The Sword and Laser discussion

I also remember being particularly challenged by Umberto Eco's Kant and the Platypus which was a collection of essays and probably the first time I attempted more "scholarly" material.

I've always intended on finishing Dhalgren and Gravity's Rainbow. Dhalgren is actually rather 'pellucid' as the Goodreads description says, but very long and mundane (except for some very explicit sex scenes), and I suppose some high literary aspirations. I have an old audio version of Gravity's Rainbow, but the audio quality is pretty bad. At least Jenny finished it.

Elizabeth wrote: "Javier wrote: "When I was, I think, ten or eleven years old, I read The Name of the Rose, mostly because of the spanish computer game.

Most adults around me tried to read it because of the movie a..."

I would have to agree that The Name of the Rose was the most challenging book I've ever read. It still holds a special place in my heart because one of my favorite professors in college gave me his personal copy of The Key to The Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages to help with translation. After 20 years, I still have those books.

I second Ulysses. Without a doubt. It's been about ten years and even now, I sometimes pick it up just to check if it was really that hard. It was.

I liked Moby Dick. The strongest impressions I got from it were the silliness of a chapter all about how whales are fish not mammals, and the description of how whale steak tastes.

For non-fiction it would be a Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I loved it but I constantly had to reread some pages to get the concepts.
For fiction it was probably Something Happened by Joseph Heller. It was very stream of conscious. He used a lot of brackets inside of brackets inside of brackets and as he closed them I would often have to flip back several pages to reread the beginning of a sentence he was just finishing. It also disturbingly reminded me of my (very amature) writing style.

The The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson is a tough read. The learning curve is very steep. I read the first two a few years ago, but I haven't worked up the courage to read the next one. They are epic and awesome, but hard.

The Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther, translated from German in the early 1800s, its the only book I've ever read that requires two reference books to understand. (Dictionary, and Bible.)

The hardest book was the silmarilion, but just because it had lots of knowledge and names to absorb

Anathem was the hard but the most satisfying. War and Peace is one that I want to try again (perhaps a different translation). I couldn't finish The Gormenghast Novels but maybe it was the wrong time in life. I still have them on the shelf so I haven't given up yet. Finally, top of my hardest list goes to Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. It's a real mind-bender.

Moby Dick. It was actually a really good read; at moments funny or emotionally intense. It's obvious why it's considered an American classic.

That being said, it took me 6 years and 3 tries, before I could finish it. And I haven't worked up the nerve to read it a second time.

Anna wrote: "It was a real struggle for me to read The Gunslinger. English is my second language too, and many of the words in this book was simply not in my vocabulary, which is why it took me several attemps ..."

English is my first language and I still found The Gunslinger hard to read. I actually gave up and skipped to the 2nd book in the series, The Drawing of Three. It was only after reading the 2nd book, that I was able to go back and make sense of the first.

Books I was forced into reading while I was attending High School were the hardest because I found them to be the most boring books around and they actually killed my interest in reading for MANY years!

For me, it was a biography of Christopher Columbus. I was a smart-alek middle school kid and I went looking for the thickest book I could find in the local library for a book report. Read it in just over 2 weeks. I did impress the teacher, but I'll never pick a book like that again.

It was 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, but that was probably more due to the fact that I tried to read it when I was in the 3rd or 4th grade more than the content of the book itself. I've never gotten around to giving it another try.

Ayesha wrote: "Anna wrote: "It was a real struggle for me to read The Gunslinger. English is my second language too, and many of the words in this book was simply not in my vocabulary, which is why it took me sev..."

Were you reading the original, or the re-release?

Around the time of the fifth book King went back and reworked the original to fill in some context and make more sense of some of the details.

And for me, the hardest was Letters from an American Farmer in college.

It's the only book in both college and high school that I couldn't finish and where I had to fake the paper on it.

The Old Man and the Sea will always, always hold a place in my heart full of rage. I was made to read it in High School (after which we watched the movie) and I just... it took forever and there's a huge chunk where he's alone and talking to the fish and his hand. Terrible.

Pat wrote: "The The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson is a tough read. The learning curve is very steep. I read the first two a few years ago, but I haven't worked up the courage to read th..."

I hear you. I'm currently about 2/3's of the way through Deadhouse Gates, the 2nd book, and though I really do like it I'm at the same time tired of it because it requires so much effort to keep track of things. There are times when I just want to pick up a book that I can breeze through and enjoy without all the heavy mental lifting which is what leads me to often put down the Malazan book for a bit.

