'Difficult' books

[Jah Womble]

'Difficult' books

Struggling a little with The Picture of Dorian Gray. Which, for some reason, I've not read until now.

I think most are in the same boat re Ulysses.

[beak]

'Difficult' books

La Lanterne Rouge wrote: And, fourth, amongst the most difficult books I ever read was Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic. And I still can't tell if I thought it was brilliant or pointless, pretentious toss.

I was so incredibly excited to pick up a reasonably-priced second hand copy of this on a recent trip to Durham. Probably got a third of the way through it.

[Lucia Lanigan]

'Difficult' books

Quite heartened to see some of my reading bêtes noires surface here, in a roundabout way.

Marquez I think is OK as it goes, but there’s not much to him. I couldn’t be bothered getting through 100 Years.... It's just not that deep or engaging, you know?

Iain Sinclair is one strange cat. I love his first two novels, Lud Heat and White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, which are proper fiction (whatever he says): you’re plunged into these genuinely strange inner worlds, where you have to join in the narrator’s attempts to read a city built from cryptic symbols (and if you venture onto his patch IRL, you find they’re all real). From Downriver on, the moaning took over - and this is a man with very little to legitimately moan about. I’ve quite liked some of his recent articles about poets, where he’s got an interesting subject that he actually likes to focus on, but the vast bulk of his output is just a slowcoach blowing out air.

I quite like Borges but his stories are mostly intellectual exercises that can feel a bit empty. I sort of admire the conceits then forget them.

Dorian Gray’s kinda listy and of its time, isn’t it. The story’s the thing, a genuine modern fairy tale, but the prose is a little tied up with Wilde’s concerns at the time, like interior decoration as a radical act.

[Jah Womble]

'Difficult' books

Indeed, and I'm just getting to grips with the density of the prose/dialogue following that of the contemporary fiction I've been reading. (But given that I'm endeavouring to write something 'speculative' at the moment, I figured it was an essential read.)

[Felicity, I guess so]

'Difficult' books

I never finished Lord of the Rings, but not because it was 'difficult.'

Anna Karenina, but just daunted by the bulk, slow progress etc, and, I guess, the fact that I know the story from umpteen tv/film versions, so am plodding on out of duty rather than engagement.

I'm stunned at the idea that Marquez isn't

that deep or engaging

.

[Fussbudget]

'Difficult' books

I gave up on That Awful Mess on Via Merulana by Gadda after about a hundred pages. It's reputed to be extremely inventive with language and is indeed full of wordplay and pre-war slang; I don't how much of this was the translator's doing, but I couldn't understand a bloody word of it and am still not sure what the book is about (something about a robbery I think? Who knows.)

[Lucia Lanigan]

'Difficult' books

Ditto!

[Lucia Lanigan]

'Difficult' books

I like translated fiction from all over the world, but for some reason I've had a duff run with Italian authors. Like, I expected to love Dino Buzzatti's The Tartar Steppe but nope - leaves me cold. Same with Italo Calvino, although I enjoyed maybe a quarter of Invisible Cities before I got bored by the deadening repetition and pointlessness of it all (that book, not life).

[Fussbudget]

'Difficult' books

Oh I love The Tartar Steppe, it's actually the only book that's made me cry (though I rather suspect that other things on my mind at the time played quite a large part in that.) Buzzati's short stories are great, too, really twisted and dark, although they don't seem to be easily available in English.

I've had the same experience as you with Calvino, though : both Invisible Cities and If on a Winter's Night a Traveller have some really good bits and they're obviously clever constructs, but they're pretty hard to warm to, and were both quite a slog to get through.

[Stumpy Pepys]

'Difficult' books

Does William Gibson's Neuromancer count as a difficult book?

Gave up halfway though. Couldn't work out what the fuck was going on.

[WOM]

'Difficult' books

Okay, so not just me?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

'Difficult' books

Stumpy Pepys wrote: Goodreads did a recent survey among their contributors and the five most discarded classics were:

Catch-22
The Lord of the Rings
Ulysses
Moby Dick
Atlas Shrugged

Surprised by Catch-22. I like Moby Dick, but I fully understand why people give up on it. Ulysses I've attempted a couple of times and failed, and have no intention of revisiting. I wouldn't even pick up the other two.

I only finished catch 22 because I was flying to china and didn't have anything else to read. it was like a 700 page episode of Mash, and not one of the good ones, but one of the one;s where alan alda was behind the camera.

I've twice gotten over 100 pages into ulysses, and enjoyed it, particularly the bit about the cat. but just wandered off to do something else or forgot about it. I think the idea of a book based on wandering around dublin lost in my own thoughts was always a it too close to home.

