Looks like it’s a mix of “hard to read due to wording/length/density” and "emotionally draining.
So it has Dhalgren but not Hogg :dubious:
The only one I have read is Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s not the longest page/word count book I have read, but it was the hardest. I have also read Pynchon’s V, which was almost as hard.
I own House of Leaves, didn’t get around to it yet. I listened to some of the text in his sister’s song :dubious: I did not get far in the Silmarillion. I saw both Battle Royale movies, that’s got to count for like 1/4? And I watched them like 10 years before the Hunger Games was a thing. The Castle - I read some Kafka back in the day, I don’t remember if I picked this one up or got through it.
I have read two of Little Nemo’s books (well one is 4 or 5 books, read them all). Presumably listed because of the weird language (WTF is fulgin? Moloko?)
Don DeLillo’s Underworld was long and dull. Wasn’t horrible.
I slogged thru a bunch of the classics in the 1980’s when there were no other books I did 3-5 day long train rides in China.
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey was one I just couldn’t finish the first time. Good intro and setting but then complete crap. I picked it up a couple of years later on one of those really long Chinese train rides of the past and finished it. It was pure shit. Gawd, it was horrible. That stupid fucking drowning scene. Then the ending. Gah, what shit. Kesey definitely dropped too much acid. Sometimes a Great Notion could have been on this top 50.
The only one I’ve read (or attempted to read) is Heart of Darkness. I found it captivating and read through it really fast. I have no idea why it’s on this list.
I’ll finish reading a book as long as (a) it has an interesting plot, or (b) it’s funny.
The ones on that list that I gave up on were The Divine Comedy (Paradiso has very little plot and it’s not funny) and Gravity’s Rainbow (the plot moved slowly and I didn’t think it was funny, although I thought The Crying of Lot 49 was both interesting and funny).
I liked Pet Sematary, Moby-Dick and War and Peace, and I was lukewarm on Heart of Darkness, Sophie’s Choice and Tristram Shandy
**
Moby Dick
Per Sematary** (Stephen King is “tough”? Really?) The Silmarillion (twice. And I didn’t even like it that much) War and Peace (After I started reading it I signed up for a class on it. Figured I might as well get academic credit, if I was going to do it anyway) Canterbury Tales
The Divine Comedy
A Tale of a Tub (and other satires)
The Gulag Archipelago (all the books)
I didn’t read it myself, but Johnny Got His Gun was required reading for several of the courses in my high school. There were always copies around.
The problem for me is when I’m struggling to track 100 characters, then suddenly realize there are only 47 - but in Russian literature everybody has 2-3 different names, and which one the other character uses is supposed to give us multitudes of information about the relationship, and whether the speaker is an upstart or a snob, etc. I always end up needing to make a chart. :rolleyes:
One thing happens… The Eagle. The Eagle, which is really a whole bunch of angels flying around in formation to make up the shape of the eagle. Sort of like a college marching band making the shape of an eagle on a football field.
Okay, it ain’t much…but it is remarkably “modern” in concept for something from that long ago. Did they have image-formation marching in the 1300s? Still, yeah, you’re right: one cool thing in a book that long is pretty thin gruel.
I read four - well, three and a half - of the books on the list.
The Sound and the Fury - read it in college and, as with all Faulkner, it left me with a shrug at the end. Just don’t care for his stuff, but it’s not exceptionally difficult.
The Silmarillion - I’ve actually read it four times. Each time I like it more, and can better see how it all fits together. It’s the Book of Genesis/Bullfinch’s Mythology for Middle-earth, and is wonderfully detailed and lyrically mythic. But I can understand how it’s not for everybody.
Heart of Darkness - I’m interested generally in the Age of Imperialism and thought I’d like the book more than I actually did, but again, didn’t find it a very tough book to read.
The Canterbury Tales - I read substantial excerpts from it in high school and was neither wowed nor repelled.
I do like a ball-breaking novel now and again (although it has to deliver). Read 16 on that list and several others by the listed authors. With a lot of them I’d say it’s a case of the reader needing to toughen up - get work-hardened with this type of literature and it becomes accessible.
There’s a distinct subsection, though, that is just off the scale. e.g. Pynchon (sometimes) and the two WGs, Gaddis and Gass (always), are really demanding. Not only do you have a dense, challenging prose style to wrestle with, you’ve got wildly fantastical stories, often in an unusual structure, that can be really hard to understand.
I doubt it’s possible to read something like Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon and really feel like you’ve grasped a majority of the book. Not in a single sitting. I can see people enjoying and finding it a rewarding read (on balance). But to really get to grips with it would take several read-throughs IMHO. Interpreting a big book in this fashion is not really what most of us are interested in, although credit to those who take their literature seriously enough to do this.