Ulysses by James Joyce.
I carried this book travelling around in Europe for about three years, kept it near my bed for about another 5 years but I think the furthest I ever got into it was about page 20, and that might be an optimistic memory on my part.
I once met a guy who did his Master’s thesis on the book and could quote verse and chapter from memory. I remember looking at him and thinking, “we are from different planets.”
When I was a sophomore in high school (roughly 15 years ago), I set myself the task of reading Richard Nixon’s memoires cover to cover. It took me months to do this. If you’re wondering WHY I did this…I can barely remember. Guess I thought that history is important, and American presidents are important to history, ergo, it’s important for me to read this particular book… :smack:
Whoops…I didn’t read them in French…MEMOIRS…
Nietzsche’s “Also sprach Zarathustra”. I still have a headache years later.
I carried this around with me for a couple months, dutifully reading and trying to figure out what Joyce was going on about, when I got to page 400 I stuck the bookmark in and never picked it up again. That was in, let’s see, 2000. I still have the book, too, dragged it along with me from California to Michigan to Illinois. Sometimes I imagine I’ll try to finish it, but then I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t start over again, it’s been so long. However, since the book makes no freaking sense and has no apparent plot, does it really matter?
Oh, I enjoyed it well enough, I just found it slow going. It’d take me half an hour to read five pages, the print was so tiny.