I love Salman Rushdie, but I still had to struggle with Satanic Verses. Well worth the effort, but not something I’m going to try again any time soon.
Like Lamia, I should apparently be prouder than I am for finishing Focault’s Pendulum. Although my attention was definetly wandering for the last chapter or so. Still, I didn’t think it was that hard. I was defeated by The Island at the Edge of the World, though.
I haven’t even tried Ulysses yet. I’m just happy that I’ve got a pretty good handle on The Dead.
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Can’t say I agreed with much of it, but it was certainly compelling.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, elsewise known as Blade Runner. Only Philip K. Dick novel I’ve managed to finish.
I took my screenname (somewhat obliquely) from The Canterbury Tales. Modern English translation, though.
If it makes you feel any better, you could read those last ten pages and still not know for sure what happens. The book concludes with the narrator apparently finding some peace with what he believes to be his fate, but it’s not clear whether he’s actually right about what’s going to happen to him.
I recently finished The Tale of Genji. I’ll admit, it was hard, slow going. I’m not much for fiction to begin with, but I really wanted to read it because of all the historical detail.
I found it a rather painful reading experience. First of all, none of the female characters have names-- just vague nicknames, some of which are very similar. Sometimes people are known by their titles, which change as the story progresses. There are dozens of characters, so this gets pretty confusing. I kept having to refer back to the chart in the front of the book.
I also had to start from the beginning a few times. I’m a person who reads multiple books at one time. Genji is not a book conducive to this style of reading. After a break of just a day or two, I had forgotten who’s who and what their relationships are, and I’m usually a person who can remember what she reads easily.
Thirdly, the book had no plot to speak of. It mainly consited of the romantic liasons of Genji, and meandered through his life story-- unfortunately not a very interesting one. Other than briefly pissing off the Emperor, Genji does little of interest, except for his strange Lolita relationship with Murasaki, which actually made me a bit uncomfortable as I was reading it.
So, I’m justly proud in having worked my way through the thousand-plus page bulk of it. It will probably be one of the few books I do not re-read, though.
I made it all the way through Infinite Jest, twice. You actually sort of have to, since the end of the book happens just before the beginning. 300+ pages of footnotes. Some of it was utter bullshit but some was genius.
Okay, well if we’re not being whooshed here, I maintain that if this is even possible, it wouldn’t be possible to get much out of such an experience. Unless you are Joyce himself, or a genius of equal standing.
Ulysses was the book I first thought of when I read the OP. I studied it over the course of several weeks in a preceptorial in college. I’m thinking of re-reading it. But I’ll have to re-read The Iliad first, of course.
For the benefit of those who haven’t read Ulysses, buck’s handle is the first four words of the book.
I read Kant’s Pure Reason and Practical Reason, although I’m not particularly proud of the fact. I remember one or two points from them (categorical imperative, right?), but I can never remember the difference between a priori subjective judgments and *a posteriori *synthetic perceptions. (No, no, please don’t explain it. Please!)
I enjoyed Les Miserables too much to be proud of reading it. Great book. Same for Crime and Punishment.
Divine Comedy: Been there, read that, hated it.
Moby Dick: Not on my list of great novels, unless you cut out all those interminable chapters on the anatomy of sperm whales that interrupt the flow of the real story. Maybe not even then. For drama, Billy Budd is far superior.
I never finished Foucault’s Pendulum or War and Peace.
Two things I’m really proud of: reading the complete written works of Galileo. If you start off with Galileo’s Daughter, I guarantee you will want to read the master himself. And he’s not as difficult as you might expect. He wrote for ordinary people. Chronos: Don’t wait to stumble across him: go out and get it!
The other thing I’m pretty proud of (reminded of it by mention of Foucault’s Pendulum): while reading The Name of the Rose, I came across Eco’s description of the tower library-cum-maze. I wasn’t sure that what he described was physically possible, so based only on his verbal description, I made a drawing of it, and confirmed that it was indeed possible. (I was mightily impressed by his powers of description.) Only after I had completed my drawing did I find the drawing published in the book. The two were identical! Yay me!
All 5 of the Harry Potter books in a day and a half.
The Catcher in the Rye. Most people my age only read magazines, so reading a classic like that is an accomplishment for me. It also earned me extra credit points in school
I didn’t realize that Focault’s Pendulum was that hard to finish. I loved it and The Name of the Rose and I think I’m going to pick up Baudalino tomorrow. Finnegan’s Wake on the other hand… my god. I picked up a copy at my dorm library sale a few years ago (50 cents!) on a whim after reading Cecil’s column on it. Unfortunately, due to my habit of not using bookmarks, I kept losing what page I was on since I couldn’t use the plot or even characters to identify where I was. I think the furthest I’ve gotten is about 50 pages in. It’s fun to read out loud though.
