Looks like this is only fiction. If not, Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" would qualify.
Venky On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 12:12 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 > © Copyright 2009 Hindustan Times > > > > - Anil KUMAR
