Jerusalem is one of my favourite books tbh. Read it on release and carried it around back in school. I'm 21 now and read his first novel Voice Of The Fire as it was re-released this year. Jerusalem is very deliberate in its construction and VOTF isn't really a first novel its more like a prologue to what he accomplished with Jerusalem imo. Jerusalem is less one book and is essentially a Trilogy disguised as one book. Book one is fragments of the community and the Warren family in particular, book 2 is one cohesive narrative about a kid going to the afterlife and book 3 is a crazy collection of Moore trying his most out there experimental literature. If you struggle with Jeruslem you should consider reading VOTF or buy the edition of Jerusalem which is packaged as 3 separate books. I think it's worth it in spades and its probably the most beautiful philosophy I've read, Moore gives everyone an out from death but doesn't really remove the negative aspects of reality. Personally it's The Recognitions and Gravity's Rainbow that I dip a toe into and then drop. I know I just need to hurl myself into those icy depths but I lack the confidence required. Most of the time I think large or difficult books aren't really difficult but just require a time commitment which is way longer than any other book. Took me a month and a half to read Jerusalem but I read another 5 books alongside it during that time. Those books were my break from Jerusalem lmao. It has a lot to say though so it's difficulty was warranted imo.
I really appreciate this comment. You know, you are among many people who have urged me to give Jerusalem another shot. And I will certainly do it. All my best to you!
"The Tunnel" by William H. Gass defeated me after about 150 pages. There were so many exquisite scenes with beautiful prose, but the plot was slipping through my fingers. Each paragraph is so dense, it takes a lot of energy to follow. Definitely a case of me and not the book, as you say.
I can understand that, even though my experience was different. When I started in on it I felt ready for it. And it took a solid month of reading it exclusively. Any book that took 30 years to write will probably have this commensurate demand on the reader. But there’s no shame in it. The book is there, waiting for you when the time is right!
The Road to Reality is a beast! Amazing that he starts by defining fractions and arithmetic and then goes all the way through modern physics in a single book. A truly monumental achievement. (And the bibliography alone is unbelievable.) Certainly a lifelong task to read let alone deeply understand that one.
The first few chapters were very stimulating. The book is highly laudable in its goal and achievement. One day (or year) I will commit to a careful journey through it!
It’s a goal for me as well! I’ve found one of the joys of the book to be the graphics and diagrams. Penrose has a particular genius for making highly abstract ideas visually clear. I was fascinated to learn recently that he corresponded with M.C. Escher and influenced the famous impossible staircase drawings.
@@LiamHaleMcCarty The best physics book in my opinion is Why God Doesn't Exist by Bill Gaede. The title was a poor choice on his part (although he explains why he chose it) as it makes it sound like a book about atheism but it's actually a book about physics and science.
How gratifying to stumble onto a TH-camr who shares my taste for maximalism and who has hit many of the same walls. The texts by Leopardi, Theroux (Darconville's Cat), Gibbon, Solzhenitsyn, all stymied me as well. Luckily I had to read Clarissa in graduate school and ended up writing a 20 page essay for the class that ended up at around 40 pages. I did complete Jerusalem and found it fascinating and still do. It's like one of those films whose ending somehow utterly, yet satisfyingly, overthrows everything that went before (e.g. Memento) with the result that you find yourself having flashbacks during which you keep reworking scenes to fit in with the final reveal. For my fiftieth birthday, I gave myself the completion of In Search of Lost Time, through which I had made it half-way before putting it down. When I picked it back up several years later, I realized I couldn't go forward or start again and never got past Swann in Love. I finished it 2 months before my birthday, so I threw in anotherlong-time nemesis, The Recognitions, which I'd been trying to read since I devoured Carpenter's Gothic when it first came out. The books that taunt me now are The Idiot and The Man without Qualities. One book, however, has defied me for over 40 years, Les Chansons de Maldoror. What's odd about that is that Les Chansons is one of my favorite books, and one of the more influential in terms of my approach to aesthetics. The problem is that I cannot get past the 3rd Canto and I believe it's because the book is somehow simultaneously putrid and way too rich--like a spoiled cheesecake.
One of my most respected professors told me that Moore’s “Jerusalem” was one of his favorite books in recent memory. But no praise holds a candle to the clarity of “Boring, boring, boring.”
Hahaha! The ironic thing is that this book had all the trappings of a book I should really like. And I fancy myself a fairly forgiving reader. I wonder if there are books-like graphic novels, say-that I should be acquainted with in order to get more out of this. Perhaps one day I’ll connect with it. There are a few books I didn’t mesh with until several attempts later.
Thanks for that encouragement! I do plan to revisit it-hence why it’s still in my library and not sold to a secondhand shop. I appreciate your saying that!
@@babbymonke Do the endless and mind-numbing descriptions of Northampton stop after 400 pages? I got to 250 pages and nearly threw the damn thing across the room it was so boring.
@@james2529 The first part is definitely the slowest, but it builds characters and some plot threads which do actually pay off later. I don't think the descriptions ever go away but it's worth it to get to part 2, it's very different and its plot and the sort of psychedelic fantasy it describes make the slow parts tolerable. Part 3 can be boring but some chapters are great and resolve many threads
I know only of one person who definitely finished Zettel's Traum, an old friend of mine from Germany. He had a designated table for it, persevered with Teutonic discipline and succeeded after one year, averaging about 3-4 pages a day. Simultaneously I had sank my teeth into Schmidt's last finished typoscript "Abend mit Goldrand" (Evening edged in Gold), which was a delight to read in its more humorous approach, its slightly more accessible way of using the column technique and of course its more palatable length. And something strange happened with that one: when I was nearing the end I felt a distinct melancholy coming over me having to leave this weird and beautiful landscape.. one of the few books I felt genuinely bereaved when it ended. Apart from it being a possible stepping stone to the gargantuan mountain of ZT I consider it one of Schmidt's finest works.
Thanks for sharing this! I love this: "persevered with Teutonic discipline"! The only person I know who has read ZT in its entirety, carefully and deeply, is critic Steven Moore (who first introduced me to Schmidt). He can speak about ZT conversationally! One day I will embark on the journey. A dedicated table with a couple pages a day sounds like the best approach. All my best to you!
I finally got around to reading _Clarissa_ last year and I was blown away. I was expecting it to be a dull, plodding thing that I would just have to get through. Instead, I found it captivating. It has jumped into my top ten novels of all time.
It really caught my attention when Harold Bloom praised it. I’ve started it a couple of times and realized it was something special but that I wasn’t ready for it yet. (This happens from time to time.) So it’s waiting for me. And now you’ve given me the nudge.
I managed to read Gulag Archipeligo, but it was hard. Sometimes I could whizz through 50 pages but at other times could barely read 1. As you said a really difficult topic. It sickened me off of reading in general, I didn't read anything at all for 6 months after finishing it.
Sheesh. It’s a heavy topic. I couldn’t watch Schindler’s List for a long time and after I watched it finally I had a similar experience: I couldn’t watch anything for a while. Such a long-resonating solemnity. But-this is an important work and one day I will hunker down with it and grapple.
"The Road To Reality" is hilarious. It's meant to be a "common mans" exposition of physics yet you'd need *at least* a post-doc level of mathematics to make any progress. I guess Roger just thinks everybody knows complex analysis.
I have a Masters in Quantum Chemistry and "The Road to Reality" still had new mathematics and concepts in it that I needed to learn to make any progress. I still haven't finished it either.
I've actually started reading 3 pages a day and I'm loving it! (I presume we're referring to the Zibaldone. It's been a while since I made/watched this video.)
@Leaf by Leaf yeah, interesting that you mention it… I actually stalled out around pg 350 a while ago but recently started trying 10 pages every Sunday morning with my coffee. It’s dawned on me that reading Leopardi is a manic experience, the guy was brilliant but a little wired. Written in his early twenties in only a few years, he had a weakness for sweets and would routinely put 6-10 spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee (see the biography by Iris Origo)! A workaholic by age 14 and dying of a heart condition at 36 or so, he truly put everything into his work! The Zibaldone is one of the great works of history imo, if exhausting. He was a brilliant proto-psychologist but not so great at political theory…
IJ has claimed a fair amount of casualties for sure. Coincidentally I am finishing up my second read of it this well and will make a video that I hope will prove helpful. All my best to you!
When I was teaching English in Italy many moons ago, we had a Penguin Classic abridged version of Decline and Fall, which was still about 1,000 pages, but I loved it. Maybe give that a try first.
Usually I recoil at abridgments, but in this case that may not be a bad idea. Then I can go through and get the fine details if I am so persuaded. Thanks!
@@LeafbyLeaf I agree on abridgements. It is the only one I've read since I was a child and felt cheated to discover some book I read was incomplete. Perhaps it is best to think of the Penguin volume as a Gibbons Reader, which one amazon (www.amazon.com/Decline-Roman-Empire-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140431896) reviewer describes thus: This abridgment retains the full scope of the original, but in a breadth comparable to a novel. Casual readers now have access to the full sweep of Gibbon’s narrative, while instructors and students have a volume that can be read in a single term. This unique edition emphasizes elements ignored in all other abridgments-in particular the role of religion in the empire and the rise of Islam.
Thank! I quite fond of it. When we built this house, I spec'ed out the library and my wife designed the rest of the house. In fact, since 2017 I've never left the library. I wonder what the rest of this place looks like...
A book that defeated me recently was 'The Shape of Things to Come' by HG Wells, where he writes about an imagined future as if it's an historical book. The writing was so dry (which makes sense, conceptually) that I thought "I know where this is going, and I just can't do it", and stopped pretty early on. I hope to be in the mood for it one day. The list of books that I'm too scared to even approach on the other hand............
The Gulag Archipelago is truly depressing. I’ve read only a 100 pages but it was very difficult. Should pick it up either soon or next year. Tried to read Infinite Jest but I stopped midway a couple years ago, also read Gravity’s Rainbow after that and remembered enjoying this more than Infinite Jest.
Moore’s Jerusalem is one of my favourite books. Each to his own. Moore’s description of a kids playground: ‘…and the autistic cubist’s notion of a concrete horse that grazed eternally nearby…’
@@LeafbyLeaf When you get to ‘Round the bend’ It helped me to look up annotations on the net. Made me realise how much of a magician Moore really is. Enjoy.
I'm glad to see that you include both humanities and physics and scientific examples. Too often the assumption made by a lot of people is that the humanities are a lot easier than the sciences, but really if you're looking at its hardest pieces of literature, that are on defining historical events like the Roman Empire's fall, to truly understand it takes quite a brain that is beyond most of what the ordinary human mind has capacity enough to comprehend outside of a linear, simplified reduction of the event to an encapsulation by some very basic sentence or two, which is something people also do when simplifying difficult, or non-intuitive physical and spatial theories about mathematics or atomic particles, to make it easier for intuition to grasp - finding the links uniting all the factors in an epic historical events requires an understanding of all the contingencies in the world greater than what an individual mind can hold all at once in its grasp. By the way your book shelf is more shelved and stocked with works of literature than the contents of my small town library in the middle of desert in Australia.
Read Alter's translation when you read ESV or NASB. Great complement. You don't sit down and read it in a day!!! Loved Gulag Archipelago although by volume 3 there was a large amount of redundancy.
Two that keep defeating me are _The Origins of Order,_ by Stuart Kauffman and Ernst Casirer’s _The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms._ The Kauffman book is a fascinating discussion of complexity and self-organizating systems (his discussion of how life likely emerged from auto-catalytic sets of chemicals is fascinating). There’s another excellent book (which I have read) called _Evolution in Four Dimensions,_ by Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb that supplements Kauffman’s book. The latter is about how there’s much more to evolution than just random - “random” - variation and natural selection. Evolution actually operates through four different kinds of inheritance systems that build on one another and interact in interesting ways: the genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic systems. There are fascinating discussions in the book about the kinds of (by our standards) simple cultures that animals develop, but which are nevertheless recognizable as cultures (mother rabbits can pass a taste for certain foods down to her offspring through her milk, rats can teach each other efficient techniques for stripping pine cones, etc.). Even genetic inheritance is more complicated than most people think because a gene’s effects on you will depend not only on what the gene itself is _but what other genes it’s located next to, and in what order._ Kauffman’s book focuses exhaustively on self-organization, but together they make a much much interesting and polychromatic picture of evolution. The upshot of his book, though, is that, given the nature of organic chemistry, the emergence of life was probably just about inevitable. Evolution and biology are much more lawlike and less random than they appear. Kauffman also wrote another book called _At Home in the Universe,_ which I have read, and which is basically a shorter version of _Origins of Order._ And as for the Casirer book, well, I have read the first volume, but whenever I push further, other books always call me away.
Robert Fagles was asked in an interview what literary work he’d recommend most to “his” readers and he said without a moments thought- The Civil War trilogy by Shelby Foote- after reading a bit about the work and from my respect for Fagles- I embarked on what has now been a 5 year long intention to read this tomb of a historical text.
I, too, have been picking at that one for years and years and years. I watched the Ken Burns documentary, which feature Foote often, and my interest got piqued again, but I've yet to read even the first volume all the way through.
