'Difficult' books

[WOM]

'Difficult' books

Have you read In The Heart of The Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick? It's non-fiction and is the real story of the incident that inspired Moby Dick. Read it soon, as Ron Howard's feature film of it comes out next month.

[Bored Of Education]

'Difficult' books

There are two or three books that I have ridiculously not finished despite trying on a couple of occasions.

Haywire by actress and writer Brooke Hayward who was the daughter of agent/producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan.

You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again by Julia Phillips, the film producer who worked on The Sting, Taxi Driver and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Maybe I don't like Hollywood memoirs.

Little is the Light: Nostalgic travels in the mini-states of Europe by Vitali Vitaliev. This should be up my street as it is a travelogue about tiny countries.

A History of Wales by John Davies. To be honest, it is less surprising that I am finding this hard. IT is quite a dry, academic book.

[laverte]

'Difficult' books

I'm having another go at Nightwood by Djuna Barnes. I've been told it gets better after the first chapter, which is only 22 pages long, but my goodness those 22 pages are a drag. Lots of authorial pontificating about "the Jew" and extremely detailed descriptions of portrait paintings I can't visualise. The writing is, so far, not as evocative as I'd expected; there's a long monologue where the doctor bangs on allusively about catholic and protestant doctrine; it reads like a tedious sketch from an old varsity magazine. And I don't think I've met any of the main characters yet; the first pages are all about the ancestry of a phoney aristocrat, which it's desperately hard to give a toss about.

I'm determined to get at least as far as chapter three this time, but I fear high modernism is just not my thing.

[ursus arctos]

'Difficult' books

Bon courage

I've never made it that far.

[laverte]

'Difficult' books

Aieee! I might have to scale back my ambition, it seems.

[30 years ja service]

'Difficult' books

i see kerouac mentioned earlier, i often revisit what i consider to be his trilogy:-

on the road, dharma bums, big sur

i never viewed these as some call to pack the rucksack to young people, more a warning written by someone who in 'one the road' started his journeys and began to face and sort of overcome his social awkwardness, experience a couple years of enlightenment in 'dharma bum', then gradually fall apart in 'big sur'.

somebody once told me leave 'visions of cody' there, and after having a very difficult time reading 'visions of duluoz' i could understand why.

so if anyone out there hasnt read kerouac and is considering doing so, my advice would be - stick to the trilogy...

[Lucia Lanigan]

'Difficult' books

laverte wrote: I'm having another go at Nightwood by Djuna Barnes. I've been told it gets better after the first chapter, which is only 22 pages long, but my goodness those 22 pages are a drag. Lots of authorial pontificating about "the Jew" and extremely detailed descriptions of portrait paintings I can't visualise. The writing is, so far, not as evocative as I'd expected; there's a long monologue where the doctor bangs on allusively about catholic and protestant doctrine; it reads like a tedious sketch from an old varsity magazine. And I don't think I've met any of the main characters yet; the first pages are all about the ancestry of a phoney aristocrat, which it's desperately hard to give a toss about.

I'm determined to get at least as far as chapter three this time, but I fear high modernism is just not my thing.

I love it unreservedly, but if it wasn't floating your boat or making you enjoy the seasickness by then you would have been right to bail. The doctor is a gloriously weird creation.

Mina Loy's a steadier hand from the same era, I love her stuff.

[Patrick Thistle]

'Difficult' books

Felicity, I guess so wrote:

Anna Karenina,

I've moaned about that on another thread. I have finally finished it.

If it had just been Levin's story, that would probably have been OK. Even the bits where he's wrestling with what kind of farming to do are OK. The wedding scene and then the scene at his brother's death bed were very memorable.

Anna, on the other hand, was just annoying, Tolstoy has to keep telling us how charming and lovely she is and how everyone likes her, because you sure as anything couldn't work it out from the character. I read her as an entitled, selfish person, demanding that people love her.

[Patrick Thistle]

'Difficult' books

seand wrote: 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.

I gave up on that too. I just could not get on with it at all.

[Patrick Thistle]

'Difficult' books

I read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and really didn't like it so haven't bothered with the next two in the trilogy.

[Patrick Thistle]

'Difficult' books

I really liked Catch 22 and Catcher in the Rye, mentioned above.

Less thrilled with On the Road. It was OK, but didn't live up to the hype for me. I know a hipster type who reads On the Road annually and tells everyone about it as if it's the greatest book ever.

I didn't connect with The Great Gatsby either. (Mentioned that in my book group and our American member was appalled.)

[Janik]

'Difficult' books

Patrick Thistle wrote: Anna, on the other hand, was just annoying, Tolstoy has to keep telling us how charming and lovely she is and how everyone likes her, because you sure as anything couldn't work it out from the character. I read her as an entitled, selfish person, demanding that people love her.

