What book have you had to struggle the most with to finish and why?
For me- I've stopped and started 'Light in August' several times to get through it- probably over the course of a month while reading other things. I don't know why I have such problems with Faulkner =( but anyway that's my book from recent memory.
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Its size and difficulty made it difficult.
Henry James' final three novels. Too painful to account why.
First on my list would probably have to be Middlemarch because I was just so mind numbingly bored. I did put it down for a couple months but decided I couldn't let it defeat me and picked up again and finished it...then I burned it because I never wanted to have to see it again.The second book that comes to mind is The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky but for different reasons, that one just filled me with such despair, I couldn't continue. I got to about half way before I had to quit, then, like with Middlemarch, I gave it a month or so, reading light, fluffy, happy books in the meantime. I finally decided to tackle the second half, naively thinking it couldn't get worse...it got worse.
Waryan, I have issues with Faulkner as well. I've read A Light in August and The Sound and the Fury and neither were easy reads for me but I did get through them without having to take a break...that doesn't mean I understood anything, but I did finish them in normal time.
the luminous grass of the prairie hides
feet lovely and still as sleeping doves,
porcelain bones strong enough to carry a life,
but weighty and unmovable
As black Dakota hills. ~ Riesa
I'm finding difficulty completing Tolkien's 3rd part of the Trilogy, 'The Return of the King'...I got through the first two and 'The Hobbit' just fine.
But somehow I'm stuck on the last one...I've put it down, and I've read so many, many books in between!
I suppose I just need to sit myself down with it one day, and dig into it!
"My warm hands have made the paper limp,
So that its feel reminds me of slept-in sheets: comfortable and safe"
"All these things I say... I say them because I want you to know, I don't ever want to regret afterwards that I didn't say enough, I would rather say too much." ~ Samuel Selvon
The hardest thing I ever read was the short stories by Melville. I have read about 4 of them I think, and they were all quite grueling to get through.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
*sympathizes*Originally Posted by Sir Bartholomew
Still haven't finished them, though I'm committing myself to them completely once classes are through. I also seem to keep getting interrupted in the middle of 'The Turn of the Screw'.
Melville's Pierre was a pain; without a class to keep up with, I would never have bothered to finish.
I never got more than halfway through The Two Towers.
Twelve years elapsed between reading the first half of Les Miserables and the last half. I loved both parts. I suppose what held me back was that I'm not overfond of long books. I've made a special effort to read longer fiction in recent years, and I've found that by placing a quota of pages per day on my reading habits I can motor through anything. That's how I got through War and Peace, and Orlando Furioso last year.
The Hobbit. It became slow-paced in the middle. The second time I read it I had no problem with it though and loved it immensely. The Magus has been quite difficult to keep up with too in the middle.
I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew.
Tolkein, for sure. Can't seem to get through some of those books. I love the stories, but the writing can be tough.
Hmm...I had a really hard time reading Great Expectations and The Sun Also Rises. Great Expectations was at the very end of the school year, so that could be why. Not very good memories. Other than that, I've hated reading St. Augustine's Confessions, because it is so disorganized and awfully boring. And some bad fantasy books I've never finished. I started both Ulysses and Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins and never finished either, though I plan to pick both up one day. I was in the middle of a move and trying to read both at the same time in order to return them to the library before I left my home town. Did not happen. I don't recommend reading Ulysses and anything else at the same time. But I WILL finish both someday.
Never had much of a problem with Melville, but I really haven't read that much of his work, just parts of Moby Dick and a few short stories.
While I didn't like Wuthering Heights or Pride and Prejudice very much, I must admit that they were pretty easy to get through. Wuthering Heights was a little slow at the beginning but it really picked up. I read Pride and Prejudice out loud to my mother on a road trip and she really liked it.
"Memory believes before knowing remembers."
--Faulkner
Anything by Balzac or Hugo!I honestly don't think I've read a more boring book than Father Goriot...
Also,I've read Moby Dick twice.I don't know,there's something about that book that makes it interesting for me to read it.
Noću, u intimnom, poluglasnom razgovoru sa samim sobom, nikako ne mogu zapravo logički opravdati zašto se u posljednje vrijeme toliko uzrujavam zbog ljudske gluposti.
Miroslav Krleža
Goethe, Elective Affinities
The plot was interesting but reading this book was so strenuous.
I keep having trouble with Pride and Prejudice... I keep stopping and starting so much so I have to go back to remember what happened, so its taking like 3 times longer to read than it would normally, and most likely I'm finding it harder because its for school.
Iris Murdoch's Black Prince. It is the about the author writing what he hopes will be his masterpiece...
Some parts of it are interesting and quite funny; but after few interesting pages, there are several pages of the author's philosophy, and sometimes he even directly addresses narratives. That could stil be interesting - but the problem is, that the author is not just bad man - egoistic immature pompous brat - he is also bad writer. And I simply couldn't stand it.
It is the first book after many years that I haven't finished... that happens really rarely, because I hate the feeling of "unfinished work" so I usually finish the book even if I don't like it, but this one was simply too boring... It kinda remined me why I stopped reading philosophy...
I've mentioned it a couple of time already but Don Quixote has beaten me twice. I will certainly read it through one day, and war and peace which I abandoned a while ago, and Lolita too. I got a good way into each of them and enjoyed reading them but I just wasn't gripped enough to stick with it.
I think there is a definate negative psycological effect when you present yourself with a large book, just the size of it is off-putting. I have actually found in the past that I have much better luck with large books if I read them in PDF format on my laptop - no weighty codex to put me off I find I just plough though in no time.
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