I read Foote’s series years ago and was very impressed by his lucid descriptions, especially at the human scale. Then I read multiple serious histories of the Civil War by academic historians who worked from original sources. I found that Foote’s books are full of errors that often favor the brave southern boys fighting against hopeless odds but led by totally brilliant generals. He clearly expresses sympathy with the southern cause in many places. My conclusion is that Foote’s Civil War is closer to a historical novel than a history. It is appropriate that Fagles loved Foote’s work, since it resembles the works of Homer in that way.
Fagles was my Comp Lit professor at Princeton. He taught the core course which included The Anantomy of Criticism and Mimeses. I am sorry I was too young to think of asking what else he would recommend.
Just found your channel today, this is your 2nd vid I'm watching. I feel like I've stumbled onto a booktube secret society. I am going to look into the Baroque book.
Hey! Welcome! Glad you found me down here in the secret society. ;-P My newer videos have better quality, by the way. Makes me self-conscious of the older ones.
This one’s not as large as many others here, but I’ve never been able to get through A Tale of Two Cities. I want to, and I’ve read some other Dickens stuff, but this one has beaten me twice so far.
I’m into audiobooks. Also reacting to your q and a. Love the q and as. Driving and hearing an audiobook works for me. Responding to q and a her bc I just listened to II and III and now I’m here.
I quite liked Jerusalem as I like anything by Alan Moore. Just re-read Middlemarch and Ulysses again and I am currently re-reading Gravity's Rainbow. The only 2 books that have defeated me are Infinite Jest which I have tried to read once and Joyce's Finnegan's Wake which I have tried to read twice but each time I have failed to complete mainly because its like reading a foreign language that you don't understand.
Indeed, Joyce used a handful of languages to contrive the mighty Wake. I've only ever dipped a toe in it here and there, but I feel that a serious engagement is nigh. Middlemarch and Ulysses are two of my favorites! I do plan to give Jerusalem another try. Many people have given me enough input to convince me. All my best to you!
The last book that defeated me was 'Women and Men' a novel by Joseph McElroy. I ordered the novel by W. Paul Anderson from Amazon. I also like big books.
The only reason I didn’t include McElroy’s magnum opus is because I haven’t started it yet. So it hasn't defeated me. Unless you can be defeated based on intent!
I can't wait to start on Women and Men. I have a feeling it will become my favorite novel, next to Ulysses and Infinite Jest and Midnight's Children/Satanic Verses.
@@TheCollidescopePodcast I just finished Women and Men -- I won't lie, it's not an easy read, but I loved it. It immediately jumped near the top of my MOST FAVORITE NOVELS LIST. And I can't wait to read it again. Enjoy.
@@makebelievestunt Congrats on finishing it, Michael! I'll be on the lookout on Goodreads for your thoughts on it. I definitely prefer difficult books over easy ones as long as there is some kind of payoff.
The Recognitions. The beginning is so great. But then Gaddis and I just lose each other. Some of the dialogue suddenly begins to feel so trite (which I know is on purpose) so I skim it a bit hoping for that next big striking character moment, only to find out that I should have payed more attention when an event happens and I am unable to understand it.
A lot of people have had this same trouble. David Letzler discussed it most eloquently in his book The Cruft of Fiction (which I’ll post a video on in a few weeks). The truth is that books like theses are made to be reread. Not a popular notion, but it’s the inevitable truth. The value of the book is commensurate to the time spent with it. But, that said, if you can’t grapple with it and don’t want to waste the time, by all means move on. Life’s short and there are plenty of books!
Personally, I have a lot of books that defeated me, most of them are classics. I started to think that is something the fact that I choice to buy them and just love the art between titles. ,,Introduction in psihanalize" by Sigmund Freud was at beggining acceptable, but after 300-400 pages become so complexe and deep that make me crazy. It's surely a book that will change something at you in sense of introspection and reflexion. You will ask yourself after. "What was the motivation beyound a action?", "Why try to reject something and accepte another thing?" But just the ask will not send you the rezolvation, so it's kind a painfull when you fell that personally I don't know something... just more and more question that make you weak and disturbing you from the meaning of life... To live.
I think you’ve really hit on something a lot of people experience: why should I sit and struggle with this book when I could be living? That would be a great topic for a video...
@@LeafbyLeaf I think reading is a noble action like writing. I have a curiosity, you try to write? I'm surely that you are able to made a great job and maybe a monster novel because you have a lot of books behind and are able to unerstand a lot of concept... You are great at speaching, obviously, people are better and more perfectionist at writing. Art reflect the best varianr of a soul. Anyway, in my opinion the great filosofy quotes is "why"? In generally it's vital to know why make a think, what expectetion we have from that action. A lot of people have problem with "why", even me. I know from experience that this is the most difficult topic, but from a book I started to ask more things then before. I respect you a lot. Kepp going with great things, you are awesome!!! ♥️👍👍
Yes, I have been writing for about 16 years now. So far, I have only had book reviews published. I am 2 years into work on a novel right now. Thanks so much for all of your kind words. Much appreciated!
I think, for me, it’s the subject of physics and not the books, but I have also read and read and reread In A Nutshell and A Brief History of Time. In addition to these, I have enjoyed multiple viewings of various specialists who make an effort to explain all this to the regular people of earth on television shows. Once, on perhaps the fifth watch, my brain understood space-time. Only for a moment, but it was glorious.
It's the same for me. Math and science tend to take me a while to get my head around. I'm so thankful for great explainers like Stephen Hawking and Carlo Rovelli!
Love this. And in your question and answer series you talked about not doing away w writers bc of their past problems. That’s good, bc people w that oppressive McCarthyistic pov can’t read history whatsoever based on the differences in cultures over time.
Lots of fabulous books, some I've never heard of which is always stellar. Kudos to you on reading some of Bottom's Dream. When I learned about it a few months ago, I thought of purchasing it & gave it serious thought. That book intimidates me to no end & I know my place with that pecking order! 🥰 I'll happily chill here with Joyce for a few more decades. May need a few more lifetimes to get my reading level up there with Schmitt. ... though the temptation to explore it is quite real. Please don't fret about pronunciation I think any mispronunciation of this great writer is largely cancelled out by simply talking about the unabridged version. There's folks who don't know it's a 3 volume book which could be a disservice to it. Nothing against abridgements or even 'Cliff Notes' editions. I'd accept a Cliff Notes for Sidney's Old Arcadia if it ever comes down to it & my reading time is truly running short. But I think because of what struggles/passion for truth these authors went through to create these books, the very least we could do is muster up enough self discipline to sit in our cozy room with the edition that has a few extra pages. Don't fret about the stresses for you to get through it 'cause when the time's right to read it, I'm sure you'll get the most from it. If you like, try starting with his earlier works before embarking on Gulag. He packs a punch in everything he writes. Right now Borges is giving me a hearty challenge. After 10 pages, I'm dumbfounded for a few days & can't read anything else. Fabulous video, I'm happy to have found your channel a couple of days ago. I hope your week is pretty awesome. 🤓
I'm glad you stopped by--and now I have discovered your channel! Thanks for all the comments and encouragement. It always intrigues me how, one day you can look at a book and think "I'll never read that"; then, the next day, you dive into it and read through with gusto! Borges! Now you're talking! I am a huge Borges fan--fiction and non-fiction. He changed my view of what could be done with fiction. I will include him in a forthcoming video of my top desert(ed) island books. Looking forward to checking out your videos. Take care!
@@LeafbyLeaf Thanks! I have Borges non-fiction here as well. I'm so happy you mentioned he also wrote non-fiction! * bliss * Happy to meet another Borges fan. Yes, he certainly is a master at blending genres or even just information sources! I look forward to your island books. You take care, too!
Great video, thank you. Love this channel. Gravity's Rainbow was the book I finally had to put down. Ironically, it wasn't the style that eventually defeated me (I loved the couple of other Pynchons I have read) but some of the subject matter. I still hope to come back to it one day but Pynchon is a particularly talented provocateur haha
Thanks! Glad you’re enjoying the videos. I get that about subject matter. I’ve had my own books I had to set aside for the same thing. No judgement here.
This is for everyone: What do you do when you pick out a book and the writing is just bad. Like it has awards and reviews and it reads like a romance? I have decided life is too short and there’s so many books, that I just stop and give it back or give it away. Do you keep going? That said, I’ve learned to trust your recommendations! Thank you!!
I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow, got through the first section, about 180 pages, and discovered I couldn't make sense of the book at a sentence by sentence level. It felt like I had lost the ability to read. It was so weird. I actually did like what I read of it, and love Lot 49, so I want to go back to it someday.
Lot 49 is a great entryway to Pynchon. GR can indeed be disorienting. And sometimes we need to get a taste of something and then go back to it later. “Entropy” is also a good Pynchon to get the flavor.
I have had that issue with every single Pynchon novel I've read except 'Inherent Vice', and I've read them all except 'Slow Learner' and 'Bleeding Edge'. It's his syntax, it's really rich and (this is the only way I can explain it) 'chewy'. I keep going back though, and I just resign myself to the fact that there will be chunks of the book that I won't follow. I don't know if he does it on purpose (could he be that kind of evil genius?), as his prose spins off with, what appears to be, the intention of losing the reader. It doesn't stop me going back though, as, despite feeling like I'm barely gripping onto his words, I glean so much magic from what I do grasp onto, that I find myself wanting to repeat the experience.
I think, to be brief, books like Pynchon’s bigger novels are made to be reread. I have found, as with rereading Gaddis and Wallace, subsequent readings yield more and more rewards. There’s simply too much packed in to grasp on a single pass.
With giant works of fiction, like Pynchon, I think to some degree the reader has to submit to the novel and allow it to literally rewire the language processing circuits in the brain. First 5 or 6 attempts at Gravity's Rainbow, I felt I was at like a 10% comprehension level on a sentence by sentence basis (if that), but then something kinda clicked and I was finding myself reading in real time with maybe 50% comprehension and confidence in seeing the thought structures behind the text that result in Pynchon's choice of specific strings of sentences.
I can get through a couple paragraphs of (Daniel Matt's translation of) the Zohar. After a couple paragraphs, the life-process requires days, months, years to integrate whatever happened in the light transfusion. Not sure if I'd refer to that as "defeat". Its definitely an orgasmic satisfaction to be contacted by literature at that level. But it blows circuits and immediately reorganizes whatever the view was as retained by the conventional-self. That thing gets sacrificed and is clearly-outmoded, and many people would classify that a defeat.
I have the Maurice Simon translation of the Zohar. I wouldn't classify this as "defeat," but rather "proper reading." You've given me a video idea: Books to Be Read Slowly" or something like that.
@@LeafbyLeaf I'm just finding your channel and greatly appreciate what you've put together. i began reading gravity's rainbow a week or so ago and have been watching the video you made, finding it very helpful and encouraging - like having a buddy to read it with. great stuff! thank you. a focus on 'books to be read slowly' is a good idea. henry corbin just popped into mind. are you familiar with him?
It took me over ten years to read both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights (not the same ten years, but there was an overlap). I've been unable to finish The Compass: The Improvisational Theatre that Revolutionized American Comedy by Janet Coleman. Twice I checked it out through Interlibrary Loan, and had to return it before finishing it. Then, I bought my own copy, and now there is no incentive to start reading it. I'd like to read Gibbon in tandem with the Roman writers. I'll read one of the Romans first, then read the passage fom Gibbon covering the same period.
Over the years, I put down Finnegan's Wake (too dull, didn't enjoy Ulysses much and don't enjoy word play that much); Infinite Jest (not interesting enough to spend so much time on); and Swann's Way (may try to find my old copy to give it another shot). One that I found hard to finish, but may actually re-read some day, is The Magic Mountain.
@@LeafbyLeaf I've read Death In Venice, Buddenbrooks, Tonio Kruger, and Lotte In Weimar, but haven't read anything else, not sure which would be best to read next - Transposed Heads sounds like an odd story.
Yeah I couldn't enjoy Ulysses either. I felt like it's a continuous stream of insider Irish jokes about Ireland/Dublin's history and religious history of the region. I mean he'll squeeze like 4 word-plays, 3 historical references and 3 religious mockeries in *one* sentence. When he's fun and playful alone it can be pretty funny, but I feel like i need a religious studies and Irish history PhD just to *enjoy* the book. I like wordplay but it's non-stop with Ulysses. I feel like you don't read Ulysses, you research it. Not that much fun to me.
