The most difficult book you've ever read?

[Eldritch]

For myself, in the non-fiction department it is Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science (http://www.wolframscience.com/). It is the size of a concrete slab, weights about as much as an anvil, and you'd probably have to immerse yourself in it for several months to really understand what the hell it is about.

As for fiction, I'd say it is Cormac McCarthy's excruciating Blood Meridian (http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/works/bloodmeridian.htm). One I never managed to finish was Roberto Bolaño's 2666 (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22171). I tried to read it in the original Spanish -- bad idea.

[Murphy]

The Holy Bible.

[Cato]

Anything by Teilhard de Chardin.

[Tabiti]

Might have been some textbook in Economics or book-keeping, since I'm totally lost when it's about money. Theory in Higher Math is also fun, but at least there is some logic you can catch.
"Unfinished Tales" by Tolkien wasn't very pleasant one as well...Sorry Tolkien fans, but that sucks!
First pages of "Catch 22" are difficult until you "catch" the manner of the author. Few 19th and early 20th century Bulgarian writings are also terrible, because the language and style of writing. And mostly the fact YOU HAVE to read them for school.

[Svanhild]

http://media.buch.de/img-adb/02960978-00-00/kusch_mathematik_4_integralrechnung.jpg

The mathematics book for my senior classes. Analysis, integral calculus, stochastics and all the other things I never understood. :wink

http://www.hilda-gymnasium.de/tl_files/Media/Content/Faecher/Mathematik/graph4.jpg
:confused3: => :confused2: => :1099: => :banghead: =>:cussing => :dizzy: => :help:

[Lutiferre]

Thus Spoke Zarathustra in its Danish translation (Således talte Zarathustra) was really hard until I got used to the language style. The style was very different from normal modern day Danish and seemed highly convoluted but was really just very delicate, but once I got used to it, understanding started getting smoother, the images were conveyed more succesfully, and it was wonderful to read.

[Eldritch]

The Holy Bible.

Somehow I knew you'd say that.

[Murphy]

Somehow I knew you'd say that.

I know it's God's word and all, and God is a cool dude etc., but he could have done with a better editor :P.

[Tabiti]

Analysis isn't that bad actually once you catch the meaning of "function", "graphic", "derivative", "integral" and "differential". Math teachers usually suck, not the subject.

[Lutiferre]

I'd have to say anything by Kant is really the most difficult, Kantian clinical and convoluted terminology is a poet's personal fiery hell.

[Murphy]

I'll also need to add much from Aquinas.

[Lutiferre]

I'll also need to add much from Aquinas.

Aquinas is much like Kant in this regard.

Though Aquinas is even harder if you consider how concentrated his expositions are. Very often I find myself considering hard and long the single words in his sentences to understand anything at all.

[Tabiti]

Thus Spoke Zarathustra in its Danish translation (Således talte Zarathustra) was really hard until I got used to the language style. The style was very different from normal modern day Danish and seemed highly convoluted but was really just very delicate, but once I got used to it, understanding started getting smoother, the images were conveyed more succesfully, and it was wonderful to read.
It's not the translation, indeed the old style. I'm sure even Germans have problems understanding the original Nietzsche in the beginning.

[Cato]

Anything by David Hume too.

[Svanhild]

Analysis isn't that bad actually once you catch the meaning of "function", "graphic", "derivative", "integral" and "differential". Math teachers usually suck, not the subject.
I'm sorry to say that abilities differ. After years of stress, anger and tutoring I can say that I don't have the ability to excel in maths. My fortes are languages and arts. :wink Truth be told, I catch the meaning of "function", "graphic"... but I never understood what to do next. f(x), f´(x), f(y-x).....go to hell! :cool:

[Lutiferre]

Anglo-saxon analytical philosophy and it's endless tirades of worthless blabbering and blabbering into unknown levels of abstraction, especially the "transcendental" (Kantian) variety, is the deepest depth of verbal hell I have ever delved down into, in the world of philosophy.

[Piparskeggr]

Calculus was my bane in college...

Fiction, though I love the stories, I always have a hard time wading through the works of James Fenimore Cooper.

[Murphy]

Augustine can be quite hard sometimes. He's a much easier read than Aquinas etc., of course. But at times his works can just.. drag.

[Eldritch]

I forgot Volter Kilpi's massive Alastalon salissa ("In the Hall of Alastalo"), a 900-page novel about an uneventful afternoon in a small Finnish village in the 1860's. :rolleyes:

Some English expert in Finnish literature spent years trying to translate it into English, but eventually had to admit defeat. Or did he die of boredom? I forget.

[Lutiferre]

It's not the translation, indeed the old style. I'm sure even Germans have problems understanding the original Nietzsche in the beginning.

Yes, I am aware.

But I think the stylistic effort from Nietzsches side was the right form for his thought and definitely paid off. It makes for a work which feels much grander and more eternal than one written in a more profane and temporally inclined daily language would be able to.

