What are the most challenging books you've managed to read all of?

Winter's Tale

I've never finished Gravity's Rainbow. I actually like it, but I always stall out.

The Aeneid.

Beloved

The Sound and the Fury

Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, Mrs. Dalloway, War and Peace.

Sally Field's autobiography.

Les Misérables

'Middlemarch', and I loved it.

Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia. Some parts were easy enough but other parts, well, I'm sure were excellent if I understood them. Still when I was able to understand it was fascinating as hell which is what kept me going, and I ended up reading the whole thing.

Tristram Shandy, Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities, Crime and Punishment, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (haven't tackled Ulysses yet).

They were all worth the challenge and rewarding to read.

My Name is Barbara. Couldn't bring myself to even open the cover.

The Sound and the Fury for sure. I enjoyed Middlemarch. It was long but not particularly challenging.

I tried to read Proust, but I didn't make it, so I can't claim it here.

"The Wings of the Dove" - boy, that was a hard one to get through.

“Island of the Day Before” - grueling in the 90s. Later, I used Wikipedia to catch the references and it was much easier.

My Name is Barbara

Get off DL! We don't want heterosexuals here!

I found "Moby Dick" to be a real slog, I made myself finish it but the reward vs the time spent was ... not great. The most difficult book I still really enjoyed was "Ratner's Star" by Don DeLillo.

Another vote for Middlemarch. I did finish it though.

But I hope to re-read it someday. It was one of the first Victorian novels I read in my 50s (after The Way We Live Now and David Copperfield) when I decided it was time to see what I'd been missing after usually just reading the Cliffs Notes in high school. Now that I've gotten several dozen of them under my belt and am a more patient (and smarter) reader, I think I'd enjoy and appreciate it more.

Middlemarch, but I don't remember anything about it. I got about 1/2 way through Gormenghast and couldn't take it anymore.

Saducismus triumphatus is a book on witchcraft by Joseph Glanvill

“House of Leaves” was also a trudge. It felt like I had stepped outside of time and it was over and I would never get that time back.

Stephen King is famous for writing page turners, but I’ve never been able to get past the halfway point of “Under The Dome.”

When Atlas Shrugged

Shogun

I DID make it all the way through Dom DeLilo’s White Noise. I read several pages eight or ten times.

A Little Life.

^Dom DeLillo. Excuse the new fingers.

Another vote for The Sound and the Fury.

Edmund White's Genet: A Biography. Fantastic book. But damn, it is long.

Last year I read Caroline Fraser's Prairie Fires, and it is excellent, but it is dense.

The 10 Years I Loved You The Most

[quote] When Atlas Shrugged

Is it not simply titled “Atlas Shrugged?”

R12, i came here to write the same. The endless, sometimes meaningless sentences of The Wings of the Dove were hell. Late Henry James was a mess (probably due to the dictating). I finish t because the plot and characters are great, only i wish he had written it much earlier, when he still wrote reasonably.

from college, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

afterward, probably Moby Dick or Ulysses

Mein Kampf

"Fun With Dick And Jane," for some, of a certain age.

(The first cut is the deepest.)

Especially once Little Sally and her Spot enter the picture.

The Holy Bible - King James Version (Lord, those Hebrews can go on about their laws).

Les Miserables

Atlas Shrugged (I liked the story and Dagny as a character, girlfriend got her some good sex, but when John Galt gets on tv and Rand stops the story to write 50 pages of propaganda, Lord, I almost put it down).

Hawaii in paperback

Referring back to Saducismus triumphatus, which was an incredibly long, tedious and boring book, but one thing that surprised me (oh the book was published in 1681 by the way and completely influenced Cotton Mather) was as I forced myself to read it I came upon an actual account of a poltergeist in it. What struck me it likely real was the author's explanation for it was it's a witch. Everything was 'it's witches' or 'it's the devil'. Their response to the weird account made me think it probably happened because they had no understanding of what it was, nor do I, but they tagged onto it the usual suspects of the day: witches aka witches working for the devil.