I don't generally think I'm defeated by any books, though an argument could be made for a few. For most books I've partially read, I'd say I've been distracted from some--the ones I will surely return to and finish eventually--and I've become disinterested in others--the ones I will *not*. I guess I'm in distracted mode from Ulysses. I will get back to that one, for sure. I'm in the process of reading the Recognitions, I loved the first, say, 400 pages, I'm a bit bogged down in a middle section that isn't holding me in quite so firm a grip and I'm moving to a new home, new job, etc., so I'm at risk of distraction here, but I'm pretty sure I'll carry on with that one. I'm conflicted regarding Jefferson Davis's The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Do I really have to go back and read the last third after a hiatus of years? I was influenced to read it by, of all unexpected sources, W.E.B. Dubois, just to see what the lost-causers had to say for themselves. But I kind of felt that I got it without having to finish it. As for Clarissa, I am a zealous advocate. Do it! As for all of these books, they probably each benefit from being the only thing you read until you're finished. Clarissa possessed my full attention, as did the Chinese classic Water Margin. Several times in one's life, I think it's great to just live with a book for a good long while. Which reminds me... I guess I have to get back to Orlando Furioso one of these days, eh?
Great distinction between distracted and disinterested. For all the books in my video, save for Jerusalem, I keep going into distracted mode for sure. (I felt that "keep defeating" was a snazzy continuous verb and tense to use: "defeat" ironically makes me feel better; and "keep defeating" show that the battle is not over!) The Recognitions is definitely one of my favorite books (I've a short video about it), so I'll trade you the push for Clarissa for a push for the Gaddis! As for living with a book for a while, you are spot on there. It seems I get less and less time to do that, but almost every book that is in my desert(ed) island trunk is a big fat book that I shared my life with for upwards of a month or so, without any infidelity (i.e. reading other books). Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!
It's almost embarrassing to admit because of how tiny it is, but I've started Kant's 'Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals' twice now, and given up within the first 10 pages
There’s no shame when it comes to heavyweights like Kant and Hegel, et al. When I first grappled with Kant, I had to turn to the Prolegomena first and consult several experts.
I have only dipped my toes in the Wake (though a serious reading of it is on the horizon); I tossed Ulysses aside the first time I read it, then revisited it and fell in love with it; and Nightwood I've still got on my shelf, unread. In general, I think there are a great many victim-comrades out there with you!
Attempting Finnegans Wake currently, audio as well as print versions, and of course it seems impossible yet funny. However I've discovered a book called Finnegan Begin Again: a novel towards an understanding of Finnegans Wake by Damian Westfall written in 2019 which kind of follows the original while completely modernizing it. I'm not sure if this one is much easier to comprehend, but it's worth a shot. BTW, I read Ulysses in a state of perplexedness (if that's a word), then listened to the audiobook and was pleasantly enlightened.
For the really well-written texts, I imagine it takes just as long to "truly" read, without guidance, something that took may years to write. And that still does not suppose we will understand what we have read, as language is a tricky thing and not even the greatest thinkers can fully capture what they mean to say in words, no matter how experimental. Always an approximation.
Penrose was maybe the latest book I did not finish, I made it well through it then I realized I am not gaining that much by reading it. He has the most weird way of explaining relatively simple concepts with very elaborate and convoluted references. If you don't know what he means before he says it, little chance you understand afterwards :) "Gulag Archipelago" is a great book, it reads very well, only problem is its length; "Jerusalem" is a nice book, but hard to call it a novel really, it is a collection of various texts related to Northampton revolving around some characters
@@LeafbyLeaf Decline of the West, along with Gebser's Ever-Present Origin, are two of my favorite books. I cannot recommend highly enough to make that day as soon as possible, Spengler is truly something else. Though I should state that Gibbon is my all-time favorite author! For me, Decline of the West and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire are about as near to the "perfect book" as is possible, to which I've only found Anatomy of Melancholy nearly approaches. Augustine's City of God is in that sublime category for me, as well.
Hunger's Bride I picked up when it first came out and I really enjoyed that one. I wish they would make an audio version of it as it would also be fun to listen to it.
Oh, awesome! I don't "meet" too many people who've read it. I was just talking about this one with the Great Concavity podcast guys. One day I will settle in with this one and read it through. But I have to wait until this strange metaphysical entity speaks to me and tells me it's time.
My defeaters: Thomas Aquinas, Maimonides & Thomas Pynchon.Pausing Raymond E. Brown's Death of the Messiah: Very deep & detailed, also Proust. Loved the Gulag, The Oak and the Calf & many of his others.
I know I’m two years late but there’s an abridged single volume collection for The Gulag Archipelago. You can find it on Amazon and it’s well worth the time. It’s much shorter and easier to digest. Hope this helps!
Thanks so much for the suggestion! I may well approach this like I did Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down: I read the abridgment first, then the unabridged.
@@LeafbyLeaf You're absolutely welcome. It's definitely a worthwhile read, but lately, thanks to your suggestion I've been reading Don Quixote and I'm loving it. It's been years since I tried to read it but after watching a couple of your videos about reading longer books I decided to give it another shot. SO thank you for your channel. I truly appreciate hearing your thoughts on books and how to read longer works.
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo defeated me . I read Notre Dame Dr Paris first to get a feel for his narrative style but failed every time. May fare better with Audio.
The Baroque Cycle is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Cryptonomicon was also excellent. All of his earlier work is worth the effort. I can’t say why but anything including and after Anathem I find utterly unreadable. I had the same feeling with Thomas McGuane. The Bushwacked Piano was pure lunatic genius. He wrote a few more that were nearly as good as the BP. Then he moved to Montana and started writing about cowboys in doomed relationships. I actually researched his bibliography to determine if perhaps there were two authors by the same name. Alas he wrote a few wonderful little books and then lost his edge. I love your channel. You have caused an explosion in my “to read” list and inspired me to build a set of white bookshelves
Wow, thanks so much for the valuable insight! I have Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon on my shelves, but I've yet to read Stephenson. SO many books! Thanks for your kind words about this channel. Please let me know when your shelves are built. I'd love to see them!
Great video, Chris! Clarissa is a slog. I spent nearly six months on it during college. It's a book I will probably only read once. Bottom's Dream continues to intimidate me from my shelf. I read Finnegans Wake a year or so back and kept hearing BD referred to as a much longer version of the Wake. Not sure I'm ready to commit to that sort of intellectual endeavor just yet.
@@LeafbyLeaf Defenders of Clarissa will often cite it as a very early example of a psychological novel, wherein the tale revolves more around the thoughts/feelings of the characters than any sort of narrative drive. I can't recall who said it, but there's a quote out there to the effect that "if you read Clarissa for the plot, you'll hang yourself." That being said, I can appreciate the moral concerns of Samuel Richardson, and I probably would have enjoyed the book more if I'd have read it a little faster than I did. If I'm on any novel for too long, I get antsy for something else.
I suggest The American. Short, but all the hallmarks of James. Then: Turn of the Screw. Then the short story Figure in the Carpet. And, finally, his major novels.
I have been continuously throwing myself at kant’s critique of pure reason for the last two years and I don’t think I picked up a single thing beyond what was said in the preface and the introduction. E
@@LeafbyLeaf hey! Thanks I’ll definitely check that out. For some reason TH-cam doesn’t notify me when I got a reply to a comment so I never saw this before now. Aghhh!
I'm surprised that you didn't list Finnigan's Wake ( I'm sure that you've heard that ad nauseum). I've read 5 pages of FW and couldn't go on. I dated a girl that had an older brother that suffered from Schizophrenia and I always knew when he wasn't taking his medication. In conversation, one might assume that this guy is a genius because he would discuss quantum theory and then switch as to why McDonald's really doesn't want to fix their soft ice cream machines. As I started reading FW I started thinking this guy is classic Schizophrenic. He's absolutely out of his tree. But at the same time I think that I'm just not working hard enough. I even purchased Joseph Campbell's (who I deeply respect as a scholar) Skeleton key to FW and I still couldn't further than 10 pages. I also found a wiki that explains every single sentence. And as I'm trying to make heads or tails of this thing, I simply put it down and start to reread Gravity's Rainbow and smile.
Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon... It has not defeated me, I love Pynchon but that one I have not even started! I look at it, I want to read it and I give up... For now. :P It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine
Some of these big books take me a few years to complete, so they don't all 'defeat me' per se, but as much as I love WTV, I can't ever find a good pace when reading Argall. I just can't finish it. And other than V and The Crying Lot of 49, those Pynchon books just kill me every time. I agree with something that Alexander Theroux said in an interview about Pynchon. To paraphrase, it was something along the lines of his biggest fault is that his chapters are too long and he doesn't give any breaks to the reader.
It was interesting to me when I started reading Theroux how different of a maximalist he was (as compared to Pynchon). Steven Moore charts the divide very well and shows how Theroux is more aligned with Mailer and Updike in his approach to the novel, and not in the vein of what Jim Gauer calls "reading as an extreme sport" of Pynchon. I love all of Pynchon and wonder if my technology background has something to do with it in texts like GR.
@@LeafbyLeaf You've probably already heard it, but here is, for reference, the interview that I was talking about. hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/e/b/9/eb92c6087e5d351a/MOI_Alexander_Theroux.mp3?c_id=1836251&cs_id=1836251&destination_id=14547&expiration=1604595435&hwt=7cc19ab15cad8f2adf96ed76bc5e8292
Anyone know if there are plans for a second printing of _Bottom's Dream?_ I'm happy to pay the $70 list rate for a copy, but the secondary market prices just keep climbing.
I’ve only recently came across this channel. Very enjoyable. Though would respectfully disagree with Jerusalem being boring. It’s just incredible all that can be told in the amount of time that a child chokes on a piece of candy. The section where he “describes” a fourth dimension is for me as elucidating and clever as Abbott’s Flatland... perhaps more so... certainly funnier.
I really appreciate your comment. I have gotten a bunch of mixed feedback on Jerusalem. I definitely want to revisit it. You’ve certainly kindled my interest with the Flatland reference.
Welcome, Jeff! For all except Jerusalem I would definitely agree. Funny how that is (quantity affects quality). So many times I will read a slim little volume (Ducornet, Woolf, and Salter come to mind) and marvel at its eloquence, wanting so badly for it to go on and on---but then it hits me that the shorter length ensures the sustained flavor of the experience. In fact, now that I think on it, The Mad Patagonian, to me, sustained its flavor perhaps because of its Cloud Atlas-style form-shifting!
I've read the road to reality twice in English and twice in italian and i loved it. For me as italian, it is quite impossible to think reading leopardi in English. He is absolutely incomprehensible without knowing the contest in which he lived. It's quite difficult to understand even for us italian people. I've read the zibaldone when i was 18 years old after having studied chuncks of it during 3 years of junior high school and 5 years of high school. Let me think some similar in English that for me will be impossible to read...finnegans wake. Moore is too boring. I think i ll try to read it again. I ve never read solzenitsin. I ve read "kolyma tales" by salamov instead. Quite interesting reading. "The declin and fall of roman empire" is a pain in the ass for me also. I didn't know the other books you cited even if "einstein's beets" seems quite interesting for me. My defeating books are: the man without qualities by Musil, don quixote, the mill on the po by Bacchelli, finnegans wake and anniversaries by uwe johnson(1668 pages)
Gibbons' Fall is worth listening to chunks at a time on Audio, it is around 126ish hours of audio by Charlton Griffin. So maybe that would be a good option for you if you have not already tried it.
I envy people who can do audiobooks--that would mean I could "read" while I drive! But--alas--I am apparently not an auditory learning because my mind wanders immediately from audio-based stuff. With the printed word I can stay engaged for upwards of 8-10 hours straight, but audio equals almost instant loss of attention. I have been thinking of reading an abridgement at some point. Thanks for the suggestion though!
Think the only book that keeps defeating me is Elfrieda Jelinek's "The Piano Teacher". There is just too much self-abasement in that for me. It reminded me of a scene in Polanski's film "Repulsion" which I've sat down to watch on several occasions, but never been able to get past the same point each time.
I totally get that. I stave off such film. But at the time I was a big Haneke fan and didn’t know it was a book first. Since I’ve seen the movie, I get why you can’t finish the book.
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson leaves me stranded time and time again. This is due to the strange phrasing throughout, as well as a plethora of barely explained neologisms.
I got The Road to Reality just to see what all the fuss was about. The amazon reviews go something like 'I have two PhD's from Princeton in QFT yet this book baffles me' ... its not for the faint of heart.
"Zettels Traum" ? Maybe start at the beginning auf Arno Schmidt, not at the end ;) I read the "Die Gelehrtenrepublik" and that das experimental in form but very readable. That book is sayed to be his last "normal" Book, after that it is sayed to get very experimental ...
"Don't gnaw your lip like that, Wilma!" Thanks, that alone has finally convinced me to begin pursuing Bottom's Dream. Meantime, Zibaldone...I just a month ago shelved it after it spent a year on a low table by my desk. To compare that to another giant Italian work, Gramsci's prison diaries can be dipped into randomly. Z requires a steady, probably daily dose. After the intro, I made it two days, maybe three, returned after a few weeks and felt I had to start over. I've not given up, just waiting for retirement. I spend a lot of time in Italy, and I need to read it so I'll be able to slyly ask everyone I know if they read it (with a follow up snare question for those who say, of course).
There is actually a wave of people interested in #Schmidt2021 which would be like the current #Musil2020 for The Man Without Qualities. I am thus planning to crack (get it) Bottom's Dream open in January 2021--which gives me time to prepare for the rest of this year. Gramsci's Prison Notebooks: I've been keeping my eye on prices ever since I heard Jim Gauer talk about his indebtedness to Gramsci. I love your approach to Zibaldone to trap people--I do the same with Moby-Dick! I need to put Z on my night table along with Montaigne, which I consistently dip into.
