartoris/Snopes novels I recommended starting with, but because it's a sort of 'prequel,' and would be harder to get into without knowing who the Sartoris family would spawn...

And I've never braved the waters of Joyce. Tried 'Portrait' once and gave up after a few pages. That was before I got back into classics, but it's still an author I haven't gotten around to How's that for a bumpkin?

Lolita was tough. I didn't finish it.
Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintanence was also difficult. It was interesting as hell. But you just had to read it slow.

[QUOTE=jacobsmorris]Lolita was tough. I didn't finish it.
Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintanence was also difficult. It was interesting as hell. But you just had to read it slow.[/QUOTE]
Man, I loved Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence. I flew through that book and couldn't put it down. I'm sorry to hear that it gave you trouble.

No trouble. It was just that I read it slow. It's one of my all time favorites. I've read it 5 or 6 times. But I just didn't read it fast. I was enthralled the entire time. Don't get me wrong. The book rocked. It just needed a lot more thought than most.

Ever read the sequel - Lila? It's good too.

Never read the sequel - I'll have to look for it.

I get what you're saying now. The book is kind of deep. It leaves you thinking a lot.

[QUOTE=jacobsmorris]Lolita was tough.[/QUOTE]

I had a boss who had a major thing for barely legal conquests, and the more they looked underaged, the more excited he was about it. Then he read 'Lolita' while were were on an out-of-town business trip, and, well, hearing him from the next room reading it pretty much put it off my to-read list for good. He had Tourette's, and that book wound him up more than a $10,000 check.

Shuddering at the thought even now...

[QUOTE=jacobsmorris]
Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintanence was also difficult. It was interesting as hell. But you just had to read it slow.[/QUOTE]

I tried to read that one in high school and couldn't hang with it. Ditto for 'Blue Highways.' Might have to revisit those. Also, for a Steinbeck fan, I have no excuse for not having read 'Travels With Charley.' Maybe I should string the three together.

This is weird, I read the Sound and the Fury first from Faulkner and found it easier going than the other two I've read, The Wild Palms (Which I thought I really hated at the time but I find myself thinking of it more often than you would a book you didn't like) and As I Lay Dying (Which was just a good book, no arguments, it really built up a momentum, I think).

[QUOTE=MadHatter]...Electric Koolaid Acid Test...[/QUOTE]

This is a great book to pair with 'Hell's Angel's' by HST. You get Ken Kesey and the Hell's Angels from two angles, one of them very much an outsider, one more of an insider (HST rode with the Angels until they beat him nearly to death). Also, that first book is still the best work Thompson has ever done. He still had editors to listen to and a few working brain cells left...

[QUOTE=Chixulub]This is a great book to pair with 'Hell's Angel's' by HST. You get Ken Kesey and the Hell's Angels from two angles, one of them very much an outsider, one more of an insider (HST rode with the Angels until they beat him nearly to death). Also, that first book is still the best work Thompson has ever done. He still had editors to listen to and a few working brain cells left...[/QUOTE]
That is exactly what I was thinking. I read these books back to back. At the time, I was in a big Ken Kesey/Hunter Thompson kick - so they were perfect choices. They both cross over, yet tell a different story.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]That is exactly what I was thinking. I read these books back to back. At the time, I was in a big Ken Kesey/Hunter Thompson kick - so they were perfect choices. They both cross over, yet tell a different story.[/QUOTE]

Try doing 'Hamlet' backed up to 'Rosencrantz & Gildenstern are Dead.' It's erie how Stoppard works in the actual Shakespeare for the scenes where R&G are onstage for Hamlet, and works all the other Godot-ish existentialist farce.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what 'Rosencrantz & Gildenstern are Dead' is.

[QUOTE=Chixulub]He only wrote, what 27 novels (if you don't count 'Sartoris' and 'Flags in the Dust' as the same book), plus a hefty stack of short stories. Just read it all...[/QUOTE]

Good advice. I’m not much for, and the scattered opinion here proves its unreliability, ‘you should read xx first’.
When it comes to the classic guys, yeah, maybe reading one of the ‘greatest hits’ is a starting point, and then (or before that) just go down the line in chronological order. Sometimes first books aren’t a home run (Faulkner’s _Soldiers’ Pay_ is ok), but it can be interesting to see a writer develop. Plus, and especially with a Faulkner, it’s nifty to see characters and themes and thoughts develop in future stories.

[QUOTE=Chixulub]Then he read 'Lolita' while were were on an out-of-town business trip, and, well, hearing him from the next room reading it pretty much put it off my to-read list for good.[/quote]

Put it back on. Don’t let some idiot that used it as a ‘how-to’ manual deprive you of an amazing book. Nabokov is a wizard of language, and it’s not even his native tongue.

