Good job for putting Shakespeare on the list: his language in some of the plays really is daunting for a modern reader. Also, if you still feel like understanding Hegel (despite having a family) Frederick Beiser's Hegel (2005) published by Routledge is a really good introduction! I studied Hegel for a thesis I wrote at university and this book helped me a ton.
Excellent video! My Authors: 1. All magical realism authors - Marquez, Rushdie, Calvino, Murakami, etc. 2. Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum (Loved Name Of The Rose though) 3. James Joyce - Ulysses 4. William Faulkner - Absalom! Absalom! 5. Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon 6. Thomas Pynchon - Mason & Dixon 7. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest and most postmodern authors 8. Most poets except Robert Browning and Tennyson I loved the guest appearance! 💜
Pynchon is one of my favourites and i find that while reading his works its best to just roll with the punches and allow your self to not fully understand what is going in. I find that if you overanalyse or worry you’re not understanding what is going you’ll end up in a stasis like you described. The more you move through it the more you find youself understanding pieces and parts of the puzzle but its the kind of thing that would recquire multiple readings to fully grasp. Ive only read it once and i personally liked Bleeding Edge better but I just enjoyed it for the experience.
yeah i do the same. I just try to understand it on a sort of intuitive level although sometimes he drops some more info like a 100 pages later and it suddenly makes sense. Somehow i still love reading him, every book is like a puzzle. One thing i found that helps is to always assume sarcasm or irony. About to start on Against the day, already getting goosbumps :)
I you are interested _Absalom, Absalom_ is the novel we are group reading for Faulkner in August 2023. My most difficult authors are 19th Century Russians.
BOJ without a doubt. I think it was just the sheer density of it. I got diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome earlier this year and I'm convinced that it was BOJ that tipped me over the edge.
Moby Dick was the hardest book I'd ever read. Took me numerous false starts, but I finally got through it, and it was incredibly rewarding and I'm so glad I persevered. Gravity's Rainbow was pretty hard, ngl, but I just bulled my way through it and didn't give myself any opportunity to reconsider. I got...some of it, I think, but I didn't really like the experience enough to recommend it. Shakespeare varies for me. Hamlet and Macbeth I found pretty difficult, but Othello and Julius Caesar I found fairly easy to grasp. But I do think Shakespeare has earned his spot as the pinnacle of English literature; no other writer has done so much.
One of the things that really helped with Moby Dick for me was reading it in a grad school seminar where we read the uncensored complete edition, and realizing how full of ridiculous humor it is. Melville definitely goes there, and there's tons of sexual humor. Alongside his full repertoire of styles and themes, one of the best things I've read.
I was an English major in college. Here are my thoughts: *Moby Dick is probably my favorite book...I've read it 3 times. I thought it was hard, but not impossible. *Gravity's Rainbow? I tried twice. Got through about 100 pages the first time and about 3/4 of the way through the second time. I found the ideas that Pynchon presents to be really interesting and memorable, especially in the first half of it, but damn...it's like reading lead. For me the plotlessness and silliness of it was frustrating. *Faulkner is one of my favorite authors. His books vary from difficult to absolutely confounding. I like "A Light in August" and "Go Down, Moses" but "As I Lay Dying" and "The Sound and the Fury" are brutal. *Shakespeare? Never a big fan. Much too difficult. The only play I really liked was "Othello." Have a good one.
@@KDbooks I just imagine him a magical realist trying to write literary fiction which helps since his novels have elements of the fantastical in it. Two elements of it in Gravity's Rainbow, V. Has a character that burries a mannequin which the scene is hilarious in my opinion. Mason and Dixon about the animatronic Duck hunting the cook down, and my least liked against the day has tons more but it felt like scrapes or writing jammed together. His writing style is hit or miss for me and a lot of others.
William H. Gass's The Tunnel, always overwhelms me. It's absolutely beautiful, lyrical writing with some of the most potent scenes you could imagine. It's also, however, so disorienting and experimental (for me) I keep getting defeated and completely lost. I will certainly finish one day, but it'll take some practice and effort. I also agree with your 5 (No one can tell me Phenomenology is accessible in the slightest). Though I will say, everything I've ever seen highlighting those works/writers has made me feel like they're worth the massive effort, so I hope maybe one day I'll be ready to meet them with what they demand.
4/5 of these I am unlikely to ever attempt and I admit that! I love Shakespeare, but I can see why he is difficult. I am the sort of person who loves stuff where the language is different though. 😂
Sorry, mate. The example you showed for Shakespeare was genuinely easy for me to understand. I think the problem starts when you stop going to the next line and try to figure it all out one line by one. You got press on and read it like prose, like it’s actually a normal sentence or paragraph.
Can Xue (her I Live in Slums was longlisted for international booker) is a writer with whom I struggled a lot lately while reading Vertical Motion (its a short story collection). Her prose is simple but I just couldn't get what she was trying to convey. As for Faulkner, based on a recommendation by a book club member, I started with Light in August and it was a lot less challenging read (except the monologues) and I really liked it. Recently I finished The Sound and the Fury and with a bit of online help I could easily follow the plot and the themes in the book. Absalom Absalom is up on my TBR~ plan to get to it early next year :)
Gravity’s Rainbow is the only book I own that I will go back to by selecting a random page. It always leaves me smiling. Try out Inherent Vice to get a sense of his writing. After a while, it weirdly clicks
I’m just here for Dora ❤ honestly I don’t understand half of what I read but I still like to read out of my comfort zone and I am content just getting whatever I get out of it. Even when stuff goes way over my head I usually find something I can take from it. And this also is why I like reading with others, I always learn from them.
Agreed about Shakespeare. What I get out of it isn't worth the headache. As far as Pynchon goes, Inherent Vice is a lot easier to understand than his other stuff.
As someone with a philosophy degree, I can tell you that it's not terribly important to understand Hegel. He doesn't really have a lot to say that is very profound or life changing to humans as individuals. Thinkers of his time period loved to write in this esoteric style almost as a way to keep the "uneducated" from understanding that they didn't really have anything smart to say. Kant does the same thing, but I like Kant because to me he's a much more likeable human whereas Hegel sat on his throne and sort of proclaimed that he had cracked the ultimate structure of the universe and the unfolding of history. I agree that Absalom Absalom is dense...I've read it three times and still don't feel I got out of it what I was supposed to, but I love Faulkner and how his universe of works is interconnected so I plan to try it one last time before I die.
A'ight, at the reveal of the first book my jaw literally dropped. I actually was thinking of Name of the Rose when watching your 'Top 10 Modern classics to read' video :)) It's been some years, but I found it very easy to read? Like it flowed nicely and was SUCH fun! That place, the library, the snow... I love it. And my favourite part - the debates (I think that's the heart of it, not the 'detective story') and the whole medieval illustration thing :) As for Foucault's Pendulum, hmmm, I felt there was this meta-dimension of the contrived convolutedness that, just as how the characters were doing all this deep-divey research you could also become like them and research every little thing they mention (I almost did that, being curious how much is based on facts and how much is invented by Eco) - for one. Another side of it I find to be like a sort of commentary on conspiracy thinking. Tbh I think that it all comes together if you read it till the end. Oh and there's also the utter pomposity of ye olde 'secret sociey' member idk. But I found it fun. Like a 'Da Vinci's Code' but intelligent :)) ( &, true, not easy-breezy I guess) But I verily prefer NotR
HA! Kieran! Yes absolutely YES! Only Shakespeare I can fully say I understood was Lear (still love it though). Only have read V by Pynchon (in high school-I was very broody) and Faulkner is so simple but so complex. Would love to tackle these hard boys again, but idk, I need more wisdom or something.
dude, you NAILED IT. pyncheon, and faulkner are both unreadable. shakespeare is only understandable because it is explained so many times. a book that i loved had the fifty WORST beginning pages... 'sometimes a great notion'! just rip them right out of the book and you have something worth reading. (oh and the hilarious idea of 'street cred' in 'bookish communities' is a keeper.)
