Most Difficult Texts You've Read

[Nate]

Outside of philosophy, I'd say Finnegans Wake and the late works of William Blake are the toughest things I've read. It also depends on how one defines "difficulty." I don't consider length a factor, and War & Peace, outside of its epic length, is one of the most lucid novels ever written. There's not a single passage in it that one struggles to understand.

what companions did you find most helpful to your comprehension of finnegans wake? like i said, i've found clive's work, mcugh's annotations, and finnegansweb.com to be my most useful resources, but i still have a long way to go. to what degree do you feel you've mastered the text?

[MorpheusSandman]

what companions did you find most helpful to your comprehension of finnegans wake? like i said, i've found clive's work, mcugh's annotations, and finnegansweb.com to be my most useful resources, but i still have a long way to go. to what degree do you feel you've mastered the text?

I actually haven't delved into any of the companions out there. I'm generally more interested in poetry, and I tend to read Finnegans Wake like I read poetry, meaning that I dive in and read a bit when I'm in the mood for playing in a linguistic playground, and then I may put it down for days or weeks at a time and not revisit it. I don't think I could read FW like a traditional novel, and I'm also not sure I'd be interested in cutting through all of is linguistic Gordian Knots. While I do very much enjoy Joyce, I tend to save that level of dedication for my absolute favorite authors/works, and neither Joyce nor FW are on that level for me. So I haven't "mastered" the text at all, nor have I really tried. I just try to let myself get swept along for the ride and grasp what flotsam and jetsam of meaning that I can.

[skan]

Hello.

I would like to find difficult English books, but not because they tell you a complex story or difficult concepts.
I'm looking for a book using a lot of complex English words and idioms. (I'm a foreigner trying to improve my English).

Which of the books you mentioned are more difficult in this sense?

Another difficult book is "One Hundred Years of Solitude" at least the Spanish version.

[PeterL]

You might want to try Ulysses by James Joyce, if you are looking for challenging words and idioms. Joyce's Finnegans Wake is even more extreme along those lines, but it is too difficult for most native speakers of English, so you might try that later.

[kev67]

I recently finished The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. That was above my reading age, especially Justine.

[ajvenigalla]

The Confidence Man

[ennison]

The Cannibal. If I feel it ain't giving me pleasure I pack it in. But saying that I have persisted with some junk out of sheer desperate stubbornness. By the way there seems to be a strange set of threads which I have not gone near - all posted by a cove with the moniker Ausvsac Are they ok?