I listen to people complaining about The Odyssey of Homer - my favorite book of all time. I tell them to track down the Penguin prose version to try to understand it. Don't use the movie as what actually happens.
I couldn't understand The Brothers Karamosov or Anna Karina until I was an adult.
Don’t mean to insert gender into a conversation about books but post menopause, it’s never been easier to quit a book. Why is that? A late-arriving confidence in my own taste, an also late-arriving impatience with canonized titles by white male writers, and the looming finality of my journey as a reader. I’ve quit Joyce’s Ulysses twice, Moby Dick twice, Underworld and Infinite Jest once. I quit Middlemarch when I was young but after slogging through the first 100 pages while muttering to myself that Dorothea was a fool, I finally completed it last year and will reread again! And I am now a quarter of the way through War and Peace and it’s so timeless and funny. I keep making connections between these bootless Russian soldiers and the sandal-clad Houthis in Saudi Arabia and the way that war is so silly and pointless and nothing ever changes! I’m still not sure why Hugo wrote this as one book but maybe that answer will be revealed six months from now!
My high school librarian was my mentor, and one day I checked out Celine's Journey to the End of Night. He promptly warned me that he found it hard to finish. I started it, and very soon realized why he hadn't finished the book; the protagonist is a narcissist and the book is simply depressingly pessimistic to a degree that I thought was impossible. When I returned it, I realized that I had stopped reading it at almost exactly where he had. Coincidence? I think not.....
I'm interested in this idea of difficult books. In many ways, we relish difficulty. I recently bought a 1999 Toyota Celica convertible with a manual transmission. It is in many ways more difficult to drive than my daily driver, a modern Subaru. But that's the point. The difficulty makes it fun. It increases engagement. And a recent study showed that driving a manual transmission increases cognitive performance in older men.
Sport is the same way. Every sport and every game is calibrated to a specific degree of difficulty. Basketball would be easier if the goal was a washtub on the floor instead of a hoop high in the air. But it would be less fun. Chess is simple in conception but endlessly difficult in execution, which makes it the prince of board games.
But it is not infinite difficulty that creates the fun. It is a very specific kind and degree of difficulty. Make the task significantly harder, and the fun would disappear. Make it significantly easier, and the fun would disappear.
This leads to an interesting question about literature. Reading a book is supposed to be fun anyway. Its fun comes from meeting characters and going on adventures with them. Is difficulty then needed to make them fun? It would seem not. Does the difficulty enhance the fun, or does it get in the way of the fun? Or are difficult books fun in a completely different way from ordinary fun books, in a way that appeals to a different audience with different tastes?
Certainly, there is no correlation between difficulty and greatness. Pride and Prejudice is not difficult. Brideshead Revisited is not difficult. Huckleberry Finn is not difficult. Difficulty is clearly not a requirement either for creating or accessing great literature. Difficulty is not a necessary ingredient, nor an inevitable side effect of some other necessary ingredient. It is a product either of temporal or social distance, authorial idiosyncrasies, or some difficult aspect of its particular subject.
This inclines me to think that reading difficult books is satisfying a distinct appetite that has nothing to do with literary appreciation per se, though literary appreciation may accompany it if the difficult book is also good literature, despite the difficulty. On the other hand, I feel no urge in myself to persevere with difficult books. I don't take any pleasure in their difficulty, nor do I feel that I will run out of great books to read before I die if I lay the difficulty ones aside.
East of Eden is my current dilemma. I am reading it because I 'should.' But I more eagerly set it aside for Galahad and the Grail or something else on my to-be-read list.
East of Eden did not immediately grab me the same way that, say, Lonesome Dove did. However, I was glad I finished it. Characters and place kept on developing and growing richer. The rich exposition of this slice of American history was also facinating.
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesisn Wars: I kept getting lost in this one, literally, due to a lack of maps. This is my third try, but I've gotten over halfway and I think further than I've ever got - I just read the account of the Eleans blocking the Lacaedemonians from participating in the Olympics, which is the kind of detail I enjoy and remember from firsthand historical accounts.
Les Miserables par Victor Hugo: Years ago, I earned a Proficiency Certificate in French, but my reading comprehension is just out of range for Hugo (by contrast, I succeeded in reading all of Jules Verne's 'Le Tour du Monde en 80 Jours'). I did at one point make it through the first volume of Les Mis but got lost in the second volume and, some years later, started again, only to stop again. Still, it is further than I got with Don Quixote in Spanish - I finally gave in and read DQ in translation.
Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" x bringing in another group of characters [with four Russian names each!] almost 200pages in, I 'bout chucked the book across the room. Finished it eventually and glad I did. (I love Tolstoy' s short stories but will NEVER attempt war n peace) The "Road to Serfdom" is hard because of FA Hayek's expansive understanding and thought process.
Spent two summers doing the Russian "stuff" and have read "Anna K" and "Anna K Away" which are aimed at Gen z. Have also attempted "The Brothers K" and it still sits glaring at me across the room. Karamazov was easier than that was
I'm old, and there are too many words of the lives and writings of the Saints btwn me n Count Leo.
