What was the most difficult book you've ever read?
Ulysses.
>>7642022
some shit on film by Deleuze
Gravity's Rainbow. It took me a few months after reading it before it finally "clicked."
probably Ficciones
Kants ethics probably.
>>7642037
what was difficult about it? I found it pretty easy if I wasn't trying to understand all of it.
My mental health report.
>>7642022
Cannonball is the most difficult to parse.
The Tunnel is the most difficult to understand.
>>7642048
modern /lit/, everyone
A lot of poetry like Milton, Keats, Pound. I have to reread it over and over just to make out what its about.
>>7642022
the rebel man by camus
Finnegans Wake.
Canterbury tales.
No question
To the Lighthouse is more difficult than Ulysses
>>7642022
Critique of Pure Reason by Kant. That being said, I haven't tried Ulysses or GR yet.
>>7642048
Well, I was.
And am.
The Man Without Qualities - a dense mess, one of those books I feel like people force themselves to like
Dracula - painfully boring
>>7642090
I agree with this. It sounds like some mentally unstable woman's random ramblings. I guess I'm still not ready for it.
>>7642022
Gulliver's Travels.
It was simple to understand his allusions of character archetypes, and obvious satire.
But just slogging through that archaic text so relevant to it's time but irrelevant to our own.
It wasn't even very interesting either, so that's a bonus point for difficulty.
>>7642074
Gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were reading the original Middle English
>>7642022
Who's this semen demon?
>>7642153
way to go von neumann
>>7642058
Some of Milton's poetry is pretty dense:
"When I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide, Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite."
I remember reading that in high school after reading Paradise Lost, and having no idea of it beyond basic understanding
Neuromancer. That was painful to get through with no payoff since everything about that book got absorbed into other mediums.
oh and when novels are "hard" like GR or Ulysses that just ends up meaning they're fun to read.
Any Russian novel because the fucking names - I know it's real - but I can't remember shit about stevano ivanovitch alliloyev or his half brother iosip leonivich stevanoyov. It was the names that put me off Dostoevsky and the likes
>>7642186
After just reading it for about a minute I'd say it speaks on living on the Earth a quasi-purgatory and waiting until then to go to heaven. He also seems to state that his one talent is not dying and that these talents and works of men are in the name of God, and so they must wait to face judgment.
Thoughts?
>>7642256
holy shit not even close this is embarrassing
>>7642265
forgot Milton was blind
whoops
>>7642265
Don't listen to this guy. You can interpret it anyway you want and I thought yours was very beautiful.
>>7642303
>you can interpret it any way you want
Wew lad
>>7642256
>"When I consider how my light is spent
when i think of how my light shines (light is obv figurative) (emanation of god)
>E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
I'm halfway done with life, and the world is dark (contrast to light mentioned in last line)
>And that one Talent which is death to hide,
death to hide, light. writing? paradise lost = revelation of nature of god
>Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
multiple meanings: his prose is useless for its being stuck with him/he is useless, though his soul aspires
>To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, least he returning chide,
more evidence for writing- used to serve god and present account
>Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
does god make me work (denying light- shines spontaneously and without effort, or should)
>I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
he asks- not seriously though. patience prevents him actually asking.
>That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
god doesn't need you to write.
>Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
god needs nothing.
>Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
bear his yoke and do the work set before you. write. let the light shine
>Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
God is ruler. thousands move at his bidding
>And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
and shitpost as he decreed (and move everywhere tirelessly). referring most likely to angels.
>They also serve who only stand and waite."
even if you can't speed everywhere (as an angel) you can still glorify god.
this was a very nice poem, anon. thank you for sharing it with me.
>>7642090
I read (some? most? of) this in college but I can't remember a single thing about it
>>7642022
COPR or Nicomacean Ethics wad
Sir Gawan and the Grene Knight
So, sort of like >>7642074
>>7642198
What do you mean by no payoff? I thought that some of the prose was rather beautiful.
>>7642126
>The Man Without Qualities - a dense mess, one of those books I feel like people force themselves to like
Retarded pleb spotted. Stick with middlebrow authors, dullard.
>>7642434
The prose was insulting tryhard diarrhea. I much prefer when genre writers resign in their bad prose rather than trying to force something even more horrendous.
>>7642198
Neuromancer is so bad lol I'd rather read the instruction manual for Halo 2
>>7642126
musil is easy
try working through pound's cantos if you want real difficulty
ficciones
>>7642936
For real? I'm guessing your not fluent in Spanish. Try Don Quixote.
beowulf
or beyond good and evil
>>7642950
Board is 18+
>>7642126
>Dracula - painfully boring
this to be honest, familia
>>7642022
Fucking this.
>>7642956
you can read old English? say that again
>>7642946
I'm argentinian, but I had to look words up in the dictionary like 2 times per page
and I haven't read many books yet though, I should have mentioned that
>>7642980
is it worse than Gravity's Rainbow?
Trying to read Children of Hurin before the Silmarilion .
Aristotle metaphysics
Most difficult, finished: To the Lighthouse
Most difficult, couldn't finish: The Unnameable, Out by Christine Rose-Brooks
I intend to try them again one day, having read more.