FWIW, Ulysses is much for engaging to me, too! And to be honest, I read Naked Lunch back when I was deep in a study of the Beats, maybe around 2009 or so, and I hardly remember any of it. I found WSB's Crab Nebula to be far superior and indicative of what he was doing that was new (e.g. cut-ups).
I don't think I'm as Smart as the Author of these Videos, but one book that has defeated me is William James' "Varieties of Religous Experiences. I know many people in this Spiritual Path I am involved in who have tried reading the book, but it also "defeated" them. It is not an easy read. It is a book that was written in the beginning of the 20th Century and had a lot of 19th Century Language and Ideas. I know only a few people who were able to sucessfully read it. I may try reading it again.
Be careful not to ascribe too much “smarts” to me-you’d be surprised how little is going on upstairs! I know of William’s notable work, but I’ve always been more drawn to his brother Henry. Though, this book recently came out and has me thinking of approaching the great pragmatist’s work: www.amazon.com/Sick-Souls-Healthy-Minds-William/dp/0691192162/
It’s expensive because it is a one-of-a-kind feat of craftsmanship that the average and even above average writer cannot pull off. Plus it didn’t exactly see a mass-market publishing run.
@@LeafbyLeaf What's strange to me is that English language copies are so much cheaper, but I suppose they were also published far more recently so maybe that's the difference.
The two authors I've struggled to read but finally gave up are Proust and Chateaubriand. Proust I just don't share any interest or obsessions with him, I admit he's a great writer but not for me, and Chateaubriand's style, although very elegant (I read in French), is awfully dull and flat. Montaigne is another mountain (pun!) that I can't climb because of the language. 16th century French is a foreign language to a modern reader if you haven't studied it in college. And I don't share his themes and optimism either, not my temperament. I'm much more delighted with Pascal.
Whereas I, reading in English, adore Roust, Chateaubriand, Montaigne, and Pascal. Of course, I did manage to get through the first volume of Proust in French. _That_ was a trial!
I started this gazillion-page "Ducks, Newburyport" but only went a few pages and that was it. Just wasn't for me to bother with over a thousand non-stop pages of THAT, someone else at the library can enjoy it, no offense to the ducks.
If you were like me, you'd never get a book done, l'm thinking. I have been known to look at the back blurb, then the page count. If it's over 500 pgs and sounds boring from the blurb, it's getting resold.
Also had problems reading the tin drum by gunter grass. Was on a date long ago, and he suggested we watch the movie. So young and dumb as I was, I watched as much as I could of it. Told him I couldn't take any more of it, and told him to take it off. He seemed ok about it, and that was that. End of story.
I'm Spanish speaking by birth and have never finished the Quijote. I tried as it's compulsory reading in high school, but only by way of excerpts. My attempt at reading "A la recherche du temps perdu" went awry, since it proved to be very boring and verbose, what's the issue with that stupid madaleine already, give me a break?! As for English, I own a copy but haven't finished Finnegans Wake, while I struggled and did finish Catch-22. Maybe not such a complex read for a native but as an advanced student of the English language, it was quite a challenge, particularly from the rich, oftentimes archaic vocabulary employed standpoint!
Those are some heavy-lifting books for sure. I think that your experience with the Quijote as compulsory high school reading is the same for Americans and Moby-Dick: students are basically forced to hate it before their lives really even start. A lot of these books demand more life experience of their readers. None of them were written with a high school student in mind! (Well, maybe Catch-22.) I applaud you for your efforts nonetheless!
@@LeafbyLeaf thanks a lot, it's always appreciated to have positive feedback from native speakers! I'll keep checking your recommendations, I am now about to embark on Ian McEwan's "Solar". High-brow satire, am I right?
One of my favorite books of all time! I talk about it in tandem with other Hofstadter books in a very early video: th-cam.com/video/awvJzIPcD-g/w-d-xo.html
@@LeafbyLeaf Yeah, I just got through a summer undergrad author study class on him. Unfortunately I was the only person in the class and the professor was busy doing other things this summer, but at least it's fun reading. When I have time I'm gonna try to get a paper on Blake, Marx, Marianne Williamson and Evangelion together, unironically lol
Speaking of Jerusalem I have been looking at my 5 volume Soncino Press edition of "The Zohar" for about 20 years and it's just not happening. I should probably donate it.
The Zohar is something I’ve wanted to explore for a long while! I’ve read portions of it. What condition is your set in? I’m up for accepting such a donation! 😁😁😁
I thought I answered this. Four of the five volumes are perfect, the pages in the 5th are loosening up from the spine, a little glue will fix it. Still want it? Tell me where to send it. I can KoFi you to keep your mailing address off public TH-cam. ( I am, however, keeping The Jewish Annotated New Testament and all my Soloveitchik books to myself 😉)
@@LeafbyLeaf I said donate, just tell me where to send them. You mentioned Greensboro, I am in Charlotte, name a drop off, as I drive all over the state weekends trying not to go nuts. I have a few other things to throw in I think you will like. I need to minimize.
I love Alan Moore's comics/graphic novels. Pity this novel isn't worth reading. I feared it would be boring. I might try his other attempt at the novel.
I'm pretty hard reader and was not led astray by Ulysses, McElroy or The Satanic Verses (or by any other well known The Great Reader Defeator wich I read), but what fiction couldn't do it classical non-fiction coped with a bang, and I fall by le coup de grâce from hand Pierre-Simon Laplace and his "Exposition du système du monde/The System of the World". Still feel shame.
Very respectable! I still need to read TSV. I loved Ulysses from the start, and I’ll have a video dedicated to it in my Western Core Series. I’ve taken stabs at Euclid, Galileo, and Newton, but I have never tried Laplace. I’m more of a Hawking, deGrasse Tyson, and Rovelli guy for science. (I need someone to synthesize those older texts with modern discoveries for me).
Hello, pretty funny, that you mentioned a german book by arno schmidt on your list. I can confirm to you, that even here in germany noone has read this book ;) I've got a copy of it in my shleve staring at me. Maybe one day i'll pick it up. But you're surely not the only one who struggles with it.
Could someone pleeeeese list these books with author and title.correctly spelled. The description does not include the list, and the transcript is about as accurate as an online translator The first book especially, I can't make out the cover, and when I enter anything Zippo into Google I get ten thousand matches about lighters.
I like Thomas Mann writings(The Magic Mountain being in my top 5 favourite books) so I tried to read Joseph and his brothers a 1500 page book during the second half of Genesis, I got 1000 pages in and just lost interest. So many of the themes about the ancient middle east went right over my head, I simply just don't get the appeal of that book. Also other than Paradise Lost I have trouble appreciating epic poetry like The Divine Comedy, Don Juan and Greco-Roman epic poems, I really rather read a novel than most narrative poetry.
I love Mann, especially Magic Mountain, which has stayed with me ever since I read it 6+ years ago. I haven't read Joseph yet but I know the day is coming. The novel is, of course, the world's most popular form--and has been for quite a while. I, too, gravitate to novels over everything else. But--hey--if you have an appreciation for Paradise Lost, that's great! I can't wait to get to that one in my Western Core series (it's next up after Don Quixote Part II)!
@@LeafbyLeaf I'm glad you love The Magic Mountain as well, it's one of those books that stays with you for the rest of your life or it's found to be boring. I really much prefer to read Milton than Dante, Paradise Lost is a feast for those who love the English language, and also a background in the Classics and Christian Theology will help because Milton does show off how learned he is if you check the notes section while you read. The way he writes Satan, makes him one of the best characters in world literature. Trust me it's great, I'm glad Harold Bloom convinced me to read it.
@@LeafbyLeaf one of my friends' fsther, a man from West Ireland, thinks Finnegans Wake is not meant to be read. "Good Jaysus: that's just Joyce taking the piss".
Jerusalem is one of my favourite books tbh. Read it on release and carried it around back in school. I'm 21 now and read his first novel Voice Of The Fire as it was re-released this year. Jerusalem is very deliberate in its construction and VOTF isn't really a first novel its more like a prologue to what he accomplished with Jerusalem imo. Jerusalem is less one book and is essentially a Trilogy disguised as one book. Book one is fragments of the community and the Warren family in particular, book 2 is one cohesive narrative about a kid going to the afterlife and book 3 is a crazy collection of Moore trying his most out there experimental literature. If you struggle with Jeruslem you should consider reading VOTF or buy the edition of Jerusalem which is packaged as 3 separate books. I think it's worth it in spades and its probably the most beautiful philosophy I've read, Moore gives everyone an out from death but doesn't really remove the negative aspects of reality.
Personally it's The Recognitions and Gravity's Rainbow that I dip a toe into and then drop. I know I just need to hurl myself into those icy depths but I lack the confidence required. Most of the time I think large or difficult books aren't really difficult but just require a time commitment which is way longer than any other book. Took me a month and a half to read Jerusalem but I read another 5 books alongside it during that time. Those books were my break from Jerusalem lmao. It has a lot to say though so it's difficulty was warranted imo.
I really appreciate this comment. You know, you are among many people who have urged me to give Jerusalem another shot. And I will certainly do it. All my best to you!
"The Tunnel" by William H. Gass defeated me after about 150 pages. There were so many exquisite scenes with beautiful prose, but the plot was slipping through my fingers. Each paragraph is so dense, it takes a lot of energy to follow. Definitely a case of me and not the book, as you say.
I can understand that, even though my experience was different. When I started in on it I felt ready for it. And it took a solid month of reading it exclusively. Any book that took 30 years to write will probably have this commensurate demand on the reader. But there’s no shame in it. The book is there, waiting for you when the time is right!
I have a hatred hotter than a thousand suns for Gass's stuff. I'm like shut the fuck up, dude!
No, it’s the book
@@tectorgorch8698pretty sure this is the exact reaction he was going for
The Road to Reality is a beast! Amazing that he starts by defining fractions and arithmetic and then goes all the way through modern physics in a single book. A truly monumental achievement. (And the bibliography alone is unbelievable.) Certainly a lifelong task to read let alone deeply understand that one.
The first few chapters were very stimulating. The book is highly laudable in its goal and achievement. One day (or year) I will commit to a careful journey through it!
It’s a goal for me as well! I’ve found one of the joys of the book to be the graphics and diagrams. Penrose has a particular genius for making highly abstract ideas visually clear. I was fascinated to learn recently that he corresponded with M.C. Escher and influenced the famous impossible staircase drawings.
@@LiamHaleMcCarty The best physics book in my opinion is Why God Doesn't Exist by Bill Gaede. The title was a poor choice on his part (although he explains why he chose it) as it makes it sound like a book about atheism but it's actually a book about physics and science.
How gratifying to stumble onto a TH-camr who shares my taste for maximalism and who has hit many of the same walls. The texts by Leopardi, Theroux (Darconville's Cat), Gibbon, Solzhenitsyn, all stymied me as well. Luckily I had to read Clarissa in graduate school and ended up writing a 20 page essay for the class that ended up at around 40 pages. I did complete Jerusalem and found it fascinating and still do. It's like one of those films whose ending somehow utterly, yet satisfyingly, overthrows everything that went before (e.g. Memento) with the result that you find yourself having flashbacks during which you keep reworking scenes to fit in with the final reveal.
For my fiftieth birthday, I gave myself the completion of In Search of Lost Time, through which I had made it half-way before putting it down. When I picked it back up several years later, I realized I couldn't go forward or start again and never got past Swann in Love. I finished it 2 months before my birthday, so I threw in anotherlong-time nemesis, The Recognitions, which I'd been trying to read since I devoured Carpenter's Gothic when it first came out.
The books that taunt me now are The Idiot and The Man without Qualities. One book, however, has defied me for over 40 years, Les Chansons de Maldoror. What's odd about that is that Les Chansons is one of my favorite books, and one of the more influential in terms of my approach to aesthetics. The problem is that I cannot get past the 3rd Canto and I believe it's because the book is somehow simultaneously putrid and way too rich--like a spoiled cheesecake.
Or just because I called it Chansons instead of the correct Chants--ya don't wanna cross Maldoror.
One of my most respected professors told me that Moore’s “Jerusalem” was one of his favorite books in recent memory. But no praise holds a candle to the clarity of “Boring, boring, boring.”
Hahaha! The ironic thing is that this book had all the trappings of a book I should really like. And I fancy myself a fairly forgiving reader. I wonder if there are books-like graphic novels, say-that I should be acquainted with in order to get more out of this. Perhaps one day I’ll connect with it. There are a few books I didn’t mesh with until several attempts later.
@@LeafbyLeaf I really recommend trying again, the first 400 pages is the only boring part, while the next 400 is one of the best things I've read
Thanks for that encouragement! I do plan to revisit it-hence why it’s still in my library and not sold to a secondhand shop. I appreciate your saying that!
@@babbymonke Do the endless and mind-numbing descriptions of Northampton stop after 400 pages? I got to 250 pages and nearly threw the damn thing across the room it was so boring.
