Post: #1

I'm talking about one that you have to keep backtracking, or maybe you have to go online to figure out what the hell is going on.

The Landmark Thucydides would be mine. I'll probably have to re-read it at some point in the future.

http://www.returnofkings.com/6275/the-la...thucydides

Post: #2

delete

Decided it was off-topic enough to make a new thread: /thread-27833.html

Beyond All Seas

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes
frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Kipling

Post: #3

When I was 7 my school teacher had us to read 'The Little Prince'. I have read that book over and over again since chilhood and still don't get a thing about it.
More recently Gore Vidal's novel 'Hollywood'. I couldn't read more than two pages before I get lost.

Post: #4

Three Kingdoms
Part 1
Part 2

Fantastic read. Its a difficult one because you will be jumping from different locations all over China and follow through third person narrative of at least a hundred different important people. However, families usually have a distinct name that is shared between members, and you will not forget who was responsible/decisive at certain peak events throughout the novel.

With that said, although this is a historical novel, not all of it is accurate. There is some myth thrown in, and it proves to be very intriguing. It makes you try and distinguish what is real and what is myth, and although usually it is very clear, sometimes it makes you wonder if:

- A certain general really held a castle with 800 men against a force of 50 thousand for several days, until reinforcements came;
- If a certain general really died from illness because of being haunted by the ghost of someone he recently murdered;
- If a man was actually able to manipulate the wind to spread a fire among enemy ships (that were linked together) and contribute to the defeat of an army of nearly one million men;

etc.


A must read, or at least a further look for anyone who takes interest in historic novels.

Post: #5

I would say Ulysses, but I never actually got through it due to it being completely pointless and terrible. I'm still suspect of anyone who says they actually read all of it.

The most rambling, confusing book I can think of would be The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. There's a narrator voice that goes off on wild tangents all the while piecing together a strange, muddled storyline in a voice from an era that is hard to understand in modern speech.

You know classics; they're the books everyone talks about but nobody has ever read.

Post: #6

Paris 1919 - About how they handled the aftermath of WWI
There was so much detail, and so many friggin countries and names of key people - just lost track. But it was a good book


http://www.amazon.com/Paris-1919-Months-...0375760520

Post: #7

Finnegans Wake.

Post: #8

I've never read anything longer than a text message.

Post: #9

Any of the Tom Clancy novels.

They are absolutely riddled with tactical masturbation.

If you're not into SpecOPs type shit they lose your interest very quickly. And im actually into that kinda stuff and still found the 2-3 novels I read astoundingly boring.

Post: #10

IT by Steven King or the Hobbit. I attempted those at the age of 12 and just couldn't get through it..shyt was mad boring. Decided to fcuk with Roald Dahl instead..My Uncle Oswald.

Post: #11

A book I read recently that was hard to get through is Early Speculative Bubbles by Douglas French. The writing was easy enough, but it dealt with some technical economics information that I had trouble getting my mind around. I still don't quite understand why so many people lost their shit over tulip bulbs or how such things got to be as comparatively valuable as a McMansion in 2006 or a .com stock in 1999. Somehow Holland's bank was a hard money bank, so it's not like they could expand credit the way banks today do.

I finally decided since I'm studying Austrian Economics anyway, I'd just plow through the book and keep studying, and something I read later will help pull it together.

Post: #12

Not going to lie, some of Nietzsche's books can be incredibly tough to digest if you really want to understand his position and not just be able to say you've read his stuff.

In fiction it's probably the Fantasy series Malazan: Books of the Fallen. Its basically a far more dense Game of Thrones series written by an anthropologist with great portrayal of fictional cultures and how they interact in wartime. Reading this epic saga is like being thrown into water and being told to learn how to swim as you go.

Post: #13

Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner.

Post: #14

The Prince by Machiavelli. Dry as a nuns pussy. Sat it down in a PAX terminal and a Marine Major stole it. I think he assumed is was one of the free books from the pile on the counter. Didn't have the heart to ask for it back, as I figured he needed it more anyway. Besides, he did me a favor by taking it, as I'd kept trudging through it and have been miserable. I just played on my PSP instead.

