People Break Down The Most Challenging Books They've Ever Read

'Ulysses'

"I have been an avid reader for many years. Thick and difficult books usually don't daunt me. 'Ulysses' by James Joyce has me beat, though. I just can't take the rambling about nothing at all and gave up 200 pages in."

- AppealAlive2718

Finnegans Wake

"'Finnegans Wake' by James Joyce: hold my pftjschute."

- A_Mirabeau_702

"'Finnegans Wake' is very similar to this for me. I tried to read both 'Ulysses' and 'Finnegans Wake' and never got too far with either, even though they fascinated me."

- TopRamenBinLaden

"'Finnegans Wake' is so much more difficult to understand than 'Ulysses,' in my opinion. 'Ulysses' is like a waking man’s stream of consciousness while 'Finnegans' is almost in a weird dream-like stream of consciousness that hits different readers in different ways. 'Ulysses' is Joyce playing with style/prose while 'FW' is him playing with language."

- philsqwad

Infinite Jest

"'Infinite Jest' by David Foster Wallace."

"Every page has footnotes that are required to understand the story. All 1,000 of them."

- HeliosTheGreat

House of Leaves

"I'm reminded of 'House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski, where the footnotes are the story."

- Viltris

The Silmarillion

"'The Silmarillion' by J. R. R. Tolkien."

"It's like the Old Testament of Middle Earth. I couldn't do it."

- doug1963

Being Mortal

​"'Being Mortal' by Atul Gawande."

"My Dad read it to prepare himself for his death from cancer. He gave it to me and said he hopes it brings me the comfort of his demise as it brought him."

"I can't get past chapter three. I cry each time I try to finish it. Ugly uncontrollable despair cry."

"It is a great book, it has helped me a lot. The author has some important insights into mortality. But six years on, I am still not there yet."

- ohno_spaghetti_o

Les Miserables

"'Les Miserables' by Victor Hugo, in French. I was a second-year French language student."

- bustedaxles

"I came here to say 'Les Miserables' in English. The plot, more plot, 50+ pages of the history of Paris's sewers, more plot, more plot, more extremely long history."

"I enjoy history but don't interject an extensive detailing of it in the middle of a story."

- XShadowborneX

Blood Meridian

"'Blood Meridian' by Cormac McCarthy. Judge Holden is one of the most disgusting yet intriguing characters in fiction I have ever read."

- Andrista

Reading Comprehension Who?

"I've read a bunch of Thomas Pynchon and Dostoevsky cover to cover and forget everything that happened in them."

"I find it very hard to reconstruct the words on the page into a movie in my brain. I might as well be reading a bunch of numbers. Pretty much all fictional books are challenging for me."

- JFKRFJSRVLBJ

Lolita

"'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov. It's an infamous book that has been historically misinterpreted, romanticized, and weaponized as a love story, when it's really the account of the sexual abuse and manipulation of a 12-year-old girl, written from the perspective of the abuser trying to convince the reader of his innocence."

"Some scenes are gut-wrenching when you actually read between the lines and keep in mind who is telling the story. It's the ultimate 'unreliable narrator.'"

- CascadingStyle

Intruder in the Dust

"Anything by William Faulkner. Specifically 'Intruder in the Dust,' because that is the one I actually read. It was a requirement for one of my college classes. It was awful."

"He doesn’t use punctuation. Sometimes a 'sentence' can go on for pages at a time."

- Nomadic_View

"'The Sound and the Fury' did me in. I had to read it for my last year of high school at a time when you couldn’t look up summaries and whatnot."

"It was just an uninterrupted stream of consciousness with barely any punctuation or flow. The definition of word vomit. I felt the mental equivalent of motion sick when I read it, and thinking back on it I can vividly recall these feelings, even several years later."

- FEDophilliac

Quantum Ontology

"'Quantum Ontology: A Guide to the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics' by Peter J. Lewis."

"The book focuses on the three dominant interpretations of Quantum mechanics from a viewpoint of metaphysical ontology (the philosophy of what exists and what is real)."

"I have read many popular books on Quantum physics both in English and in Dutch. I can say I understand 70% of what is written in those books. This book sparked my interest very much when I came across it."

"I did not understand any of it. I could not finish the second chapter as I had no idea what the h**l this guy was talking about. It grounded my smug a** for a while."

- Some_Belgian_Guy

Moby Dick

"'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville. Just chapter after chapter describing whales and the whaling process. This might have captured the imagination in the 1850s, but when you’ve been watching Attenborough documentaries since childhood, explaining how big a whale is becomes tedious."

- berserk_kipper

"I think people approach it wrong. It’s not a book about an exciting adventure, although it does have that, it’s a book about being bored at sea and reminiscing on life. I hate when people say you should only read the plot chapters. The point of the book is finding meaning in the dull things around you, and the writing is beautiful."

- Tippacanoe

David Copperfield

"This is a strange choice because it's a classic, but I struggled with 'David Copperfield,' because of the writing style, by the author, Charles Dickens, who wrote these long, drawn-out sentences, and it got to the point, as I was reading, where I would just start to count, in my mind, how many punctuation marks there were, in each sentence."

- neoprenewedgie

While we could take this conversation as sad, seeing as how there are books out there that some people do not like, it's better to take it as a reminder that not every book is going to be for us, and we have every right to put that book down and pick one up that we'll love instead.