David Foster Wallace is a tough author to read, for me. I stopped reading Infinite Jest because it took me a month to get through 70 pages, and I had other books I wanted to read. I will go back to it some day, maybe.
I didn't have such a hard time with speed reading _Infinite Jest,_ but I got bored and put it down about the third or fourth time he wrote that someone had _the howling fantods._ That's a great term, but one does not need it three times in 150 pages. A more effective writer would have mixed it up with _the screaming heebie-jeebies_ or _the wobbling willies_ or something. That at least would come across as a running joke, but as it stands, it's kind of like the duplicated levels in the original _Halo._
@@deadman746 I agree! Also, hats off to your name. Not sure if it's a Death Stranding reference, but given that you mentioned Halo in your comment, I infer you to be a video game fan. I'm an admirer of Kojima's work, and Death Stranding is such a great game.
@@cjbrown1979 I'm certainly a video game fan, but my user name is much grimmer, as evinced by my channel. It's kind of too bad, because _Infinite Jest_ does have some great stuff in it. I can hardly turn to and read a page without cracking up. But I don't really think it hangs together as a narrative.
You picked two of my favourite writers a la Faulkner (Absalom Absalom is in my top ten favourite novels) and Shakespeare (although WS' plays should be seen before they're read). My personal roadblock is David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' (ironically titled after a quote from WS' 'Hamlet'). Jeesh! I mean, I really almost love DFW as a person in his interviews and the way he talks about his ideas (and am gutted we lost him too soon), but I've tried IJ twice and up to 200 pages and I just can't. Loves.
No need to get "in a pickle" about Shakespeare, his words are in everyday use. I got into Shakespeare through his comedies. Twelfth Night was the first one in the BBC Television Shakespeare 1980s series - It was spoken more conversationally than on the stage and that helped enormously, besides how fun it is. In Australia, The Bell Shakespeare company produces amazing works, love all of those. So much of Shakespeare is really in everyday use and there are even graphic novels to get you started. That is a gorgeous Name of the Rose edition that you held up. I might have to crack open my paperback copy and try it myself, been meaning to for ages, like so many other books....
I admit Faulkner is hard work sometimes, but The Sound And The Fury is a feckin’ masterpiece. Have you tried that? I read it in two days when I was 17 and it blew my mind, made me want to be a writer. I would also recommend Light In August and Wild Palms.
Agreed. The Sound and the Fury really paid off as I worked through the book. The first section is the most difficult but looking back at it from the end, it made perfect sense.
I sympathize with those who have trouble with Hegel but in his defense I think it should be pointed out that translating him is difficult, and that, more importantly, he really was trying to articulate ideas that had never been articulated previously , not simply trying to confuse the reader (or to be kind--challenge the reader). I took a year long seminar in Hegel while in college and was lucky enough to have an excellent professor and to find a book in the Boston Public Library, an old explanation of Hegel's work written in the 1890's that really clarified Hegel's intentions. But he will never be an easy read even though he could, occasionally be very pithy. For example: History repeats itself: first as tragedy then as farce. As regards Shakespeare I think it is harder for younger people to grasp him. That's partly the fault of the school system that gave up trying to teach students how to read long and complex sentences. Older people like myself (I'm 81) suffered through a curriculum that actually forced us to do just that. I kicked and moaned at the time like all students did, but eventually learned I was better for that training however boring and annoying it was. My personal; bete noire is James Joyce in his Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake stage. I had read many of his earlier works and found them excellent. I tried reading Ulysses three times between the time I was 22 and 30. I gave up on Ulysses on page 299 on 3 occasions. The first 25-30 pages I found interesting. But from page 30 to 299 I found nothing of interest and the last time I invoked the 3 strikes rule. Nothing has induced me in the last 50 years to go back. I wouldn't even attempt Finnegan's Wake, dead drunk. Cheers.
Stick with Gravity's Rainbow, seriously! I'm myself only a quarter of the way through but I just know it's going to be an all time favourite. The irreverence of the writing, the ridiculously convoluted narrative, the complete absurdity of the plot, and just the dark dark comedy tie together to make an absolute flipping piece of art. I can't say anything else. It's reached a place where it has crossed anything one can safely call literature, and has just straight up become a. piece. of. art. Also, the writing is actually just beautiful, and Pynchon's range is absolutely ridiculous. I have no idea how all this came from the brain of one man. Reading Gravity's Rainbow is like taking a trip in the mind of a genius on the brink of insanity, and it's been a long time since I've been so in awe of an author after picking something up. One book I've had on my list for a while and am a bit scared to start is Finnegan's Wake. I keep hearing people talk about how complex it is and I haven't really taken a peek yet, but I'm excited to.
Shakespeare is difficult to read, but I think that stems in part from the fact that his work is made to be performed. Tbf, early modern English is absolutely marvelous.
Ha ha... excellent video. I just happened upon your channel, glad I did. Love your delivery. I consider myself well read, but I won't lie; another tricky one to maintain focus on as you read is Tolkien. I've read his LOTR series and they are superb, but man it was tough at times to get through his descriptors.
Thanks for the warning about Eco. I will avoid. Faulkner sucks. I hated "As I Lay Dying". Hegel is philosophy and out of my sphere. Shakespeare? I won't try to help you; you're probably better at it than I am. Not easy, but not impossible. Thomas Pynchon...Gravity's Rainbow: fully agree, I've tried and tried and didn't get off the first page. But some of his others are good (try _Mason and Dixon)_ ---- Another author that can be as difficult to land as a 10 pound trout on a 5 pound line is Henry James. Some of his sentences get rather convoluted and I need to reread them 3 or 4 times and even then I'm not sure I fully understand them. But I really like his work. Try _The Turn of the Screw._
Enjoyed this video, thanks. By far the most difficult book I ever read was Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, because the author invented a dialect for all the character dialogue, which made it seriously hard work to understand wtf was going on. But it was 40 years ago that I read it, and I was a less seasoned reader, so I might make less heavy weather of it now. The atmosphere of the story, however, has stayed with me down the years.
I did read it when it came out. I got it free to review it. I agree it’s hard to begin with, but no worse than A Clockwork Orang. Like reading Chaucer, when you get into it, it’s no hard anymore.
My grandmother was a college professor in Louisiana and taught music and literature and she knew William Faulkner who lived across the state line in Mississippi which came in pretty handy for me when I read him especially Absolam Absolam
Loved the Pynchon segment. I've read Lot 49 and adored it, but probably because the book club I partake in from time to time was doing it and it's full of Pynchon fans there. They helped me understand it, and some sections are truly beautiful (the ending of the first chapter, for example), but I need to pick it up eventually and reflect about it on my own. It also helped that my book club peers are, in good part, US-ians, meaning they were able to elucidate some sociocultural and historical stuff that would totally go over my head. A while ago I tried to read Woolf's The Waves and, constantly, had to backtrack, read the same page a few times before deciding "Eh, I'll just keep going and see where this takes me." Did not take much time before I just stopped reading it altogether. Although I did read Pynchon in English (not my first language), Woolf's prose in the original is so difficult to get through. I'll tackle it again soon, just not now. To think that Woolf complained about Joyce when she wrote something as bewildering as The Waves is astonishing to me.