It's the only thing I count as a valuable take away from it.

"My Name Is Barbra". I got as far as The Concert (1993-94) and was exhausted. Couldn't take all the 'mommy bashing'. Not in any hurry to pick it up and finish it since November.

Raintree County was hard. Sometimes I'd devour it and other times just skim, thinking "it's enough already." Sometimes the writing was beautiful.

I gave up on Some Came Running after going to the trouble of getting a copy of the book as originally published (not the abridgement that happened when it was issued in paperback, or the other abridgement put together by the author's estate).

Also couldn't do: From Here to Eternity, The Naked and the Dead, or Inside USA.

For these bestselling tomes from the 50s-70s that I love, I've recently discovered the Reader's Digest Condensed Books abridged versions online at Internet Archive. If it's a book you're only reading for plot, you may as well read the short version.

Ulysses f joyce and The Unvanquished of Faulker were both hard

I found "Dune" kind of challenging in highschool. Had never read a novel with its own glossary before

Just curious, why did you read Absalom twice, OP?

r37, I also sloughed thru Raintree County and agree with your assessment. That was a book that I remember from my childhood home and I always loved the pretty title. A few other bestsellers that I remember from our bookshelves that I tried to read but didn't finish: Exodus, The Nun's Story, The Best of Everything (I love the movie though!) and The Winter of Our Discontent.

Dune

Foucault’s Pendulum

Catch-22

Loved Absalom(x2) and managed to get through Ulysses decades after my first attempt. Late James (Golden Bowl) and Proust were Temps Perdu.

Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities) in German. I understood the plot, but not necessarily all the themes. I enjoyed the challenge of reading it though.

I agree with the criticism of Henry James above, but I love Washington Square, where he manages to exhibit a restraint which eludes him elsewhere. It’s a bitter story in some ways, but told so beautifully.

For every classic I have enjoyed, there is at least one I have given up on though. I just can’t be bothered with Dickens’ long, boring descriptive passages. And I’ve never really enjoyed the Great Russian novels much. I’m sure the fault is mine though, because I just forget who is who in them.

Oh, the drudgery of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.

But I l devoured Faulkner's Sound and Fury, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and Lawence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.

A biography about U2. I don't remember who wrote it, but it was boring as hell.

Jesus Christ. Does this post count?

Crime and Punishment, Felix Holt the Radical and the Ambassadors.

The English Patient and "A Million Little Pieces" by the guy that Oprah stoned in the town square.

WW’d you @ r47, but that’s prob too meta for most here.

The Adventures of a High School Hunk, by Gordon Hoban

I just finished a 1000-pager in German (Frohburg), which was challenging not only because of the German but because it was written in a stream-of-consciousness style: no chapters, and some paragraphs went on for pages. But not challenging because I loved the subject matter.

I'm still haunted by my failure to finish another challenging, very long German book (Der Turm). I kept reading even though I started hating it, but finally gave up about 20 pages before the end.

The Recognitions by William gaddis was a slog, but good.

Remembrance of things past was also slow going but it’s one of my all time favourites still, 20 years later.

Finally I’d probably say The Power Broker by Caro. Very long but explains a whole hell of a lot about modern urban planning and how we got to where we are.

Another vote for Ulysses.

Joyce just gets progressively worse -

Dubliners is a masterpiece

Portrait of the Artist is good

Ulysses at least has powerful sections.

And Finian’s Wake? Don’t bother.

Finnegan’s Wake!!!

Sorry - still bad.

Ulysses by James Joyce. I read it as a teenager in an AP English course that focused on James Joyce. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized JJ was thought to be inaccessible. At fourteen his writing made perfect sense to me. The other book would be Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. He's viewed as very problematic now (see Mary Karr's allegations) and I know people joke about his stuff being unreadable. But I read everything he ever wrote, and I thought IJ was one of the most entertaining and engaging novels I've ever read.