I do plan to read the newer translation of Brothers K before I pass on though. I think Dostoevsky had a better grip on man's place in the Cosmos and our journey towards salvation than Tolstoy, so I deeply love FD.
The Brothers K. Ulysses, and Catch 22 were novels I read in my twenties -- 50 years ago -- without any consideration of stopping or abandoning. But just last week Elizabeth Jenkins The Tortoise and The Hare, which was highly recommended, failed to latch me. Back to the library it went. I did read the last chapter before dropping it off. 100 years of solitude has long been on my list, but it's not a matter of abandoning it but rather not starting it
I got halfway through Les Mis the other year and I like to think I'm just on a pause. I loved what I read--even enjoyed Hugo's aside essays--but I'd put it down and forget to pick it up again....
One I completely nixed a number of years back was Julie and Julia. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and the writing craft of the memoir was good, but the author's worldview was so anti mine (not different; anti) that I finally set it aside. I enjoy reading things by people with different perspectives than me, but not when their view is basically attacking my beliefs.
LOTR was hard to finish because I grew up with the movies. Peter Jackson's movie told the story in such a compelling way, it was hard not to see Elijah Wood and Christopher Lee's faces while reading the story. Contrarily, I've tried to see what people like in Dune, but the world building is so hodgepodge and the writing thinks it's smarter than it is. That story didn't make sense to me until Denis Villeneuve made his version, and now I wouldn't mind reading his imagination back into Herbert's story.
The only case I can think of where I deliberately DNF was trying to read "Pimp: The Story Of My Life" by Iceberg Slim. His writing style was so over-the-top ridiculous that it bordered on humor, which I presume was not his intent. The only time it seemed interesting to me was when he was trying to portray his mentor, Joe "Party Time" Evans, who seemed much more charismatic and multi-dimensional than him...
I’ve been trudging through Gravity’s Rainbow since May or June. Still only halfway through. The hardest books to finish require you to be in a certain mood to read. GR demands almost 900 pages of being mentally sharp yet with a strong stomach and a ton of patience. How often am I in that headspace?
Compounding the issue is the need to remember characters, so you can’t neglect it for TOO long or you’ll lose the plot.
I listen to people complaining about The Odyssey of Homer - my favorite book of all time. I tell them to track down the Penguin prose version to try to understand it. Don't use the movie as what actually happens.
I couldn't understand The Brothers Karamosov or Anna Karina until I was an adult.
We learn as we can
Don’t mean to insert gender into a conversation about books but post menopause, it’s never been easier to quit a book. Why is that? A late-arriving confidence in my own taste, an also late-arriving impatience with canonized titles by white male writers, and the looming finality of my journey as a reader. I’ve quit Joyce’s Ulysses twice, Moby Dick twice, Underworld and Infinite Jest once. I quit Middlemarch when I was young but after slogging through the first 100 pages while muttering to myself that Dorothea was a fool, I finally completed it last year and will reread again! And I am now a quarter of the way through War and Peace and it’s so timeless and funny. I keep making connections between these bootless Russian soldiers and the sandal-clad Houthis in Saudi Arabia and the way that war is so silly and pointless and nothing ever changes! I’m still not sure why Hugo wrote this as one book but maybe that answer will be revealed six months from now!
Brothers K. Starter it at least thrice.
Currently stuck on the Bleak House. But I intend to finish both before they finish me.
Yes, I also stalled on Bleak House.
My high school librarian was my mentor, and one day I checked out Celine's Journey to the End of Night. He promptly warned me that he found it hard to finish. I started it, and very soon realized why he hadn't finished the book; the protagonist is a narcissist and the book is simply depressingly pessimistic to a degree that I thought was impossible. When I returned it, I realized that I had stopped reading it at almost exactly where he had. Coincidence? I think not.....
I'm interested in this idea of difficult books. In many ways, we relish difficulty. I recently bought a 1999 Toyota Celica convertible with a manual transmission. It is in many ways more difficult to drive than my daily driver, a modern Subaru. But that's the point. The difficulty makes it fun. It increases engagement. And a recent study showed that driving a manual transmission increases cognitive performance in older men.
Sport is the same way. Every sport and every game is calibrated to a specific degree of difficulty. Basketball would be easier if the goal was a washtub on the floor instead of a hoop high in the air. But it would be less fun. Chess is simple in conception but endlessly difficult in execution, which makes it the prince of board games.
But it is not infinite difficulty that creates the fun. It is a very specific kind and degree of difficulty. Make the task significantly harder, and the fun would disappear. Make it significantly easier, and the fun would disappear.
This leads to an interesting question about literature. Reading a book is supposed to be fun anyway. Its fun comes from meeting characters and going on adventures with them. Is difficulty then needed to make them fun? It would seem not. Does the difficulty enhance the fun, or does it get in the way of the fun? Or are difficult books fun in a completely different way from ordinary fun books, in a way that appeals to a different audience with different tastes?