@@james2529 The first part is definitely the slowest, but it builds characters and some plot threads which do actually pay off later. I don't think the descriptions ever go away but it's worth it to get to part 2, it's very different and its plot and the sort of psychedelic fantasy it describes make the slow parts tolerable. Part 3 can be boring but some chapters are great and resolve many threads
Reading Joyce's Ulysses since I was 15 years old (now I am 55). Reading it still and never feel I am through with it.
That’s a well articulated definition of a classic: a book you can never be through with.
Frank Delaney, who I just found out passed away a few years ago, had a wonderful podcast called ReJoyce about Ulysses
I know exactly how you feel! I've been reading Ulysses since I was 16 (now 40) and it's been a constant companion for decades.
I know only of one person who definitely finished Zettel's Traum, an old friend of mine from Germany.
He had a designated table for it, persevered with Teutonic discipline and succeeded after one year, averaging about 3-4 pages a day.
Simultaneously I had sank my teeth into Schmidt's last finished typoscript "Abend mit Goldrand" (Evening edged in Gold), which was a delight to read in its more humorous approach, its slightly more accessible way of using the column technique and of course its more palatable length.
And something strange happened with that one: when I was nearing the end I felt a distinct melancholy coming over me having to leave this weird and beautiful landscape.. one of the few books I felt genuinely bereaved when it ended.
Apart from it being a possible stepping stone to the gargantuan mountain of ZT I consider it one of Schmidt's finest works.
Thanks for sharing this! I love this: "persevered with Teutonic discipline"! The only person I know who has read ZT in its entirety, carefully and deeply, is critic Steven Moore (who first introduced me to Schmidt). He can speak about ZT conversationally!
One day I will embark on the journey.
A dedicated table with a couple pages a day sounds like the best approach.
All my best to you!
I finally got around to reading _Clarissa_ last year and I was blown away. I was expecting it to be a dull, plodding thing that I would just have to get through. Instead, I found it captivating. It has jumped into my top ten novels of all time.
It really caught my attention when Harold Bloom praised it. I’ve started it a couple of times and realized it was something special but that I wasn’t ready for it yet. (This happens from time to time.) So it’s waiting for me. And now you’ve given me the nudge.
I managed to read Gulag Archipeligo, but it was hard. Sometimes I could whizz through 50 pages but at other times could barely read 1. As you said a really difficult topic. It sickened me off of reading in general, I didn't read anything at all for 6 months after finishing it.
Sheesh. It’s a heavy topic. I couldn’t watch Schindler’s List for a long time and after I watched it finally I had a similar experience: I couldn’t watch anything for a while. Such a long-resonating solemnity. But-this is an important work and one day I will hunker down with it and grapple.
I had a similar experience reading Shalamov's Kolyma Tales. Bleak stuff.
@@thezombieshogun I'm currently 200 pages into it, and it is truly harrowing stuff.
@@bluebamboomusic6882 Good thing it’s as fictional as Escape from Camp 14.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 while many of its sources aren't verified, much of it is quite accurate.
"The Road To Reality" is hilarious. It's meant to be a "common mans" exposition of physics yet you'd need *at least* a post-doc level of mathematics to make any progress. I guess Roger just thinks everybody knows complex analysis.
Thanks for making me feel better!
For further evidence of this, see Sir Roger Penrose on the Joe Rogan podcast.
I have a Masters in Quantum Chemistry
and "The Road to Reality" still had new mathematics
and concepts in it that I needed to learn to make any progress.
I still haven't finished it either.
@@johncrwarner Jesus wtf is quantum chemistry
@@ToriKo_ The clue is in the name.
Leopardi is my favorite. I’m on page 300 or so... I take so many notes in the margins that my hands start to ache!
I've actually started reading 3 pages a day and I'm loving it! (I presume we're referring to the Zibaldone. It's been a while since I made/watched this video.)
@Leaf by Leaf yeah, interesting that you mention it… I actually stalled out around pg 350 a while ago but recently started trying 10 pages every Sunday morning with my coffee. It’s dawned on me that reading Leopardi is a manic experience, the guy was brilliant but a little wired. Written in his early twenties in only a few years, he had a weakness for sweets and would routinely put 6-10 spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee (see the biography by Iris Origo)! A workaholic by age 14 and dying of a heart condition at 36 or so, he truly put everything into his work! The Zibaldone is one of the great works of history imo, if exhausting. He was a brilliant proto-psychologist but not so great at political theory…
I’m another casualty of Infinite Jest. I get lost about two hundred pages into it.
IJ has claimed a fair amount of casualties for sure. Coincidentally I am finishing up my second read of it this well and will make a video that I hope will prove helpful. All my best to you!
It sucks to say but it starts rolling at like 250! Youre almost there. Ive been straight up addicted to it for like a decade
@A Keithing - Once you fully immerse yourself in the world of IJ its not a difficult read at all.
When I was teaching English in Italy many moons ago, we had a Penguin Classic abridged version of Decline and Fall, which was still about 1,000 pages, but I loved it. Maybe give that a try first.
Usually I recoil at abridgments, but in this case that may not be a bad idea. Then I can go through and get the fine details if I am so persuaded. Thanks!
@@LeafbyLeaf I agree on abridgements. It is the only one I've read since I was a child and felt cheated to discover some book I read was incomplete. Perhaps it is best to think of the Penguin volume as a Gibbons Reader, which one amazon (www.amazon.com/Decline-Roman-Empire-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140431896) reviewer describes thus: This abridgment retains the full scope of the original, but in a breadth comparable to a novel. Casual readers now have access to the full sweep of Gibbon’s narrative, while instructors and students have a volume that can be read in a single term. This unique edition emphasizes elements ignored in all other abridgments-in particular the role of religion in the empire and the rise of Islam.
That's a nice home library in the background. I am envious of the book shelving too.
Thank! I quite fond of it. When we built this house, I spec'ed out the library and my wife designed the rest of the house. In fact, since 2017 I've never left the library. I wonder what the rest of this place looks like...
Found your channel intresting. Brother you look like liam Neeson.
Thanks! He’s my dad. Don’t tell anyone.
@@LeafbyLeaf 💀😂
He looks like Hashinshin
A book that defeated me recently was 'The Shape of Things to Come' by HG Wells, where he writes about an imagined future as if it's an historical book. The writing was so dry (which makes sense, conceptually) that I thought "I know where this is going, and I just can't do it", and stopped pretty early on. I hope to be in the mood for it one day.
The list of books that I'm too scared to even approach on the other hand............
Hey--that would be a great "list" video: 10 Books I'm Too Scared to Read!
I had trouble with Döblin’s “Berlin Alexanderplatz” but then found a different translation (by Michael Hofmann) and it was much better.
That is an excellent point. The right translation is very important.
The Gulag Archipelago is truly depressing. I’ve read only a 100 pages but it was very difficult. Should pick it up either soon or next year. Tried to read Infinite Jest but I stopped midway a couple years ago, also read Gravity’s Rainbow after that and remembered enjoying this more than Infinite Jest.
I plan to reread GR this year. I'm really looking forward to it! And, yes, one day I will pursue (endure?) the Archipelago.
I love your bookshelf. Keep up the reading!
Thanks so much!
Moore’s Jerusalem is one of my favourite books. Each to his own. Moore’s description of a kids playground: ‘…and the autistic cubist’s notion of a concrete horse that grazed eternally nearby…’
I've since been convinced to give this one another go! Love that excerpt.
@@LeafbyLeaf
When you get to ‘Round the bend’ It helped me to look up annotations on the net. Made me realise how much of a magician Moore really is. Enjoy.
Thanks for the tip!
I'm glad to see that you include both humanities and physics and scientific examples. Too often the assumption made by a lot of people is that the humanities are a lot easier than the sciences, but really if you're looking at its hardest pieces of literature, that are on defining historical events like the Roman Empire's fall, to truly understand it takes quite a brain that is beyond most of what the ordinary human mind has capacity enough to comprehend outside of a linear, simplified reduction of the event to an encapsulation by some very basic sentence or two, which is something people also do when simplifying difficult, or non-intuitive physical and spatial theories about mathematics or atomic particles, to make it easier for intuition to grasp - finding the links uniting all the factors in an epic historical events requires an understanding of all the contingencies in the world greater than what an individual mind can hold all at once in its grasp.
By the way your book shelf is more shelved and stocked with works of literature than the contents of my small town library in the middle of desert in Australia.
Read Alter's translation when you read ESV or NASB. Great complement. You don't sit down and read it in a day!!! Loved Gulag Archipelago although by volume 3 there was a large amount of redundancy.
Two that keep defeating me are _The Origins of Order,_ by Stuart Kauffman and Ernst Casirer’s _The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms._ The Kauffman book is a fascinating discussion of complexity and self-organizating systems (his discussion of how life likely emerged from auto-catalytic sets of chemicals is fascinating). There’s another excellent book (which I have read) called _Evolution in Four Dimensions,_ by Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb that supplements Kauffman’s book. The latter is about how there’s much more to evolution than just random - “random” - variation and natural selection. Evolution actually operates through four different kinds of inheritance systems that build on one another and interact in interesting ways: the genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic systems. There are fascinating discussions in the book about the kinds of (by our standards) simple cultures that animals develop, but which are nevertheless recognizable as cultures (mother rabbits can pass a taste for certain foods down to her offspring through her milk, rats can teach each other efficient techniques for stripping pine cones, etc.). Even genetic inheritance is more complicated than most people think because a gene’s effects on you will depend not only on what the gene itself is _but what other genes it’s located next to, and in what order._ Kauffman’s book focuses exhaustively on self-organization, but together they make a much much interesting and polychromatic picture of evolution. The upshot of his book, though, is that, given the nature of organic chemistry, the emergence of life was probably just about inevitable. Evolution and biology are much more lawlike and less random than they appear. Kauffman also wrote another book called _At Home in the Universe,_ which I have read, and which is basically a shorter version of _Origins of Order._
And as for the Casirer book, well, I have read the first volume, but whenever I push further, other books always call me away.
Robert Fagles was asked in an interview what literary work he’d recommend most to “his” readers and he said without a moments thought- The Civil War trilogy by Shelby Foote- after reading a bit about the work and from my respect for Fagles- I embarked on what has now been a 5 year long intention to read this tomb of a historical text.
I, too, have been picking at that one for years and years and years. I watched the Ken Burns documentary, which feature Foote often, and my interest got piqued again, but I've yet to read even the first volume all the way through.
I read Foote’s series years ago and was very impressed by his lucid descriptions, especially at the human scale. Then I read multiple serious histories of the Civil War by academic historians who worked from original sources. I found that Foote’s books are full of errors that often favor the brave southern boys fighting against hopeless odds but led by totally brilliant generals. He clearly expresses sympathy with the southern cause in many places. My conclusion is that Foote’s Civil War is closer to a historical novel than a history. It is appropriate that Fagles loved Foote’s work, since it resembles the works of Homer in that way.
Fagles was my Comp Lit professor at Princeton. He taught the core course which included The Anantomy of Criticism and Mimeses. I am sorry I was too young to think of asking what else he would recommend.
Just found your channel today, this is your 2nd vid I'm watching. I feel like I've stumbled onto a booktube secret society. I am going to look into the Baroque book.
Hey! Welcome! Glad you found me down here in the secret society. ;-P
My newer videos have better quality, by the way. Makes me self-conscious of the older ones.
This one’s not as large as many others here, but I’ve never been able to get through A Tale of Two Cities. I want to, and I’ve read some other Dickens stuff, but this one has beaten me twice so far.
Bruh, don't worry, I got it much worse: it's those books about Captain Underpants that keep defeating me! 😢
bahahaha!
I’m into audiobooks. Also reacting to your q and a. Love the q and as. Driving and hearing an audiobook works for me. Responding to q and a her bc I just listened to II and III and now I’m here.
I quite liked Jerusalem as I like anything by Alan Moore. Just re-read Middlemarch and Ulysses again and I am currently re-reading Gravity's Rainbow. The only 2 books that have defeated me are Infinite Jest which I have tried to read once and Joyce's Finnegan's Wake which I have tried to read twice but each time I have failed to complete mainly because its like reading a foreign language that you don't understand.
Indeed, Joyce used a handful of languages to contrive the mighty Wake. I've only ever dipped a toe in it here and there, but I feel that a serious engagement is nigh. Middlemarch and Ulysses are two of my favorites! I do plan to give Jerusalem another try. Many people have given me enough input to convince me. All my best to you!
just came across your channel by first watching the lispector video. great content. particularly liked using the DFW brick as a unit of measurement.
Right on! Welcome! I’m pretty sure DFW is the standard UOM in literary metrics, right? 😜
The last book that defeated me was 'Women and Men' a novel by Joseph McElroy. I ordered the novel by W. Paul Anderson from Amazon. I also like big books.
The only reason I didn’t include McElroy’s magnum opus is because I haven’t started it yet. So it hasn't defeated me. Unless you can be defeated based on intent!
