I hear it's Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce is that true? or are any others?
2007-12-23 17:06:14 · 24 answers · asked by Anonymous in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
I answered this question before, so I'll just give you what I had on my list. What I realized is any works written by authors who used "stream of consciousness" technique like Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner are often difficult. Except for Chaucer, we had to recite his crap for extra credit in my Brit Lit class in hs, it was effin' torture.
1. James Joyce - Ullyses and (2) Finnegan's Wake (I liked Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I TRIED real hard to get through Ullyses but eventually gave up on it. I even purchased the audiobook, still didn't help and that's saying a lot.
3. Faulkner's Sound and the Fury.
4. Tolkien's Silmarillion.
5. Hardy's Return of the Native.
6. Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dolloway - I've given up on this.
7. I think this should top your list but I don't think Chaucer is considered "modern." Some of his Canterbury Tales were just beyond me.
8. Naked Lunch by Burroughs.
9. East of Eden by Steinbeck.
10. As I Lay Dying also by Faulkner.
2007-12-23 17:48:57 · answer #1 · answered by Boy, Interrupted 5 · 1⤊ 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.
2007-12-24 03:40:03 · answer #2 · answered by gravybaby 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Yeah, I heard Finnegan's Wake too. Joyce's "Ulysses" is also really hard to read (not for the language as much as structure).
2007-12-23 17:58:06 · answer #3 · answered by Echolalia 3 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Oxford Dictionary
2016-04-10 22:45:47 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Not sure why anyone wants to determine this. It's kind of like sitting around trying to decide what the most inedible food is or the most agonizing pain; the only difference is that nobody makes you eat a brussels sprouts casserole or get a root canal in a classroom.
2007-12-23 19:29:20 · answer #5 · answered by Omar Cayenne 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Generally thought to be FW. BTW, neither Chaucer or Tolstoy wrote in English. Chaucer wrote in "middle English" and Tolstoy wrote in Russian, obviously.
War and Peace isn't that hard to read either, it's just long.
2007-12-24 05:35:13 · answer #6 · answered by Ivan R 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Manuals to any electronic thingie, for me. When my sisters and brother and I were teenagers, we read the encyclopedia all the time. It is interesting reading -- just short articles about all sorts of stuff beginning the the same letter.
2007-12-23 17:45:31 · answer #7 · answered by Snow Globe 7 · 1⤊ 2⤋
I'd go with the Bible. I mean within it alone are 66books that all come together as one story of redemption if read correctly, yet each one of those books has a deep individual meaning both spiritual and practical.
2007-12-23 19:56:37 · answer #8 · answered by guy?needshelp 2 · 0⤊ 3⤋
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.....the subject matter (The Great Depression, emigration to California, etc) and the daunting page count make it not the most fun of books to read.
2007-12-24 04:11:51 · answer #9 · answered by Gatsby 2 · 0⤊ 4⤋
I would have to say the world encyclopedia. Heck, it's harder than reading the dictionary which is surpisingly fun.
2007-12-23 17:34:46 · answer #10 · answered by nuetronhead 3 · 0⤊ 2⤋