# 50 tough books **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 5, 2013, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126 "2013-11-05T04:34:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dave\_Hartwick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@Dave\_Hartwick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Hartwick)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/1 "2013-11-05T04:34:58Z")
A site called Flavorwire has a list of books that are rough reads. The phrase “not for the casual reader” comes up. As you might expect, it’s a funny, subjective list. It’s also a fairly accessible list, considering the subject. It’s not entirely literature-- King’s _Pet Sematary_ is on it-- and all of it is fiction. There’s nary a 1400s technical manual on alchemy in sight. A couple of these I read pretty young: _The Painted Bird_ and _Johnny Got His Gun_. I think I was 11 or 12. That’s not meant to be a brag, incidentally. I read whatever was laying around the house, including _Good Housekeeping_. Apparently the editor included some bestsellers on the basis of gross subject matter or descriptions. I think there’s an interesting question there: what makes a book tough for you? For me, it’s not how gross it is or perverted the characters. I had no trouble with _Geek Love_. That sort of thing usually increases my interest. Opaque writing, now, that’s another story. And if a book takes a long time to get going, I’ll probably drop it; it’s too tough. I like a nice grabber at the start. I’ve started and quit about as many books on that list as I’ve finished. _Finnegan’s Wake_, _Gravity’s Rainbow_, _War and Peace_, all too tough for me. There are more books on there that I never heard of or seen on a library or bookshop shelf than I’ve read or started. I’m not a very tough reader. The list: [http://flavorwire.com/423424/50-incredibly-tough-books-for-extreme-readers/view-all/](http://flavorwire.com/423424/50-incredibly-tough-books-for-extreme-readers/view-all/) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/2 "2013-11-05T05:10:12Z")
I’ve never made it through the Iliad. I’ve never made it through Paradise Lost. It took me five tries to get through all of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Inferno is easy, but Purgatario is tough sledding, and Paradiso is even tougher. Since then, I’ve been through the whole thing several more times. It rewards persistence! I finished Tolkien’s Silmarillion, but I confess I was skimming by the end. He lost me early, and I kept going because I felt a sense of obligation. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/3 "2013-11-05T05:51:48Z")
Woo hoo! I’ve read at least one - “The Gulag Archipelago.” It was absolutely fascinating - I had no idea the atrocities that had gone on in Russia under Stalin, Lenin, etc. “Dhalgren” looks really familiar - I’d have to start reading it again to see if I have read it already (or started it and stopped because it was too weird). ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/4 "2013-11-05T06:25:18Z")
Well, I haven’t read many of the books on that list (I haven’t heard of quite a few of them) though in some cases I have read other comparable works by the same author. I did begin _Swan’s Way_ but never got through it. It wasn’t difficult to understand, or gross, just boring, and I certainly did not see myself reading another 11 volumes to complete the whole “novel”. _To the Lighthouse_ is another that (I think) I never finished simply because I found it as dull as ditchwater. Actually it is possible that I did finish it, but that most of it just never stuck in my memory.) But _Heart of Darkness_? Really? I may not have picked up on every aspect of the symbolism (although the main outlines were clear enough), but I did not find it a difficult read at all. The action moves right along, the language is quite transparent, and although some unpleasant things are described, you will find far worse in any cheap thriller. I am just not seeing the difficulty here. I have read other Conrad, _Nostromo_, for one, that was both more confusing in parts and much longer, but even that wasn’t really difficult, not like I found _Ulysses_ or Pynchon’s _V_ difficult. (I got through both of those, and did get something out of them - certainly I can see _why_ people think _Ulysses_ is a masterpiece - but both were tough sledding, and I was not inspired by the experiences to tackle _Finnegan’s Wake_ or _Gravity’s Rainbow_.) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/5 "2013-11-05T07:44:46Z")
Some SF titles I’d have included. _The Book of the New Sun_ by Gene Wolfe _A Case of Conscience_ by James Blish _A Clockwork Orange_ by Anthony Burgess _The Night’s Dawn_ by Peter F. Hamilton _Riddley Walker_ by Russell Hoban ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/6 "2013-11-05T08:00:43Z")
A lot of families wasted money when they included the Great Works of the West to their usual order of Encyclopaedia Brittanica. They discovered it was all heavy reading. The toughest reads in the Great Works to me are: 1. Critique of Pure Reason - Kant 2. Principia Mathematica - Newton 3. Summa Theologica - Aquinas 4. The Wealth of Nations - Smith 5. All works by Hume, Locke, and Freud 6. Darwin The easiest were: 1. Melville 2. Homer 3. Gibbon 4. Plutarch 5. Shakespeare 6. Marx/Engels (maybe that’s why rebels prefer Marx to Smith!!!) 7. Milton 8. Virgil 9. Dickens ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/7 "2013-11-05T08:22:49Z")