I'm debating right now whether to move on to the 3rd or take a break.

Proust. I got a copy of Guermantes Way, which looked short, and I thought I'd be all cool to be able to say, I read Proust. I am not cool. He kicked my rear around the block.

The imagery is beautiful, gorgeous - I've never read any other prose that created images so much like poetry. But holy cats, the sentences are two pages long and you have to hold on to a thought for it feels like hours before he gets to the point. You have to read Proust with all your attention, and not just before bed. Plus, the main character is depressed and weird. So I haven't finished it yet, though you never know.

Rob wrote: "Were you reading the original, or the re-release?

Around the time of the fifth book King went back and reworked the original to fill in some context and make more sense of some of the details. "

The original (this was about 15 years ago). I read the revised version when it came out, but by that point, the original had become the only version that matters to me.

Ayesha wrote: I read the revised version when it came out, but by that point, the original had become the only version that matters to me."

Ah ok. I've read both, but I never had trouble with the first one like you did (or if I did I don't remember since it was nearly 20 years ago), I was just curious if the re-write would be less confusing.

Rob wrote: "Ayesha wrote: I read the revised version when it came out, but by that point, the original had become the only version that matters to me."

Ah ok. I've read both, but I never had trouble with the..."
Dunno about less confusing, but I had some serious issues with the way Mr King completely changed (view spoiler)[ the way Allie died. She beggs him to kill her?!?! WTF are you doing to my anti-hero?! (hide spoiler)]

Ayesha wrote: "Dunno about less confusing, but I had some serious issues with the way Mr King completely changed [spoilers]"

Hmm..now I want to go back and re-read that part in both versions. I think I read the original in like 1996 or something and then read the other one in 2005, so it's been a bit of time for both.

The Scarlet Letter was the toughest I've read. Read it in high school and if I remember correctly the first 60-70 pages were one very long paragraph, and had nothing to do with the actual story. Not to mention that the language was difficult to get through.

The Black Swan was difficult, only because it was good and deep, yet repetitive and bloviating in spots.

I would say Pride and Prejudice. I tried the first time in the eighth grade and I just didn't like anyone in it enough to finish it. I managed to get through both high school and college without finishing despite having classes on it and I finally read it a few years ago. I liked the girls' father more than anyone else in the book, tbh.

I'm surprised so few people have mentioned A Clockwork Orange. As a side note, the Prince of Thorns is something of a tribute to that book, minus the clutter of invented slang.

The Silmarillion did take multiple attempts but at least it was rewarding.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was fine, assuming you skip the first hundred pages.

Nathan wrote: "The Black Swan was difficult, only because it was good and deep, yet repetitive and bloviating in spots."

I agree.

Tiffany wrote: "The book that I had a hard time reading mostly because there didn't seem any characters I could connect to was Atlas Shrugged. I still haven't finished that book. Maybe I'll go back to it if I'm ho..."

Atlas Shrugged is one of my favorite books ever, but I think it says something in that you couldn't relate to the characters. I don't think a lot of people could, really. But it's still a marvelous book.

Gravity's Rainbow or anything by Pynchon. I find him to be the hardest author to sit through ever. 100 Years of Solitude was also very difficult to get into. I didn't even finish that. I found it so boring.

Anna wrote: "It was a real struggle for me to read The Gunslinger. English is my second language too, and many of the words in this book was simply not in my vocabulary, which is why it took me several attemps ..."

I agree. I don't understand why so many people say they love "The Gunslinger." I find it to be an utter mess.

Tamahome wrote: "Nathan wrote: "The Black Swan was difficult, only because it was good and deep, yet repetitive and bloviating in spots."

I agree.

"

That was unexpected ;)

Probably Finnegans Wake. I got through Ulysses just fine but couldnt make head nor tails from this.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some books from college literature that would be a much better candidate, but of books that I read because I chose to, Dune. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and Dune has some excellent world-building so that I didn't mind that it took a while for me to read it - it made me feel really immersed in the world. However, I started reading it while prepping for Dragon*Con one year (bad timing, as I'm always busy in the month leading up to Dragon*Con), and so it took me an especially long time to get through.

I would have to say Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. I just could not get into it.