Why don't people expect Shakespeare to be hard to read when he fully just made up his own words half the time?? Love him but we aren't mind readers lmao
Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" is the only book I've ever had to give up on. I just couldn't follow it. I did finish "Dog Years" by Gunther Grass but it was pretty much a war of attrition to get to the end.
I've never heard a single person say Shakespeare was easy. And if someone were to, then you know they didn't understand what they read. But yes, he is the pinnacle of English literature, and I would like to read more of his work and read them more closely, but it is hard. As for other "hard" writers, I have zero desire to waste my time. There's too many great (whatever that means) books that are accessible.
Lmao I love your story of reading Pynchon on the train, I knew what you were talking about when you said a banana and a bomb. Pynchon is one of my favorite authors, maybe just because I do crave that bookish book scene cred, but also because he draws a lot from history, especially history that follows the phrase "reality is stranger than fiction". I would def implore you to give it a go at some point, and one thing that was really helpful for me was following the group read in the summer of '21 in the Pynchon subreddit. That subreddit has all the info you need in order to get a better grasp of what is going on. I sort of just buckled down and decided that I would forge on regardless of whether or not I understood everything, and that seems to be the common advice. It was more about the experimence for me. I also tried to read Eco Pendulum and couldn't stomach it, i've never tried to read Hegel, and I don't really plan to, but I've watched philosophy professors vids about him haha.
Love in the time of Cholera, anything written with stream of consciousness, LOTR, any French classics (Camus, Sartre, Balzac, whoever wrote Therese Racquin); apart from Birdsong, whoever wrote Birdsong😊
The only Pynchon I've read is Lot 49 which I didn't find that hard to read (probably because it's so short) but Gravity's rainbow is extremely daunting
I got into Shakespeare when I was an undergrad, cos I started reading his plays as a method of procrastination whilst I was supposed to be writing my dissertation. The personal way I found it easiest to get into him (and he IS confusing when you first dive in, there's no denying) is I read the plays online with the Wikipedia article for the said play open in another tab; I could flick back to the dramatis personae at the drop of a hat if I felt a bit lost, which especially helped during the history plays about the Wars of the Roses. They also helped me brush up on the historical context of Shakespeare's time when the play first appeared, which I found fascinating. I read them through in the order that they were included in the First Folio, Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, and was originally doing them at the rate of one a week, usually on a Sunday morning when I had some time to myself. After I clicked with his writing I began to enjoy them so much that I would start doing three or four a week, and at the risk of sounding like a really pretentious wanker it was some of the most fun I've ever had whilst reading. Maybe I should have vlogged my experiences or something. Don't know if that would convince you to give them a go, but I can at least say that when I started to understand his diction I began to understand why he has the titanic reputation that he does.
I've very recently started my journey with the classics. Wanna know my first book I thought I'd boldly enjoy? The Scarlet Letter. From all the conversation I've ever heard about this book people said it was creepy, influential, and... Entertaining. I will agree that there were moments on that book that were indeed creepy and influential.. saying it was entertaining was quite a stretch. I swear to god, Nathaniel Hawthorn had a single sentence that spanned an entire page. I was being drowned by the mundane. I didn't finish the book. My first experience to the classics I couldn't even finish lol.
I really loved Shakespeare's tragedies .. did not like his midsummer nights.. have yet to try his histories.. I think I will like it too. But I do agree.. why do people Idolize him so... the obsessions beyond me too. I loved Name of the Rose and its inspiration Borges Labyrnth.. But have tried Focaults pendulum two times.. it's so hard.. I shall try it again sometime. No idea about Gravity's Rainbow . I loved Faulkners Light in August.. tried Absalom .. it was hard.. will try it again..haven't read anything else by him. Loved your child in the video.
The only author I couldn’t get through was H.P. Lovecraft. I gave up at around a 1/4 of the way through “Necronomicon.” The density of the prose was just too overwhelming. I did, however, read and have enjoyed both “The Name of the Rose” and “Gravity’s Rainbow.” The lader has a convoluted plot and style, but the nostalgia, grief and bleakness factor really made for a strangely enjoyable experience at times. Also, Gravity’s Rainbow has some of my favorite poetry and I’m not at all a poetry fan. As for The Name of the Rose, imagine reading it and realizing only at thr very end, that all of the translations of the latin parts were at the very end of the book. 😂 I genuinely thought that they were meant to be left untranslated, for one thing because that publisher usually puts the footnotes at the bottom of the page, and the translations weren’t there. 😅 I guess I have a good excuse for at least rereading “The Name of the Rose.”
Thomas Pynchon. Just dnf'd the one I picked because of the infamous #tbrtackle. It was just somehow too boring. Still happy, because dnf'ing means still reducing the tbr. And still two others by Pynchon to try on my shelf. Gravity's Rainbow is one of them. I'm not defeated yet. I have read four of Faulkner's books with a bookclub. Helped a lot. And I actually liked them. Of course Shakespeare is difficult, same with Goethe.
At least you can see all the nice Shakespeare covers with that swanky new light… oh wait you only buy Wordsworth. Maybe best to keep the light off then
To be fair German metaphysicians are hard enough when you read them in the original German. Reading them in translation is even more painful. Bit harsh on Shakespeare tho. I found La Nausée needed several goes. Large tracts of Kant leave you feeling several 100 IQ points short of adequacy too.
Another good list. But what was so difficult about The Name of the Rose? I really enjoyed it from the beginning to the end. You weren't trying to read it Italian were you? did you have to read that old BS artist Hegel for school or something like that? Rather slog through all one thousand pages of Das Capital than read ten pages of that guy. It's like Gertrude Stein said about Oakland CA: When you get there, there's no there there! Yes Faulkner is so convoluted he gives me a headache but still want to read The Sound and the Fury someday. TOTALLY agree with you about Gravity's Rainbow like I'm sure most people do. Actually got through Lot 49 cause it was so short but didn't understand the point either. What's so interesting about a secret alternative postal system? Oh yeah cute kid but don't believe you're only 28. Must be the beard.
Unlike all the other writers on your list, Shakespeare's work is actually worth the extra effort. Only his poems should be read; the plays should be watched. He wasn't a novelist.
Who ever said that Shakespeare was easy? That would be misleading almost a disservice to your preparation of mindset going in. I mean Shakespeare should be comprehendable by most people: with some training or the right performance, or some notes. There's nothing about the stories at least as I understand, that is incomprehendible by the average person. However, it's more about the dialogue, the expression, even the humor. Which to me, the word play would be the hardest thing to understand in modern times.
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James I find incredibly difficult. I've started and packed it in twice. The last time I was half way through but decided I needed a break and so started another book- fatal! Alas, I didn't have the heart to go back to it. In reviews of the book people rarely comment on the writing style, which makes me suspicious if people have actually read the book or just watched the film on Netflix. You are right about Shakey, and Absolom, Absolom! gave me a headache, I couldn't finish it.
Always liked Eco, never had a struggle with his work. Great fun. Faulkner I’m allergic to, generally speaking. It’s booze writing. Hegel stands just outside my spotlight but I like phenomenology itself, mostly because I like the noumenal. *w* We concur that it’s not worth plowing through. Reminds me of Sartre, too. Just read the eminently readable Camus and be done with it. I love Shakespeare. Gotta keep in mind, we’ve lost the meaning of a given percentage of his words. Untangling him is well worth it, for me, and even the gibberish bits are cool. As Patrick Stewart, (relation?), once said, he spoke the nonsense in STAR TREK the same way he spoke the gibberish in Shakespeare, with conviction and authority. It’s tonal, basically. Gravity’s Rainbow is probably my favorite of Pynchon’s books and I’ve read them all. He’s a genius. Also very funny. The Crying of Lot 49, shortest, is also his most difficult and encoded. Try instead Inherent Vice, Bleeding Edge, or Vineland. They’re more accessible. Having responded to your responses, I’d say further that it’s not a competition, and you should read what you enjoy and fuck the academic sneering, which never matters anyhow. They spurt over Don DeLillo and I’ve made several runs at his stuff and it’s crap, sorry. Boring banality with lists. Anyway, cheers, and read what you want how you want. / Gene Stewart
I read the first chapters of james joyce's ulysses 15 times. The last five times i read it aloud. I have no idea what was going on. It may as well be in a different language.