> [@the\_diego](#): > > 1. Marx/Engels (maybe that’s why rebels prefer Marx to Smith!!!) You must have been reading\* The Communist Manifesto\*. Marx wrote that as essentially a populist piece. But when he gets into his serious mode - like _The Capital_ - it’s no light going: > [@](#): > > Since the proportions which the expansion of the productive process may assume are not arbitrary but prescribed by technology, the realised surplus-value, though intended for capitalisation, frequently can only by dint of several successive circuits attain such a size (and until then must therefore be accumulated) as will suffice for its effective functioning as additional capital or for entrance into the circuit of functioning capital-value. Surplus-value thus congeals into a hoard and in this form constitutes latent money-capital — latent because it cannot act as capital so long as it persists in the money-form. The formation of a hoard thus appears here as a factor included in the process of capitalist accumulation, accompanying it but nevertheless essentially differing from it; for the process of reproduction itself is not expanded by the formation of latent money-capital. On the contrary, latent money-capital is formed here because the capitalist producer cannot directly expand the scale of his production. If he sells his surplus-product to a producer of gold or silver, who puts new gold or silver into circulation or, what amounts to the same thing, to a merchant who imports additional gold or silver from foreign countries for a part of the national surplus-product, then his latent money-capital forms an increment of the national gold or silver hoard. In all other cases, the £78 for instance, which were a circulating medium in the hands of the purchaser, assume only the form of a hoard in the hands of the capitalist. Hence all that has taken place is a different distribution of the national gold or silver hoard. > > If in the transaction of our capitalist the money serves as a means of payment (the commodities having to be paid for by the buyer on longer or shorter terms), then the surplus-product intended for capitalisation is not transformed into money but into creditor’s claims, into titles of ownership of an equivalent which the buyer may already have in his possession or which he may expect to possess. It does not enter into the reproductive process of the circuit any more than does money in invested in interest-bearing securities, etc., although it may enter into the circuits of other individual industrial capitals. > > The entire character of capitalist production is determined by the self-expansion of the advanced capital-value, that is to say, in the first instance by the production of as much surplus-value as possible; in the second place however (see Buch I, Kap. XXII) by the production of capital, hence by the transformation of surplus-value into capital. Accumulation, or production on an extended scale, which appears as a means for constantly more expanded production of surplus-value — hence for the enrichment of the capitalist, as his personal aim — and is comprised in the general tendency of capitalist production, becomes later, however, as was shown in Book I, by virtue of its development, a necessity for every individual capitalist. The constant augmentation of his capital becomes a condition of its preservation. But we need not revert more fully to what was previously expounded. And that’s a relatively good passage. I intentionally avoided one with mathematical formulas. ---
**Author:** ![WilyQuixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@WilyQuixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilyQuixote)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/8 "2013-11-05T08:35:55Z")
Joyce, Tolstoy, Chaucer and Faulkner are obvious selections. I don’t understand the inclusion of “Pet Semetary”. The blurb below the entry explains nothing that couldn’t be inferred from the title and genre. Does it theme really make it uncomfortable to read? I suspect themes that hit closer to reality would be better. (eg Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns”) As with the OP, it is writing styles - whether it be the vernacular (Trainspotting), invented slang (A Clockwork Orange) stream of consciousness (Ulysses) or Middle English (Canterbury tales) that make a book hard to read. Some of these books are written in an accessible style (Heart of Darkness) and are not hard to read, even if the casual reader may not grasp all of the themes or symbolism. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/9 "2013-11-05T09:47:35Z")
> [@WilyQuixote](#): > > As with the OP, it is writing styles - whether it be the vernacular (Trainspotting), invented slang (A Clockwork Orange) stream of consciousness (Ulysses) or Middle English (Canterbury tales) that make a book hard to read. Some of these books are written in an accessible style (Heart of Darkness) and are not hard to read, even if the casual reader may not grasp all of the themes or symbolism. I included _Riddley Walker_ because of its language. It’s set several centuries after a nuclear war and the language of the book, while still English, has changed quite a bit. Here’s an excerpt: > [@](#): > > We done the berning that nite on the bye bye hump. The moon wer cloudit over and a hy wind blowing. I put the 1st torch to the stack then Straiter Empy for the crowd then Reckman Bessup for Widders Dump then Lorna Elswint for las. Arnge flames upping in the dark and liting all the faces roun. Catching that time of the nite stoppt on all them faces. You cud smel the berning sharp on the air mixt with the meat smel from the divvy roof. Dogs begun to howl it wer coming and going on the wind. The fire blowing in the wind and the sparks whup off in to the dark and gone. Dark and gone. Befor the wording we sung Sarvering Gallack Seas: > > Pas the sarvering gallack seas and flaming nebyul eye > Power us beyont the farthest reaches of the sky > Thine the han what shapit the black > Guyd us there and guyd us back. ---
