Most Difficult / Rewarding Books?

Livilla · Apr 8, 2013

Are there any books that you had to seriously struggle with, but that were well worth the "work?" I mean mostly novels, but perhaps you've had this sort of experience with other works of fiction as well.

I've experienced this several times, but the first and most important example that comes to mind is The Gift by Nabokov. I read it three or four years ago. Normally I am a relatively fast reader, it's not rare for me to read more than one book a week, and I'd already read a few of Nabokov's books prior to my encounter with The Gift, but this one was something else. I swear it took me at least three or four months to finish that book, maybe more. I read it in an on and off fashion, and during the breaks I read at least a dozen other books, which Heaven knows I needed to "recharge" my brain. The Gift felt like about every other sentence was a riddle, and I kept having to go back just to be able to try and solve some parts.

It is one of the (admittedly many) books that I keep coming back to, though. Not my favourite by Nabokov, but definitely one of the best-written and most thought-provoking books I've ever read. Some parts are incredibly beautiful, some give me that "OMG so true!" feeling, and some are literally-laugh-aloud funny. There are several lines that I know more or less by heart. Plus, I like to cherish the foolish notion that all the hard work must have done my brain good.

Has anyone else had a similar experience that they can probably describe more coherently than I just did?

Maryn · Apr 8, 2013

I recently read "Filth," and it had been several years since I'd had to work that hard to make out the words.(It's written in Scottish dialect with a lot of phonetic spelling.) If the person who loaned it to me hadn't said the twist was worth it, I'd have given up. Instead, I channeled Groundskeeper Willie and got online for help with the rhyming slang when I couldn't puzzle it out.

The twist was indeed fun, and while the ending was bleak, I liked it a lot. But I don't know that I'll be rereading it.

Maryn, that lazy

Livilla · Apr 8, 2013

Maryn said:
I recently read "Filth," and it had been several years since I'd had to work that hard to make out the words.(It's written in Scottish dialect with a lot of phonetic spelling.) If the person who loaned it to me hadn't said the twist was worth it, I'd have given up. Instead, I channeled Groundskeeper Willie and got online for help with the rhyming slang when I couldn't puzzle it out.

The twist was indeed fun, and while the ending was bleak, I liked it a lot. But I don't know that I'll be rereading it.

Maryn, that lazy

Hee! Last year I had a low-grade crush on a Scotsman, and all of a sudden Groundskeeper Willie started to sound really hot to me. I have yet to try and read Scottish dialect though.

Snowstorm · Apr 8, 2013

Benjamin Franklin by Carl Van Doren. While this tome is not technically difficult compared to the description of Filth above, Van Doren's prose can be very deep. I'm a fast reader, and to fully comprehend Van Doren's beautiful words I made myself read slowly and focus--something I've never done before. Well worth the effort of going slow though.

AndyD · Apr 8, 2013

Two novels come to mind:

1: The Brothers Karamozov -- Tolstoy. Read five pages and you'll hate it. Read 80 and you still will. Hit 130 and you'll be in love.

2: Infinite Jest -- DFW. Again, was a serious effort but one in hindsight I found very worthwhile.

I'm not familiar with Filth or Benjamin Franklin. Filth sounds like a trip though.

triceretops · Apr 8, 2013

The Stand was a very difficult read for me at first. It was the big 1,300-page version. It took me a long time to cleave through it, but I managed and it impressed me in spite of its immensity.

Beachgirl · Apr 8, 2013

The Source by James Michener. It was somewhere over 1,000 pages and became a personal challenge of sorts to get through it. I struggled with it at first, but the grand, sweeping history pulled me in eventually and wouldn't let me go. I've read several of his historic works and I had similar initial struggles with all of them, but they remain some of my favorite books.

Chris Grey · Apr 8, 2013

House of Leaves. While reading it, you'll read the main book itself, and the footnotes by its author, and then the footnotes by your narrator who is commenting on the book itself and the footnotes from the author, and then the occasional footnote from the editor commenting on any or all of the above. Meanwhile, the book itself is a typesetter's nightmare, including (but not limited to) colored text, mirrored text, upside down text, and blocks of text within the text that read chronologically backwards.

Do a google image search and you'll see what I mean:

House-of-Leaves-Open-Book-house-of-leaves-10676792-500-327.jpg

cmi0616 · Apr 8, 2013

AndyD said:
Two novels come to mind:

1: The Brothers Karamozov -- Tolstoy.

You mean Dostoyevsky.

cmi0616 · Apr 8, 2013

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by DFW. This isn't a novel, rather a short story collection (although the interviews might be read as a short novel), but it's the same concept. It's the type of book you can never read too many times.

sunandshadow · Apr 8, 2013

Normally I regard high reading difficulty as a fault. I know an intelligent, well-spoken college grad who won't read Andre Norton because of the difficulty of the prose, and I've seen stuff almost twice as difficult as hers. With graduate and post-graduate level non-fiction it's sometimes worth it to fight through the latinate terms and 50+ word sentences, but with fiction I'll pass unless it's poetic or witty enough that each individual scene makes up for the challenge.

quietglow · Apr 8, 2013

Foucault's Pendulum -- Eco. I had (have?) some pretty extensive knowledge of the Kabbalah and it still was rough. Worth it however.

