Most difficult book you've read?

[Judgmentalist]

Tried to read Plato's "Republic" once.

WHY U NO HAVE PARAGRAPHS?!? @_@

...Yeah, I got through maybe three pages before I gave up. I couldn't read a whole book that's hard enough to follow without being one gigantic wall of text.

A lack of paragraph breaks seems to be characteristic of "difficult" books.

Stream of consciousness?

Apparently, your consciousness does not translate well into the communication texts! I'm torn between arguing "books as art" and "books as communication mediums". Confusing! Delightful! Mostly confusing!

 

[Koroviev]

Tried to read Plato's "Republic" once.

WHY U NO HAVE PARAGRAPHS?!? @_@

...Yeah, I got through maybe three pages before I gave up. I couldn't read a whole book that's hard enough to follow without being one gigantic wall of text.

A lack of paragraph breaks seems to be characteristic of "difficult" books.

Stream of consciousness?

Apparently, your consciousness does not translate well into the communication texts! I'm torn between arguing "books as art" and "books as communication mediums". Confusing! Delightful! Mostly confusing!

I wasn't referring to stream of consciousness. It's simply the case that many older books suffer from a severe shortage of paragraph breaks.

 

[wrecker77]

I'd say A clockwork Orange. The author quite literally created his own slang that he used in almost every sentence. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about for a while (malchick? What the fuck is that?) But once you pick it up by the context then it becomes a bit easier, if you can get that far. Good story though.

If you're wondering, malchick means "male-chick", essentially "a guy". Needlessly complicated slang for the win!

This. So much this.

 

[Cyd0n1a]

G. I. Gurdjieff's Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. Very hard to understand and the author himself advises to read the 1200-page mammoth three times to get the gist of it.

 

[TheGuiggleMonster]

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

 

[Void(null)]

I have this theory that there are no difficult books, just bad authors.

 

[Drop_D-Bombshell]

Dan Brown Angels and Demons. I still get confused on most of the parts with the science company.

 

[subtlefuge]

As much as I absolutely love the Song of Ice and Fire series, they are huge and depressing, and hugely depressing.

It's tough, but worth it to read them all though.

 

[PlayingOpossum]

Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. It's a linguistic jigsaw puzzle. You know how watching a movie in 3D can give people headaches? It's like that.

 

[Hlain]

Thus spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
It was a pretty old translation, and the book itself isn't easy to begin with.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

The Lord of the Rings just trudged on, and on, and on.
It was a difficult read at the time, when I was eleven or twelve years old.

Agreed. I got through Fellowship after a couple of tries. Two Towers had me stuck for a few years before I could get past that one. I remember finishing Return of the King and being very disappointed. Those books, especially Two Towers, were just huge, meandering, pieces of literature.

 

[Mouse One]

The most difficult books are the ones I couldn't finish, I suppose. But to quote an ex-girlfriend of mine, "it's not me, it's you".

Best most difficult book, as in I was compelled to read it despite twisting my brain around, was for me The Waves by Woolf. She wrote like Joyce should have written.

 

[BleedingPride]

most difficult book ive TRIED to read is a russian dictionary... dont ask why

 

[emeraldrafael]

The Talisman by Stephen King. My dad wanted me to read the book, but I kept putting it down for months at a time. He eventually forced me to finish it, and I gotta say, it was worth it.

I find no book is worth reading when its forced.

Charles Dickson's Oliver Twist, cause I read it and didnt want to. I more or less just read it so I could see waht the hype was about.

 

[Tulks]

Foucault's The Order of Things and Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation both took me a couple of attempts to finish, yet neither are particularly long. By contrast, I found War and Peace fairly easy-going during my commute to Uni, and re-read Hobbit/LotR/Silmarillion/Unfinished Tales in their entirety several times (just before each of the films released... what an almighty geek).

 

[L4WLI3T]

When I was in 5'th grade i read all the Dark Materials books... (Golden compass, Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass) And I had a lot of trouble. but I finished them, in two weeks.

 

[Brandon237]

The Lord of the Rings just trudged on, and on, and on.
It was a difficult read at the time, when I was eleven or twelve years old.

Same on every point, although I may have been more towards 13. Damnit that thing was a pain, I happened to get the 3 in 1 book too. So many pages! 998! And I read the prologue... too long.

 

[Hlain]

Thus spoke Zarathustra and In search of lost time

Good books both of them, but rather difficult language and slow pace.

 

[teqrevisited]

I read through The Hobbit & LoTR in anticipation for the release of the films. After I finished them I found The Silmarillion. Fuck that book. It is honestly the most confusing piece of literature I have never finished.

My hat goes off to anyone who had the patience to finish it.

 

[dlsevern]

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, the footnotes were killing me.