[Psychonaut]

Non-fiction: probably a toss up between Heidegger's Being and Time and Whitehead's Process and Reality.

Fiction: either Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow or Joyce's Ulysses.

[Zankapfel]

As a child, I found "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman to be very difficult.
Same with "Der satanarchäolügenialkohöllische Wunschpunsch" by Ende, and I have no idea what the book is called in English tbh. The title is a blend of Satan, Anarchie, Archäologie, Lüge, genial, Alkohol and höllisch and it's about a punch that makes wishes come true. I know, lol.
Later, I've found Heinlen's "Stranger in a Strange Land" to be enthralling, but confusing.
"Focault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco, "The Sound and the Fury" by Faulkner and "One Hundred Years Of Solitude" by Garcia Marquez.
And agreeing with Psychonaut here, certainly "Sein und Zeit" is a book to be taken in small doses ;/
What I read in school I don't find particularly difficult, although I'm told most people do (perhaps Fluid Dynamics and maybe Statistics too). Then again if I didn't have a good grasp of these subjects I would've not chosen this career path.

[Frigga]

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, I abdandoned, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, abdandoned, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (damn him into a fiery pit of hell for his deliberate ommission of punctuation! :shakefist :grumpy: ) abdandoned. There's quite a few more...... :embarrassed

[Tabiti]

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, I abdandoned, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, abdandoned, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (damn him into a fiery pit of hell for his deliberate ommission of punctuation! :shakefist :grumpy: ) abdandoned. There's quite a few more...... :embarrassed
I've read a short version of Les Miserables for school in 5th grade. It wasn't the easiest reading especially for 11 year old.
First time I abandoned Name of the Rose (when I was 17) but before 1-2 years started reading it again, finished it and really liked it. Now this is one of my favorite books.

[OneWolf]

Mein Kampf-I don't know whether or not it was due to a bad translation or what but it was like listening to a 3 year old child detail his day at Grandmas.
Don't get me wrong,the book had it's good points,which where dutifully noted.
But honestly most of the book was nothing but inconsistent ramblings.

[Tabiti]

Mein Kampf, I've read only the first chapter. First, it wasn't so "shocking" and "interesting", second it was an e-book variant. I can't read from the monitor.

[Don]

I had difficulties with this one finding the main trama, the great number of main characters makes the reading complex as well as the complexes relations between them... having some relation with cabalistic numbers found everywhere in the book.

http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk/primers/history/origins_files/yellowsm.jpg
http://www.mylifemymuse.com/images/yellow-pages-booster-seat.jpg

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Tabiti
Mein Kampf, I've read only the first chapter.

I found Mein Kampf generally dull rather than difficult….

If you stick with the math Roger Penrose’s The Road to Reality is a real headache.

Nietzsche is difficult from the point of view that he is often misleading and likes to play tricks with you; sometimes I don’t know when he is tongue in cheek….

Kant can put a man to sleep, I not long ago finished The Critique of Pure Reason, the man is not a writer. Hume is probably worse, gods I don’t think I got past page five with Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature. For some reason I bought Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, ZZZZzzzzzz

Heathen Gods in Old English Literature by Richard North is mind numbingly pedantic at points, true it is an academic work but still….

As for fiction whilst I love it dearly I have always found Lord of the Rings to be tedious in places and shallow in character, I can understand why people don’t finish it. When you compare it to The Children of Hurin or The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun it seems a different author all together.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman whilst not difficult to follow you do feel you have missed some of it somewhere along the line, the style takes some getting used to.

[Eldritch]

American Gods by Neil Gaiman whilst not difficult to follow you do feel you have missed some of it somewhere along the line, the style takes some getting used to.

Good effort by Gaiman, but still deeply flawed. It could have done with some heavy editing, or alternatively Gaiman should have put a lot more effort into it and made into a broader, deeper work, perhaps a series. As it is it seems to fall somewhere in the middle.

[Aemma]

The Holy Bible.

LOL As Eldritch said, no surprise here from you Eoin. ;) :D The version being read can certainly offer its challenges. The King James version of the Bible, challenging in its right with its flowery language, is much more enjoyable to read as a work of literature than is anything else put out there at this moment though. The one saving grace is that most of us are quite familiar with the various plot lines already. ;) :D

And Oghren, yes Teilhard de Chardin! I tried reading The Phenomenon of Man yonks ago and just couldn't get into it! I should give it a try again...some day.

One of the most difficult books was The Mayor of Casterbridge in high school. I would probably enjoy re-reading it today and get much more from it now than I ever did back then. But oh my gods, this incredibly descriptive narrative didn't seem to want to end!! Absolutely painful to read when you're an impatient 14 year old Canadian girl with better things to do than read about the English countryside! :D

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Eldritch
Good effort by Gaiman, but still deeply flawed. It could have done with some heavy editing, or alternatively Gaiman should have put a lot more effort into it and made into a broader, deeper work, perhaps a series. As it is it seems to fall somewhere in the middle.

