I don't know how Shakespeare comes across to you in Norwegian, but as a native English speaker, it is difficult. I say that Shakespeare's unadulterated, original English is the most difficult thing I have read in my own tongue.
Oh yes, I have tried reading Shakespeare in English and that did not work out. My editions were translated not that long ago and they are pretty modern and with the English translation right besides it. It´s entertaining switching between the two languages.
I actually read Shakespeare in English in my late teens, and have only read Romeo and Juliet in Norwegian translation. I loved reading it in English, and actually didn't find it that hard. 🤷🏼
I totally agree - even if you are bright and well read and have a well-developed vocabulary AND you are a native English speaker, so much of Shakespeare's writing is not just full of archaic words that today's reader wouldn't know, but also chock full of idioms, sayings, and other once-popular phrases that are meaningless to people not living in Elizabethan England, i.e. anyone alive today who has the misfortune of not owning a Tardis or Delorean or whatever. It takes forever to teach a play too because you read a passage and you have to say to the class, "what he meant by that was (whatever)" - I used to have to do that almost every time a character opened their mouth. Unless you get an annotated version or one translated into everyday speech like the No Fear Shakespeare series, you miss SO much of the jokes and the wordplay and whatnot. You are so right - there's no shame in your game if you find Shakespeare difficult.
Read an English translation of "The Count of Monte Cristo", which I really enjoyed. I did have to get some Cliff Notes to help in a few spots, and the middle drags a bit, but it was a mostly enjoyable experience.
Thank you for encouraging me to read Fosse, his book has recently been published in Polish translation and it is difficult to find objective opinions about it (everyone is afraid of this lack of punctuation). I hope you recover quickly :)
I'm sorry you have covid. Nice to see being sick doesn't squelch your sense of humor. You crack me up. I think one giant sentence would push me over the edge - hard pass. Macbeth is so much fun. It's one of the stories I miss teaching the most.
@@becomingabookworm Hamlet has the ghost, but somehow it feels more plausible and less supernatural than the witches and their prophecies, and the floating dagger, etc. Macbeth is way more trippy in my opinion. Although that's a presumptuous statement, never having actually had a drug trip myself. I got a huge sniff of weed walking past the open doors of a bar in Amsterdam once; that's about as close as I've gotten LOL.
@@OhioEddieBlack To me the magical elements were more "tangible" in Hamlet.. At least in the beginning. I spent the first act in Macbeth mistrusting my own reading.. Haha.. Amsterdam might do that to you yes..
I haven't read Shakespeare since I was a teenager in school and I remember finding his works really inaccessible but I do have a couple of his plays on my shelves and I feel ready to fight that feeling of intimidation and see what he has to offer now that I'm an adult. I read War and Peace this year which was a book I was so afraid of but as it turns out, it was much like reading other books in that I just read and absorbed it page by page. I was surprised to find that I really loved it, and sure, there were some parts that I found tougher than others but I'm really glad that I read it and feel a bit silly about having been so afraid of it. I hope you're feeling much better very soon!
I would think it all depends on the translation. The "true to original" translations I struggle with when it comes to all classics.. I have actually started listening to W&P two times, but there has been too many names.. Maybe I should give it another try.. I have to get through it some time. I read Anna Karenina earlier this year and that was not all that bad, so it will probably be ok. Thanks for the good wishes!
One author I thought it would be difficult to read was Wilkie Collins so i put it off for a realy long time. Just read The Moonstone in english (im brazilian) and i LOVE IT. He is soooo funny and the book it not hard at all. Can't believe i waited so long!
I have 1Q84 and plan on reading it soon. I've just read so many long books I wanted to take a short pause before cracking it. I am currently reading Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. It's a super easy read, not sure I like it much. I will finish it regardless.
Yes, do it! :) Ocean.. is not my favourite of Gaimens books. Never really got into it, but as you say it´s not a difficult read, so it might serve your purpose.
I read John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress because it was influential in the American colonies. In many homes of the era, it might be the only book a family had other than their Bible. It's a long poem and intimidated me, but actually reading it was surprisingly engaging.