“Vanna Speaks”

Another vote for Ulysses. Joyce is a nightmare, it might as well have been in mandarin.

R33 everyone I know who read the book has skipped that speech. It's undoable.

Right now, I am trying to work my way through the Art of War. It's a 2500-year-old collection of strategies that are still valid today, especially when you transpose them to everyday situations. But it's not a novel; it's just an endless list of military strategies.

The Digger books

The Body Keeps the Score.

Les Misérables in French

the entire Divine Comedy. Paradise was difficult but I made it through with lots of note reading.

r36 did not understand the assignment at all!

R55. And it’s still Finnegans Wake—no apostrophe

Agree that Middlemarch isn’t particularly challenging. It does require acclimating oneself to the notion that Eliot will use 5-10 pages to narrate a conversation between two characters, wherein only 2-3 sentences are actually dialogue.

More votes for Middlemarch Ulysses War and Peace ( most Russian novels from that time period actually ) Les Misérables Moby Dick

Anything by Raymond Carver. What a bore he must have been in real life.

[quote]Right now, I am trying to work my way through the Art of War.

In the 1990s, the Art of War was required reading for anyone in the financial industry. The MBA programs were churning out bankers who could quote it by heart.

The Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle.

I had to read it several times to decipher it, but it was worth it.

As with reading a complex poem that requires time to figure out how it works, the book necessitates several read throughs to get what the point is.

Being it's relatively short - I think it's only about 50 pages if I remember correctly - it's not an impossible task, but I don't think I'd be as patient if I were reading one of the author's late period novels.

" My Pet Goat," but I did manage to get through it.

Foucault's Pendulum Ancient Evenings

MTG!

The Portrait of a Lady

The Bostonians

Both by Henry James.

Neither of them are in the almost stream-of-consciousness late period James where he dictated rather than wrote They can take a little bit of patience but they’re both excellent. “The Bostonians” is quite scathing and funny. Ironic that he is buried in a grave that looks out over greater Boston as he has no love for the city in the book.

r74, tried reading both of them but about 1/2 way through realized I didn't care what happened to the characters. At all.

The Heiress, which is the title of the play Ruth and Augustus Goetz based on Washington Square is far better than the James original. THey actually managed to improve on it. They also wrote the screenplay for the brilliant Wyler/de Havilland Oscar-winning film.

In the 90s/00s, I made an effort to see as many films based on the books by Henry James as possible as I just couldn't face reading his prose.

R74. The novels you list are NOT part of James’s late, stream of consciousness period—in fact, both are pretty accessible and were written in his early to middle periods. The big three of the late period are The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, and The Wings of the Dove—and their difficulty is often exaggerated. They take time and concentration, to be sure.

The God Bless the USA Bible…on sale now!

R77, that’s what I said. I said “neither” are part of the late period.

Atlas Shrugged, not because it’s difficult, but because I was assigned to read it in a university philosophy course and learned how to recognize ayn Rand groupies. Another one I couldn’t put down is “Exposing Deceptive Defense Doctors” by Sims. Another entertaining one is by Dorpat “Gaslighting, the Double Whammy, Interrogation and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy and Analysis”

With "A Little Life", I had to take breaks then read a little more. Tooks months. I knew it wouldn't get better, but I was compelled to finish reading it for myself and I hate leaving anything unfinished.

Also, the "King James Bible". Old Testament was a struggle - took months. New Testament was much easier to read.

The first two books of the CS Lewis Space Trilogy, Out of The Silent Planet and Perelandra, are great reads. The third, That Hideous Strength is a real slog. I picked it up and put it back down many times but finally got through it.

Books?

More votes for Ulysses, Les Misérables, and Bleak House

Also: The Raj Quartet (The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence, A Division of the Spoils) by Paul Scott. Though technically 4 different novels, they tell an intertwined story of the final days of British rule in India, occasionally with the same incidents being recounted by different characters. The TV series used the basic plot, but not the narrative complexity.