The concept is good, though not especially original, I didn’t have any “Hmmm” moments with the book. I thought it got better towards the end but the beginning…..I usually know within three or so pages if I can be arsed to stick with a book and with Gaiman I was looking at Imajica (what I’m reading now) with wistful eyes but I decided to stick it out because you really don’t get a great deal of fiction with Heathenish themes that aren’t set in Viking times, "I'm Svenn devotee of Thor, I have seen many things in my time Constantinople, the lands of the Frank, I have lived in England and fought in Ireland, I sailed...blah, blah, blah, blah....FUCK OFF!!!! Come up with an original idea....

It could have been deeper, I don’t know if it deliberately wasn’t, I have read no other works by Gaiman so I don’t have much idea of the man’s style. It did feel superficial but was that intentionally so? You can over do the deep and meaningful and it was a story not a philosophical tract but I don’t have the same buzz I get with a Pratchett novel, now that man has a rare insight and the ability to work on your mind. Still I wasn’t disappointed and at least Gaiman has written a book, unlike me who seems to think words will appear on my monitor if I look hard enough…..

[Treffie]

Either On The Road by Jack Kerouac or Franz Kafka's The Castle.

[Germanicus]

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance"
By Robert M. Pirsig

The flaws in the book include the lack of rigour, the sometimes rambling and incoherent prose, and, in general, a lack of clarity in vision. This may sound harsh, but considering other philosophical works of this nature (among the ones that have influenced me, the best ever has been G"odel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter), this particular one pales in comparison. Still there are many virtues and I'll primarily focus on them here, keeping in mind that you might have to work a bit to get through this book (everyone else I've spoken to about it has not managed to finish it).


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is the first of Robert M. Pirsig's texts in which he explores his Metaphysics of Quality. The 1974 book describes, in first person, a 17-day motorcycle journey across the United States by the author (though he is not identified in the book) and his son Chris, joined for the first nine days by close friends John and Sylvia Sutherland. The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions, referred to as Chautauquas by the author, on topics including epistemology, ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science.

The book sold over 4 million copies in twenty-seven languages and was described by the press as "the most widely read philosophy book, ever."[1] It was originally rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other bestselling book, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

The title is an incongruous play on the title of the book Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. In its introduction, Pirsig explains that, despite its title, "it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either."

[W. R.]

Probably Der Untergang des Abendlandes by Oswald Spengler. Not educated enough yet for that book. :)

[SuuT]

...Heidegger's Being and Time .

The voices in Heidegger's head wrote this book, not Heidegger himself.

[Lutiferre]

The voices in Heidegger's head wrote this book, not Heidegger himself.
Now that you say it, this seems to be true for many other authors and books as well.. and my own writings, too.

[SuuT]

Now that you say it, this seems to be true for ...my own writings, too.

Blasphemer. /troll

[lei.talk]

https://i.imgur.com/Y6NgH54.png

[Liffrea]

Aristotle’s Metaphysics……take three happy pills call me in the morning.

[Rachel]

Anything by Charles Dickens, I am competely lost when it comes to his writing style. His books are so wordy and thick that it seems to me personally i need a month to read one chapter in order to understand it fully.

[Cato]

Ohhh, I forgot about Plato's Republic.

[Murphy]

Anything by Charles Dickens, I am competely lost when it comes to his writing style. His books are so wordy and thick that it seems to me personally i need a month to read one chapter in order to understand it fully.

Honestly? I have always quite enjoyed Dickens. In fact.. I might just pick up some of his works, I haven't read them in a while.

[Tabiti]

I can add also "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas and "The Red and The Black" by Stendhal. Maybe I was too old for the first and too young for the second, don't know. I finished them, however. Both were for school.

[Stegura]

I'm going to have to say "The Silmarillion".

It beautiful book to read in certain parts but overall, it was too serious and it completely lacked the light-hearted moments that were found in "The Lord of the Rings" and especially "The Hobbit." I also disliked that there was no single, unifying quest, and above all, no band of brothers for the reader to identify with. It also contained too much difficult and hard to to read archaic language. Also, there were way too many difficult and hard-to-remember places and names to memorize.

[Lars]

Thus Spoke Zarathustra in its Danish translation (Således talte Zarathustra) was really hard until I got used to the language style. The style was very different from normal modern day Danish and seemed highly convoluted but was really just very delicate, but once I got used to it, understanding started getting smoother, the images were conveyed more succesfully, and it was wonderful to read.

Exactly my experience and I bought Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Danish (Således talte Zarathustra - DET lille FORLAG) in 2003 when the 2nd edition was published and I was every excited to give it a read, but it turned out to be a very difficult and a slow process in the beginning.
However, I overcame it. :)

[Lulletje Rozewater]

Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstadter.