Two that I tried many years ago was War and Peace, just got lost with so many characters coming and going and not sticking in my mind. Will have to give it another go. The other was Nietzsche. Found I was re-reading a paragraph so many times with my mind wandering off to something else. Best wishes.
Funny you should mention in.. I just released a short talking about my frustration because I am currently reading war and peace.. Will probably make a longer video later.. I have tried to read it now having an overview of the characters by my side, but it’s not enough.. I am lost.
Ha ha, not just me then! I recently bought a stack of Russian writers at a charity shop for 50p each. Turgenev's short story book, Huntsman's Sketches (sometimes Sportman's was a fantastic read. Best wishes.@@becomingabookworm
I thought it was about time to either get rid of war and peace or read it.. We´ll see what happens when I am through it.. I have gone through the most important russians when I finish this one, will probably take some time of classics soon.. Read Fathers and sons earlier this year but that was not my cup of tea either. But you might be on to something with short stories. I have a big book of "classic short stories" maybe I should browse through it soon.
Perhaps I can convince you on Hunters Sketces. Yermolay and the Miller'sWife starts... In the evening Yermolay and I set off for 'cover'. But perhaps not all my readers know what 'cover' means. @@becomingabookworm
Pray listen gentlemen. In the springtime, a quarter of an hour before sundown, you go into a wood with your gun but without your dog. You seek out a place for yourself somewhere close by a thicket, look around you, inspect the firing mechanism of your gun and exchange winks with your companion. A quarter of an hour passes. The sun sinks below the horizon, but it is still light in the wood; the air is fresh and translucent; there is the spirited chatter of birds; the young grass glows with a happy emerald brilliance. You wait. The interior of the wood gradually darkens; the crimson rays of an evening sunset slowly slide across the roots and trunks of the trees, rise higher and higher, moving from the lower, still almost bare, branches to the motionless tips of the sleep enfolded trees. Then the very tips grow faint; the pink sky becomes a dark blue. The woodland scent increases, accompanied by the wafts of a warm dampness; the breeze that has flown into the wood begins to die down. The birds fall asleep - not all at once, but by types: first the finches fall silent, a few instants later the robins, after them the yellow buntings. The wood grows darker and darker. The trees fuse into large blackening masses; the first small stars emerge diffidently in the blue sky. The birds are all asleep. Only the redstarts and little woodpeckers continue to make occasional sleepy whistling.... Then they are quiet as well. Once again the ringing whiff-chaff resounds overhead; somewhere or other the oriole gives a sad cry and a nightingale offers the first trills of its song. Your heart is heavy with anticipation, and suddenly - but only hunters will know what I mean - suddenly the deep quiet is broken by a special kind of croaking and hissing, there is a measured beat of rapidly flapping wings - and a woodcock, beautifully inclining its long beak, flies out from behind a dark birch into your line of fire. That is what is meant by 'standing in cover'.
Thank you for the video! 1Q84 and Knausgård's auto-fiction are hard to get through because the writing is boring and uninspired. Thank you for another nudge towards reading Fosse.
You´re welcome! Some reads are definitely hard because they are boring, but the job then is just to put those books away. Unless one likes self-torment..
I thought Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury would be hard... I was wrong... it was damn near impenetrable. It's still an astonishing novel once I realized what Faulkner was doing and why, but I can't help but feel sorry for people in 1929 picking that novel up for the first time and trying to read it as if it was a normal novel. Still, I feel like it's one of those novels I could read a dozen times and not fully understand everything, but I'm OK with that because the experience of reading it is like the literary equivalent of listening to music; it generates meaning and emotion even if on an almost abstract level.
I like the fact that you appreciate it even though it´s difficult to read. As you mention it can be like that with music and I am a lot better at listening to "challenging" music than I am understanding complex books. I guess one of the joys with reading is that the skill might develope over time.
@@becomingabookworm I think my experience with and love of poetry helped a lot, because it's even more common in poetry that I'd found myself lost as to the semantic meaning but still enraptured by the evocative use of language. I think more than even developing reading skills it's useful to develop a feeling of being OK with not knowing/understanding everything at first and a willingness to try to understand it later (if you think it's worth the trouble, of course). So many of my favorite experiences in art have been those where I didn't "get it" on a first try, but subsequent experiences made more and more sense of it.