I can't wait to start on Women and Men. I have a feeling it will become my favorite novel, next to Ulysses and Infinite Jest and Midnight's Children/Satanic Verses.
@@TheCollidescopePodcast I just finished Women and Men -- I won't lie, it's not an easy read, but I loved it. It immediately jumped near the top of my MOST FAVORITE NOVELS LIST. And I can't wait to read it again. Enjoy.
@@makebelievestunt Congrats on finishing it, Michael! I'll be on the lookout on Goodreads for your thoughts on it. I definitely prefer difficult books over easy ones as long as there is some kind of payoff.
I've been lugging around a copy of this Mcelroy tome for decades. . . .Someday
The Recognitions.
The beginning is so great.
But then Gaddis and I just lose each other. Some of the dialogue suddenly begins to feel so trite (which I know is on purpose) so I skim it a bit hoping for that next big striking character moment, only to find out that I should have payed more attention when an event happens and I am unable to understand it.
A lot of people have had this same trouble. David Letzler discussed it most eloquently in his book The Cruft of Fiction (which I’ll post a video on in a few weeks). The truth is that books like theses are made to be reread. Not a popular notion, but it’s the inevitable truth. The value of the book is commensurate to the time spent with it. But, that said, if you can’t grapple with it and don’t want to waste the time, by all means move on. Life’s short and there are plenty of books!
Personally, I have a lot of books that defeated me, most of them are classics. I started to think that is something the fact that I choice to buy them and just love the art between titles. ,,Introduction in psihanalize" by Sigmund Freud was at beggining acceptable, but after 300-400 pages become so complexe and deep that make me crazy. It's surely a book that will change something at you in sense of introspection and reflexion. You will ask yourself after. "What was the motivation beyound a action?", "Why try to reject something and accepte another thing?" But just the ask will not send you the rezolvation, so it's kind a painfull when you fell that personally I don't know something... just more and more question that make you weak and disturbing you from the meaning of life... To live.
I think you’ve really hit on something a lot of people experience: why should I sit and struggle with this book when I could be living? That would be a great topic for a video...
@@LeafbyLeaf I think reading is a noble action like writing. I have a curiosity, you try to write? I'm surely that you are able to made a great job and maybe a monster novel because you have a lot of books behind and are able to unerstand a lot of concept... You are great at speaching, obviously, people are better and more perfectionist at writing. Art reflect the best varianr of a soul. Anyway, in my opinion the great filosofy quotes is "why"? In generally it's vital to know why make a think, what expectetion we have from that action. A lot of people have problem with "why", even me. I know from experience that this is the most difficult topic, but from a book I started to ask more things then before. I respect you a lot. Kepp going with great things, you are awesome!!! ♥️👍👍
Yes, I have been writing for about 16 years now. So far, I have only had book reviews published. I am 2 years into work on a novel right now.
Thanks so much for all of your kind words. Much appreciated!
I think, for me, it’s the subject of physics and not the books, but I have also read and read and reread In A Nutshell and A Brief History of Time. In addition to these, I have enjoyed multiple viewings of various specialists who make an effort to explain all this to the regular people of earth on television shows. Once, on perhaps the fifth watch, my brain understood space-time. Only for a moment, but it was glorious.
It's the same for me. Math and science tend to take me a while to get my head around. I'm so thankful for great explainers like Stephen Hawking and Carlo Rovelli!
Love this.
And in your question and answer series you talked about not doing away w writers bc of their past problems. That’s good, bc people w that oppressive McCarthyistic pov can’t read history whatsoever based on the differences in cultures over time.
Lots of fabulous books, some I've never heard of which is always stellar. Kudos to you on reading some of Bottom's Dream. When I learned about it a few months ago, I thought of purchasing it & gave it serious thought. That book intimidates me to no end & I know my place with that pecking order! 🥰 I'll happily chill here with Joyce for a few more decades. May need a few more lifetimes to get my reading level up there with Schmitt. ... though the temptation to explore it is quite real. Please don't fret about pronunciation I think any mispronunciation of this great writer is largely cancelled out by simply talking about the unabridged version. There's folks who don't know it's a 3 volume book which could be a disservice to it. Nothing against abridgements or even 'Cliff Notes' editions. I'd accept a Cliff Notes for Sidney's Old Arcadia if it ever comes down to it & my reading time is truly running short. But I think because of what struggles/passion for truth these authors went through to create these books, the very least we could do is muster up enough self discipline to sit in our cozy room with the edition that has a few extra pages. Don't fret about the stresses for you to get through it 'cause when the time's right to read it, I'm sure you'll get the most from it. If you like, try starting with his earlier works before embarking on Gulag. He packs a punch in everything he writes. Right now Borges is giving me a hearty challenge. After 10 pages, I'm dumbfounded for a few days & can't read anything else. Fabulous video, I'm happy to have found your channel a couple of days ago. I hope your week is pretty awesome. 🤓
I'm glad you stopped by--and now I have discovered your channel! Thanks for all the comments and encouragement. It always intrigues me how, one day you can look at a book and think "I'll never read that"; then, the next day, you dive into it and read through with gusto! Borges! Now you're talking! I am a huge Borges fan--fiction and non-fiction. He changed my view of what could be done with fiction. I will include him in a forthcoming video of my top desert(ed) island books. Looking forward to checking out your videos. Take care!
@@LeafbyLeaf Thanks! I have Borges non-fiction here as well. I'm so happy you mentioned he also wrote non-fiction! * bliss * Happy to meet another Borges fan. Yes, he certainly is a master at blending genres or even just information sources! I look forward to your island books. You take care, too!
Great video, thank you. Love this channel.
Gravity's Rainbow was the book I finally had to put down. Ironically, it wasn't the style that eventually defeated me (I loved the couple of other Pynchons I have read) but some of the subject matter. I still hope to come back to it one day but Pynchon is a particularly talented provocateur haha
Thanks! Glad you’re enjoying the videos.
I get that about subject matter. I’ve had my own books I had to set aside for the same thing. No judgement here.
@@LeafbyLeaf by the way have you read any Gene Wolfe?
Not yet. But his name came up a lot when I asked for sci-fi recommendations!
Not yet. But his name came up a lot when I asked for sci-fi recommendations!
I have Zibaldone, and those parts where it's highly technical about language totally defeats me, i just want to read his pessimism!
Hahaha! I happen to be reading Zibaldone at the moment. Doing about 4 pages a day.
This is for everyone: What do you do when you pick out a book and the writing is just bad. Like it has awards and reviews and it reads like a romance? I have decided life is too short and there’s so many books, that I just stop and give it back or give it away. Do you keep going? That said, I’ve learned to trust your recommendations! Thank you!!
one never will finish Finnegan's wake, even if you've read every word and used a reader's guide. The Wake is eternal.
Well put. Many great books are indeed endless, bottomless.
I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow, got through the first section, about 180 pages, and discovered I couldn't make sense of the book at a sentence by sentence level. It felt like I had lost the ability to read. It was so weird. I actually did like what I read of it, and love Lot 49, so I want to go back to it someday.
Lot 49 is a great entryway to Pynchon. GR can indeed be disorienting. And sometimes we need to get a taste of something and then go back to it later. “Entropy” is also a good Pynchon to get the flavor.
I have had that issue with every single Pynchon novel I've read except 'Inherent Vice', and I've read them all except 'Slow Learner' and 'Bleeding Edge'. It's his syntax, it's really rich and (this is the only way I can explain it) 'chewy'. I keep going back though, and I just resign myself to the fact that there will be chunks of the book that I won't follow. I don't know if he does it on purpose (could he be that kind of evil genius?), as his prose spins off with, what appears to be, the intention of losing the reader. It doesn't stop me going back though, as, despite feeling like I'm barely gripping onto his words, I glean so much magic from what I do grasp onto, that I find myself wanting to repeat the experience.
I think, to be brief, books like Pynchon’s bigger novels are made to be reread. I have found, as with rereading Gaddis and Wallace, subsequent readings yield more and more rewards. There’s simply too much packed in to grasp on a single pass.
With giant works of fiction, like Pynchon, I think to some degree the reader has to submit to the novel and allow it to literally rewire the language processing circuits in the brain. First 5 or 6 attempts at Gravity's Rainbow, I felt I was at like a 10% comprehension level on a sentence by sentence basis (if that), but then something kinda clicked and I was finding myself reading in real time with maybe 50% comprehension and confidence in seeing the thought structures behind the text that result in Pynchon's choice of specific strings of sentences.
I can get through a couple paragraphs of (Daniel Matt's translation of) the Zohar.
After a couple paragraphs, the life-process requires days, months, years to integrate whatever happened in the light transfusion.
Not sure if I'd refer to that as "defeat". Its definitely an orgasmic satisfaction to be contacted by literature at that level.
But it blows circuits and immediately reorganizes whatever the view was as retained by the conventional-self. That thing gets sacrificed and is clearly-outmoded, and many people would classify that a defeat.
I have the Maurice Simon translation of the Zohar.
I wouldn't classify this as "defeat," but rather "proper reading."
You've given me a video idea: Books to Be Read Slowly" or something like that.
@@LeafbyLeaf I'm just finding your channel and greatly appreciate what you've put together.
i began reading gravity's rainbow a week or so ago and have been watching the video you made, finding it very helpful and encouraging - like having a buddy to read it with.
great stuff!
thank you.
a focus on 'books to be read slowly' is a good idea.
henry corbin just popped into mind. are you familiar with him?
It took me over ten years to read both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights (not the same ten years, but there was an overlap). I've been unable to finish The Compass: The Improvisational Theatre that Revolutionized American Comedy by Janet Coleman. Twice I checked it out through Interlibrary Loan, and had to return it before finishing it. Then, I bought my own copy, and now there is no incentive to start reading it. I'd like to read Gibbon in tandem with the Roman writers. I'll read one of the Romans first, then read the passage fom Gibbon covering the same period.
I'm currently through FW. I don't have the willpower of finishing this book. Wish me luck.
You can do it!
Over the years, I put down Finnegan's Wake (too dull, didn't enjoy Ulysses much and don't enjoy word play that much); Infinite Jest (not interesting enough to spend so much time on); and Swann's Way (may try to find my old copy to give it another shot). One that I found hard to finish, but may actually re-read some day, is The Magic Mountain.
Glad to hear you were hooked by Mann. That is such a subtly powerful novel. Have you read any of his others?
@@LeafbyLeaf I've read Death In Venice, Buddenbrooks, Tonio Kruger, and Lotte In Weimar, but haven't read anything else, not sure which would be best to read next - Transposed Heads sounds like an odd story.
Yeah I couldn't enjoy Ulysses either. I felt like it's a continuous stream of insider Irish jokes about Ireland/Dublin's history and religious history of the region. I mean he'll squeeze like 4 word-plays, 3 historical references and 3 religious mockeries in *one* sentence. When he's fun and playful alone it can be pretty funny, but I feel like i need a religious studies and Irish history PhD just to *enjoy* the book.
I like wordplay but it's non-stop with Ulysses. I feel like you don't read Ulysses, you research it. Not that much fun to me.
I don't generally think I'm defeated by any books, though an argument could be made for a few. For most books I've partially read, I'd say I've been distracted from some--the ones I will surely return to and finish eventually--and I've become disinterested in others--the ones I will *not*.
I guess I'm in distracted mode from Ulysses. I will get back to that one, for sure.
I'm in the process of reading the Recognitions, I loved the first, say, 400 pages, I'm a bit bogged down in a middle section that isn't holding me in quite so firm a grip and I'm moving to a new home, new job, etc., so I'm at risk of distraction here, but I'm pretty sure I'll carry on with that one.
I'm conflicted regarding Jefferson Davis's The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Do I really have to go back and read the last third after a hiatus of years? I was influenced to read it by, of all unexpected sources, W.E.B. Dubois, just to see what the lost-causers had to say for themselves. But I kind of felt that I got it without having to finish it.
As for Clarissa, I am a zealous advocate. Do it! As for all of these books, they probably each benefit from being the only thing you read until you're finished. Clarissa possessed my full attention, as did the Chinese classic Water Margin. Several times in one's life, I think it's great to just live with a book for a good long while. Which reminds me... I guess I have to get back to Orlando Furioso one of these days, eh?
Great distinction between distracted and disinterested. For all the books in my video, save for Jerusalem, I keep going into distracted mode for sure. (I felt that "keep defeating" was a snazzy continuous verb and tense to use: "defeat" ironically makes me feel better; and "keep defeating" show that the battle is not over!)
The Recognitions is definitely one of my favorite books (I've a short video about it), so I'll trade you the push for Clarissa for a push for the Gaddis!
As for living with a book for a while, you are spot on there. It seems I get less and less time to do that, but almost every book that is in my desert(ed) island trunk is a big fat book that I shared my life with for upwards of a month or so, without any infidelity (i.e. reading other books).
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!
Humger's Brides, a beautifully written book, a story within a story which I also have not completely read.
Definitely want to take a crack at Zibaldone at some point....
I've actually been reading a few pages a day for a while now--it's excellent!