[Murphy]

I'm going to have to say "The Silmarillion".

I am now going to have to deem you heretic and call for your execution ;).


It beautiful book to read in certain parts but overall, it was too serious and it completely lacked the light-hearted moments that were found in "The Lord of the Rings" and especially "The Hobbit." I also disliked that there was no single, unifying quest, and above all, no band of brothers for the reader to identify with. It also contained too much difficult and hard to to read archaic language. Also, there were way too many difficult and hard-to-remember places and names to memorize.

Well.. I think the problem is that you have approached the book in the wrong way. First, it was never finished and second, it was never meant to be a next Lord of the Rings :P. It was a history, it was a mythology. It wasn't a novel :P!

[Eldritch]

I am now going to have to deem you heretic and call for your execution ;).



I think you're going to have to bring out the bulldozer and dig mass graves in that case, to be honest. The first chapter, Ainulindalë, was the only part I managed to wade through. It was extraordinarily beautiful though, I readily admit.

[Murphy]

I think you're going to have to bring out the bulldozer and dig mass graves in that case, to be honest. The first chapter, Ainulindalë, was the only part I managed to wade through. It was extraordinarily beautiful though, I readily admit.

I must set up an Inquisitorial Court to deal with such rampant heresy at Apricity!

[Treffie]

Anything by Charles Dickens, I am competely lost when it comes to his writing style. His books are so wordy and thick that it seems to me personally i need a month to read one chapter in order to understand it fully.

Dickens' books are wonderful - keep practising and you'll soon find an austerity that you won't find (hardly) anywhere else.

[Comte Arnau]

http://www.elpetitprincep.eu/Imatges%20grans/Catalan.jpg

[Germanicus]

"The Anglo Saxon Chronicles" .... i'm a slugger, i did finish reading it.:rolleyes:

[Fortis in Arduis]

An old lover gave me three huge volumes on yoga philosophy by Sri Aurobindo.

I died after the first few pages.

[Svipdag]

The most difficult book I ever actually read was "Indian Philosophy" by Rasdhakrishnan. The style seems contrived to extinguish all interest in the subject. Indeed, one reviewer described it as "unreadable" . It's not, but it requires determination. The most difficult book I ever tried to read is "Principia Mathematica" By Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell.

I'm very bad at mathematics and I had hoped that getting to the conceptual foundations of it might help me to understand it. Their approach is to use symbolic logic (which I thought I understood) as a tool to lay bare the bases
of mathematics. I soon found my grasp of symbolic logic inadequate to follow their reasoning.

The most TEDIOUS book I have ever read, bar none, is the "glorious" Qur'an.
Although it was given to mankind "in plain Arabic so that all might read and understand", infidel that I am, I have had to rely upon translations into English. I realise, of course that the translators are all abandoned sinners who are damned to Hell for translating the Qur'an, which is forbidden.

To be sure that the translations are accurate, I read three of them, reasoning that, if they are consistent, they are probably accurate. They are consistent.

Repetition, for the sake of emphasis, is a common device in Middle Eastern languages. However, repetition of whole suras ["books"] is surely unnecessary. The "glorious" Qur'an was and is in desperate need of a sane editor, one who would arrange the suras in chronological order or by subject matter, not, as was done, by LENGTH.

[Eldritch]

The most TEDIOUS book I have ever read, bar none, is the "glorious" Qur'an.
Although it was given to mankind "in plain Arabic so that all might read and understand", infidel that I am, I have had to rely upon translations into English. I realise, of course that the translators are all abandoned sinners who are damned to Hell for translating the Qur'an, which is forbidden.

To be sure that the translations are accurate, I read three of them, reasoning that, if they are consistent, they are probably accurate. They are consistent.

Repetition, for the sake of emphasis, is a common device in Middle Eastern languages. However, repetition of whole suras ["books"] is surely unnecessary. The "glorious" Qur'an was and is in desperate need of a sane editor, one who would arrange the suras in chronological order or by subject matter, not, as was done, by LENGTH.

AfaIk even devout Muslims admit that the Koran is more or less incomprehensible without its companion piece(s), the Hadith.

(I have read neither, nor is reading them anywhere near the top of my "must read" list)

[SuuT]

The most TEDIOUS book I have ever read, bar none, is the "glorious" Qur'an.


The Quran is meant to be sung, as I understand it.

[Turkophagos]

http://www.buffyholt.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/kafka-the-metamorphosis.jpg

Not the easiest read for a 14 year old kid. I really enjoyed it a decade later though.

[Svanhild]

The Quran is meant to be sung, as I understand it.
It's meant to be burnt. I've read it and I consider it the main source of 70 to 80% of all wars on the globe in the last 1500 years.

[SuuT]

It's meant to be burnt.