Science of Logic.
>>7642096
money matters
>no faggot, god is everything obey leviathan
>you are obligated to work, your employer is not obligated to pay you
seems pretty simple to me. he was just the idiot laughing stock of philosophy circles for being the lone dissenting voice in a community of people trying to do serious work of redefining existence with the end of just doing shit because you're a peasant and you were told to do it. kant is shit tier meme.
good authors are easy to read. I've found this more and more as i moved away from meme tier shitposting like joyce. lel I made it cryptic lelelel so smert. no. good authors make it simple. so simple a child can understand and familiarity with the subject matter and discourse is not required because they communicate effectively. of course you can continue being pleb tier and pay lip service to faggots who intentionally communicated poorly.
>>7642022
The Brothers Karamazov. I also found C&P pretty difficult.
>>7642200
he he. I can agree.
phenomenology of spirit and of grammatology tied
found the faerie queen really difficult to get through (only botherd with the first book desu) for poetry, pound's cantos are dense as fuck too...
novels...mcelroy women and men was pretty difficult, and the obvious finnegans wake
>all this To The Lighthouse trouble
Good luck on the Waves babby
Finnegans Wake is beyond me, and a non-translated version of Leviathan stumped me bad
>>7642022
the cat in the hat
>>7642043
anything kant really. not so much the content even, but all those unecessarily intricate, nested sentences, - it's torture.
two pages in i'll start having a mild headache and i'll just wanna to travel back in time and give the guy a wedgie.
So far, moby dick or the sound and the fury
>>7642123
Idiot.
>>7642186
>>7642367
I read it like this:
>"When I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
Light is spent ever half his days. He only truly lives half his life, half is wasted on sleep.
>And that one Talent which is death to hide, Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, least he returning chide,
Here he says that it would be bad to hide his Talent (this might indeed be his talent for writing...but I think it could also refer to sleep, as not sleeping means death, and it is a useless talent)
>Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask;
Does God really want me to work during the day, in that half-time of light I am given? Also, deny'd the light might also refer to Milton's blindness, and the poem is also called "on blindness". Does god expect a blind man to work?
>But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies,
...
>God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly.
God has no direct benefit to us working, but trying to live with grace is what pleases him most
>Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite."
Either his angels also help those who do not work, or those who do not work serve just as well as the angels.
Das Kapital.
>>7642186
>when I consider how my light is spent
When I consider what I do with my time
>E're half my days, in this dark world and wide
Half of my days in this bad world
>and that one talent which is death to hide, Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
There's a talent within me that I'll never be able to fully utilize and will disappear along with my death
>To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, least he returning chide,
To serve God by describing my time on Earth
I'm not going to go through the rest of it but it seems like he's saying he feels like there are so many people on earth that he is worthless.
Wuthering heights.
>>7644842
embarrassing
>>7642198
This.
>His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.
Just fuck off, Gibson.
>>7642022
freud is hardest english
>>7642038
lol Cinema 1 and 2
Nobody knows what the fuck he's talking about but when you've seen 50% of the films he names drops you at least feel like you're making some sense of it.
>>7642022
one hundred years of solitude, just for the names.
>>7642153
>not reading the original middle english
>>7642022
my diary
y
d
i
a
r
y
T B H
Somebody published Mumonkan and Hekiganroku together.
>Case 1
>A monk and Joushou "Has a dog the Buddha Nature?"
>Joushou answered, "Mu."
What did the author mean by this??
>>7642041
Hey, me too.
>>7644550
You will get used to it after, e.g. twenty page or so; I would, sincerely -- since this stems from a priori duty and, not so much in the slightest whatsoever, a hypothetical imperative, namely a silly kind of obligation -- stop whining.
>>7642022
Sihler's New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin
>>7642022
metamorphosis
i could comprehend every event and all that, but i failed to derive any of the more complex themes for quite a while
>>7642022
Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Maybe it was my translation, but I found it way harder than some of the other, more straightforward Nietzsche books (e.g. The Antichrist).
>>7642056
>Tunnel
Sabato's or Gass'?
>>7645511
gotta be gass, sabato isnt difficult
>>7642022
Fundamentals of Engineering Thermodynamics
>>7642056
>canonball the most difficult to parse
Holy FUCK this
>>7642022
that endless one with telephone numbers and shit
Tractatus logico-philisophicus by Wittgenstein. Then again, I went into it knowing very little about philosophy proper.
>>7645523
>actually reading something useful
Get the fuck out.
Haven't read that many books yet, but so far this
book 4 of the dark tower series. Like trudging through a mile long stretch of tar.
>>7645962
>reading translations
Fucking Yuropoors
>>7647051
You are baiting, aren't you?
Thomas Carlyle - Sartor Resartus
haven't read hardly anything compared to you boys but this thing was a nightmare, though when i did manage to break through it was entertaining... i guess. i can't seem to remember much of it even though i only read it a few months ago.
if anyone else has read it, how does it compare to the /lit/ favorites? i feel like i can either read anything now or am in for a world of hurt
>>7642022
Don Kwix-otee
evola's book on buddhism (doctrine of awakening)
holy moly