The first time I took lord of the rigns off the shelf I got as far as "it was bilbo baggins;s eleventy first birthday," and launched the book across the room.

Having been brought to the first two movies I decided to read the book, and I had to drink my way through the last five hundred pages, and the five different endings.

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

'Difficult' books

- And what did you do in the Great War, Mr Joyce?

- I wrote Ulysses. What did you do?

Tom Stoppard, Travesties

[ursus arctos]

'Difficult' books

Lucia, of course I would say this, but you should try The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily (also Buzzatti).

It's supposedly a children's book, but is wise and entertaining (also short).

I never really thought of Catch 22 as being a quintessentially American book, but I'm beginning to think that it is, and that that accounts for the opinions expressed above.

Catcher in the Rye is certainly an angsty Northeast middle class teenager's book. Ursus minor hates it, but he grew up in circumstances very different from mine.

[WOM]

'Difficult' books

I started reading The Hobbit at 14 and thought it was a load of crap. I picked it up again when I was in my early 40s and finished it.

[Amor de Cosmos]

'Difficult' books

Of the books your supposed to read in your teens Catch 22 was by far the most powerful. More than On the Road, far more than Catcher in the Rye. The immediate legacy of WW 2 was a big part of my childhood, Vietnam was amping up too, which made it doubly relevant. The only book that came close was Tom Wolfe's The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. They hit me hard as both were published close to when I read them, but Kerouac and Salinger belonged to a different generation. It must be also be said that I was a massive Americanophile back then.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

'Difficult' books

I never really thought of Catch 22 as being a quintessentially American book, but I'm beginning to think that it is, and that that accounts for the opinions expressed above.

I think that catch 22 is more a product of its time, than a product of its culture and I get the impression that its impact would have been much greater closer to the time it was written. It's been copied, and influenced so many things that it's hard to be that impressed by it.

Though I can see your point though in that it also relies on a couple of gimmicks that once you've seen you're not that impressed by. If you're familiar with cynicism, or the use of paradoxes, then it's a pretty slim book in every sense, other than the physical. It would be better if it was only half as long.

[San Bernardhinault]

'Difficult' books

On the Road is a book I always cite as something to only ever read in your teens. As a 17 year old taking trains across Europe it was utterly brilliant and I identified with it and loved it. When I tried it again as an adult it was just unreadable, self-indulgent toss. Not difficult, in any real sense. Just unreadable through being self-indulgent. Catch-22, I thought, held out much, much better on a second reading as an adult.

I'm baffled that either are considered "difficult".

[Amor de Cosmos]

'Difficult' books

Me too. Unless extended to mean difficult to finish, because not interesting.

[gloveguy]

'Difficult' books

What I meant by 'difficult' was books that that are a challenge to follow, either narratively ("what the hell is going on here?"', thematically ("what is this about? What does the author mean by all this?", or linguistically (having to re-read a sentence a few times just to understand its literal meaning). There surely a lot of other interpretations, though.

I still like 'On the Road,' tho I think it's more iconic than great. I can forgive the self-indulgence as being reactionary to the times. 'Catcher in the Rye' tho is just far too whiny for me to ever read again.

I don't think of either of them as difficult per the criteria above.

[WOM]

'Difficult' books

WOM wrote: Also C by Tom McCarthy. Just a slog that I finally gave up on.

I've picked this up again for some reason, and I'm going to try to finish it. Good luck to me.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

'Difficult' books

WOM wrote:

Also C by Tom McCarthy. Just a slog that I finally gave up on.

I've picked this up again for some reason, and I'm going to try to finish it. Good luck to me.

I honestly enjoyed it.

[WOM]

'Difficult' books

I think you gave it a good Booker review, which is why I bought it.

It's been sitting there on the shelf since I gave up on it, silently taunting me, like things that sit up on the shelf and taunt you, silently, do.

Currently, they're finally away from the 'estate' and are drinking murky water in some spa in Eastern Europe.

[WOM]

'Difficult' books

Well, I've finally finished it. I'm happy I did so, as it was challenging and rewarding. But I can't, with a straight face, recommend it.

From C's wiki page: After a certain point, most sentences go something like this (not a parody): "Everything seems connected: disparate locations twitch and burst into activity like limbs reacting to impulses sent from elsewhere in the body, booms and jibs obeying levers at the far end of a complex set of ropes and cogs and relays."

It's true. 309 pages of it. It would try the patience of a saint. But, in the end, it's not bad.

[seand]

'Difficult' books

I gave up on DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little when I tried it, though I can't remeber why. I must try again. I think it's another of the notorious members in this category.

Moby Dick is very long and very slow going but it just about keeps you engaged and delivers a cracking climax. I've kids and a crazy busy life these days, so it helps if my reading is something I can pick up and follow after a week or two away.