Well, of course.:D

I meant to illustrate that it is so plodding and cumbersome because one is actually reading lyrics with the expectation that it is a normally written book. Without knowing that it is essentially a song prior to reading it, it makes it aesthetically worse than it already is.

[Tabiti]

Once me and my friends searched for a Koran copy to burn it, however the price was too high for kindling;)
Anyway, I'd like to take a look at its pages. As far as I know the lyrics are like fairy tales which hidden meaning you should uncover.

[Groenewolf]

Anyway, I'd like to take a look at its pages. As far as I know the lyrics are like fairy tales which hidden meaning you should uncover.

That is what the hadith are for. They tell in what context the verses where revealed.

[Octothorpe]

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, I abdandoned, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, abdandoned, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (damn him into a fiery pit of hell for his deliberate ommission of punctuation! :shakefist :grumpy: ) abdandoned. There's quite a few more...... :embarrassed

Oh, I implore you to pick up The Name of the Rose again! It's such a wonderful work. If some of the language passages are difficult, then, frankly, skip them--Eco essentially recapitulates those passages and you can pick up the meaning fairly well.

Work that I found difficult when I read it (I was in late grade school): Pantagruel, by Rabelais. I should probably go back and pick it up now--I don't really remember now what it was quite about.

[Cato]

Lovecraft is always a bit of a chore, his English is technical and he tends to write long, often rambling paragraphs of description.

[Eldritch]

Lovecraft is always a bit of a chore, his English is technical and he tends to write long, often rambling paragraphs of description.

I love Lovecraft. He was a pedantic bore and an opinionated bigot -- in other words, a kindred spirit of mine if there ever was one.

[Cato]

I love Lovecraft. He was a pedantic bore and an opinionated bigot -- in other words, a kindred spirit of mine if there ever was one.

I love him too, but he'll take an entire paragraph to describe something that R.E. Howard can describe in a sentence. :rolleyes:

[Svipdag]

It may be singable in Arabic, but it certainly is not in English translation. Some of the suras may be like unto fairy tales, but some deal with very mundane matters , such as how the property of a deceased Muslim should be divided amongst his heirs.

Once one starts looking for "hidden meanings", anything can mean anything.
Swami Yogananda, for example, claimed that the hedonistic and materialistic verses of Omar Khayyam's "Rubaiyat" are actually a deeply spiritual Sufi allegory. The "hidden meanings" which he reveals are so far-fetched that anyone who has read the Fitzgerald translation of the Rubaiyat cannot help being very skeptical.

As a song, much of the subject matter of the "Glorious" Qur'an seems singularly ill-suited to be used as lyrics, about as incongruous as Dmitri Shostakovitch's "Song of the Forests", a secular oratorio dealing with the Soviet reforestation program, as beautiful a piece of hack-work as was ever penned.

[Bloodeagle]

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson or An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man. The first volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff.
I skipped about this book for a few days hoping to understand. I had to give it away.

[Sally]

I'd have to give this more thought, but having to read Borges in Spanish as a teenager was very vexing. Oh, and Niebla by Miguel de Unamuno (also in Spanish) was a bit of a chore!

[Cato]

I should've thought of this sooner: Mein Kampf. Never has it been such a chore, with so much rambling and so many long-winded paragraphs, to read a book. I read it, not once, but twice!

[anonymaus]

Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks

I absolutely detest the writing style and subject matter; the atmosphere is painfully pedestrian in a very unromantic way.

I read one chapter before considering suicide.

[Lithium]

All proto-bulgarian(?) books for school.

[Autobahn]

I was unfortunate enough to have to read "Death of a Salesmen" by Arthur Miller in High School. Not so much that the book was difficult, but it was extremely boring, in my opinion.

[lei.talk]

https://i.imgur.com/BbWrBGe.png (https://www.google.com/search?q=%22sic+itur+ad+astra%22+galambos)
thus do we reach the stars

[Ivanushka-supertzar]

Gustav Meyrink - Der Golem.

I absolutely got lost in this book (not in the good sense of the word). Maybe I should try it again some time later.

[mymy]

The Name of Rose written by Eco... I definitely need to read it again. That book confused me few times and I was reading it quite long:embarrassed

[Svipdag]

Most difficult to understand : Indian Philosophy by Radhakrishnan

Most difficult to read: The Qur'an

[Lábaru]

http://www.elfenomeno.com/imag/tolkien/silmarillion_cubierta.jpg

[Gaztelu]

http://i778.photobucket.com/albums/yy66/Rijska/Cervantes_Don_Quixote_1605.gif

I read the original version that was written in Old Castilian, which was a pain in the ass because I had to consult the glossary every two seconds to find the meanings of obsolete words.

[Don]

http://i778.photobucket.com/albums/yy66/Rijska/Cervantes_Don_Quixote_1605.gif

I read the original version that was written in Old Castilian, which was a pain in the ass because I had to consult the glossary every two seconds to find the meanings of obsolete words.

