A few months back, I bailed on Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. It’s a classic, practically legendary. But I just couldn’t do it. That doesn’t mean I won’t come back to it. I bailed on The Brothers Karamazov several times before it finally clicked and I sailed through it; I wasn’t ready until I was.
Some books are notoriously difficult. There are any number of reasons. Writing for Big Think, Scotty Hendricks lists several, including a few still on my list of books I still want to read. I’m indifferent about Les Misérables; maybe I’ll read it, maybe I won’t. But Ulysses and The Tale of the Genji are both books I want to tackle. And yet there they are: “better known for being hard-to-finish rather than widely read.”
Then again, Catch-22 makes Hendricks’s list, and I had no trouble with it.
As with anything in life, mileage may vary when it comes to literary difficulty. There are so many factors—not only the book itself, but what we bring to it. Sometimes a book is challenging on its own terms; then you throw in a hectic life, difficulty paying attention, lack of interest, whatever, and suddenly DNF is the name of the game.
What I’m curious about is what books you find challenging to finish. What books have stumped you, bested you, caused you to throw up your hands in defeat? What books do you have trouble getting through? Bonus points if it’s one you feel you really want to read. Tell me in the comments.
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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!