Certainly, there is no correlation between difficulty and greatness. Pride and Prejudice is not difficult. Brideshead Revisited is not difficult. Huckleberry Finn is not difficult. Difficulty is clearly not a requirement either for creating or accessing great literature. Difficulty is not a necessary ingredient, nor an inevitable side effect of some other necessary ingredient. It is a product either of temporal or social distance, authorial idiosyncrasies, or some difficult aspect of its particular subject.
This inclines me to think that reading difficult books is satisfying a distinct appetite that has nothing to do with literary appreciation per se, though literary appreciation may accompany it if the difficult book is also good literature, despite the difficulty. On the other hand, I feel no urge in myself to persevere with difficult books. I don't take any pleasure in their difficulty, nor do I feel that I will run out of great books to read before I die if I lay the difficulty ones aside.
I've tried Gravity's Rainbow two or three times but can't get more than 100 pages in before giving up.
East of Eden is my current dilemma. I am reading it because I 'should.' But I more eagerly set it aside for Galahad and the Grail or something else on my to-be-read list.
East of Eden did not immediately grab me the same way that, say, Lonesome Dove did. However, I was glad I finished it. Characters and place kept on developing and growing richer. The rich exposition of this slice of American history was also facinating.
Hard to finish books:
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesisn Wars: I kept getting lost in this one, literally, due to a lack of maps. This is my third try, but I've gotten over halfway and I think further than I've ever got - I just read the account of the Eleans blocking the Lacaedemonians from participating in the Olympics, which is the kind of detail I enjoy and remember from firsthand historical accounts.
Les Miserables par Victor Hugo: Years ago, I earned a Proficiency Certificate in French, but my reading comprehension is just out of range for Hugo (by contrast, I succeeded in reading all of Jules Verne's 'Le Tour du Monde en 80 Jours'). I did at one point make it through the first volume of Les Mis but got lost in the second volume and, some years later, started again, only to stop again. Still, it is further than I got with Don Quixote in Spanish - I finally gave in and read DQ in translation.
Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" x bringing in another group of characters [with four Russian names each!] almost 200pages in, I 'bout chucked the book across the room. Finished it eventually and glad I did. (I love Tolstoy' s short stories but will NEVER attempt war n peace) The "Road to Serfdom" is hard because of FA Hayek's expansive understanding and thought process.
Spent two summers doing the Russian "stuff" and have read "Anna K" and "Anna K Away" which are aimed at Gen z. Have also attempted "The Brothers K" and it still sits glaring at me across the room. Karamazov was easier than that was
I hope you will give War and Peace a try. I read Anthony Brigg's translation and highly recommend it.
Also, I'm actually a fan of Constance Garnett and Isabel Hapgood. Please pray for Translators...
Grace and peace to you.
I'm old, and there are too many words of the lives and writings of the Saints btwn me n Count Leo.
I do plan to read the newer translation of Brothers K before I pass on though. I think Dostoevsky had a better grip on man's place in the Cosmos and our journey towards salvation than Tolstoy, so I deeply love FD.
The Brothers K. Ulysses, and Catch 22 were novels I read in my twenties -- 50 years ago -- without any consideration of stopping or abandoning. But just last week Elizabeth Jenkins The Tortoise and The Hare, which was highly recommended, failed to latch me. Back to the library it went. I did read the last chapter before dropping it off. 100 years of solitude has long been on my list, but it's not a matter of abandoning it but rather not starting it
I got halfway through Les Mis the other year and I like to think I'm just on a pause. I loved what I read--even enjoyed Hugo's aside essays--but I'd put it down and forget to pick it up again....
One I completely nixed a number of years back was Julie and Julia. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and the writing craft of the memoir was good, but the author's worldview was so anti mine (not different; anti) that I finally set it aside. I enjoy reading things by people with different perspectives than me, but not when their view is basically attacking my beliefs.
LOTR was hard to finish because I grew up with the movies. Peter Jackson's movie told the story in such a compelling way, it was hard not to see Elijah Wood and Christopher Lee's faces while reading the story. Contrarily, I've tried to see what people like in Dune, but the world building is so hodgepodge and the writing thinks it's smarter than it is. That story didn't make sense to me until Denis Villeneuve made his version, and now I wouldn't mind reading his imagination back into Herbert's story.
I’m stuck in Brothers K! I keep getting into other reads but I really want to finish —and love it —before the end of the year!
Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop. I had no interest in any of the characters and wondered why I was even reading it. So I stopped.
The only case I can think of where I deliberately DNF was trying to read "Pimp: The Story Of My Life" by Iceberg Slim. His writing style was so over-the-top ridiculous that it bordered on humor, which I presume was not his intent. The only time it seemed interesting to me was when he was trying to portray his mentor, Joe "Party Time" Evans, who seemed much more charismatic and multi-dimensional than him...
I’ve been trudging through Gravity’s Rainbow since May or June. Still only halfway through. The hardest books to finish require you to be in a certain mood to read. GR demands almost 900 pages of being mentally sharp yet with a strong stomach and a ton of patience. How often am I in that headspace?
Compounding the issue is the need to remember characters, so you can’t neglect it for TOO long or you’ll lose the plot.