This book is only difficult to those who are not used to read old castilian or interested in old words now cultismos.

The essence of these are their complexity and intelligence in the message, jugglers of the language, something in extinction in our times.

If you read pieces from El Siglo de Oro, you are reading the same words and language that is not other than a true and rich castilian keeping old words, treasures awaiting to be recovered and used by the modern dignifiers of this noble language.

QUEVEDO about the bakers he found in his travel to the hells. The first time I readed these words, I felt into an attack of laugh. 400 years after they were written.

"-¡Ladrones! ¿Quién merece el infierno mejor que vosotros, pues habéis hecho comer a los hombres caspa y os han servido de pañizuelos los de a real sonándoos en ellos, donde muchas veces pasó por caña el tuétano de las narices? ¡Qué de estómagos pudieran ladrar si resucitaran los perros que les hicistes comer! ¡Cuántas veces pasó por pasa la mosca golosa, y muchas fue el mayor bocado de carne que comió el dueño del pastel! ¡Qué de dientes habéis hecho jinetes y qué de estómagos habéis traído a caballo dándoles a comer rocines enteros! ¿Y os quejáis, siendo gente antes condenada que nacida los que hacéis así vuestro oficio? ¿Pues qué pudiera decir de vuestros caldos? Mas no soy amigo de revolver caldos. Padeced y callad enhoramala, que más hacemos nosotros en atormentaros que vosotros en sufrirlo. Y vos andad adelante, me dijo a mí, que tenemos que hacer estos y yo."

[Svanhild]

http://media.buch.de/img-adb/06250011-00-00/effi_briest.jpg

[joe blowe]

Hitchens is a great writer. Try listening to the audio book - he narrates.
His other book is 'God is not great'. Very good.
He is fighting cancer now and last time I looked, the prognosis was not good. I wish him well.

[Cato]

Some from the top of my head.

Mein Kampf, read it three times and never really got the gist of it. So I tossed my copy into the trash can with a happy grin, like all tabloids deserve.

The Enneads of Plotinus.

The Republic of Plato.

The Age of Reason of Paine, when I first read it. Now it's like an old friend. :)

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, which I first encountered in my middle teen years. So, about 20 years ago. It was hard for me to grasp then, but is easy for me to grasp know. :):)

The Egyptian Book of the Dead, translated by E.A. Budge.

The Bible, which I was reading a good 30+ years ago as a wee lad and I still can't make heads nor tails of.

etc.

[Gamera]

http://www.lhs.edu.pe/catalogo/_data/20100831154322_001364.jpg

This one and most of the books written by José María Arguedas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mar%C3%ADa_Arguedas). The way he mixes Spanish with Quechua and elements of amerindian culture in his writings makes it difficult for me to understand it, so I have to re-read every paragraph in many cases.

[Breedingvariety]

Word difficult implies it was hard to understand. So the more difficult book is the harder it is to understand it, to the point of complete inability to make sense of it. So the most difficult book would be book you didn't understand at all. But at the same time there is an assumption there was something to understand by superior intelligence than yours. There is an assumption of readers failure and writers authority. But the assumption may be wrong and you couldn't understand the book not because of your lack of intelligence or lack of knowledge in the field, but because of writers inconsistency. Then the book wasn't difficult, it was dribble.

I have never read a difficult book. Either because I consider I lack required knowledge and should read something more basic, or I deem a book not worth my time for whatever reason.

[Eldritch]

Hmmm, okay. Is "challenging" any better? Whether it's intellectually, emotionally or whatever.

[anonymaus]

Is "challenging" any better?

That's easier to answer: Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks.

Wanted to open my fucking wrists after the first chapter. Did not read further.

[Eldritch]

That's easier to answer: Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks.

Wanted to open my fucking wrists after the first chapter. Did not read further.

But that was also your answer for most "difficult" book, ;)

[anonymaus]

But that was also your answer for most "difficult" book, ;)

Reading just that one chapter scarred me so badly as to post it twice. :p

[Fortis in Arduis]

Some books on yoga theory by Sri Aurobindo.

Sometimes these things are best left to people with real intellect.

[Troll's Puzzle]

http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/olid/OL3326055M-M.jpg

I got sleepy every 4 pages & a light headache while reading. took a long time to finish. didn't learn much. must try again sometime. not looking forward to it :P

[Aske]

http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/olid/OL3326055M-M.jpg

I got sleepy every 4 pages & a light headache while reading. took a long time to finish. didn't learn much. must try again sometime. not looking forward to it :P

lawlz. that one is Critique of Pure Reason done barney style. Reading any of Kant's weighty tomes is daunting experience both for content and for stylistic reasons but he actually makes complete sense. not that he's right about everything or even most things but with effort he becomes very clear. he also happens to be an excellent writer.

most difficult books? well, the aforementioned Critique of Pure Reason. Heidegger, Being and Time (or really anything of his; this one was just the weightiest and densest). Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

[Batavia]

https://i.postimg.cc/tCN0mdXh/8524819368.jpg (https://postimages.org/)

Didn´t understood half of it :lmao
But I like Sloterdijk, at least he is quite critical.