Also, since you mentioned Nabokov (one of my favs): Ada. So torrid and so impenetrable. Worth the effort. Google translate for the french lines is cheating.

AndyD · Apr 8, 2013

cmi0616 said:
You mean Dostoyevsky.

Bah, that was dumb of me. Only finished that last week.

House of Leaves was extremely difficult but in mind doesn't meet our second criterion. If anything I felt betrayed having struggled through its nonsensical typset.

RachaelLaWriter · Apr 8, 2013

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, The Joke by Milan Kundera, and Infinite Jest by DFW. All worth the read, but of the three, I can only see myself giving IJ a re-read.

blacbird · Apr 8, 2013

The Snopes Trilogy (The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion), by William Faulkner. All strong representatives of Faulkner's best work, and together, in my view, his greatest fictional achievement.

But not a transparently easy read, if you haven't read two or three of Faulkner's earlier works. He gets easier and faster to read once you get a subliminal feel for the rhythm/style of his prose. That does take a little patience, however.

caw

guttersquid · Apr 8, 2013

Watership Down.

Started it several times and couldn't get past the second chapter. It wasn't the writing, mind you, it was that it's a story about rabbits. But once I got past that second chapter I never looked back until I'd finished. It's still ranked as one of my five favorite books of all time.

Expat-hack · Apr 8, 2013

I am shamed. My daughter read Les Miserables when she was 15. I have not.

KN_Vaasco · Apr 8, 2013

Trainspotting. The dialect I soon began to understand pretty quickly--got a lot of exposure to a huge variety of accents in me life, so that might have helped--but some parts I started flagging. It was well worth it though. Emotionally...Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr. Devastating.

Orianna2000 · Apr 9, 2013

In general, if I have trouble reading a book, I put it down. Several times, I've forced myself to read the whole thing and the ending just wasn't worth the agony. The only books I haven't regretted forcing myself to read were The Silmarillion by Tolkien, and the Bible.

MakanJuu · Apr 9, 2013

This is kind of how I ended up reading novels. At about 9 or 10, I'd seen the Redwall series on TV. After the show ended, I wanted to get into the books, but there were proper novels and I could never finish one.

I finally got angry at myself and forced myself to marathon read one until I finished & ended up falling in love with the series.

BethS · Apr 9, 2013

One author that many people say is difficult to get into but once you do, you'll be a fan for life is Dorothy Dunnett. I've seen this happen over and over in my writing circles. Me, I tried the first Lymond novel, twice, and couldn't get past the first fifty pages.

gothicangel · Apr 9, 2013

I am reading - or have been since Feb - Nigel Tranter's The Bruce Trilogy. It runs to 1000 pages, it was originally published in the early 70s so the style in quite difficult and dense, but the history is so rich and multi-layered it has to be the best novel I've read about Robert the Bruce. I will definitely be looking for more of his books.

lolchemist · Apr 9, 2013

Titus Groan was pretty awesome. Moby Dick as well. And add another vote for Les Mis from me. There are soooooooooooo many things in the book that the movies/miniseries never even get a chance to touch upon!

flapperphilosopher · Apr 9, 2013

Like some others, if I'm finding a book difficult going--for me, usually because of the style-- I quit. There's so many great books I'll love, why force myself to read something I don't like? There is one book through that I found very slow going, but I kept reading it anyway and love it-- The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. I'd read about 30 pages at a time (30 very full of text pages!) and sometimes stop for a few days and read something else, but I kept coming back to it. It's a terrific book but not a page-turner.

Coop720 · Apr 10, 2013

Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald wasn't easy, but I absolutely loved the style. I guess that was rewarding? I think it's easy to love the writing, but find it hard to get through. Even Dickens is a slog sometimes, but his stories are amazing.

Most Difficult / Rewarding Books?

Livilla

Maryn

I Tried

Livilla

Snowstorm

Baby plot bunneh sniffs out a clue

AndyD

triceretops

Beachgirl

Not easily managed

Chris Grey

Vagrant Story

cmi0616

cmi0616

sunandshadow

Impractical Fantasy Animal

quietglow

chocolate. stat.

AndyD

RachaelLaWriter

Readin' & Writin'

blacbird

guttersquid

I agree with Roxxsmom.

Expat-hack

Too much lost generation as a kid!

KN_Vaasco

Orianna2000

Freelance Writer

MakanJuu

BethS

gothicangel

Toughen up.

lolchemist

Shooting stars.

flapperphilosopher

Coop720