Joyce's Ulysses is my nemesis. About Shakespeare. I learned English as a foreign language. When I began to study, I bought Hamlet (in the original, not graded), and put it on my night stand. My goal was to learn English so well I could read Hamlet. Forward forty years. I am a retired English lit professor for students of English as a Foreign language. And I reached my goal of reading Hamlet without trouble, and even better, of understanding Laurence Olivier's pronunciation. But I can never read more than four pages of Ulysses without getting a headache.
I found Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's Ulysses extremely helpful. Joyce literally sat down with Gilbert and explained every chapter in detail. I understand that he was going to also do that with Finnegans Wake but died before that happened.
The book I was unable to read was Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. How is that a trilogy? Did anyone read it? I had difficulty (3rd X's a charm) with Dahlgren by Samuel R. Delany. For reference, I loved Focault's Pendulum but had to pick it up twice. It is one of my favorite books as is The Count of Monte Cristo.
I loved Faulker's As I lay Dying, and I also read Absolom, Absolom! It was a little rough, but I followed it. What I have discovered with Faulkner is that he is an author you must read rather than listen to the audiobook versions, especially a work like The Sound and the Fury. I LOVE Shakespeare. Sorry, but you are the only "serious" reader who doesn't understand Shakespeare. Sure, you might need to use context clues to comprehend some more archaic words, but Shakespeare is simply the greatest writer of all time and comprehended the human condition like no other writer before or since. Pynchon, I will agree, can be challenging, but I find his novels worth the effort, and The Crying of Lot 49 is his easiest novel (I guess no one has explained the tropes of postmodern literature to you because it is a very easy book to comprehend). I have yet to read The Name of the Rose, but I have wanted to read it for quite a while.
Thankyou for making me feel seen about Shakespeare. I'm a highschool English teacher and I can't fucking stand Shakespeare. His language is inaccessible at best and 99% of my students lose out on experiencing all of the emotion of his plays when they read his works. I'll still teach it, but rather than doing class read-alongs of Shakespeare, I try to turn it into a field trip to see it performed live and students get way more out of it that way.
@@anthonyleecollins9319 and the episodic nature of it is great for rereads. there’re so many hilarious episodes: the devil and the lawyer, the werewolf, the werebeaver etc
I remember reading ''Positions'' by Derrida for my linguistics essay at uni and it truly felt like a fever dream. I was lost in all those words and did not pick up anything meaningful. It was chaotic. Another one: HERmione by Hilda Doolittle. Oh my godddd, I loved her prose but the meaning behind those words? I got zero. I felt so dumb lol.
I loved The Name of the Rose (and enjoyed the movie a lot, too), but Foucault's Pendulum was too much. I felt the same way about Gravity's Rainbow as you. I started it as one of those 'must read' classics and couldn't get through the first few pages. Similarly, Ulysses by James Joyce. I read all his other stuff and enjoyed it, can't get into his magnum opus. However, the one author that upsets me most is actually Joseph Conrad. I so looked forward to The Heart of Darkness - hated 99% of it (and, yes I got all the 'stuff'), but figured I'd give a try to Secret Agent but put it away after 10 pages. Forget about it.
I came upon Penelope Shuttle via 'The Wise Wound', her fascinating book about menstruation, co-authored with her husband Peter Redgrove. Then I tried her novel 'Rainsplitter in the Zodiac Garden'. Lovely title, but utterly incomprehensible - to me, anyway.
Possibly the first time I have ever watched an entire paid promotion without fast-forwarding. That was perfection!
Thanks 😂 ♥️
Good job for putting Shakespeare on the list: his language in some of the plays really is daunting for a modern reader. Also, if you still feel like understanding Hegel (despite having a family) Frederick Beiser's Hegel (2005) published by Routledge is a really good introduction! I studied Hegel for a thesis I wrote at university and this book helped me a ton.
Excellent video!
My Authors:
1. All magical realism authors - Marquez, Rushdie, Calvino, Murakami, etc.
2. Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum (Loved Name Of The Rose though)
3. James Joyce - Ulysses
4. William Faulkner - Absalom! Absalom!
5. Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon
6. Thomas Pynchon - Mason & Dixon
7. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
and most postmodern authors
8. Most poets except Robert Browning and Tennyson
I loved the guest appearance! 💜
Great list. You have saved me from pain. Many thanks.
I absolutely love Eco and magical realism is my favorite genre but the rest of this list is perfect. Joyce, Faulkner, Pynchon? Just kill me now.
How is magical realism difficult? lmao
Goodness. I loved "Beloved" Sorry to hear "Song of Soloman" not so hot.
@@Pantano63 😂😂
Pynchon is one of my favourites and i find that while reading his works its best to just roll with the punches and allow your self to not fully understand what is going in. I find that if you overanalyse or worry you’re not understanding what is going you’ll end up in a stasis like you described. The more you move through it the more you find youself understanding pieces and parts of the puzzle but its the kind of thing that would recquire multiple readings to fully grasp. Ive only read it once and i personally liked Bleeding Edge better but I just enjoyed it for the experience.
That was my approach too. Set the mower blade a little higher or you’ll end up in the rocks
@@craigscott3133 haha, i like that. Very clever way of putting it.
yeah i do the same. I just try to understand it on a sort of intuitive level although sometimes he drops some more info like a 100 pages later and it suddenly makes sense. Somehow i still love reading him, every book is like a puzzle. One thing i found that helps is to always assume sarcasm or irony.
About to start on Against the day, already getting goosbumps :)
When people tell me that not only do they like Shakespeare but that they find it funny I decide I don't like them
😂😂😂😂
I you are interested _Absalom, Absalom_ is the novel we are group reading for Faulkner in August 2023.
My most difficult authors are 19th Century Russians.
BOJ without a doubt. I think it was just the sheer density of it. I got diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome earlier this year and I'm convinced that it was BOJ that tipped me over the edge.
:))
What does BOJ stand fir?
She is the best Serious Reader EVER!! And the cutest! 🤣
She is an icon
this was perfectly executed. very nice work
Moby Dick was the hardest book I'd ever read. Took me numerous false starts, but I finally got through it, and it was incredibly rewarding and I'm so glad I persevered. Gravity's Rainbow was pretty hard, ngl, but I just bulled my way through it and didn't give myself any opportunity to reconsider. I got...some of it, I think, but I didn't really like the experience enough to recommend it. Shakespeare varies for me. Hamlet and Macbeth I found pretty difficult, but Othello and Julius Caesar I found fairly easy to grasp. But I do think Shakespeare has earned his spot as the pinnacle of English literature; no other writer has done so much.
I would only read MD for the whale peni- I mean… that plot.
Moby Dick is definitely worth the struggle. There is some mind blowing writing in there.
that is totally understandable. it IS a great book, but moves in a series of fits and starts. and having sailed on old fashioned boats helps.