[AA_Excellence]

116020

This book was my first introduction to proofs, before that, I was more of a plug-and-chug kind of guy. Thankfully, this book not only humbled me, but inspired me to take more discrete math to fulfill my cs degree.

[JamesBond007]

Tractatus Logico-philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

What is Mathematics ? by Courant and Robbins

[Occiput in Starlight]

When Lee Child started messing with coauthors it really broke the flow of his writing for me.

So probably The Sentinel (2020) or No Plan B (2022)

[BakersfieldChimp]

116020

This book was my first introduction to proofs, before that, I was more of a plug-and-chug kind of guy. Thankfully, this book not only humbled me, but inspired me to take more discrete math to fulfill my cs degree.
Someone else has read Thomas Hardy. I got my spark towards pure math during the Linear Algebra part at the beginning of Diffy Qs. Linear Algebra was my introduction tp proofs...unless one counts grade school geometry.

Thread duty...
Textbooks and Philosophy books are one thing. The hardest book I have read was "Finnegans Wake". This was in college when I put effort into being "hardcore" in everything. It took me almost two years and a few analysis books. A few years later, I concluded that the drunken ramblings of a genius were still drunken ramblings.

There is a reason I refer to myself as a "recovering intellectual"

[gixajo]

Once I read a big book in which, although I understood all the words, I could not understand the storyline.

The title of each chapter was a letter of the alphabet and I seem to remember that its title was "dictionary".

I don't remember the author, but he must have been crazy, because as I told you, it didn't make any sense.

[Lemminkäinen]

Tractatus logico-philosophicus.

[Occiput in Starlight]

Once I read a big book in which, although I understood all the words, I could not understand the storyline.

The title of each chapter was a letter of the alphabet and I seem to remember that its title was "dictionary".

What language was it in? I got about halfway through the Polish translation. I also think the plot was gratuitously exotic. And there was waaay too much exposition.

[gixajo]

What language was it in? I got about halfway through the Polish translation. I also think the plot was gratuitously exotic. And there was waaay too much exposition.

I read it in Spanish, but I read that that strange book has been translated into all the languages ​​of the world.

That makes me feel very silly, since apparently it must be a very popular book all over the world and I am not able to make any sense of it.

[Occiput in Starlight]

I read it in Spanish, but I read that that strange book has been translated into all the languages ​​of the world.

That makes me feel very silly, since apparently it must be a very popular book all over the world and I am not able to make any sense of it.

I wouldn't overestimate its popularity. Most people I've observed seem to barely read a passage or two at a time and only once every blue moon at that.

For comparison, I read A Game of Thrones in one sitting.

[Todesritter]

Steiner's Cosmic Memory in recent memory, moreso because of the format than the content. I think I might have found every book I never finished easier to read if it had been on paper. I'm intentionally excepting art and film theory books, because I've more often gone through specific chapters rather than the whole thing.

Fiction-wise, Kafka's Trial and The Sorrows of Young Werther, which was more florid and harder to read than the Iliad and Kalevala. I like Goethe, but nonetheless... I found the Unfinished Tales and the Iliad as well as Kafka's short stories a pleasant read as long as they were printed on good paper, though.

Steppenwolf was an emotionally demanding read, in that it confronted me with a lot of uncomfortable habits and thought-cycles I had also assumed in my life. Ultimately, that's what made it so rewarding, though.

[Token]

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Probably the most difficult philosophy book ever written.

[InmostLight]

Granted, I read them both in early high school, but House of Leaves and Sophie's World were both impossible for me to finish.

[Voskos]

1984 by George Orwell. Scarily relevant.

[Occiput in Starlight]

This one is difficult but the payoff at the end is massive:
https://i.ibb.co/H4CHNh9/images-2023-04-02-T114043-183.jpg (https://imgbb.com/)

[Rædwald]

Anything by Kerouac. I don't know why he gets such praise, his writing is schizophrenic at best.

[Jingle Bell]

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Probably the most difficult philosophy book ever written.

Even harder that Zaratusthra? Damn

[Token]

Even harder that Zaratusthra? Damn

Reading Nietzsche is a breeze compared to Hegel, hehe.

[Marshall Theodore]

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Probably the most difficult philosophy book ever written.

Arent Kant books the hardests? i didnt know that about Hegel.

[Token]

Arent Kant books the hardests? i didnt know that about Hegel.

Kant's hardness is overrated IMO, he writes in a very straightforward and logical way. Hegel is pretty much impossible to understand without the help of secondary literature.