**Author:** ![Heropsychodreamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@Heropsychodreamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heropsychodreamer)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/10 "2013-11-05T14:44:57Z")
When I was a kid and all the way through High School, I loved to read. I had to read Heart of Darkness as a senior in high school. It was so difficult and horrible that it turned me off of reading completely and totally for 10 years. I honestly did not pick up a book for pleasure reading for a decade, that is what a bad impression that book left on me. It make me feel all reading was as horrible as that book. ---
**Author:** ![Laggard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de053/32.png) [@Laggard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laggard)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/11 "2013-11-05T14:57:10Z")
Blood Meridian? Some of the material is disturbing but it’s not a difficult book to read. ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/12 "2013-11-05T15:14:48Z")
Mmm, yes… they seem to have went for a mix of “disturbing subject matter” and “bloody dense and impenetrable,” generally not in the same book. Me, I’ve got one–Battle Royale. Don’t remember it being terribly difficult in any way, honestly. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/13 "2013-11-05T15:34:25Z")
> [@Laggard](#): > > Blood Meridian? Some of the material is disturbing but it’s not a difficult book to read. I had trouble getting through it. It’s unrelentingly bleak, almost post-apocalyptic, both with the characters and the lanscape. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/14 "2013-11-05T15:42:10Z")
**War and Peace** was not too tough, just overlong. It’s not that great a book, in my humble opinion. Brothers Karamazov, another lengthy Russian book, is far, far better. **Johnny Got his Gun?** Not hard to read at all. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/15 "2013-11-05T15:58:13Z")
I’ve read all of **Moby Dick** (which I didn’t find that much of a slog) **Heart of Darkness** (ditto) and **The Divine Comedy** , which was tough for me to get through. I’ve read many of **The Canterbury Tales** , all in Middle English, in high school and college. Tough because I had to keep checking the glossary, but still very worthwhile. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/16 "2013-11-05T16:03:02Z")
I don’t usually like to shit on that oh-so-sacred cow: “Online List Designed to Drive Advertising Dollars,” but the criteria for building this list is so obviously inconsistent that it might as well have been called, “50 books selected at random from undergraduate literature majors’ reading lists.” ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/17 "2013-11-05T16:15:40Z")
I’ve read six of them (if you count reading\*\* Canterbury Tales\*\* in a modern English translation). Of those I know, **Sophie’s Choice, Gravity’s Rainbow** and **Dhalgren** were difficult not reads in any sense (other than the fact the last two were extremely long books). ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/18 "2013-11-05T16:16:31Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > I don’t usually like to shit on that oh-so-sacred cow: “Online List Designed to Drive Advertising Dollars,” but the criteria for building this list is so obviously inconsistent that it might as well have been called, “50 books selected at random from undergraduate literature majors’ reading lists.” Well, of course. Any list like this without _Wuthering Heights_ on it is obviously lacking any merit. ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/19 "2013-11-05T16:17:25Z")
Read and appreciated, if not loved Moby-Dick, Herman Melville The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer Sophie’s Choice, William Styron Clarissa, Or the History of a Young Lady, Samuel Richardson The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Read but did not love Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner Utterly defeated by In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust Almanac of the Dead, Leslie Marmon Silko The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien Read, but huh?? Pet Sematary, Stephen King ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2013, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126/20 "2013-11-05T20:12:20Z")
Why is Pet Semetary on the list? Any response from the writer? > [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > I’ve read all of **Moby Dick** (which I didn’t find that much of a slog) **Heart of Darkness** (ditto) and **The Divine Comedy** , which was tough for me to get through. > > I’ve read many of **The Canterbury Tales** , all in Middle English, in high school and college. > Tough because I had to keep checking the glossary, but still very worthwhile. I don’t think Canterbury Tales should count as difficult since it is a language thing. In plain modern English, it’s not that bad. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50-tough-books/673126.md?page=2)