One of the things that really helped with Moby Dick for me was reading it in a grad school seminar where we read the uncensored complete edition, and realizing how full of ridiculous humor it is. Melville definitely goes there, and there's tons of sexual humor. Alongside his full repertoire of styles and themes, one of the best things I've read.
I was an English major in college. Here are my thoughts:
*Moby Dick is probably my favorite book...I've read it 3 times. I thought it was hard, but not impossible.
*Gravity's Rainbow? I tried twice. Got through about 100 pages the first time and about 3/4 of the way through the second time. I found the ideas that Pynchon presents to be really interesting and memorable, especially in the first half of it, but damn...it's like reading lead. For me the plotlessness and silliness of it was frustrating.
*Faulkner is one of my favorite authors. His books vary from difficult to absolutely confounding. I like "A Light in August" and "Go Down, Moses" but "As I Lay Dying" and "The Sound and the Fury" are brutal.
*Shakespeare? Never a big fan. Much too difficult. The only play I really liked was "Othello."
Have a good one.
best ad for series readers i have ever seen. period.
♥️♥️♥️
Dora approves this message
Kieran, this was, great. On point. Thank you.
Shakespeare is a knack. Once you get that knack, the Bard is quite simple
just found your channel and I have to say that I'm loving it! best wishes from south Florida 🏖❤️
Looks like your a great dad too. Cheers man!!
Ps You have to go at Pynchon as Magical realism is the way to go. A Naked Lunch took me a month to read.
Naked Lunch made zero sense 💯
What Pynchon novel is Magic Realism?!
@@KDbooks I just imagine him a magical realist trying to write literary fiction which helps since his novels have elements of the fantastical in it. Two elements of it in Gravity's Rainbow, V. Has a character that burries a mannequin which the scene is hilarious in my opinion. Mason and Dixon about the animatronic Duck hunting the cook down, and my least liked against the day has tons more but it felt like scrapes or writing jammed together. His writing style is hit or miss for me and a lot of others.
William H. Gass's The Tunnel, always overwhelms me. It's absolutely beautiful, lyrical writing with some of the most potent scenes you could imagine. It's also, however, so disorienting and experimental (for me) I keep getting defeated and completely lost. I will certainly finish one day, but it'll take some practice and effort.
I also agree with your 5 (No one can tell me Phenomenology is accessible in the slightest). Though I will say, everything I've ever seen highlighting those works/writers has made me feel like they're worth the massive effort, so I hope maybe one day I'll be ready to meet them with what they demand.
I'd just like to say: thank you!
♥️
4/5 of these I am unlikely to ever attempt and I admit that! I love Shakespeare, but I can see why he is difficult. I am the sort of person who loves stuff where the language is different though. 😂
Yes me too.. love languages.. and the changes to it..
You are just great!!! Expressed perfectly the feelings of many readers!
Thank you 🙏
Definitely in your Shakespeare camp!
Sorry, mate. The example you showed for Shakespeare was genuinely easy for me to understand. I think the problem starts when you stop going to the next line and try to figure it all out one line by one. You got press on and read it like prose, like it’s actually a normal sentence or paragraph.
Tried to read Wolf Hall 3 times , gave up each time.
The Folger additions of Shakespeare plays are great.
Can Xue (her I Live in Slums was longlisted for international booker) is a writer with whom I struggled a lot lately while reading Vertical Motion (its a short story collection). Her prose is simple but I just couldn't get what she was trying to convey.
As for Faulkner, based on a recommendation by a book club member, I started with Light in August and it was a lot less challenging read (except the monologues) and I really liked it. Recently I finished The Sound and the Fury and with a bit of online help I could easily follow the plot and the themes in the book. Absalom Absalom is up on my TBR~ plan to get to it early next year :)
It’s almost as if you saw into the next video of difficult authors… cos Xue is there
@@KDbooks haha look forward to it~
Gravity’s Rainbow is the only book I own that I will go back to by selecting a random page. It always leaves me smiling. Try out Inherent Vice to get a sense of his writing. After a while, it weirdly clicks
Inherent Vice is a great place to start.
Maybe because I’m a southerner, but I find Faulkner pretty accessible. Try again maybe? 🎃
I had a girlfriend once from Atlanta, and she said it really makes a difference to be from the South (she loved Faulkner).
I’m just here for Dora ❤ honestly I don’t understand half of what I read but I still like to read out of my comfort zone and I am content just getting whatever I get out of it. Even when stuff goes way over my head I usually find something I can take from it. And this also is why I like reading with others, I always learn from them.
Agreed about Shakespeare. What I get out of it isn't worth the headache.
As far as Pynchon goes, Inherent Vice is a lot easier to understand than his other stuff.
With Shakespeare, try watching a production and following along with the text. It comes alive.
You're not a serious reader if you haven't met a book and and/or an author that makes you feel stupid.
As someone with a philosophy degree, I can tell you that it's not terribly important to understand Hegel. He doesn't really have a lot to say that is very profound or life changing to humans as individuals. Thinkers of his time period loved to write in this esoteric style almost as a way to keep the "uneducated" from understanding that they didn't really have anything smart to say. Kant does the same thing, but I like Kant because to me he's a much more likeable human whereas Hegel sat on his throne and sort of proclaimed that he had cracked the ultimate structure of the universe and the unfolding of history. I agree that Absalom Absalom is dense...I've read it three times and still don't feel I got out of it what I was supposed to, but I love Faulkner and how his universe of works is interconnected so I plan to try it one last time before I die.
more adorable adbreaks please!
We will try
A'ight, at the reveal of the first book my jaw literally dropped. I actually was thinking of Name of the Rose when watching your 'Top 10 Modern classics to read' video :))
It's been some years, but I found it very easy to read? Like it flowed nicely and was SUCH fun! That place, the library, the snow... I love it. And my favourite part - the debates (I think that's the heart of it, not the 'detective story') and the whole medieval illustration thing :)
As for Foucault's Pendulum, hmmm, I felt there was this meta-dimension of the contrived convolutedness that, just as how the characters were doing all this deep-divey research you could also become like them and research every little thing they mention (I almost did that, being curious how much is based on facts and how much is invented by Eco) - for one. Another side of it I find to be like a sort of commentary on conspiracy thinking. Tbh I think that it all comes together if you read it till the end. Oh and there's also the utter pomposity of ye olde 'secret sociey' member idk. But I found it fun. Like a 'Da Vinci's Code' but intelligent :)) ( &, true, not easy-breezy I guess)
But I verily prefer NotR
HA! Kieran! Yes absolutely YES! Only Shakespeare I can fully say I understood was Lear (still love it though). Only have read V by Pynchon (in high school-I was very broody) and Faulkner is so simple but so complex. Would love to tackle these hard boys again, but idk, I need more wisdom or something.
dude, you NAILED IT. pyncheon, and faulkner are both unreadable. shakespeare is only understandable because it is explained so many times. a book that i loved had the fifty WORST beginning pages... 'sometimes a great notion'! just rip them right out of the book and you have something worth reading. (oh and the hilarious idea of 'street cred' in 'bookish communities' is a keeper.)
David Foster Wallace is a tough author to read, for me. I stopped reading Infinite Jest because it took me a month to get through 70 pages, and I had other books I wanted to read. I will go back to it some day, maybe.
I didn't have such a hard time with speed reading _Infinite Jest,_ but I got bored and put it down about the third or fourth time he wrote that someone had _the howling fantods._ That's a great term, but one does not need it three times in 150 pages. A more effective writer would have mixed it up with _the screaming heebie-jeebies_ or _the wobbling willies_ or something. That at least would come across as a running joke, but as it stands, it's kind of like the duplicated levels in the original _Halo._
@@deadman746 I agree! Also, hats off to your name. Not sure if it's a Death Stranding reference, but given that you mentioned Halo in your comment, I infer you to be a video game fan. I'm an admirer of Kojima's work, and Death Stranding is such a great game.