I wish I saw like Infinite Jest or something on here, I guess to comfort me in the future, I don't know what I was expecting to be honest. Personally, I don't really find Murakami intimidating, it's just 1Q84 is so, SO long.
Haha! I don´t think I´ll read Infinite Jest for just the same reason that you wished it was on this list. Murakami shouldn´t be itimidating either, it´s just my weird mind thinking it was.. 1Q84 is great!:)
Is this the first time you have Covid? I can't remember if you told me already. 🤔 I think I have told you already, but I felt like reading the first book of My Struggle was, a struggle. 😅 I love Shakespeare ❤ And you know how I feel about Fosse already. 😉 I hope you feel better soon!
It's my opinion, but I don't like his books, I call those books :Beginn with I , between I and and with I. And I really read many books. But I must agree:Dear reader, don't be scarred if the book is thick even 1000pages long. If you feel that you like to read it, do it, maybe you get surprised that itends and you think:Oh no, that's sad.
I guess you´re referring to Knausgård and yes, there is not really more than "I" in them.. I agree, I feel like most of the bigger books I read are worth it. But maybe that´s just me trying to justify the time I have spent reading them..
I don't know how Shakespeare comes across to you in Norwegian, but as a native English speaker, it is difficult. I say that Shakespeare's unadulterated, original English is the most difficult thing I have read in my own tongue.
I want to read Murakami and Knausgaard and Jon Fosse, and yes, I am intimidated by the size of those books. Thanks for the encouragement
Oh yes, I have tried reading Shakespeare in English and that did not work out. My editions were translated not that long ago and they are pretty modern and with the English translation right besides it. It´s entertaining switching between the two languages.
Hope you try them out sometime! Would be fun to hear what you think of them.
I actually read Shakespeare in English in my late teens, and have only read Romeo and Juliet in Norwegian translation. I loved reading it in English, and actually didn't find it that hard. 🤷🏼
I totally agree - even if you are bright and well read and have a well-developed vocabulary AND you are a native English speaker, so much of Shakespeare's writing is not just full of archaic words that today's reader wouldn't know, but also chock full of idioms, sayings, and other once-popular phrases that are meaningless to people not living in Elizabethan England, i.e. anyone alive today who has the misfortune of not owning a Tardis or Delorean or whatever. It takes forever to teach a play too because you read a passage and you have to say to the class, "what he meant by that was (whatever)" - I used to have to do that almost every time a character opened their mouth. Unless you get an annotated version or one translated into everyday speech like the No Fear Shakespeare series, you miss SO much of the jokes and the wordplay and whatnot. You are so right - there's no shame in your game if you find Shakespeare difficult.
Read an English translation of "The Count of Monte Cristo", which I really enjoyed. I did have to get some Cliff Notes to help in a few spots, and the middle drags a bit, but it was a mostly enjoyable experience.
Cool! I will have to read it again sometime..
Thank you for encouraging me to read Fosse, his book has recently been published in Polish translation and it is difficult to find objective opinions about it (everyone is afraid of this lack of punctuation). I hope you recover quickly :)
You’re welcome! I think once you’re «in the flow» you’ll forget about punctuation. Thank you :)
I'm sorry you have covid. Nice to see being sick doesn't squelch your sense of humor. You crack me up. I think one giant sentence would push me over the edge - hard pass. Macbeth is so much fun. It's one of the stories I miss teaching the most.
Thanks! Macbeth is more different from Hamlet than I thought so far. I was not prepared for the supernatural elements at all.
@@becomingabookworm Hamlet has the ghost, but somehow it feels more plausible and less supernatural than the witches and their prophecies, and the floating dagger, etc. Macbeth is way more trippy in my opinion. Although that's a presumptuous statement, never having actually had a drug trip myself. I got a huge sniff of weed walking past the open doors of a bar in Amsterdam once; that's about as close as I've gotten LOL.
