Most boring/difficult books you've ever read.

[Fetzenfisch]

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

No, thats perfectly understandable. I've tried reading Fellowship of the Ring at least 5 times, I've never made it more than 100 pages in without trying something else.

Crime and Punishment is probably the longest I've spent on a book this year. On the other hand, its the good sort of difficult.

I tried reading the Cantebury Tales, but only managed to read the prologue. The lesson I learned from it was that standardised spelling is a very good thing. You also have to learn tonnes of new words to get through it.

Currently reading Neuromancer, I'll admit, I had to look at a plot summary on the internet a couple of times to get myself up to speed.

yeah tolkien can give you a hard time, but the two towers make up for that. i never finished the 3rd book though.
the canterbury tales are a great and funny read. but need some preparation i guess. Medieval English literature is part of my studies, if it wouldnt i guess it'd not be the easiest literature.
(but still much better than the medieval german texts, the niebelungenlied is kinda interesting , the rest is all the same boring shit. the englishmen had their humor even back in the dark ages)

 

[ALuckyChance]

To me, Crime and Punishment, I like it so far, but I can't help but to find it boring most of the time, not to mention, how long it is. Every time I try to read it, I end stopping. And this comes from someone who read Dune in a whole day non-stop.

 

[Unesh52]

Ayn Rand. She's such a pretentious ****; all her books are overlong, blunt, vapid dissertations about impractical, idealized, pseudo-philosophical bullshit. I hate her.

 

[Hazzaslagga]

when I was 13 I read a little book called shogun. twas a book larger than the dictionary with 1246 or1426 pages. on top of this each page took about 2 minutes to read as fast as i could and i can read faster than anyone I know. anyone else know of this book. it took a very long time to read. twas fairly difficult for my young self to get my head round it.

 

[Daselthechaz]

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

Hallelujah! And you know what's really sad about it? The whole thing totally turned me off of Hawthorne for years, despite the fact that his short fiction is actually REALLY FUCKING GOOD.

If you're reading this and you're about to have to read The Scarlet Letter for a class or some such thing, the only way to do it without losing your grip on sanity (or grammar) is to take a break after you hit the word "bosom" three times. You'll have finished roughly 3/4 of a sentence by that point, and then you can come back refreshed.

As for Heart of Darkness, it is by far denser than uranium, but it also sits by my Bible and my copy of Watchmen to make sure that if I ever have a question about ethics, I have a one stop shop.

 

[Lionsfan]

The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. Boy was that a slog, and ultimately unsatisfying.

I honestly can't see what makes that book a 'classic'.

This. I couldn't make it through the whole book as I was so damn bored and tired of the whole thing. That class also introduced me to two other books which I despise: The Great Gatsby and Ethan Frome.

THE PICKLE DISH. OH GOD THE PICKLE DISH.

Fuck that Pickle Dish and everything about it. Did you ever see the movie?

OT: Probably Ethan Frome and anything by Ayn Rand. Brave New World was pretty bad too

 

[Seydaman]

The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. Boy was that a slog, and ultimately unsatisfying.

I honestly can't see what makes that book a 'classic'.

Write a book about bad shit
Instant classic
But you can't go tooo far
Or then you'll cause me to puke
Write about black oppresion? BEST SELLER
Write about how much vietnam sucked? BEST SELLER
Write about anything sad or controversal? BEST SELLER
Write the 120 sodom? I read a summary online, I think that summary alone scared me shitless.

 

[Seydaman]

The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. Boy was that a slog, and ultimately unsatisfying.

I honestly can't see what makes that book a 'classic'.

This. I couldn't make it through the whole book as I was so damn bored and tired of the whole thing. That class also introduced me to two other books which I despise: The Great Gatsby and Ethan Frome.

THE PICKLE DISH. OH GOD THE PICKLE DISH.

Fuck that Pickle Dish and everything about it. Did you ever see the movie?

OT: Probably Ethan Frome and anything by Ayn Rand. Brave New World was pretty bad too

Brave New World sounds interesting, my older brother read it and told me a little about it, was interesting but then again he's a really good story teller.

 

[the Dept of Science]

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. With each page, I would put the book down and think "Why am I reading this crap?". Unfortunately, I seem to be the only person on planet earth who thinks this way.

Don't worry, you are not. I didn't enjoy it, my mum didn't enjoy it either (she likes funny books but her sense of humor is quite different from mine, I partly recommended it to her out of curiousity whether she would enjoy it). People told me it was funnier than Catch 22 and Hitchhikers Guide. Having recently reread HHGTTG, I can say I probably laughed more times in its 150 pages than I did in however many Confederacy of Dunces has.

The thing is, it kindof made me feel like I was stupid when reading it. I kept on thinking "am I missing something? are they making tonnes of jokes that I'm just not getting?"

 

[Jonluw]

Growth of soil is the most boring book I have ever read.

Edit: Oh, and The world without end. One of the few books I did not finish.

 

[drummond13]

Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. The first third or so is written from the stream-of-consciousness style perspective of a retarded adult (I mean this literally). My god what an awful read.

 

[Rosm101]

Sun by David Eagleman, a very poor excuse for a book

 

[Seydaman]

I found Romeo and Juliet to be the biggest pile of rom-com dreck I've ever read. (Followed closely by A Midsummer Night's Dream.) Though in balance, MacBeth, Hamlet and Othello were pretty good.

A Midsummer Night's Dream wasn't that bad, I'm suppose to read Romeo and Juliet this year, but the thing is, a huge amount of ancient and classic works are redone in modern works, so when you actually read the classics they are dull and boring because you've already seen it a thousand times.
Like playing COD 4 then Doom, Doom is a classic but, you get it.

 

[imnot]

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

I sort of agree, I found the good bits good, but the bits in between just dragged on and ooonnn, not to mention the eyestrain you get from reading tiny text.

 

[XIII's Number XIV]

All Quiet on the Western Front. Heart of Darkness runs a close second.

 

[Duskwaith]

River boy. What the fuck.

The book was so shit i "lost" it i.e. it got destroyed due to shitty handeling.

Mein Kampf was just abit fucked aswell "we hate the communists"-"here we shall use communist ideas!"

To kill a mocking bird was insightful into that era but other than that so boring

 

[Michael Logan]

Ill have to say the illiad I tried to read it because its famous, but the poemlike writing was just so annoying.

Might try to read it again sometime though.

 

[zombiestrangler]

Catcher in the Rye. I fucking hated that book and had to read it junior year of high school. I picked it up like a year or two before junior year and could not finish it at all. Meanwhile it was my JY English teacher's favorite book. He even named his daughter Phoebe. He was still a pretty cool teacher.