Rich wrote: "I agree. I don't understand why so many people say they love "The Gunslinger." I find it to be an utter mess. "

Same here. To me it seemed that King was way out of his comfort zone and I never went back to read any of the others.

I had a really difficult time with Absalom, Absalom!. I made it through but it wasn't pleasant until it was over. I ended up liking it well enough but I found the process of reading to be tough.

The Silmarillion was the hardest book I have ever read but it's also possibly the best.

Kiska wrote: "Proust. I got a copy of Guermantes Way, which looked short, and I thought I'd be all cool to be able to say, I read Proust. I am not cool. He kicked my rear around the block.

The imagery is beauti..."

I've had the Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way sitting on my bookshelf for quite a long time and I keep telling myself that it's going to be the next book I read.

However, I see so many comments that pretty much say the same thing you mention (the amount of focus/attention the text requires) that I keep convincing myself to wait until I have more time to devote to it.

Oh, Dharmakirti, don't give up! I bet you'll succeed where I failed. Go, Proust! :)

Aloha wrote: "The Bible is on my list to read for the longest time due to its influence on culture. I just finished reading The Recognitions, which contained a lot of obscure references to religion's influence,..."

Keep in mind that the Bible can, for the most part, be treated as a series of short stories/histories and is still taught in that format. I was raised Christian, but am now atheist, so while I have read the Bible straight through, I would urge you to read a few stories, cogitate, and come back to it when it suits you.

I loved The Hobbit but had trouble with the following trilogy. I admire Tolkien, I just couldn't take slogging through more minutely detailed descriptions at the time. One day, perhaps.
Roots: The Saga of an American Family took me several years to finish. It is an amazing book, an amazing legacy. I'm one of those readers who gets really emotionally involved with characters, so I had to take breaks frequently to remind myself I couldn't 'help' them or alter history to change fate. It made me very depressed for the most part, but oh! how sweet it made every victory.

I have two: Siddhartha by Herman Hess and Moby Dick. Siddhartha is such a complex philosophical book, chocked full of Buddhist myth and mysticism. Given that it's written in such a strange flow, at least for me, it takes a lot of concentration to capture everything there is to offer. I read it an high school and again in college. I'm still not sure I get it.

Moby Dick...Moby...Dick...I know it's an American classic, but there is just so much pointless exposition. I found no enjoyment in reading the book, so I've never finished it. I know the story, I get why it's important, and it makes a fun movie, but if I'm going to read an American classic I'd MUCH rather read some Mark Twain.

Derek wrote: "I have two: Siddhartha by Herman Hess and Moby Dick. Siddhartha is such a complex philosophical book, chocked full of Buddhist myth and mysticism. Given that it's written in such a strange flow, at..."

I third Moby Dick; I finally took a class where I would need to read it and thought, "I'll finally get to it!" And then I ended up using Sparknotes for maybe the first time; it's so dense and just not approachable for me. Funnily enough, Absalom, Absalom! was also a required reading for that class and I loved it.

Speaking of older storytelling styles, I'd say the Iliad was the hardest of my high school career. How many of pages are there on this guy's lineage? Oh, doesn't matter, now he's dead. Skip to the Achilles brooding parts.

Joe wrote: "The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Very dry and wordy book"

I listened to the John Lee read audiobook and loved this...would not have made it through otherwise.

Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy was good but really really long (3000 pgs?). I don't know how I did it. I remember just blitzing through the end of the last book with sore eyes and only understanding 75% of what I was skimming. I think the beginning was much more interesting than the beginning of Pandora's Star.

Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter. A real brain work out :)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23...

I started with A Portrait because of Lost, and the connection to Joyce's other work(Ulysses) which I was unable to find after looking around 3 locations. So I settled on this volume.

I have managed to get somewhere into the second chapter. Then I lost my bookmark and couldn't remember where I had last read from.

So I've suspended it to read other works.

Not due to a lack of story telling or the language barrier but because I lost interest and couldn't get it back yet...

Emily wrote: "I loved The Hobbit but had trouble with the following trilogy. I admire Tolkien, I just couldn't take slogging through more minutely detailed descriptions at the time. One day, perhaps.
Roots: The ..."

Agreed, but LotR isn't nearly as difficult as A Tale of Two Cities. That book is a pain in the butt to understand, and quite often lost me. Charles Dickens fans, please don't attack me. I didn't say it was bad. Just that it was vague, confusing, and difficult.