[Occiput in Starlight]

I didn't read Hegel in college even when it was required for some philosophy paper I took. I was incapable of the necessary concentration and work ethic.

I wouldn't even classify my attempt as "reading" because the experience was so unlike any other book-human experience I have ever had.

Maybe if I had any affinity for or experience with the sciences, my Hegel experience wouldn't have seemed so alien to me.

[capocannoniere]

Jorge Luis Borges' short stories. They are hard but they are very rewarding. The few ones I think I was able to understand were life-changing.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra was very hard too, but I never seriously attempted to study him. I only read The Genealogy of Morals fully, it was great but as Token said it's the one book that a layman can read with no challenges. Philosophy is complicated to me because there isn't really a straightforward path to beginners and autodidacts.

[Mortimer]

I dont know if difficult but tiresome and much to read... 4-5 Books.... Thousands of pages combined

https://i.ibb.co/mh5rfrP/Whats-App-Image-2023-04-02-at-08-30-58.jpg (https://ibb.co/r52KDKX)
https://i.ibb.co/yVvZSFw/Whats-App-Image-2023-04-02-at-08-30-57.jpg (https://ibb.co/mSZ285L)
whatsapp logo wallpaper hd (https://imgbb.com/)

[Occiput in Starlight]

I didn't read Hegel in college even when it was required for some philosophy paper I took. I was incapable of the necessary concentration and work ethic.

I wouldn't even classify my attempt as "reading" because the experience was so unlike any other book-human experience I have ever had.

Maybe if I had any affinity for or experience with the sciences, my Hegel experience wouldn't have seemed so alien to me.

I also tried reading Schopenhauer a couple of times, but without background knowledge and reading my enterprises were futile.

Like with Hegel, I found reading Schopenhauer to exercise muscles of the mind which my usual reading materials (fiction, history, biography, poetry, light non fiction) simply don't. But maybe it's just that I haven't read enough advanced (or advanced enough) books and that's why I experienced Schop./Heg. the way I did.

I find it strange thinking about the dying of people like Hegel and Schopenhauer. There is something jarring about such intense cognition simply ceasing to be.

[Todesritter]

Anything by Kerouac. I don't know why he gets such praise, his writing is schizophrenic at best.

Loser hippie degenerates idolize a loser hippie degenerate that made it big in pseudo-artistic circles as proof that their lifestyle isn't fruitless waste. The whole postmodern Beat generation was trash.

[Kiel]

Citadelle by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

[BakersfieldChimp]

Anything by Kerouac. I don't know why he gets such praise, his writing is schizophrenic at best.

https://www.beatdom.com/famous-writers-didnt-like-kerouac/


"TRUMAN CAPOTE
Kerouac claimed to have written his great novel in a three-week frenzy at his type-writer, banging away on the keys and churning out words onto a giant scroll of taped-together paper. Seven years on the road; three weeks writing the book. That’s how he said it was written. To this day, he is famed for this “spontaneous prose” style, yet it sparked the most well-known of all put-downs for On the Road, when Truman Capote, who wrote In Cold Blood, remarked, “That isn’t writing; it’s typing.”

[BakersfieldChimp]

Steiner's Cosmic Memory in recent memory, moreso because of the format than the content. I think I might have found every book I never finished easier to read if it had been on paper. I'm intentionally excepting art and film theory books, because I've more often gone through specific chapters rather than the whole thing.

Fiction-wise, Kafka's Trial and The Sorrows of Young Werther, which was more florid and harder to read than the Iliad and Kalevala. I like Goethe, but nonetheless... I found the Unfinished Tales and the Iliad as well as Kafka's short stories a pleasant read as long as they were printed on good paper, though.

Steppenwolf was an emotionally demanding read, in that it confronted me with a lot of uncomfortable habits and thought-cycles I had also assumed in my life. Ultimately, that's what made it so rewarding, though.

Where I come from, Kafka is used as "self-help" reading.

[BakersfieldChimp]

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Probably the most difficult philosophy book ever written.


My stumbling block with Hegel seems really stupid at this point. Once I realized he was more of a Christian out of convenience rather than a true believer, I quit trying to make his ideas fit into that mindset.

[Todesritter]

Where I come from, Kafka is used as "self-help" reading.

I'd classify Kafka and Hesse (although in very different senses) as "you can't keep living like this, man" authors

[BakersfieldChimp]

I'd classify Kafka and Hesse (although in very different senses) as "you can't keep living like this, man" authors

Hesse


In my teens, I went through a phase where I couldn't quite get over the brilliance of "Siddhartha". I was so full of myself.
As a recovering intellectual, I put more value in "Steppenwolf" and I shudder at my one-time devotion.

Strauss' most beautiful work is a setting of a Hesse text
https://youtu.be/Se0HPsJex04

[Batavia]

https://i.postimg.cc/VvtkkwRx/zz10.jpg (https://postimages.org/)