Most boring/difficult books you've ever read.

[Shamgarr]

well I'm being forced to read to kill a mocking bird for english class and
so far................ITS THE WORST BOOK I'VE READ............. so far

really? I personally loved that book and i read it for school twice.

Anyway, I'd have to go with The Once and Future King. That shit made me want to gouge my eyes out, blend them with a bunch of nails, eat the concoction, wait till I poo it out, then smear the feces on a sheet of paper and try to read that because it probably would have been more interesting and far more coherent.

 

[The Procrastinated End]

The Scarlet Letter and Black Boy. American literature may not all be awful, but these two should not be used to help introduce someone to it.

 

[Combined]

Dostoevsky. Anything by him. I've read all of his books, mind you. Strictly to test my will. When he actually writes about what happens, then it's really not that bad and somewhat enjoyable. When he gets into the character's inner turmoil, though... well... let's just say I'm not fond of extremely long paragraphs based entirely on the same damn thought.

Catcher in the Rye. I do believe I need not say more on it.

Joseph Conrad is also not one of my favourites, but a lot less hard to read once he stops talking so much about the damn sea and the sailors and so on.

Finally, Starship Troopers. It's really good, but for some strange reason I never found it compelling enough for me to read from start to finish in one sitting, as I often do.

 

[A random person]

Most books in school for me, as I'm an oddly slow/lazy reader. If I had to choose, though, I'd probably go with Woodsong or the Scarlett Letter. Technically Shakespeare was harder than the latter, but it was actually somewhat interesting, even if you don't entirely know what's going on.

To Kill a Mockingbird. Forced to read it in English, boring as shit./quote]
I remember reading plot summaries of it instead of reading the damn book. It's actually pretty amazing if you imagine Scout as a TF2 Scout and the court sections being line Phoenix Wright.

 

[milkkart]

anything from the wheel of time series, boring in a dozen different ways. got a mate who loves them though so i guess its just a case of taste.
cryptonomicon is pretty mindfucking, still not finished it because i keep getting distracted from it and there's no way i can just pick up where i left off.

 

[DustyDrB]

Walden. Thoreau comes off as a complete pompous ass. Then he'll go on overlong descriptions of things that are very honestly mundane. He brags so much about how self-sufficient he was, but some sources say that his parents helped him out. That's not to say the book is without merit. There are some truly great moments in it, but they are scattered about in a sea of pompousness and detail.

One of my majors in college was Religion. In one class we had to read a book called The Unchurched Next Door. It was the most horribly piece of literature I've ever read, and I am a Christian. It presupposes that people who don't go to church are not Christians and are horrible people (I'm not making this up), totally overlooking the fact that there are many people like me who don't go to church because of how fake and self-serving it has become. The book highlighted much of what angers me about my faith (or about the people who "follow" it). It's just a sham version of Christianity that is more concerned about changing people's behavior (which isn't a goal of the faith, oddly enough) than it is concerned with showing genuine compassion to others. I wrote the book a horrible review (an assignment) at the end of the class and threw it in the closest dumpster right where it belongs.

 

[londelen]

I really hated Catcher in the Rye. The character pissed me off, that stuck up, whining, asshole.

 

[scrambledeggs]

If anyone has read the "name of the rose" from start to end..
you're a better man than me.

 

[I Max95]

macbeth
i dont see the appeal
it bored me to tears

strangely enough i was more bored when i watched ian mckellen and dame judy dench do it in a movie

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Anything by Robert Jordan, seriously the Wheel of Time series is the slowest high fantasy book series I've ever attempted and *not* finished reading.

EDIT: Craptastic I gots ninja'D!!!

 

[miscelaneous]

Great Expectations. dull man dull.
i like certain books. The Things They Carried was good a little weirdly paced but good.

I was about to say Lord of the Flies and then I saw this. This is it for me.

 

[Dalamard]

Völuspá (prophecy of the oracle) and hávamál (the words of the wise) are 2 of the most difficult books i have ever read it is ridden in over 800 years old Icelandic and many of the words in the text have changed meaning since then, but it is very enlightening once you understand it.

 

[Wadders]

Gotta be The Last of the Mohicans.

Loved the Micheal Mann film, but the book is fucking dry. I read like 40 pages of it before I just though. "Fuck this for a laugh, I'll just watch the movie again"

 

[D0WNT0WN]

Try Shakespeare when you are 13 years old.

I dont mind him now, but at 13 it is pure unadulterated torture.

 

[newfoundsky]

The Scarlet Letter. Thank you, Mr. Hawthorne, but I don't want an eleven page description of a woman walking through a door.

I'm currently writing a research paper on this garbage. It's as painful as reading about the door. And the bush. And the jail. Seriously. ITS AN ENTIRE CHAPTER DESCRIBING A DOOR, A JAIL, AND A BUSH. All of which are only mentioned once. The only thing remarkable about the bush is that its a rose bush. And roses are red. And Hester Prynne must wear a red A (for being a slut), a Scarlet Letter if you will, and roses are red! HAWTHORNE YOU GENIUS!

You know what else is red Mr Hawthorne? Blood. Especially the blood that poured forth from my eyes as I read (red, oh shit there it is again!) your sorry excuse for a book.

And I'm expected to sympathize with Hester! I'M EXPECTED TO SYMPATHIZE WITH A CHEATING WIFE WHO HAD SEX WITH THE LOCAL PASTOR. Chillingworth was to good to her. Consequently, the Report button is red. He planned it ALL out.

And how the hell does a comet remotely make a red A? And that's were the book went from dreadfully unbearable to kindling.

EDIT: FIRE IS RED TO OMG!!!!!

 

[Da Chi]

The Simulacrum by Tolkien. It was a nightmare to get through

 

[oktalist]

The Double and Notes from Underground, both by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Really good, but downright impenetrable.

Edit: to those people saying Shakespeare: those are plays, not novels. They are meant to be experienced at the theatre.

Also the English translation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson was alright, but not nearly as good as the film adaptation had led me to believe. The entire first half of the book reads like the minutes of a shareholders' annual meeting, regailing the reader with the most tedious details of the entire histories of every single business mentioned in the story, so the actually interesting bit only starts half-way into the book. Also I do not care how many gigabytes of RAM each character's laptop has. But that is what happens when the author has died before the editor get their hands on a manuscript; the editor's hands are tied to a certain extent, with not being able to send it back with suggestions for alterations.

 

[vingtcinq]

Lord of the Flies. Oh my god. I pity the English students who have to endure it and the teachers who do it semester after semester. (though, to be honest, I swear that my English teacher had a crush on Golding)

You're already drowning in symbolism by the third page. So monotonous, so predictable, so terrible.
William Golding, you suck.

edit: Oh, and Nobokov. What a piece of work that man must have been.

 

[RamirezDoEverything]

Displaying my heresy here, I'll say ANYTHING BY TOLKIEN.

'nuff said, i tried to read the books before i saw the moveis, after two towers and 20 pages of return of the king I just couldn't pain myself to attempt to read it.

 

[Da Chi]

speaking of poorly translated I never could get into Rene Descartes. I read a few chapters of his book, Discourse on the Method and he is incredibly dull. I had to hunt for whatever point he was trying to make. But then again it could be translation