@@OhioEddieBlack To me the magical elements were more "tangible" in Hamlet.. At least in the beginning. I spent the first act in Macbeth mistrusting my own reading.. Haha.. Amsterdam might do that to you yes..
I haven't read Shakespeare since I was a teenager in school and I remember finding his works really inaccessible but I do have a couple of his plays on my shelves and I feel ready to fight that feeling of intimidation and see what he has to offer now that I'm an adult.
I read War and Peace this year which was a book I was so afraid of but as it turns out, it was much like reading other books in that I just read and absorbed it page by page. I was surprised to find that I really loved it, and sure, there were some parts that I found tougher than others but I'm really glad that I read it and feel a bit silly about having been so afraid of it.
I hope you're feeling much better very soon!
I would think it all depends on the translation. The "true to original" translations I struggle with when it comes to all classics..
I have actually started listening to W&P two times, but there has been too many names.. Maybe I should give it another try.. I have to get through it some time. I read Anna Karenina earlier this year and that was not all that bad, so it will probably be ok. Thanks for the good wishes!
One author I thought it would be difficult to read was Wilkie Collins so i put it off for a realy long time. Just read The Moonstone in english (im brazilian) and i LOVE IT. He is soooo funny and the book it not hard at all. Can't believe i waited so long!
Oh cool! I have not heard about the book, but I have The woman in white on my kindle. Should maybe give it a go! Thanks!
I loved "The Woman in White". If you like mysteries, you'll enjoy it.
I have 1Q84 and plan on reading it soon. I've just read so many long books I wanted to take a short pause before cracking it. I am currently reading Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. It's a super easy read, not sure I like it much. I will finish it regardless.
Yes, do it! :) Ocean.. is not my favourite of Gaimens books. Never really got into it, but as you say it´s not a difficult read, so it might serve your purpose.
Funny! It is the same book from Haruki Murakami that lead me to 1Q84
I read John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress because it was influential in the American colonies. In many homes of the era, it might be the only book a family had other than their Bible. It's a long poem and intimidated me, but actually reading it was surprisingly engaging.
Cool! I love when surprises goes in that direction..:)
Two that I tried many years ago was War and Peace, just got lost with so many characters coming and going and not sticking in my mind. Will have to give it another go. The other was Nietzsche. Found I was re-reading a paragraph so many times with my mind wandering off to something else. Best wishes.
Funny you should mention in.. I just released a short talking about my frustration because I am currently reading war and peace.. Will probably make a longer video later.. I have tried to read it now having an overview of the characters by my side, but it’s not enough.. I am lost.
Ha ha, not just me then! I recently bought a stack of Russian writers at a charity shop for 50p each. Turgenev's short story book, Huntsman's Sketches (sometimes Sportman's was a fantastic read. Best wishes.@@becomingabookworm
I thought it was about time to either get rid of war and peace or read it.. We´ll see what happens when I am through it.. I have gone through the most important russians when I finish this one, will probably take some time of classics soon.. Read Fathers and sons earlier this year but that was not my cup of tea either. But you might be on to something with short stories. I have a big book of "classic short stories" maybe I should browse through it soon.
Perhaps I can convince you on Hunters Sketces. Yermolay and the Miller'sWife starts... In the evening Yermolay and I set off for 'cover'. But perhaps not all my readers know what 'cover' means.