Oh The Raj Quartet! I started it and read a few hundred pages but gave up because I felt a little lost in the politics of India. I would really like to give it another go. I di read the final book in the series Staying On about an elderly British couple who.....stay on after their friends and colleagues have all left........much shorter, lovely, wistful and very accessible.

In length, Anthony Powell's [bold]A Dance to the Music of Time[/bold] in 12 volumes, just s little under 3000 pages, with 400 named characters. Published over the period 1951-1975. I wanted to read it unhurriedly over a long period and did so over a little more than a year with some breaks for travel and other interruptions, reading other books along the way which seemed the perfect approach for me.

It's also my favorite book or books, read at the perfect point in my life.

I've only read the first of the 12 books in Powell's 12 volume saga and it was so long ago now that I'd need to re-read. I think I'd like to read all 12, maybe one a month over the course of a year while I read other things between them.. I very rarely ever read the same author back to back, I prefer more varierty between fiction and non fiction, genres, style, etc

r83 = Carlotta Vance

R69 I learnt about the existence of Art of Work through my various stints as a C-something (CEO, COO, etc.)

My verdict, about halfway, is that Art of War is an excellent book when one is about to wage true war. The rest barely transposes to our mundane, sheltered lives.

Art of War*

Although Art of Work has funny ring to it..

The Brothers Karamazov but it was in a high school honors class, a long time ago.

For those who've read Infinite Jest... Is it worth it?

R45, I also never could finish The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.

I tried getting through both of those more than once. And have yet to succeed.

R92 I mean, if you're interested in Infinite Jest, get it from the library and read the first couple of pages. It's a really entertaining, fun book to read. In my experience there was nothing challenging about it at all.

I'm decades out of school, so the only reason I read is to be entertained and engaged, not to be challenged.

Was the Wind-up Bird Chronicles the one about the stay-at-home husband who wanders through the back yards of his neighborhood while his wife is at work? I never finished that one. Should I have?

"My Pet Goat."

R95 - we got it the first time @ R71.

r96 is right, and we also got it the first time someone made that joke on this site in 2002, and the thousands of times it's been made since.

I looked at all the words in Ulysses when it was assigned in college, but making coherent meaning? That’s altogether another story.

Pat the Bunny was a slog. I had to get past that textural issue.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - AUUGGHHH

DeLillo's Underworld.

Oh, wait. Never finished. No plans to try. DeLillo at his most prolix and self-consciously Ambitious.

Ulysses. Had to read it for a grad-school course.

Didn't like it.

I read several Garfield comic strip joke books one summer.

For some reason, can never get into “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” It’s not that it’s difficult I just find it… I dunno. I just can’t get past the first few pages.

Lord of the Rings, in grade school. Much of it was long winded and I was BORED but I forced myself through it to the end. I was very young. I would announce to everyone I was "going to read that big book", whichever books were in our houses, or my relatives' houses. Then I would read it.

By 6-7th grade some friends and I were reading "forbidden" books, in secret from the adults. Trashy novels and biographies. One we all loved was "Going Down With Janis" which was a biography/memoire by Joplin's lesbian lover. Books like that were a sensational read on the cusp of puberty.

Ditto, R15!!! I read it my junior year of high school. We had a very sharp, savvy American Lit teacher who didn't suffer fools and KNEW if you tried sneak by on Cliff Notes. Still, many of my classmates used them here & there, to catch up (for class discussion), if they were behind a few chapters. Not me. I read every fucking word of that boring-ass "classic"!! It was excruciating.

Analingus For Dummies

Our Lady of the Flowers by Genet. It's interesting, but fuck me if I know what's going on!

101 Reasons to suck cock and eat cum n piss

R108 great book. Could you read it in French? Genet is transgressive so everything low and ugly is rendered exquisite.

The Little Engine that Could

Wow, R109. That is so funny and clever.

Are you eleven?

Not r112 I’m 50! 50 yrs old!

I’ve made a couple earnest cracks at Canterbury Tales, but I don’t think it’s meant to be.