>>*1. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce:* i have always felt that Finnegans Wake is more of a sound art piece than a novel to be read from cover to cover! :-)
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Anil Kumar <anilkumar.naga...@gmail.com>wrote: > > Calling the attention of the bibliophiles on Silk - > > > > http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/books/Ten-toughest-books-to-read/Article1-557458.aspx > > Oh well; the others too... > > > Ten toughest books to read > > Who among us hasn’t struggled with a book or poem that failed to capture > our attention? Here's a list of ten toughest reads in literature. > > *1. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce:* Internet searches on “most difficult” > and “hard to read” novels unfailingly recognize *Finnegan’s Wake* as the > most difficult work of fiction in the English language. Written partially in > a made-up language of mindbendingly convoluted puns, this novel is often > considered unreadable. > > *2. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner:* Some readers have found > themselves filled with fury after trying to tackle the > near-punctuation-less, paragraph-long, stream-of-onscious sentences. > > *3. Naked Lunch, William Burroughs:* Is it any surprise that a book whose > pages were written while the author was high on heroin, then cut into > pieces, randomly reassembled, and published is a tough read? The > book certainly is a difficult read, as sentences seem to just end without > warning and new sentences begin half-way through. > > *4. The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot:* This tremendously dense modernist poem is > told in five parts and abruptly shifts between characters, time, place, and > languages (English, Latin, Greek, German, and Sanskrit) with nothing more > than the reader’s own erudition to make the connection between passages. > > *5. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne:* You may need a dictionary > and you can easily get lost in the multiple pages of descriptive > digressions. Hawthorne himself admitted to adding a complete chapter (The > Custom House) only because the book was otherwise too short to print. > > *6. Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco:* Fans read Eco with a dictionary at > hand, raving that his books are “for the strong of spirit, people with > perseverance, willing to struggle in order to reach the ultimate truth that > only the very few have mastered.” > > *7. The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:* This > not-quite-objective-history, not-quite-memoir, “literary investigation” > weaves endless depressing narrative threads, using prose seemingly designed > to punish. The palpable sense of despair and apathy comes less from the > text, but from the reading thereof, and it forces most readers to abandon > the fight. > > *8. Moby Dick, Herman Melville:* This 600-plus-page book goes on and > on—and on—about whaling techniques while remaining light on plot. > > *9. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand:* Devotees recommend taking on the 1,000 page > book in small doses, over a long period of time. > > *10. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy:* Fans say it’s best to read a few > chapters at a time, keep notes, rent the film, and then be sure to “do > something special” to celebrate after you’ve finished it. In fact, many > people have read it just to say they did. > > *(Info Courtesy: listverse.com)* > * > http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/557458.aspx*<http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/557458.aspx#> > © Copyright 2009 Hindustan Times > > > > - Anil KUMAR >