@@cjbrown1979 I'm certainly a video game fan, but my user name is much grimmer, as evinced by my channel.
It's kind of too bad, because _Infinite Jest_ does have some great stuff in it. I can hardly turn to and read a page without cracking up. But I don't really think it hangs together as a narrative.
Eco was fantastic ….
Not sure what it was but it was fantastic ! I think I reached fugue state while reading his books
You picked two of my favourite writers a la Faulkner (Absalom Absalom is in my top ten favourite novels) and Shakespeare (although WS' plays should be seen before they're read). My personal roadblock is David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' (ironically titled after a quote from WS' 'Hamlet'). Jeesh! I mean, I really almost love DFW as a person in his interviews and the way he talks about his ideas (and am gutted we lost him too soon), but I've tried IJ twice and up to 200 pages and I just can't. Loves.
Great video!
Great video! How do you get on with Will Self?
the cutest Ad read on TH-cam I've ever seen, lol.
No need to get "in a pickle" about Shakespeare, his words are in everyday use. I got into Shakespeare through his comedies. Twelfth Night was the first one in the BBC Television Shakespeare 1980s series - It was spoken more conversationally than on the stage and that helped enormously, besides how fun it is. In Australia, The Bell Shakespeare company produces amazing works, love all of those. So much of Shakespeare is really in everyday use and there are even graphic novels to get you started.
That is a gorgeous Name of the Rose edition that you held up. I might have to crack open my paperback copy and try it myself, been meaning to for ages, like so many other books....
I admit Faulkner is hard work sometimes, but The Sound And The Fury is a feckin’ masterpiece. Have you tried that? I read it in two days when I was 17 and it blew my mind, made me want to be a writer. I would also recommend Light In August and Wild Palms.
Agreed. The Sound and the Fury really paid off as I worked through the book. The first section is the most difficult but looking back at it from the end, it made perfect sense.
I sympathize with those who have trouble with Hegel but in his defense I think it should be pointed out that translating him is difficult, and that, more importantly, he really was trying to articulate ideas that had never been articulated previously , not simply trying to confuse the reader (or to be kind--challenge the reader). I took a year long seminar in Hegel while in college and was lucky enough to have an excellent professor and to find a book in the Boston Public Library, an old explanation of Hegel's work written in the 1890's that really clarified Hegel's intentions. But he will never be an easy read even though he could, occasionally be very pithy. For example: History repeats itself: first as tragedy then as farce.
As regards Shakespeare I think it is harder for younger people to grasp him. That's partly the fault of the school system that gave up trying to teach students how to read long and complex sentences. Older people like myself (I'm 81) suffered through a curriculum that actually forced us to do just that. I kicked and moaned at the time like all students did, but eventually learned I was better for that training however boring and annoying it was.
My personal; bete noire is James Joyce in his Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake stage. I had read many of his earlier works and found them excellent. I tried reading Ulysses three times between the time I was 22 and 30. I gave up on Ulysses on page 299 on 3 occasions. The first 25-30 pages I found interesting. But from page 30 to 299 I found nothing of interest and the last time I invoked the 3 strikes rule. Nothing has induced me in the last 50 years to go back. I wouldn't even attempt Finnegan's Wake, dead drunk.
Cheers.
Stick with Gravity's Rainbow, seriously! I'm myself only a quarter of the way through but I just know it's going to be an all time favourite. The irreverence of the writing, the ridiculously convoluted narrative, the complete absurdity of the plot, and just the dark dark comedy tie together to make an absolute flipping piece of art. I can't say anything else. It's reached a place where it has crossed anything one can safely call literature, and has just straight up become a. piece. of. art. Also, the writing is actually just beautiful, and Pynchon's range is absolutely ridiculous. I have no idea how all this came from the brain of one man. Reading Gravity's Rainbow is like taking a trip in the mind of a genius on the brink of insanity, and it's been a long time since I've been so in awe of an author after picking something up.
One book I've had on my list for a while and am a bit scared to start is Finnegan's Wake. I keep hearing people talk about how complex it is and I haven't really taken a peek yet, but I'm excited to.
As a unashamed Faulkner lover, I completely get where you are coming from
Shakespeare is difficult to read, but I think that stems in part from the fact that his work is made to be performed. Tbf, early modern English is absolutely marvelous.
Ha ha... excellent video. I just happened upon your channel, glad I did. Love your delivery. I consider myself well read, but I won't lie; another tricky one to maintain focus on as you read is Tolkien. I've read his LOTR series and they are superb, but man it was tough at times to get through his descriptors.
Hey Joe 👋 thanks for popping by (via a algorithm 😂)
@@KDbooks Via algorithm... yeah kinda, sorta, but then my thing is writing, reading and tabletop gaming, so I'm glad you popped up :-)
P.S. You'll note I've sent you an email ;-)
Thanks for the warning about Eco. I will avoid.
Faulkner sucks. I hated "As I Lay Dying".
Hegel is philosophy and out of my sphere.
Shakespeare? I won't try to help you; you're probably better at it than I am. Not easy, but not impossible.
Thomas Pynchon...Gravity's Rainbow: fully agree, I've tried and tried and didn't get off the first page. But some of his others are good (try _Mason and Dixon)_
----
Another author that can be as difficult to land as a 10 pound trout on a 5 pound line is Henry James. Some of his sentences get rather convoluted and I need to reread them 3 or 4 times and even then I'm not sure I fully understand them. But I really like his work. Try _The Turn of the Screw._
I was waiting to see if you'll mention Pynchon and yes, i agree! (can't stand him)
Enjoyed this video, thanks. By far the most difficult book I ever read was Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, because the author invented a dialect for all the character dialogue, which made it seriously hard work to understand wtf was going on. But it was 40 years ago that I read it, and I was a less seasoned reader, so I might make less heavy weather of it now. The atmosphere of the story, however, has stayed with me down the years.
Yeah; that was tough.
I did read it when it came out. I got it free to review it. I agree it’s hard to begin with, but no worse than A Clockwork Orang. Like reading Chaucer, when you get into it, it’s no hard anymore.
@@Joanna-il2ur Agree with the Chaucer parallel. Bewildering at the start but you do kind of get the hang of it after a while.
My grandmother was a college professor in Louisiana and taught music and literature and she knew William Faulkner who lived across the state line in Mississippi which came in pretty handy for me when I read him especially Absolam Absolam
Loved the Pynchon segment. I've read Lot 49 and adored it, but probably because the book club I partake in from time to time was doing it and it's full of Pynchon fans there. They helped me understand it, and some sections are truly beautiful (the ending of the first chapter, for example), but I need to pick it up eventually and reflect about it on my own.
It also helped that my book club peers are, in good part, US-ians, meaning they were able to elucidate some sociocultural and historical stuff that would totally go over my head.
A while ago I tried to read Woolf's The Waves and, constantly, had to backtrack, read the same page a few times before deciding "Eh, I'll just keep going and see where this takes me." Did not take much time before I just stopped reading it altogether. Although I did read Pynchon in English (not my first language), Woolf's prose in the original is so difficult to get through. I'll tackle it again soon, just not now. To think that Woolf complained about Joyce when she wrote something as bewildering as The Waves is astonishing to me.
Gravity’s Rainbow. That book scares me.
I refuse to accept people read this 😂😂😂
Jacques Derrida.
The CodeX Cantina has a series of videos on Absalom, Absalom! Without them, I don't think I would have finished the book.
