Books what's the most difficult book you've read? (or tried reading)

Definitely has to be Trainspotting. It was difficult for me to get used to the way of speaking and all the terms and when I got another book from a friend, and he urgently wanted me to read it, I put Trainspotting aside. Needless to say I have yet to get far into Trainspotting to date.

 

I suppose when I first started reading his work, Shakespeare took some getting used to. Other than that, I don't really recall struggling with a book in terms of difficulty. Now in terms of keeping my interest, that's a different story, but it doesn't belong here.

 

For me anything to do with Shakespeare as well. I spent a year studing Romeo and Juliet and i still couldn't understand what they were going on about.

Lately i got a book call "Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke" by Susan J. Napier. I found this book realy hard to read. The whole thing kind of seems like a lecture to me as she tries to define anime. I just really found it hard to get around my head what she was talking about.

 

Other than economics text books, which I swear are written just to confuse students so they wise up and change majors, I have to say Dante's Inferno. I read this for school last year, and it was freakin' difficult. The story, while immensely interesting and symbolic, was very hard to follow because of the language involved. I guess that's what I get for reading a hundred-year-old translation of a four-hundred-year-old book. I partly blame the translator for this one. In the future, I think I'm only going to read prose translations.

 

Haha I finished that book in 4 days with no problems :sweat2:, I actually found it very interesting.

Anyway I found Paradise Lost extremly difficult to read, I find books that have over 400 pages of pure poetry interesting but just plain confusing. :anger2:

 

Any Shakespheare book, Im not that good at reading old english writing. I understood Romeo And Juliet because I saw Westside Story before Romeo and Juliet so if was fairly easy to understand.

 

Okay... so am I, like, the only one that is capable of understanding Shakespeare with little to no trouble without any previous exposure? ;

 

I understood it after the first book, but you have to understand, the first Shakespeare book I read was "The Merchant of Venice". That book has so many weird turns of phrase, terms, etc. that it's difficult for many to follow. After that, though, they were easy as pie.

 

There's a lot of us here, in fact.
When I read Merchant in high school (my first Shakespeare) there were times in which I'd laugh out loud at a joke and the whole class would stare at me. I still read Willy the Shake's stuff now and then, and really piss off my older sister with my opinions on his writings (she's a Shakespeare scholar of sorts, and hates what I think on some things ... screw her and all that).

 

Their eyes were watching god was very hard to understand, i gave up after a while, they had all these words from the back in the 1800s and racial slurs.

One book i also didnt like was lord of the flies, it was just way to disgusting for me.

 

I also found A Divine Comedy hard to read. I changed the translation I was reading three times before I found one that I liked. But it was an awesome story, which is why I found better translations rather than giving up.

I struggled with Shakespeare at first but it got easier as I read and I ahd no trouble after the first play I read.

 

Yeah, mine would have to be the Divine Comedy as well. I have Dante's Inferno as translated by John Cicardi(not sure if spelled right), and it reads beautifully. But I couldn't find the Purgatorio and Paradiso translated by him so I got the Wicksteed or something version and I can't get through it. If you want to read the Inferno I highly recommend the Cicardi version. He went through and changed it to modern English. He also set it in three line stanzas with the rhyming couplet at the end of each canto. So I guess he didn't have enough time to get to the rest of the story.

 

I wish my professor had used that translation while we were studing it in Western Literary Tradition. I swear, whoever did the translation went through and translated the whole thing word for word. Oh well, at least it had footnotes. Isn't strange how most teachers have you read Inferno, but very few make you read the entire Divine Comedy? It's actually a really good story.

 

JRR Tolkeins :The Silmarillian

 

Aye, the Silmarillion was tough going. I didn't make it through on my first attempt, but the second time I tried, I read half of it in one sitting. Once you get through the first few chapter, it's actualy really good. But you do need to remember a hell of a lot of names. I don't find Shakespeare hard at all though. I actaully really like most of it.
Probably the hardest book I've ever had to read would be Doris Lessing's The Grass Is Singing. It's not hard because the language is complex or oblique, it's hard because it's such a horrificly monotonous and depressing pile of dog ****. I had to do it for my leaving cert too. ****ing ****.

 

Most all books are hard for me to read, I have horrible reading comprehension problems.

Books need to grab my interest, which usually means they have to be funny. So any other book that I have read, that hasn't been funny, is the hardest book I've tried to read.

 

Okay. I think I'm crazy, but The Odessey is freaking IMPOSSIBLE to read. I have to read each page about 5 times...At least, this translation that is mandated by the school, which is, of course, the cheapest one, so the translation is bloody horrible.

And, trust me, I'm not a light reader. I can understand Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" better than I can this book...and have you ever read "A Brief History of Time"? Yeah.)