Books that are too difficult, out of your league, too long

[sin]

What's your list?

Mine:

1. Ulysess (James Joyce)
2. Generally anything by Kenzoburo Oe (very hard to get into)
3. The Waves (Virginia Woolf)
4. Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon)
5. The Tunnel (William Gass)
6. Half of the things by Kobo Abe (Exception: "Woman in the Dunes")
7. The Tin Drum (Gunter Grass)
8. The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann)
9. The Red and the Black (Stendhal)
10. Anything by any Russian *in general* (read: Dr Zhivago, Master and Magarita, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment)
11. In Search of Lost Time (Marcel Proust)
12. A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth)
13. Don Quixote (Cervantes)
14. 2666 (Robero Bolano)

Did I miss out anything or anyone?

-- 02 Jan 2012, 07:32 --

More:

1. Underworld (Don Delilo)
2. The Makioka Sisters (Junichiro Tanizaki) -- I must complete this before I die, but it's just...too slow and nothing happening
3. Sea of Fertility quartet (Yukio Mishima) -- one of those few Jap writers (next to Oe) I cannot 'get into'
4. David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
5. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)

[Jacob]

I don't like to consider books to be, "too difficult." or "out of my league." Definitely never too long, if it's slow, then I obviously have no interest in the book. That's the factor of having it not fast pace and slowly written. If it's too difficult, I would like to put it on hold, still keeping the book but going back to it after a bit, like David Copperfield. A brilliant Charles Dickens piece.

[sin]

I don't like to consider books to be, "too difficult." or "out of my league." Definitely never too long, if it's slow, then I obviously have no interest in the book. That's the factor of having it not fast pace and slowly written. If it's too difficult, I would like to put it on hold, still keeping the book but going back to it after a bit, like David Copperfield. A brilliant Charles Dickens piece.

You mean there are no books that you simply 'don't get'? Maybe like 'Gravity's Rainbow' or 'Finnegan's Wake'? Or 'House of Leaves'?

With the exception of Emily Bronte, and now that my university days are long over, I generally try not to read anything before 1900.

[mouseofcards89]

What do you have against the Russians *in general?* Some of the politics are dated, and people do not "fly at" or "call on" each other these days, but it's easy enough to work around that. Dostoevsky was popular with quasi-literate peasants in his day. So was Tolstoy, for that matter. If you want to denigrate Turgenev, I'm right behind you: he was no 'Russian' author. I wasn't too impressed with Goncharov either, but, mind you, I've only read "Precipice," not "Oblomov," which has been heralded as his best work, for whatever that's worth. Bulgakov was too much of a feminist and stole Dostoevsky's devil. Gogol is well worth reading, though you need to know a fair bit about the political climate of the day before reading his books. The worst thing that can be said about any of them is that they're a bit dated (with the exception of Dostoevsky, because he's too brilliant for any such classification).
That being said, I do agree that Pynchon is very esoteric. Though his work does have its high points, it often seems self-effacing and almost cannibalistic. He's largely what John Ralston Saul might call a 'technocrat' writer in that his work can only be 'understood' by a very select few with alphabets behind their names. I'm certainly too dumb to get most of it. If you want Pynchon with fewer recondite references and more of a human factor, read David Foster Wallace.

[TimeKeeperApprentice]

Mine is the Iliad by Homer. It is in poem from and I'm 12...I wouldn't understand it....

[loksin]

What do you have against the Russians *in general?*

They are too long and tedious...currently Brothers Karamazov is dialogue all the way...

I'm fine with both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky's shorter works (Death of Ivan Ilych and Notes from Underground).

The long ones are just, well, long and not terribly exciting (or at least not yet)...

I enjoy some of Chekov's short stories though (my favourite being 'The House with the Mezzanine')

Nabokov is uniquely un-Russian, though I do not like his writing very much either, but he certainly has excellent English.

[Jacob]

I don't like to consider books to be, "too difficult." or "out of my league." Definitely never too long, if it's slow, then I obviously have no interest in the book. That's the factor of having it not fast pace and slowly written. If it's too difficult, I would like to put it on hold, still keeping the book but going back to it after a bit, like David Copperfield. A brilliant Charles Dickens piece.

You mean there are no books that you simply 'don't get'? Maybe like 'Gravity's Rainbow' or 'Finnegan's Wake'? Or 'House of Leaves'?

With the exception of Emily Bronte, and now that my university days are long over, I generally try not to read anything before 1900.

Maybe because I only read a lot of books by my favorite genres or authors, and I always read the first page or something and blurb before I take it out. I think there has been a book where I couldn't wrap my head around, but I would always put the book on hold for later until I have gained more knowledge, then I would give it another go.

[Maud Fitch]

.....With the exception of Emily Bronte, and now that my university days are long over, I generally try not to read anything before 1900.

I think that comment hits the nail on the head. Often books which prove too difficult or too hard to read are the ones written in another time, another age. If you are reading for leisure, there's no harm in reading contemporary novels which suit your style.

[Bighuey]

For me it was Ben-Hur. I read about a fourth of it and couldnt get into it. too long and wordy. The movie was much better. @ Timekeeper, try reading The Illiad when you are a little older. I think you will find it an exciting book. The Odyssey was a little harder to get into until towards the end when Odyesseus comes back to Ithica and finds all these guys trying to make time with his wife then it really picks up and moves right along.

[love_aud]

I had the hardest time with the Count of Monte Cristo when I was about 13 or 14. Too many big words and just way too difficult to understand and follow. See, I had seen the movie and so I had thought that I could take on the book no problem. But I was way wrong. The book though is the very next book on my list (my boyfriend got it for me for Christmas) after I finish the Hunger Games series.

Other then that though I never really had problems reading things unless in a class. Like, I didn't like the Tales of Earthsea at all. I just couldn't get into it. I think it might have been because of my past with Harry Potter or that the class/students hated the book just as much as I couldn't get the whole point of it. Maybe, I should try and pick that book/series up again and see if it was just because I read it in a class...

[RuqeeD]

I don't think I've come across any yet although there have been plenty that I have given up, but I think that was because the story and/or the writing failed to capture me.

[AnnaWins]

You Can't Go Home Again was just too long and too boring for me. I gave up after the first "book" within the novel. Unbearably over-written and long.

[loksin]

The one that really killed me was Ivanhoe, above all things, even Chaucer.

First of all, Ivanhoe is not even the name of the hero...

Then you have sentence constructions like 'Upon this matter I have consulted my legs...."
Who on earth in the right mind speaks like this in this day and age? Needless to say, I didn't finish even half of the novel. Thank God there were other texts, if not I would have flunked that module.

[Tralala]

You Can't Go Home Again was just too long and too boring for me. I gave up after the first "book" within the novel. Unbearably over-written and long.

Oh, man, I loved this book! Did take a bit for me to get into it, yeah, but it was worth it. The "hysterical" women that George's doctor/neighbor treats...funny and clever and....well, now I want to read it again. Just methinks, but I'm odd. YMM(and probably will)V.

[lincolnp]

I basically gave up on 1Q84. It had long tedious descriptions that occured multiple times. I spent 2 weeks with the book and I was only 1/4 into it. I usually read at least 2 books a week, and it just wasn't happening this time.