The little known _The Enchanter_ is a good pre-read to it (and VN’s last book in Russian).
“Lolita” is also one of the few movies I don’t mind watching (the Kubrick –who I’m not a big fan of- version, I haven’t seen the other(s)), as Nabokov himself did the screenplay and it’s pretty interesting what he did with it.
Peter Sellers, as always, is a bit over the top, though.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]I'm sorry, but I have no idea what 'Rosencrantz & Gildenstern are Dead' is.[/QUOTE]

A play by Tom Stoppard.
If one has little “Hamlet” knowledge it may not be terribly interesting.
j(ay)

[QUOTE=jay]A play by Tom Stoppard.
If one has little “Hamlet” knowledge it may not be terribly interesting.
j(ay)[/QUOTE]

That's why I think it's a great play to read side by side with Hamlet.

I tore through Ulysses voraciously
reading each page warmed my brain
so reading and failing horribly at understanding Finnegan's Wake really let me down
I got extreme love and hate for Mr. Joyce
I haven't read A Portrait..yet

I tried White Noise but got easily distracted..I wanna read Underworld anything that can change a person like Mr. Brown said, has to be worth a read
I really wanted to like Heart of Darkness i love to read on madness and insanity but it was too painfully slow

[QUOTE=sixteentimes]So [I]Requeim for a Dream[/I] and [I]A Clockwork Orange[/I] were both a little challenging the first time around.[/QUOTE]

I haven't read Requiem for a Dream, but A Clockwork Orange was pretty easy for me. I guess that might have something to do with being Serbian (the Serbian language is very similar to Russian, which is what the nadsat language is based on)...

Catch-22 was hard, but worth it. Heart of Darkness was very difficult... a little disappointing as well, since I had heard so many good things about it.

Books in Sanskrit are pretty hard to read.

I haven't braved Joyce in a while. Tried to read 'Portrait of the Artist,' a couple of years ago and couldn't get into the flow. I've also procrastinated on 'Gravity's Rainbow' and 'Vineland' though I've read the rest of Pynchon including his shorts stories.

I read 'All the Beautiful Sinners' in two days, and loved it. I'm a slow fucking reader, so if I read 500 pages in two days, it's not a page-turner, it's a book that takes over my whole life. I'm practically reading in the shower, and while I drive.

But 'Fast Red Road' has been slower going for me. I've had distractions and side-tracks. And as usual, I've got a couple of short story collections going in addition to Paris Review and Playboy (I try to read the fiction, in addition to viewing the plastic surgery disasters). Actually the copy I got from interlibrary loan is 'Glory Dog: A Plainsong.' Same book but published as SGJ's doctoral disseration. Even has his advisor's signatures on it.

But then, it took me a couple months to slog through 'Mason & Dixon,' which is not only one of my favorite books, but is probably the best Pynchon I've read (leaving room for 'GR' or 'Vineland' to trump it).

But I've got to admire SGJ's range. 'All the Beautiful Sinners' is a fast-paced thriller. 'Fast Red Road' is postmodern surrealism, turgid and dense. Probalby somewhere between 'V.' and 'Beloved' in terms of challenging the reader.

But hey, I listen to a lot of Coltrane, and while Giant Steps is much more accessible, my oldest daughter seemed to 'get' his free-jazz stuff (the 'Seattle' tapes and other "sheets of sound" stuff) when she was maybe three. I'd have it playing on my truck's CD player, and she'd say, "Coltrane's going crazy!" She said it with awe and a big smile. So when it comes to challenging literature, maybe sometimes you have to step back from your pretense of rationality and just laugh. Say, 'Birdfinger is a crazy motherfucker.'

I made a promise to myself to read Ulysesses and Gravity's Rainbow, I loved Rainbow, haven't tackled the former yet.

Vineland is his weakest effort in my opinion. It isn't bad, but the satire and temporal jumping isn't utilized as well as usual in my opinion.

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]Books in Sanskrit are pretty hard to read.[/QUOTE]

Oldest piece of literature ever, a Sanskrit tablet. It's a prayer to the goddess Ninkasi, about beer. In fact, it's more or less a recipe for a primitive beer.

Hunter/gatherer cultures move with the game, but a farmer says through an ice age. Without booze, there's no agriculture, without agriculture there's no aquatic empires. Without aquatic empires, man isn't a story of totalitarian regimes. Without those totalitarian regimes, we wouldn't have 'free' nation states.

So like it or not, civilization as you know it, all comes from beer.

tolkiens "The Silmarilian". its ridiculous because its not a story, its just a running commentary with a ton of weird names that are barely introduced to you. it read like "this happened, then this, then that, now its like this.." but not that simply, he writes in old english like style.

its the kind of book where my mind starts wandering and all of a sudden ten pages go by and i realize i don't know what i just read.

according to a friend of mine, who knows alot about religion and history and stuff, the silmarilian isn't an original work. all of the history of middle earth, gods and stuff, is derived from lots of other religions and if you know about them it makes it more interesting to read. the only time i noticed this was there was a similar name to that which i saw in the "necronomicon".

I love the layers of detail in V
but crying lot and vineland to me don't stick
and i really wanna try Gravity's Rainbow sometime soon

and Chix i love your jazz parallel
im starting to get into free jazz more now
i was when i was a kid from my dad as well but i got older and it didnt make sense anymore
but now i brought out some of my dads old tapes and it's just mind-blowing
Sun Ra, Sunny Murray, Mingus, Coltrane etc
it's just beautiful music

[QUOTE=Chixulub]Oldest piece of literature ever, a Sanskrit tablet. It's a prayer to the goddess Ninkasi, about beer. In fact, it's more or less a recipe for a primitive beer.

