Literary ecstasy for yer mind!! / whats the most difficult book youve ever read? / pharren 18 years ago

whats the most difficult book youve ever read?

i found myself thinking about this at work today, and got curious. so, like the title says, whats the most difficult book youve ever read? post the name of the book (and hopefully the author) and why it was challenging. it can be anything: too boring, too poorly written, or whatever.


heres mine:

the dosadi experiment, by frank herbert

i cant even come up with a description to do this book justice. there is not a single wasted word. every sentence seems to have at least two meanings, especially the dialogue. some parts are just WAY too subtle for me to catch the first (second, third) time around, and some parts are deliberately left unexplained (still dont know quite for sure what the DemoPol is). these three things, combined with the political nature of the book, made it the absolute most challenging thing i have ever read.

quantum physics is easier to understand. i had to read everything at least three times before i either got it, or gave up on it.

its still a good book, but wow...

interested in what other people have to say!

Mileron 18 years ago
Lord of the Rings trilogy.

He describes everything down to the tiniest blade of grass.

"We're walking. We're walking. We're walking. Oh look, horse crap and oh it looks like it ate an apple while dancing naked with elven women cavorting and painting each other with berry juice."

BORING

Well actually, if the above scene were true, he'd have a flashback to that moment, and describe all the broken grass instead of the hotness.
Rainee 18 years ago
Well if the first few pages of a book don't hold my interest, it never gets read..

That being said, the last one I put a good effort into but just couldn't do at the time was Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. A fiction book just should not have that many footnotes in it :neutral:
Verileah 18 years ago
lol, I couldn't finish that book either Rainee. The footnotes annoyed the holy fuck out of me.

I find Russian Literature very difficult - I think something gets lost in translation to English or something. Dr. Zhivago was rough for me and might qualify as the most difficult book I've ever finished. It was a wonderful story with some amazing quotes but still a lot of work for my little brain to slog through.
Wystro 18 years ago
Joseph Campbell - The Masks of God: a four volume work that explores that commonality of world religions. Very dense, but once I made the transition in my brain, very worth it. I would never list a boring book as a difficult read because there has been plenty of crap that I've just thrown in the bonfire. Joseph Campbell is awesome, and it was worth the work to take in his genius.
Verileah 18 years ago
/agree on Joseph Campbell. I just bought my dad the Power of Myth PBS special he did...mostly to replace the VHS tapes I ganked long ago :X.
Slipnish 18 years ago
Anything by William Faulkner, because he could describe a supernova of the sun in real time and STILL put yer ass to sleep, or the original English version o Chaucer's Canterbury (sp now that I think about it?) Tales. ZOMFG! It's like being locked in a room wearing a shock collar and the ingredients for a box of cereal and being forced to read it every 30 seconds or so...

Mind numbing....

I do agree that Frank Herbert can be a mind altering experience, but I seldom want to work that hard to read...
assPOPE 18 years ago
The post-Lord of the Rings, "Silmarillion" (sp) and second to that (though not hard, just a a runaway rollercoaster of flashbacks, flashforwards, and flashsideways is "House of Leaves"