It's almost embarrassing to admit because of how tiny it is, but I've started Kant's 'Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals' twice now, and given up within the first 10 pages
There’s no shame when it comes to heavyweights like Kant and Hegel, et al. When I first grappled with Kant, I had to turn to the Prolegomena first and consult several experts.
Ah. . . What about James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake", his "Ulysses", and Djuna Barnes's "Nightwood"? I didn't survive any of these.
I have only dipped my toes in the Wake (though a serious reading of it is on the horizon); I tossed Ulysses aside the first time I read it, then revisited it and fell in love with it; and Nightwood I've still got on my shelf, unread. In general, I think there are a great many victim-comrades out there with you!
Attempting Finnegans Wake currently, audio as well as print versions, and of course it seems impossible yet funny. However I've discovered a book called Finnegan Begin Again: a novel towards an understanding of Finnegans Wake by Damian Westfall written in 2019 which kind of follows the original while completely modernizing it. I'm not sure if this one is much easier to comprehend, but it's worth a shot. BTW, I read Ulysses in a state of perplexedness (if that's a word), then listened to the audiobook and was pleasantly enlightened.
For the really well-written texts, I imagine it takes just as long to "truly" read, without guidance, something that took may years to write. And that still does not suppose we will understand what we have read, as language is a tricky thing and not even the greatest thinkers can fully capture what they mean to say in words, no matter how experimental. Always an approximation.
Great, great points, all.
Penrose was maybe the latest book I did not finish, I made it well through it then I realized I am not gaining that much by reading it. He has the most weird way of explaining relatively simple concepts with very elaborate and convoluted references. If you don't know what he means before he says it, little chance you understand afterwards :) "Gulag Archipelago" is a great book, it reads very well, only problem is its length; "Jerusalem" is a nice book, but hard to call it a novel really, it is a collection of various texts related to Northampton revolving around some characters
Have you made it through Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West?
Shamefully, I haven't even started that one yet, despite its massive influence on my of my favorite writers. One day, one day, one day!
Defeated me.
@@LeafbyLeaf Decline of the West, along with Gebser's Ever-Present Origin, are two of my favorite books. I cannot recommend highly enough to make that day as soon as possible, Spengler is truly something else. Though I should state that Gibbon is my all-time favorite author! For me, Decline of the West and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire are about as near to the "perfect book" as is possible, to which I've only found Anatomy of Melancholy nearly approaches. Augustine's City of God is in that sublime category for me, as well.
Hunger's Bride I picked up when it first came out and I really enjoyed that one. I wish they would make an audio version of it as it would also be fun to listen to it.
Oh, awesome! I don't "meet" too many people who've read it. I was just talking about this one with the Great Concavity podcast guys. One day I will settle in with this one and read it through. But I have to wait until this strange metaphysical entity speaks to me and tells me it's time.
Reading Jerusalem:
Boring
Fantastic
Interesting
Rereading Jerusalem:
OMG Yes
Fabulous
WOW
Beyond Accurate
I'm convinced!
Hey Chris, how are you doing?
Have you since completed any of these books? If yes, what are your thoughts about it?
Of these books, I’ve begun reading the Zibaldone a little at a time and I’m loving it! 🙌
My defeaters: Thomas Aquinas, Maimonides & Thomas Pynchon.Pausing Raymond E. Brown's Death of the Messiah: Very deep & detailed, also Proust. Loved the Gulag, The Oak and the Calf & many of his others.
Those are definitely some HEAVY hitters!
I know I’m two years late but there’s an abridged single volume collection for The Gulag Archipelago. You can find it on Amazon and it’s well worth the time. It’s much shorter and easier to digest. Hope this helps!
Thanks so much for the suggestion! I may well approach this like I did Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down: I read the abridgment first, then the unabridged.
@@LeafbyLeaf You're absolutely welcome. It's definitely a worthwhile read, but lately, thanks to your suggestion I've been reading Don Quixote and I'm loving it. It's been years since I tried to read it but after watching a couple of your videos about reading longer books I decided to give it another shot. SO thank you for your channel. I truly appreciate hearing your thoughts on books and how to read longer works.
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo defeated me . I read Notre Dame Dr Paris first to get a feel for his narrative style but failed every time. May fare better with Audio.
I’ll do you one better-I haven’t even begun reading either of those books. *gulp*
They’re on my “embarrassed I have not read yet” shelf on Goodreads.
The Baroque Cycle is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Cryptonomicon was also excellent. All of his earlier work is worth the effort. I can’t say why but anything including and after Anathem I find utterly unreadable. I had the same feeling with Thomas McGuane. The Bushwacked Piano was pure lunatic genius. He wrote a few more that were nearly as good as the BP. Then he moved to Montana and started writing about cowboys in doomed relationships. I actually researched his bibliography to determine if perhaps there were two authors by the same name. Alas he wrote a few wonderful little books and then lost his edge.
I love your channel. You have caused an explosion in my “to read” list and inspired me to build a set of white bookshelves
Wow, thanks so much for the valuable insight! I have Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon on my shelves, but I've yet to read Stephenson. SO many books! Thanks for your kind words about this channel. Please let me know when your shelves are built. I'd love to see them!
Interesting: I thought SevenEves was actually some of his best work. I liked Anathem but I can see why people would find it to be a slog
What would you recommend as the best book with which to start?
@@LeafbyLeaf Snowcrash is definitely the best place to start. It is like a modern update of Neuromancer. Smart and hilarious.
And so it shall be!
Great video, Chris! Clarissa is a slog. I spent nearly six months on it during college. It's a book I will probably only read once.
Bottom's Dream continues to intimidate me from my shelf. I read Finnegans Wake a year or so back and kept hearing BD referred to as a much longer version of the Wake. Not sure I'm ready to commit to that sort of intellectual endeavor just yet.
Thanks! Did you find any merit to Clarissa?
@@LeafbyLeaf Defenders of Clarissa will often cite it as a very early example of a psychological novel, wherein the tale revolves more around the thoughts/feelings of the characters than any sort of narrative drive. I can't recall who said it, but there's a quote out there to the effect that "if you read Clarissa for the plot, you'll hang yourself." That being said, I can appreciate the moral concerns of Samuel Richardson, and I probably would have enjoyed the book more if I'd have read it a little faster than I did. If I'm on any novel for too long, I get antsy for something else.
How would you compare it to a Henry James novel?
@@LeafbyLeaf I wish I could say, but I have yet to read any James. Do you have a suggested starting place?
I suggest The American. Short, but all the hallmarks of James. Then: Turn of the Screw. Then the short story Figure in the Carpet. And, finally, his major novels.
I have been continuously throwing myself at kant’s critique of pure reason for the last two years and I don’t think I picked up a single thing beyond what was said in the preface and the introduction. E
Have you read his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics? It helped me tremendously in my plight with the Critique!
@@LeafbyLeaf hey! Thanks I’ll definitely check that out. For some reason TH-cam doesn’t notify me when I got a reply to a comment so I never saw this before now. Aghhh!
Yeah, TH-cam sometimes drops notification for me, too. Cheers!
I'm surprised that you didn't list Finnigan's Wake ( I'm sure that you've heard that ad nauseum).
I've read 5 pages of FW and couldn't go on. I dated a girl that had an older brother that suffered from Schizophrenia and I always knew when he wasn't taking his medication. In conversation, one might assume that this guy is a genius because he would discuss quantum theory and then switch as to why McDonald's really doesn't want to fix their soft ice cream machines. As I started reading FW I started thinking this guy is classic Schizophrenic. He's absolutely out of his tree. But at the same time I think that I'm just not working hard enough. I even purchased Joseph Campbell's (who I deeply respect as a scholar) Skeleton key to FW and I still couldn't further than 10 pages. I also found a wiki that explains every single sentence. And as I'm trying to make heads or tails of this thing, I simply put it down and start to reread Gravity's Rainbow and smile.
Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon... It has not defeated me, I love Pynchon but that one I have not even started! I look at it, I want to read it and I give up... For now. :P It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine
That’s the only Pynchon I haven’t read! But I plan on reading it this year (see my 2020 TBR video.
@@LeafbyLeaf seen it, I am committed to Against the Day this year, got the trade paperback with the plane dive-bombing the city! Can't wait :)
Everyone who reads it must Converse I’ve got the same copy. Enjoy!
@Juan Greco which? Mason and Dixon or Against the Day?
Everyone who reads it must Converse my question exactly!
Some of these big books take me a few years to complete, so they don't all 'defeat me' per se, but as much as I love WTV, I can't ever find a good pace when reading Argall. I just can't finish it. And other than V and The Crying Lot of 49, those Pynchon books just kill me every time. I agree with something that Alexander Theroux said in an interview about Pynchon. To paraphrase, it was something along the lines of his biggest fault is that his chapters are too long and he doesn't give any breaks to the reader.
It was interesting to me when I started reading Theroux how different of a maximalist he was (as compared to Pynchon). Steven Moore charts the divide very well and shows how Theroux is more aligned with Mailer and Updike in his approach to the novel, and not in the vein of what Jim Gauer calls "reading as an extreme sport" of Pynchon. I love all of Pynchon and wonder if my technology background has something to do with it in texts like GR.
@@LeafbyLeaf You've probably already heard it, but here is, for reference, the interview that I was talking about. hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/e/b/9/eb92c6087e5d351a/MOI_Alexander_Theroux.mp3?c_id=1836251&cs_id=1836251&destination_id=14547&expiration=1604595435&hwt=7cc19ab15cad8f2adf96ed76bc5e8292
@@dcdc139 thanks for the link of the interview!, I love listening to him
Anyone know if there are plans for a second printing of _Bottom's Dream?_
I'm happy to pay the $70 list rate for a copy, but the secondary market prices just keep climbing.
I don’t know of any, but now that Deep Vellum has acquired the Dalkey catalogue perhaps an affordable paperback (at the very least) is in the future.
@@LeafbyLeaf oh, it'd be amazing to get a paperback edition! Even better: a four-volume set like the Suhrkamp Verlag's German edition.
Yessssss!
@@LeafbyLeaf well, I emailed Deep Vellum, and they said they hope to have a new printing of Bottom's Dream this year!
I’ve only recently came across this channel. Very enjoyable. Though would respectfully disagree with Jerusalem being boring. It’s just incredible all that can be told in the amount of time that a child chokes on a piece of candy. The section where he “describes” a fourth dimension is for me as elucidating and clever as Abbott’s Flatland... perhaps more so... certainly funnier.
I really appreciate your comment. I have gotten a bunch of mixed feedback on Jerusalem. I definitely want to revisit it. You’ve certainly kindled my interest with the Flatland reference.
They do say that excessive eloquence can be exhausting. Maybe that applies to some of these books, in your experience?
Welcome, Jeff! For all except Jerusalem I would definitely agree. Funny how that is (quantity affects quality). So many times I will read a slim little volume (Ducornet, Woolf, and Salter come to mind) and marvel at its eloquence, wanting so badly for it to go on and on---but then it hits me that the shorter length ensures the sustained flavor of the experience. In fact, now that I think on it, The Mad Patagonian, to me, sustained its flavor perhaps because of its Cloud Atlas-style form-shifting!
Miss Macintosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young. Around 750 pages. I read it, my eyes saw each word, still not sure about the plot.
From what I could tell, the plot is: a woman rides a bus to Iowa. 😜
I do have a video on MMMD, if you’re interested.
Definitely a tough nut that one.
I've read the road to reality twice in English and twice in italian and i loved it. For me as italian, it is quite impossible to think reading leopardi in English. He is absolutely incomprehensible without knowing the contest in which he lived. It's quite difficult to understand even for us italian people. I've read the zibaldone when i was 18 years old after having studied chuncks of it during 3 years of junior high school and 5 years of high school. Let me think some similar in English that for me will be impossible to read...finnegans wake. Moore is too boring. I think i ll try to read it again. I ve never read solzenitsin. I ve read "kolyma tales" by salamov instead. Quite interesting reading. "The declin and fall of roman empire" is a pain in the ass for me also. I didn't know the other books you cited even if "einstein's beets" seems quite interesting for me. My defeating books are: the man without qualities by Musil, don quixote, the mill on the po by Bacchelli, finnegans wake and anniversaries by uwe johnson(1668 pages)
I love Leopardi’s poetry! Funny-I’m reading Don Quixote now (again) and I plan to read Musil to kick off the new year.
Is that Thomas Moore you are talking about or another writer?
@@HoldenNY22 , is alan moore, the author of jerusalem.
Gibbons' Fall is worth listening to chunks at a time on Audio, it is around 126ish hours of audio by Charlton Griffin. So maybe that would be a good option for you if you have not already tried it.
I envy people who can do audiobooks--that would mean I could "read" while I drive! But--alas--I am apparently not an auditory learning because my mind wanders immediately from audio-based stuff. With the printed word I can stay engaged for upwards of 8-10 hours straight, but audio equals almost instant loss of attention. I have been thinking of reading an abridgement at some point. Thanks for the suggestion though!
@@LeafbyLeaf I can't really do it without following along with the text as my mind wander as well.
Oh, that’s an interesting tact!