Hunter/gatherer cultures move with the game, but a farmer says through an ice age. Without booze, there's no agriculture, without agriculture there's no aquatic empires. Without aquatic empires, man isn't a story of totalitarian regimes. Without those totalitarian regimes, we wouldn't have 'free' nation states.

So like it or not, civilization as you know it, all comes from beer.[/QUOTE]
I've heard that.

[QUOTE=ArcherDylan27]I love the layers of detail in V
but crying lot and vineland to me don't stick
and i really wanna try Gravity's Rainbow sometime soon

and Chix i love your jazz parallel
im starting to get into free jazz more now
i was when i was a kid from my dad as well but i got older and it didnt make sense anymore
but now i brought out some of my dads old tapes and it's just mind-blowing
Sun Ra, Sunny Murray, Mingus, Coltrane etc
it's just beautiful music[/QUOTE]I think V and Crying are both excellent as well.

[QUOTE=Nith Sahor]Heart of Darkness was very difficult... a little disappointing as well, since I had heard so many good things about it.[/QUOTE]

A little disappointing? Reading that book was like getting kicked in the nuts with steel toe boots, over and over again. Even the teacher's who taught it in college hated it.

Well I had heard a lot of good things about it... after having read Gatsby and Pride and Prejudice part of me didn't really expect anything.

Perhaps it's not that they're hard books, but that the way they're written does not lend itself to today where any story can be condensed into two hours via movies, whereyou have people like Chuck who do not masturbate with descriptions.

[QUOTE=Nith Sahor]Well I had heard a lot of good things about it... after having read Gatsby and Pride and Prejudice part of me didn't really expect anything.

Perhaps it's not that they're hard books, but that the way they're written does not lend itself to today where any story can be condensed into two hours via movies, whereyou have people like Chuck who do not masturbate with descriptions.[/QUOTE]
"I'll not give the Grail to you, sir."

[I]IIIIIIIIIIIII loooooooooooove Ney York in Juuuuune....

How about youuuuuuuuu?[/I]

I am never never never ever tripping and slugging through anymore Pride and Prejudice whats-her-face. Ever.

On that note, The Island of the Day Before is proving to be harder than I had initially anticipated. I'm still not entirely sure what its about.

[QUOTE=Poderosa]the hardest book i ever have read is No Logo - by Naomi Klein. But its not a ficional book so I gues it dosent count.
The second hardest book was La Divina Comedia by Dante. Man, those books were hard...in the same book the canterbury tales followed. At that point I gave up.[/QUOTE]

I hadn't even considered non-fiction, but some of the technical books on beekeeping, yeast microbiology, water chemistry, they were pretty rough going. Especially the ones geared to an upper level college course, and I went into them without the background, had to pick it up on the fly.

But out of non-fiction, I have a topper:

'The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization' by George Russell. I had the background, eighteen months of study with John Elliott, plus a decade of working out of the 60's version of Russell's book when he came out with the fourth edition. It's an intense text, really could serve as the core for a graduate program in music theory.

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]"I'll not give the Grail to you, sir."

[I]IIIIIIIIIIIII loooooooooooove Ney York in Juuuuune....

How about youuuuuuuuu?[/I][/QUOTE]

It smells pretty bad up there doesn't it?

[QUOTE=phlegmatics]am i a moron for not being able to translate irving welsh's dialouge and still keep my mind in the story?

or is this a common thing?[/QUOTE]

i don't like him but i think it's harder for americans to figure the dialect than the brits. i hear those kind of accents all the time so i can figure it out but when i read requiem for a dream i struggled big time because i couldn't hear it, it was all alien to me.
<3

I just joined this group so dont flog me.
The hardest book I tried to read was Nietzsches' " Beyond Good and Evil". That and Dantes 'Inferno' is a tough follow.

[QUOTE=Jane Jones]I am never never never ever tripping and slugging through anymore Pride and Prejudice whats-her-face. Ever.

On that note, The Island of the Day Before is proving to be harder than I had initially anticipated. I'm still not entirely sure what its about.[/QUOTE]
It's alright, but I finished it and didn't take a whole lot away. I'm trying to remeber what the theme/themes were... nope, forgot.

[QUOTE=rossthefireman]I just joined this group so dont flog me.
The hardest book I tried to read was Nietzsches' " Beyond Good and Evil". That and Dantes 'Inferno' is a tough follow.[/QUOTE]
The Nietzsche one is good, the sad part is, he's probably one of the best writers, in terms of technique and readability of most continental philosophers. Take a look a Derrida sometime, or Heidegger... it's like, OK you made your point, move on please.

Plus they get into language that overcomplicates their arguments and as such the arguments try and define more permuatations of themselves and leave a lot of resulting contradictions.

[QUOTE=Nith Sahor]It smells pretty bad up there doesn't it?[/QUOTE]
I was referring to your avatar, what are you referring to?