I read about a third of War and Peace in 6th grade because my mom made me. I had no idea what was going on. I got the abridged copy and tried to read that, and eventually ended up skipping hundreds of pages at a time so that it’d be done quicker.
Confederacy of Dunces: I’m impressed I actiually finished it. I thought this book was crap, and resembled a script to a really lame sitcom. However, I do understand what another poster was talking about when he mentioned picking up a classic and loving it without ever having heard about it. Same thing happened with me and The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Executive Orders: This is not only the biggest book I’ve ever read (1300 pages), it’s one of the biggest novels I’ve even seen. With having said that, it was an ok book, nothing special.
The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin: It was a 700 page history book, and I read it all, not for school, not for a dying relative, but because I was interested in the guy and wanted to learn. For that, I felt good about myself.
That is something to be proud of. Anyone who can plow all the way through Numbers, 1 Chronicles, and the minor prophets without blowing his own brains out from sheer boredom has accomplished something praiseworthy.
Les Misérables . Unabridged. Without skipping over the parts on the Napoleonic wars. I have tried several times, and haven’t been able to repeat the feat.
Oliver Twist, in fifth grade. Took me all summer but I slogged through it.
All of the Bronte sisters works the following summer. I really, really liked them. I had no idea they were considered ‘literary’ works. They were just cool books.
All of Stephan J. Gould’s books, which I read when I was stuck in the house with small children and my brains were slowly turning to mash potatoes. Reading his stuff was much tougher than it sounds since I had no science background and the works were intensely difficult to parse out. But I was changed by the experience.
I myself just read that about a year and a half ago. HATED it. In fact, I even started a thread here telling people to convince me to finish it. Ultimately, I DID finish it. And wanted to slap the shit out of Holden Caufield. Perhaps if I’d read it when I was about his age, I would have related to it more. Instead of 30, which I was.
The Bible. Mostly to say that I did. Personally, I thought it was wordy and poorly thought out. I will confess to skipping the chapter on everyone begatting everyone else. I didn’t think there’d be a quiz on all of that stuff.
Love In the Time of Cholera. Just because of the mention that John Cusack made in High Fidelity. Thought it sucked. I’d rather pound my nuts flat with a wooden hammer than pick this book up again. I hate this book the same way that Jewish people hate Hitler, only more often.
After that one, I wouldn’t tackle [b[Unbearable Lightness of Being**.
However, I AM proud of the fact that I’ve read all of the Harry Potter books, the ENTIRE Dark Tower series by Stephen King (all six books, anyway) in a four-day span, the complete works of Shakespeare, the complete works of Oscar Wilde (I quote/paraphrase Tom Servo: “Let’s go camping…I’ll dress up like Oscar Wilde and you read the complete works of Noel Coward.”), everything Edgar Allen Poe’s written that I can get my hands on. Oh! And The Princess Bride…by S. Morganstern.
Is The Crying of Lot 49 considered atypical of his writing. then? I found that book readily accessible…especially compared to Surfacing by Margaret Atwood, which I read right after.
I’m proud of the fact that I chose to read every page of The Perfect Storm Sebastian Junger instead of taking the easy way out and killing myself halfway through to avoid the ceaseless torture it bestowed upon the reader. Then I had to sit through a 3-hour lecture-dicussion about it…
Lord of the Rings trilogy. (proud only because it was like a chore but I stuck at it)
Others I’m glad to say I’ve read - Nineteen Eighty Four, Animal farm, His Dark Materials.
And I have started reading Origin of Species (decided that since I am an atheist I may as well read my ‘bible’)
I can’t pick just one. Either ‘Capital’, which I got for a dollar at a library sale. Longest 848 pages ever. Just finished last night.
Or, ‘Cien años de soledad’ - One Hundred Years of Solitude, in Spanish. Took the better part of this past school year, but I finished it.
Just don’t ask me to explain either of them.
Or, if I want to go just based on age, I’d say Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”, which I read for a summer course I took when I was 13. We didn’t need to read the entire thing, but I did, because I’m a geek like that.
I had to read Catcher in the Rye in high school, and I hated it too. I’m proud that I finished the damn thing and got a B on the paper without barfing. I’m also proud that I liked and understood Grapes of Wrath, which I read the same year and almost no one else liked or understood.
I think my biggest accomplishment is reading a significant portion of the World Book Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. When I was in elementary school. My 5th grade teacher had the World Book in the back of the class, so I sat back there and read out of it because the class was boring. The Sci and Tech set was a present from my dad sometime around my 8th birthday, and I got plenty of use out of it. I’ll probably get the current edition when I have kids of my own.