@@becomingabookworm
Pray listen gentlemen. In the springtime, a quarter of an hour before sundown, you go into a wood with your gun but without your dog. You seek out a place for yourself somewhere close by a thicket, look around you, inspect the firing mechanism of your gun and exchange winks with your companion. A quarter of an hour passes. The sun sinks below the horizon, but it is still light in the wood; the air is fresh and translucent; there is the spirited chatter of birds; the young grass glows with a happy emerald brilliance. You wait. The interior of the wood gradually darkens; the crimson rays of an evening sunset slowly slide across the roots and trunks of the trees, rise higher and higher, moving from the lower, still almost bare, branches to the motionless tips of the sleep enfolded trees. Then the very tips grow faint; the pink sky becomes a dark blue. The woodland scent increases, accompanied by the wafts of a warm dampness; the breeze that has flown into the wood begins to die down. The birds fall asleep - not all at once, but by types: first the finches fall silent, a few instants later the robins, after them the yellow buntings. The wood grows darker and darker. The trees fuse into large blackening masses; the first small stars emerge diffidently in the blue sky. The birds are all asleep. Only the redstarts and little woodpeckers continue to make occasional sleepy whistling.... Then they are quiet as well. Once again the ringing whiff-chaff resounds overhead; somewhere or other the oriole gives a sad cry and a nightingale offers the first trills of its song. Your heart is heavy with anticipation, and suddenly - but only hunters will know what I mean - suddenly the deep quiet is broken by a special kind of croaking and hissing, there is a measured beat of rapidly flapping wings - and a woodcock, beautifully inclining its long beak, flies out from behind a dark birch into your line of fire. That is what is meant by 'standing in cover'.
Thank you for the video!
1Q84 and Knausgård's auto-fiction are hard to get through because the writing is boring and uninspired. Thank you for another nudge towards reading Fosse.
You´re welcome! Some reads are definitely hard because they are boring, but the job then is just to put those books away. Unless one likes self-torment..
I thought Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury would be hard... I was wrong... it was damn near impenetrable. It's still an astonishing novel once I realized what Faulkner was doing and why, but I can't help but feel sorry for people in 1929 picking that novel up for the first time and trying to read it as if it was a normal novel. Still, I feel like it's one of those novels I could read a dozen times and not fully understand everything, but I'm OK with that because the experience of reading it is like the literary equivalent of listening to music; it generates meaning and emotion even if on an almost abstract level.
I like the fact that you appreciate it even though it´s difficult to read. As you mention it can be like that with music and I am a lot better at listening to "challenging" music than I am understanding complex books. I guess one of the joys with reading is that the skill might develope over time.
@@becomingabookworm I think my experience with and love of poetry helped a lot, because it's even more common in poetry that I'd found myself lost as to the semantic meaning but still enraptured by the evocative use of language. I think more than even developing reading skills it's useful to develop a feeling of being OK with not knowing/understanding everything at first and a willingness to try to understand it later (if you think it's worth the trouble, of course). So many of my favorite experiences in art have been those where I didn't "get it" on a first try, but subsequent experiences made more and more sense of it.
I wish I saw like Infinite Jest or something on here, I guess to comfort me in the future, I don't know what I was expecting to be honest. Personally, I don't really find Murakami intimidating, it's just 1Q84 is so, SO long.
Haha! I don´t think I´ll read Infinite Jest for just the same reason that you wished it was on this list. Murakami shouldn´t be itimidating either, it´s just my weird mind thinking it was.. 1Q84 is great!:)
Is this the first time you have Covid? I can't remember if you told me already. 🤔
I think I have told you already, but I felt like reading the first book of My Struggle was, a struggle. 😅
I love Shakespeare ❤
And you know how I feel about Fosse already. 😉
I hope you feel better soon!
This is the second time but a long time since last 😅 My health seems to be going in the right direction luckily :)
@@becomingabookworm That's good to hear! Being ill sucks.
I keep forgetting how boring it is until it happens again 😂
Then you never lived in Røros, Norway. They thrive with Whom is related with Whom, even if it's a distant cousin.
Haha! Oh yes, I have relatives that also are very keen on knowing who is related to eachother, I´m just not that interested..
It's my opinion, but I don't like his books, I call those books :Beginn with I , between I and and with I. And I really read many books. But I must agree:Dear reader, don't be scarred if the book is thick even 1000pages long. If you feel that you like to read it, do it, maybe you get surprised that itends and you think:Oh no, that's sad.
I guess you´re referring to Knausgård and yes, there is not really more than "I" in them.. I agree, I feel like most of the bigger books I read are worth it. But maybe that´s just me trying to justify the time I have spent reading them..
Take _War and Peace._ Always take along a family tree diagram of the families so you don't get lost.
Absolutely! I use those diagrams for a lot of books. Always nice to have something visual when reading more complex books..