THANK YOU. I'm so glad someone else has said this! Throw in massively whiny and self-indulgent as well. Possibly the least likeable supposedly sympathetic main character I've ever come across.
I hear she gets hit be a train in the end. Good. Apart from the dent she might have put in the train. That is a pity.

I found War and Peace difficult as well. And very unengaging. So I gave up on that one as well. I've come to the conclusion that Tolstoy is not an author for me.

[Amor de Cosmos]

'Difficult' books

garcia to thread!

[gloveguy]

'Difficult' books

I had the same problem with Anna as has been mentioned by others: Tolstoy keeps telling us how witty and charming she is, without ever letting us see it. James did the same in 'Portrait of a Lady' - 'the partygoers hung on her every word and dissolved in mirth at her wit....' how about letting us see some of that dialogue?

But back to Tolstoy, I did love 'The Kreutzer Sonata'...

[Patrick Thistle]

'Difficult' books

Janik wrote:

Anna, on the other hand, was just annoying, Tolstoy has to keep telling us how charming and lovely she is and how everyone likes her, because you sure as anything couldn't work it out from the character. I read her as an entitled, selfish person, demanding that people love her.

THANK YOU. I'm so glad someone else has said this! Throw in massively whiny and self-indulgent as well. Possibly the least likeable supposedly sympathetic main character I've ever come across.
I hear she gets hit be a train in the end. Good. Apart from the dent she might have put in the train. That is a pity.

I found War and Peace difficult as well. And very unengaging. So I gave up on that one as well. I've come to the conclusion that Tolstoy is not an author for me.

I kept reading just because someone said that she got hit by a train. She actually throws herself under it in spite because she didn't think Vronsky loved her enough. Although I'm not quite sure how she did it, because Tolstoy obviously didn't know how someone would actually chuck themselves under a train (them being new technology and all) so there's this whole confusing bit where she is watching the wagons and kind of chucks herself in between two of them.

Anyway, yeah, sympathies with the train.

Vronsky is an arse too and she falls so in love with him and it's really not clear why.

[Bored Of Education]

'Difficult' books

Patrick Thistle wrote: I read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and really didn't like it so haven't bothered with the next two in the trilogy.

Yeah, I read the first and have the other two which I will probably read but wasn't bowled over . To me, they are pale Ian Banks imitations.

The thing that makes it difficult rather than just average is that there are so many characters that they have to have a family tree at the start. To me, if it isn't obvious from the story who the characters are through the writing, there are either too many characters or the writing isn't good enough.

If he hadn't have died, I am not sure they would have been the phenomenon they are. Not an original observation, I am sure.

[Bored Of Education]

'Difficult' books

Last Exit to Brooklyn for me. I tried it a fair few years ago and couldn't work out whether it was any good or not because the idiosyncratic stream of consciousness style which made it unreadable to me. Grammar is there for a reason, people!

[Crusoe]

'Difficult' books

Does Riddley Walker count? I read that as part of my A-levels. Still have nightmares about phonetic spelling to this day. (Sarvering gallack seas indeed.)

[jameswba]

'Difficult' books

'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' needed an editor to cut about half of it, then it would have been a competent bit of crime fiction.

The central mystery is reasonably gripping, but I don't think I've ever read a novel with quite so much superfluous material in it. I've no desire to read further in the trilogy either.

[Bored Of Education]

'Difficult' books

Also, a middle-aged political journalist writing a novel about a emotionally damaged and vulnerable young woman being attracted to a middle aged political journalist is a touch icky.

[Patrick Thistle]

'Difficult' books

The central "mystery" is why Interpol and police forces across the world spent over 20 years investigating the case and couldn't find a girl it took a washed up journalist a week or so to find.

I mean, how rubbish are the police in Sweden.

It wasn't that so much, my objection was the torture and ultraviolence scenes. The main ones seemed completely superfluous to the story, so why include them? To shock? Or to titillate?

[jameswba]

'Difficult' books

You always suspend disbelief in detective fiction. The genre is founded on the incompetence of the police vs inspiration of whoever ends up uncovering the truth. I've no problem with that.

Agree about the torture/mutilation stuff, same goes for all the hackery and financial whizz-kid material.

Agree too that the 'vulnerable girl falls in love with washed up journalist' angle is just pervy middle-aged male fantasy. Yet the character, and Larsson himself, think of themselves as feminists, hence the alternative title of the book.

Pretty crap all round. Not quite sure why it's in the 'difficult' category, mind.

[Patrick Thistle]

'Difficult' books

Yeah, good point James. I guess it wasn't very difficult.

I read the Gormenghast trilogy. The first two I breezed through quite quickly. The third one was interminable.

I like Peake's prose though.

[Bored Of Education]

'Difficult' books

jameswba wrote: Yet the character, and Larsson himself, think of themselves as feminists, hence the alternative title of the book.

What was that then?

[jameswba]

'Difficult' books

Men Who Hate Women. But actually, it's not the alternative title, it's how the original Swedish title translates.