Think the only book that keeps defeating me is Elfrieda Jelinek's "The Piano Teacher". There is just too much self-abasement in that for me. It reminded me of a scene in Polanski's film "Repulsion" which I've sat down to watch on several occasions, but never been able to get past the same point each time.
By any chance is that book what Michael Haneke’s film of the same name is based on?
@@LeafbyLeaf yes, but I've never seen it (don't get me started on film adaptations of serious literature!) :-)
I totally get that. I stave off such film. But at the time I was a big Haneke fan and didn’t know it was a book first. Since I’ve seen the movie, I get why you can’t finish the book.
@@LeafbyLeaf :-)
I understand you, Jelinek makes me feel as I would get sick if I continue reading that book.With all respect fot the author's work.
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson leaves me stranded time and time again. This is due to the strange phrasing throughout, as well as a plethora of barely explained neologisms.
Boy, what a title!
I got The Road to Reality just to see what all the fuss was about. The amazon reviews go something like 'I have two PhD's from Princeton in QFT yet this book baffles me' ... its not for the faint of heart.
That makes me feel a lot better!
"Zettels Traum" ? Maybe start at the beginning auf Arno Schmidt, not at the end ;) I read the "Die Gelehrtenrepublik" and that das experimental in form but very readable.
That book is sayed to be his last "normal" Book, after that it is sayed to get very experimental ...
Yeah, I always sort of throw myself into the deep end first! :)
Thanks for the recommendation!
"Don't gnaw your lip like that, Wilma!" Thanks, that alone has finally convinced me to begin pursuing Bottom's Dream. Meantime, Zibaldone...I just a month ago shelved it after it spent a year on a low table by my desk. To compare that to another giant Italian work, Gramsci's prison diaries can be dipped into randomly. Z requires a steady, probably daily dose. After the intro, I made it two days, maybe three, returned after a few weeks and felt I had to start over. I've not given up, just waiting for retirement. I spend a lot of time in Italy, and I need to read it so I'll be able to slyly ask everyone I know if they read it (with a follow up snare question for those who say, of course).
There is actually a wave of people interested in #Schmidt2021 which would be like the current #Musil2020 for The Man Without Qualities. I am thus planning to crack (get it) Bottom's Dream open in January 2021--which gives me time to prepare for the rest of this year. Gramsci's Prison Notebooks: I've been keeping my eye on prices ever since I heard Jim Gauer talk about his indebtedness to Gramsci. I love your approach to Zibaldone to trap people--I do the same with Moby-Dick! I need to put Z on my night table along with Montaigne, which I consistently dip into.
@@LeafbyLeaf do keep the channel updated if you decide to go through with Bottom's Dream next year. Maybe that'd get me to purchase it..
I definitely will! Just as I’m doing with the current group read of 2666!
I admit it: Naked Lunch. I have tried it again and had to stop. And yet I've read Burgess' "A Shorter Finnegans Wake" and "Ulysses".
FWIW, Ulysses is much for engaging to me, too! And to be honest, I read Naked Lunch back when I was deep in a study of the Beats, maybe around 2009 or so, and I hardly remember any of it. I found WSB's Crab Nebula to be far superior and indicative of what he was doing that was new (e.g. cut-ups).
I don't think I'm as Smart as the Author of these Videos, but one book that has defeated me is William James' "Varieties of Religous Experiences. I know many people in this Spiritual Path I am involved in who have tried reading the book, but it also "defeated" them. It is not an easy read. It is a book that was written in the beginning of the 20th Century and had a lot of 19th Century Language and Ideas. I know only a few people who were able to sucessfully read it. I may try reading it again.
Be careful not to ascribe too much “smarts” to me-you’d be surprised how little is going on upstairs! I know of William’s notable work, but I’ve always been more drawn to his brother Henry. Though, this book recently came out and has me thinking of approaching the great pragmatist’s work: www.amazon.com/Sick-Souls-Healthy-Minds-William/dp/0691192162/
Neal Stephenson's Anathem! I was very impressed by his novels from the 90s but once I got to this one I felt like he'd lost me
I haven’t read Stephenson yet. Which books would you say are worth reading?
@@LeafbyLeaf In ascending order I'd go with Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and The Diamond Age
I have the first two on my shelves (my only Stephensons)! Thanks for this!
I‘d love to get my hands on a German edition of Bottom‘s Dream but they are all so incredibly expensive
No kidding! Same here. You and I share the same Traum. :-)
Do you know the german title? Maybe it is cheaper to by here in germany?
No, wait, about 400 euro. Why??? Shame on me, but i never heared about zettels traum before...
It’s expensive because it is a one-of-a-kind feat of craftsmanship that the average and even above average writer cannot pull off. Plus it didn’t exactly see a mass-market publishing run.
@@LeafbyLeaf What's strange to me is that English language copies are so much cheaper, but I suppose they were also published far more recently so maybe that's the difference.
Catcher in the Rye...To Kill a Mockingbird, to name 2
lol
Oh, man. I haven't gotten past page 10 in either one. I've tried each one three times. Both of them actually put me to sleep during my first attempt.
The two authors I've struggled to read but finally gave up are Proust and Chateaubriand. Proust I just don't share any interest or obsessions with him, I admit he's a great writer but not for me, and Chateaubriand's style, although very elegant (I read in French), is awfully dull and flat.
Montaigne is another mountain (pun!) that I can't climb because of the language. 16th century French is a foreign language to a modern reader if you haven't studied it in college. And I don't share his themes and optimism either, not my temperament. I'm much more delighted with Pascal.
Whereas I, reading in English, adore Roust, Chateaubriand, Montaigne, and Pascal. Of course, I did manage to get through the first volume of Proust in French. _That_ was a trial!
I started this gazillion-page "Ducks, Newburyport" but only went a few pages and that was it. Just wasn't for me to bother with over a thousand non-stop pages of THAT, someone else at the library can enjoy it, no offense to the ducks.
You are definitely not alone in that reaction. There are plenty of books out there!
If you were like me, you'd never get a book done, l'm thinking. I have been known to look at the back blurb, then the page count. If it's over 500 pgs and sounds boring from the blurb, it's getting resold.
I think that’s a pretty fair approach!
Also had problems reading the tin drum by gunter grass. Was on a date long ago, and he suggested we watch the movie. So young and dumb as I was, I watched as much as I could of it. Told him I couldn't take any more of it, and told him to take it off. He seemed ok about it, and that was that. End of story.
I'm Spanish speaking by birth and have never finished the Quijote. I tried as it's compulsory reading in high school, but only by way of excerpts. My attempt at reading "A la recherche du temps perdu" went awry, since it proved to be very boring and verbose, what's the issue with that stupid madaleine already, give me a break?! As for English, I own a copy but haven't finished Finnegans Wake, while I struggled and did finish Catch-22. Maybe not such a complex read for a native but as an advanced student of the English language, it was quite a challenge, particularly from the rich, oftentimes archaic vocabulary employed standpoint!
Those are some heavy-lifting books for sure. I think that your experience with the Quijote as compulsory high school reading is the same for Americans and Moby-Dick: students are basically forced to hate it before their lives really even start. A lot of these books demand more life experience of their readers. None of them were written with a high school student in mind! (Well, maybe Catch-22.) I applaud you for your efforts nonetheless!
@@LeafbyLeaf thanks a lot, it's always appreciated to have positive feedback from native speakers! I'll keep checking your recommendations, I am now about to embark on Ian McEwan's "Solar". High-brow satire, am I right?
You’re welcome!
I have not read that one yet, but I recall the cover and that it’s possibly about AI.
William Gaddis has defeated me twice. I tried to read The Recognitions and JR, but did not get very far in either one.
No shame in that for sure; his are demanding books.
Have y'read Gödel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter?
One of my favorite books of all time! I talk about it in tandem with other Hofstadter books in a very early video:
th-cam.com/video/awvJzIPcD-g/w-d-xo.html
Right now, it's a Jerusalem of a different kind, Blake's. A lot shorter, but good god, it's so mind-boggling and I want so badly to understand it.
Ah, Blake! For me, understanding Swedenborg's religious system was a huge key to Blake's mad prophecies. Perhaps I should do a Blake video.
@@LeafbyLeaf Yeah, I just got through a summer undergrad author study class on him. Unfortunately I was the only person in the class and the professor was busy doing other things this summer, but at least it's fun reading. When I have time I'm gonna try to get a paper on Blake, Marx, Marianne Williamson and Evangelion together, unironically lol
Speaking of Jerusalem I have been looking at my 5 volume Soncino Press edition of "The Zohar" for about 20 years and it's just not happening. I should probably donate it.
The Zohar is something I’ve wanted to explore for a long while! I’ve read portions of it. What condition is your set in? I’m up for accepting such a donation! 😁😁😁
I thought I answered this. Four of the five volumes are perfect, the pages in the 5th are loosening up from the spine, a little glue will fix it. Still want it? Tell me where to send it. I can KoFi you to keep your mailing address off public TH-cam. ( I am, however, keeping The Jewish Annotated New Testament and all my Soloveitchik books to myself 😉)
Sorry I’m just getting to this. Thanks for offering! How much do you want for the set?
@@LeafbyLeaf I said donate, just tell me where to send them. You mentioned Greensboro, I am in Charlotte, name a drop off, as I drive all over the state weekends trying not to go nuts. I have a few other things to throw in I think you will like. I need to minimize.
Whoa, whoa! I couldn’t do that. The set could yield some good $ for you.
I love Alan Moore's comics/graphic novels. Pity this novel isn't worth reading. I feared it would be boring. I might try his other attempt at the novel.
The only book that really defeated me was Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
I could see that. Most people are taken aback when they go from Siddhartha or Steppenwolf to Glass Bead.
I'm pretty hard reader and was not led astray by Ulysses, McElroy or The Satanic Verses (or by any other well known The Great Reader Defeator wich I read), but what fiction couldn't do it classical non-fiction coped with a bang, and I fall by le coup de grâce from hand Pierre-Simon Laplace and his "Exposition du système du monde/The System of the World". Still feel shame.
Very respectable! I still need to read TSV. I loved Ulysses from the start, and I’ll have a video dedicated to it in my Western Core Series. I’ve taken stabs at Euclid, Galileo, and Newton, but I have never tried Laplace. I’m more of a Hawking, deGrasse Tyson, and Rovelli guy for science. (I need someone to synthesize those older texts with modern discoveries for me).
Hello, pretty funny, that you mentioned a german book by arno schmidt on your list. I can confirm to you, that even here in germany noone has read this book ;) I've got a copy of it in my shleve staring at me. Maybe one day i'll pick it up. But you're surely not the only one who struggles with it.
Radetzky March by Joseph Roth. I don't know why but I just can't get into it.
And I still haven't read anything of Joseph Roth's.
Could someone pleeeeese list these books with author and title.correctly spelled. The description does not include the list, and the transcript is about as accurate as an online translator
The first book especially, I can't make out the cover, and when I enter anything Zippo into Google I get ten thousand matches about lighters.
Hahaha! The first one is _Zibaldone_ by Giacomo Leopardi. I will update the description now. Thanks for the nudge!
@@LeafbyLeaf Thank You for the quick response. Your channel is several cuts above the rest.
My kryptonite is Gödel Escher Bach…own 2 copies too 😆😂
HAHAHA!
I like Thomas Mann writings(The Magic Mountain being in my top 5 favourite books) so I tried to read Joseph and his brothers a 1500 page book during the second half of Genesis, I got 1000 pages in and just lost interest. So many of the themes about the ancient middle east went right over my head, I simply just don't get the appeal of that book. Also other than Paradise Lost I have trouble appreciating epic poetry like The Divine Comedy, Don Juan and Greco-Roman epic poems, I really rather read a novel than most narrative poetry.
I love Mann, especially Magic Mountain, which has stayed with me ever since I read it 6+ years ago. I haven't read Joseph yet but I know the day is coming. The novel is, of course, the world's most popular form--and has been for quite a while. I, too, gravitate to novels over everything else. But--hey--if you have an appreciation for Paradise Lost, that's great! I can't wait to get to that one in my Western Core series (it's next up after Don Quixote Part II)!
@@LeafbyLeaf I'm glad you love The Magic Mountain as well, it's one of those books that stays with you for the rest of your life or it's found to be boring. I really much prefer to read Milton than Dante, Paradise Lost is a feast for those who love the English language, and also a background in the Classics and Christian Theology will help because Milton does show off how learned he is if you check the notes section while you read. The way he writes Satan, makes him one of the best characters in world literature. Trust me it's great, I'm glad Harold Bloom convinced me to read it.
Finnegan's Wake laughing in the background :)
Haha-you’re exactly right! It has defeated me twice. But it was more of a truce: we agreed it wasn’t the right time and that we’d meet again.
@@LeafbyLeaf one of my friends' fsther, a man from West Ireland, thinks Finnegans Wake is not meant to be read. "Good Jaysus: that's just Joyce taking the piss".
Hahahahahah!!! That’s rich!!!
Now that some time has passed, have you been able to defeat any of these books?
In fact, I've been slowly chipping away at _Zibaldone_ and loving it!