What’s the most challenging book you’ve ever read or tried to read?
>>25077931Schizophrenic rants on /pol/ with no paragraph breaks.
>>25077931Gravity's Rainbow
Pic rel.
>>25077931A couple pages of Finnegans Wake didn't convince me it would be at all worth attempting to decode.I don't read stories without interesting plots, nor without marvelous prose.
>>25077931Warrior Cats
>>25078074FW has amazing prose so sounds like you're hung up on plot lmao
FW > Differential geometry textbook as a freshman > Proteus + Oxen > Gravity's Rainbow > Ulysses
>>25078132retard.
>>25077931Haven't gotten to the big ones yet like Ulysses or GR, but IJ was not really a hard read. Just very long. What I'd legitimately call harder was Pynchon's V. Very dense prose and easy to lose track of the million little threads he dangles in front of you.
>>25077931mid-30s to mid-40s heidegger
the art of computer programming
>>25078346GR is V. on steroids. And Ulysses is just as hard, in places even harder.
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Read half of it and gave it up because for one thing I was barely able to understand it, and the little I did understand, I didn't really agree with. I figured I would do some background study on other philosophers before returning to it, if ever. So far, it seems that the philosophies I seem to agree with are in direct opposition to him, so it's not really that enticing to return. I'm not in a point where I can vouch for its relevance, validity, contribution etc. but I seriously doubt I will ever not see it as barely coherent.
>>25078132>FW has amazing proseWhy do people say shit like this? Prose means writing without meter. Verse means writing with meter. Would you say "I loved the verse" about a book of poetry? Would you say "I loved the non-metrical writing in Finnegans Wake"?It's annoying and I will die on this autistic hill. Use the word "style" or just say "writing" and stop annoying me.
>>25077931Discipline and Punish / FoucaultAlso: the New Testament. ... felt like real punishment. Never finished.
>>25078586no, I say I loved the prose in FW
>>25078763You're annoying and you sound like a retard. No one used to talk like this and now it's everywhere.
>>25078813Social media has irrevocably destroyed all discourse. It's over; best just retreat into your books, conversations with friends, and forget the rest. There's no coming back from all this stupidity.
>>25077931My diary desu.
>>25078816>best just retreat into your books, conversations with friends, and forget the rest. There's no coming back from all this stupidity.I agree wholeheartedly with this feeling. This site should only be interacted with no discussion in mind, it's only textual fast food of memes and ocassional funny images and replies. Beyond that, there's really nothing of value here.
The most challenging books I've read are bad, miscellaneous bad lit. With anything good I am at least motivated by intrigue or enjoyment. Lack of quality is the only thing that makes books hard to read for me
>>25078346V. isn't hard at all. You're probably just stupid
>>25077931IJ is great but I didn't find it that difficult, it was pretty breezy and fun apart from a few sections.Hardest thing I've ever tried to read is the Old Testament. Aside from its size, it also has a huge variety of styles and genres (I mean in the true sense, like History, Poetry, Philosophy, etc), it's full of linguistic things that are difficult to translate from Hebrew, and are difficult to read in translation, and the Pentateuch after the flight from Egypt (the intensely detailed description of the Mosaic Law) is possibly the greatest filter in all of literature.
Finnegans Wake’s a hoot! Proust? I just can’t. Sorry guys.
>>25077972Thanks for posting that, anon. I'm just starting to read (after many many years of not) and I was worried that I wouldn't know what "good" writing is since I have nothing to base it against. But it turns out I can tell when bad writing presents itself and I've just been picking good books.