We Stan Codex Cantina
Why don't people expect Shakespeare to be hard to read when he fully just made up his own words half the time?? Love him but we aren't mind readers lmao
Name of the Rose - I I read the words but did not understand it. Tried a second time but did not finish. Glad to hear I am not the only one.
Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" is the only book I've ever had to give up on. I just couldn't follow it. I did finish "Dog Years" by Gunther Grass but it was pretty much a war of attrition to get to the end.
Yeah, I've skimmed Grass and Rushdie in the past and never returned. Rushdie's memoir, Joseph Anton, is a fantastic read though.
I've never heard a single person say Shakespeare was easy. And if someone were to, then you know they didn't understand what they read. But yes, he is the pinnacle of English literature, and I would like to read more of his work and read them more closely, but it is hard. As for other "hard" writers, I have zero desire to waste my time. There's too many great (whatever that means) books that are accessible.
I loved The Name of the Rose! Try it as an audiobook. That's how I did it.
Lmao I love your story of reading Pynchon on the train, I knew what you were talking about when you said a banana and a bomb. Pynchon is one of my favorite authors, maybe just because I do crave that bookish book scene cred, but also because he draws a lot from history, especially history that follows the phrase "reality is stranger than fiction". I would def implore you to give it a go at some point, and one thing that was really helpful for me was following the group read in the summer of '21 in the Pynchon subreddit. That subreddit has all the info you need in order to get a better grasp of what is going on. I sort of just buckled down and decided that I would forge on regardless of whether or not I understood everything, and that seems to be the common advice. It was more about the experimence for me.
I also tried to read Eco Pendulum and couldn't stomach it, i've never tried to read Hegel, and I don't really plan to, but I've watched philosophy professors vids about him haha.
You had me at The Name of the Rose. I thought the audiobook version would make it possible for me to follow, but I was still quickly lost.... {sigh}
Love Shakespeare’s tragedies. Everything else he wrote, not so much lol.
Love in the time of Cholera, anything written with stream of consciousness, LOTR, any French classics (Camus, Sartre, Balzac, whoever wrote Therese Racquin); apart from Birdsong, whoever wrote Birdsong😊
Also Tristram Shandy. Hated it and only got couple of chapters in.
How old are you?
What difference does that make?
Ola wrote Therese Racquin. One of his harder books. The movie is easier. Try Le Grand Meulnes.
Joanna. Ah yes. Emile Zola. I would attempt another one but afraid my French isn't up to it any more.
The only Pynchon I've read is Lot 49 which I didn't find that hard to read (probably because it's so short) but Gravity's rainbow is extremely daunting
I got into Shakespeare when I was an undergrad, cos I started reading his plays as a method of procrastination whilst I was supposed to be writing my dissertation. The personal way I found it easiest to get into him (and he IS confusing when you first dive in, there's no denying) is I read the plays online with the Wikipedia article for the said play open in another tab; I could flick back to the dramatis personae at the drop of a hat if I felt a bit lost, which especially helped during the history plays about the Wars of the Roses. They also helped me brush up on the historical context of Shakespeare's time when the play first appeared, which I found fascinating.
I read them through in the order that they were included in the First Folio, Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, and was originally doing them at the rate of one a week, usually on a Sunday morning when I had some time to myself. After I clicked with his writing I began to enjoy them so much that I would start doing three or four a week, and at the risk of sounding like a really pretentious wanker it was some of the most fun I've ever had whilst reading. Maybe I should have vlogged my experiences or something. Don't know if that would convince you to give them a go, but I can at least say that when I started to understand his diction I began to understand why he has the titanic reputation that he does.
I loved Name of the Rose. Marvelous.
I feel your pain with Hegel. I love Umberto Eco though, name of the rose is one of my favourites have not read Foucault’s Pendulum though
I've very recently started my journey with the classics. Wanna know my first book I thought I'd boldly enjoy? The Scarlet Letter.
From all the conversation I've ever heard about this book people said it was creepy, influential, and... Entertaining.
I will agree that there were moments on that book that were indeed creepy and influential.. saying it was entertaining was quite a stretch. I swear to god, Nathaniel Hawthorn had a single sentence that spanned an entire page. I was being drowned by the mundane. I didn't finish the book. My first experience to the classics I couldn't even finish lol.
I really loved Shakespeare's tragedies .. did not like his midsummer nights.. have yet to try his histories.. I think I will like it too.
But I do agree.. why do people Idolize him so... the obsessions beyond me too.
I loved Name of the Rose and its inspiration Borges Labyrnth..
But have tried Focaults pendulum two times.. it's so hard.. I shall try it again sometime.
No idea about Gravity's Rainbow .
I loved Faulkners Light in August.. tried Absalom .. it was hard.. will try it again..haven't read anything else by him.
Loved your child in the video.
The only author I couldn’t get through was H.P. Lovecraft. I gave up at around a 1/4 of the way through “Necronomicon.” The density of the prose was just too overwhelming.
I did, however, read and have enjoyed both “The Name of the Rose” and “Gravity’s Rainbow.” The lader has a convoluted plot and style, but the nostalgia, grief and bleakness factor really made for a strangely enjoyable experience at times. Also, Gravity’s Rainbow has some of my favorite poetry and I’m not at all a poetry fan. As for The Name of the Rose, imagine reading it and realizing only at thr very end, that all of the translations of the latin parts were at the very end of the book. 😂 I genuinely thought that they were meant to be left untranslated, for one thing because that publisher usually puts the footnotes at the bottom of the page, and the translations weren’t there. 😅 I guess I have a good excuse for at least rereading “The Name of the Rose.”
Thomas Pynchon. Just dnf'd the one I picked because of the infamous #tbrtackle. It was just somehow too boring. Still happy, because dnf'ing means still reducing the tbr. And still two others by Pynchon to try on my shelf. Gravity's Rainbow is one of them. I'm not defeated yet.
I have read four of Faulkner's books with a bookclub. Helped a lot. And I actually liked them.
Of course Shakespeare is difficult, same with Goethe.
At least you can see all the nice Shakespeare covers with that swanky new light… oh wait you only buy Wordsworth. Maybe best to keep the light off then
😂😂😂😂
There are too many injokes here 😂
To be fair German metaphysicians are hard enough when you read them in the original German. Reading them in translation is even more painful.
Bit harsh on Shakespeare tho.
I found La Nausée needed several goes. Large tracts of Kant leave you feeling several 100 IQ points short of adequacy too.
Oh yeah, Nausea. Did. Not. Enjoy.
La Nausee left me noxious. End of. Nothing to recommend it.
I read _Slow Learner_ and _The Crying of Lot 49,_ I enjoyed both.
If On A Winters Night a Traveller - Calvino. This was my hardest book. My brain turned inside out and whimpered.
Oh, I have never considered reading Calvino. Know a log of people love this book, but have no idea what’s It about
@@KDbooks I've read it and I still don't know what it's about. It makes Bulgakov's Master and Margarita a breeze to work out.
Another good list. But what was so difficult about The Name of the Rose? I really enjoyed it from the beginning to the end. You weren't trying to read it Italian were you? did you have to read that old BS artist Hegel for school or something like that? Rather slog through all one thousand pages of Das Capital than read ten pages of that guy. It's like Gertrude Stein said about Oakland CA: When you get there, there's no there there! Yes Faulkner is so convoluted he gives me a headache but still want to read The Sound and the Fury someday. TOTALLY agree with you about Gravity's Rainbow like I'm sure most people do. Actually got through Lot 49 cause it was so short but didn't understand the point either. What's so interesting about a secret alternative postal system? Oh yeah cute kid but don't believe you're only 28. Must be the beard.
