My sister and I are talking about a list of the hardest books to read that are written in English, but we can't find it anywhere online. Does anyone know where we could find it?
2007-11-24 11:22:59 · 27 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
James Joyce "Ulysses" It is supposed to be a great book, but it is nearly impossible to read.
2007-11-24 11:25:23 · answer #1 · answered by Steve C 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
I never hacked Finnegans Wake, but the hardest to read in intelligible English is Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, because the sentences really are long sentences, and if you lose the thread, you're lost for a whole paragraph. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity is similar. Both great books though, and they have something to say to those who will put in the effort.
2016-05-25 06:12:00 · answer #2 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Anything by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner and others who often use "stream of consciousness."
Some examples that killed me:
"Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas R. Hofstadter
"Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf
"Requiem for a Dream" by Hubert Selby Jr.
"Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values" by Robert Pirsig
I also found "Night" by Elie Wiesel hard to read, but because of the subject matter, not the writing itself.
2007-11-24 11:42:05 · answer #3 · answered by Ganguro Gal version 3.0 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
This is the only list I could find.
http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?p=423984
For me it has to be Finnegans Wake - James Joyce. I never could get through it.
From Finnegans Wake
by James Joyce
. . . They near the base of the chill stair, that large incorporate licensed vintner, such as he is, from former times, nine hosts in himself, in his hydrocomic establishment and his ambling limfy peepingpartner, the slave of the ring that worries the hand that sways the lamp that shadows the walk that bends to his bane the busynext man that came on the cop with the fenian’s bark that pickled his widow that primed the pope that passed it round on the volunteers’ plate till it croppied the ears of Purses Relle that kneed O’Connell up out of his doss that shouldered Burke that butted O’Hara that woke the busker that grattaned his crowd that bucked the jiggers to rhyme the rann that flooded the routes in Eryan’s isles from Malin to Clear and Carnsore Point to Slynagollow and cleaned the pockets and ransomed the ribs of all the listeners, leud
and lay, that bought the ballad that Hosty made. . . .
2007-11-24 15:29:05 · answer #4 · answered by sounditout 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Anything in Olde English such as Beowulf and Chaucers Canterbury Tales. Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are also tedious and complex. In modern books, the Tolkien books require you to have a descriptive imagination or else you will be lost.
2007-11-24 12:02:25 · answer #5 · answered by menasha_rabinowitz 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
For sheer boredom I suggest the volumes of sermons published in Victorian times by clergymen which judging by the number of them must have been as popular then as bodice-rippers are today. Tranlated from the german 'Capital' by Karl Marx is impenetrable, to understand Marx you have to read Engel's commentaries, at least he used plain English. I don't find any of the classics others mentioned hard to read but I do agree that the Joyce works need a companion 'translation' to understand them.
2007-11-24 11:52:47 · answer #6 · answered by janniel 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Shakespeare!!! he use to make it up as he went ,his Grammar was shocking,but his writing was brilliant,his stories time immortal,sarcastic humor with a hatred of the Manor born but strangely the high horses were his greatest fans.Because of his invention and innovation of the English Language he will always be remembered.
2007-11-24 11:54:44 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
2007-11-24 11:25:54 · answer #8 · answered by ? 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
That would definitely be James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. Complete with footnotes. Few ever get through it. You can find it pretty much anywhere. It is a terrific challenge.
----
They're, Their, There - Three Different Words.
Careful or you may wind up in my next novel.
Pax - C
2007-11-24 11:31:43 · answer #9 · answered by Persiphone_Hellecat 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Shakespeare! Read them in script version; that'll be a challenge.
Since everyone has a different perspective of 'hard' I doubt you'll find a website that lists them, but classics in general are rather difficult.
2007-11-24 11:25:02 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Gosh, I had trouble reading The Scarlet Letter my sophomore year.
And Shakespeare as well.
Some Mark Twain.
All because of diction.
2007-11-24 11:34:00 · answer #11 · answered by Done 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