Shakespeare: Difficult but enjoyable WITH a lot of help.
The Golden Bowl by Henry James did me in. Agree about Absalom Absalom. Going on for pages and pages without a paragraph break drove me nuts.
Ever read Joyce? AA is Faulkner's most Joycean novel.
Shakespeare is historical because we were told so, taught so and forced to accept it so.
Unlike all the other writers on your list, Shakespeare's work is actually worth the extra effort. Only his poems should be read; the plays should be watched. He wasn't a novelist.
Gadis , I've tried and feel like I was developing a hole in my stomach.
Who ever said that Shakespeare was easy? That would be misleading almost a disservice to your preparation of mindset going in.
I mean Shakespeare should be comprehendable by most people: with some training or the right performance, or some notes. There's nothing about the stories at least as I understand, that is incomprehendible by the average person.
However, it's more about the dialogue, the expression, even the humor. Which to me, the word play would be the hardest thing to understand in modern times.
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James I find incredibly difficult. I've started and packed it in twice. The last time I was half way through but decided I needed a break and so started another book- fatal! Alas, I didn't have the heart to go back to it. In reviews of the book people rarely comment on the writing style, which makes me suspicious if people have actually read the book or just watched the film on Netflix. You are right about Shakey, and Absolom, Absolom! gave me a headache, I couldn't finish it.
Dostoyevsky, i got the bit about the man with the axe then i was like what?
Always liked Eco, never had a struggle with his work. Great fun.
Faulkner I’m allergic to, generally speaking. It’s booze writing.
Hegel stands just outside my spotlight but I like phenomenology itself, mostly because I like the noumenal. *w* We concur that it’s not worth plowing through. Reminds me of Sartre, too. Just read the eminently readable Camus and be done with it.
I love Shakespeare. Gotta keep in mind, we’ve lost the meaning of a given percentage of his words. Untangling him is well worth it, for me, and even the gibberish bits are cool. As Patrick Stewart, (relation?), once said, he spoke the nonsense in STAR TREK the same way he spoke the gibberish in Shakespeare, with conviction and authority. It’s tonal, basically.
Gravity’s Rainbow is probably my favorite of Pynchon’s books and I’ve read them all. He’s a genius. Also very funny. The Crying of Lot 49, shortest, is also his most difficult and encoded. Try instead Inherent Vice, Bleeding Edge, or Vineland. They’re more accessible.
Having responded to your responses, I’d say further that it’s not a competition, and you should read what you enjoy and fuck the academic sneering, which never matters anyhow. They spurt over Don DeLillo and I’ve made several runs at his stuff and it’s crap, sorry. Boring banality with lists.
Anyway, cheers, and read what you want how you want.
/ Gene Stewart
I read the first chapters of james joyce's ulysses 15 times. The last five times i read it aloud. I have no idea what was going on. It may as well be in a different language.
Joyce's Ulysses is my nemesis. About Shakespeare. I learned English as a foreign language. When I began to study, I bought Hamlet (in the original, not graded), and put it on my night stand. My goal was to learn English so well I could read Hamlet. Forward forty years. I am a retired English lit professor for students of English as a Foreign language. And I reached my goal of reading Hamlet without trouble, and even better, of understanding Laurence Olivier's pronunciation.
But I can never read more than four pages of Ulysses without getting a headache.
I found Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's Ulysses extremely helpful. Joyce literally sat down with Gilbert and explained every chapter in detail. I understand that he was going to also do that with Finnegans Wake but died before that happened.
I'm so happy that Shakespeare made the list. I thought I was the only one
We stand strong!!
The book I was unable to read was Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. How is that a trilogy? Did anyone read it? I had difficulty (3rd X's a charm) with Dahlgren by Samuel R. Delany. For reference, I loved Focault's Pendulum but had to pick it up twice. It is one of my favorite books as is The Count of Monte Cristo.
You're only 28?! I wish I'd been as well read as you when I was 28
I’m really not that well read 😂
I loved Faulker's As I lay Dying, and I also read Absolom, Absolom! It was a little rough, but I followed it. What I have discovered with Faulkner is that he is an author you must read rather than listen to the audiobook versions, especially a work like The Sound and the Fury. I LOVE Shakespeare. Sorry, but you are the only "serious" reader who doesn't understand Shakespeare. Sure, you might need to use context clues to comprehend some more archaic words, but Shakespeare is simply the greatest writer of all time and comprehended the human condition like no other writer before or since. Pynchon, I will agree, can be challenging, but I find his novels worth the effort, and The Crying of Lot 49 is his easiest novel (I guess no one has explained the tropes of postmodern literature to you because it is a very easy book to comprehend). I have yet to read The Name of the Rose, but I have wanted to read it for quite a while.
Well Adolph, you are vastly superior in intellect to the average Joe if all of these are as simple as you make them.
Thankyou for making me feel seen about Shakespeare. I'm a highschool English teacher and I can't fucking stand Shakespeare. His language is inaccessible at best and 99% of my students lose out on experiencing all of the emotion of his plays when they read his works. I'll still teach it, but rather than doing class read-alongs of Shakespeare, I try to turn it into a field trip to see it performed live and students get way more out of it that way.
never read gravity's rainbow, but enjoyed mason and dixon recently. it's pynchon with heart and hilarious pynchon
A lot of people here are mentioning M&D and it’s making me curious
@@KDbooks you need to get to america there. that's where awesomeness starts. and it's around 200 page mark
Agree completely. Heart and humor. I've read GR, but I'm never reading it again. I love to go back to M&D.
@@anthonyleecollins9319 and the episodic nature of it is great for rereads. there’re so many hilarious episodes: the devil and the lawyer, the werewolf, the werebeaver etc
I remember reading ''Positions'' by Derrida for my linguistics essay at uni and it truly felt like a fever dream. I was lost in all those words and did not pick up anything meaningful. It was chaotic. Another one: HERmione by Hilda Doolittle. Oh my godddd, I loved her prose but the meaning behind those words? I got zero. I felt so dumb lol.
Derrida made me hate linguistics and literary theory.
People who READ (seriously) and admit works they struggle with are far from dumb. We can't engage with everything.
I loved The Name of the Rose (and enjoyed the movie a lot, too), but Foucault's Pendulum was too much. I felt the same way about Gravity's Rainbow as you. I started it as one of those 'must read' classics and couldn't get through the first few pages. Similarly, Ulysses by James Joyce. I read all his other stuff and enjoyed it, can't get into his magnum opus. However, the one author that upsets me most is actually Joseph Conrad. I so looked forward to The Heart of Darkness - hated 99% of it (and, yes I got all the 'stuff'), but figured I'd give a try to Secret Agent but put it away after 10 pages. Forget about it.
Absalom! dilemma is so relatable. He makes me sleep. And you are not alone in your hatred of Hegel. Many great men have hated him more than you.
I came upon Penelope Shuttle via 'The Wise Wound', her fascinating book about menstruation, co-authored with her husband Peter Redgrove. Then I tried her novel 'Rainsplitter in the Zodiac Garden'. Lovely title, but utterly incomprehensible - to me, anyway.
Menstruation? Fascinating? Are you SURE?
Let's read Gravity's rainbow together. I, too, read The Crying of Lot 49, and that's my only exposure to Pynchon. Let's get our street cred.
I don’t want marginal street cred 😂 I want a happy life
@@KDbooks Reading with me = Happy Life. It can't just be Bambi all the time.
i didn't even understand my philosophy professor explaining hegel there is no way i'm gonna give his works a chance