Post: #15

A book that I put down, not because it was intellectually challenging but because it was a pain in the ass to read was Catcher In The Rye. For all I've heard about it over the years, it was a huge letdown. I slogged through it for a few hours, then looked up the cliff's notes online. I couldn't identify with the character and got sick of his whining and stupid life choices.

Whaw! I'm a rich kid in the late 40's. I'm so misunderstood at all the expensive boarding schools I get sent to. Whaw! Where are gender studies when we need them?

Post: #16

(09-06-2013 05:30 PM)emuelle1 Wrote:  A book I read recently that was hard to get through is Early Speculative Bubbles by Douglas French. The writing was easy enough, but it dealt with some technical economics information that I had trouble getting my mind around. I still don't quite understand why so many people lost their shit over tulip bulbs or how such things got to be as comparatively valuable as a McMansion in 2006 or a .com stock in 1999. Somehow Holland's bank was a hard money bank, so it's not like they could expand credit the way banks today do.

I finally decided since I'm studying Austrian Economics anyway, I'd just plow through the book and keep studying, and something I read later will help pull it together.

The following book has a chapter on the tulip bubble which took place in Holland. It is the clearest explanation I have seen.

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Blooded-Risk-S...149&sr=1-1

Most authors mess up the explanation, since they are lazily rehashing inaccurate descriptions. As opposed to checking to see what really happened. The blame lies with writers repeating the misinformation from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, which was first published in 1841.

So - to make it clear - people were not paying vast sums of money for single tulip bulbs. They were paying those sums for the rights to breed a particular variety of tulip.

So - to give an analogy - they were buying the 'patent' for a particular variety of tulip, as opposed to just buying a single tulip bulb.

Anyway - the above is a great book. Aaron Brown is super smart. It is one of the most interesting books I have ever read. I have read alot of books to do with finance, and this book contained more novel insights than any other finance book I have read.

Post: #17

I really struggled with Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita". Despite it being considered one of the seminal works of modern fiction, I found the frequent references to other authors, subtle parallels to biblical stories, and analogous riddles to be overwhelming. Either the people who think so highly of the book are a hell of a lot smarter than I'll ever be, or say the book is brilliant because everyone else says it is.

Post: #18

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche.

OH MY GOD! Only by reading it you can understand what I mean...

Post: #19

Cardguy, thanks. I think French covered that, but with so many other concepts to get my head around, I missed it. I'll add Brown's book to my wish list for later purchase. Thanks for the tip.

Post: #20

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. ~800 or 900 pages (big pages, small print, small margins) plus 300 pages in endnotes. There are a bunch of characters and multiple story lines going on. You need a bookmark for the book and a bookmark for the notes. Definitely not for everyone though as it does take some work to get through.

Post: #21

(09-06-2013 05:33 PM)Vicious Wrote:  Not going to lie, some of Nietzsche's books can be incredibly tough to digest if you really want to understand his position and not just be able to say you've read his stuff.

My fuck is Nietzsche confusing. I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra on my breaks at work. I usually have to read a section a few times before it sinks in... and then I realize you have to consider the whole book. Things that I already thought were easy to understand, but shit.


Also catch 22. fuck that book.

Post: #22

(09-06-2013 04:50 PM)AfgScarface Wrote:  Any of the Tom Clancy novels.

They are absolutely riddled with tactical masturbation.

If you're not into SpecOPs type shit they lose your interest very quickly. And im actually into that kinda stuff and still found the 2-3 novels I read astoundingly boring.

Interesting. I have read six of his books and have never found them to be particularly difficult to follow or understand, then again I rather like technical military books. Have you read Red Storm Rising? I finished it in 2 days despite being over 800 pages. Couldn’t put it down even with the political decisions being slightly unrealistic.

My pick for the hardest book i’ve ever read would be A Bright Shining Lie. I read this book when I was sixteen and most of it went above my head I’ll need to read it again sometime as it was truly epic.

Post: #23

Aristotle's books on logic - Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics.

I was 19 and slogging through them myself.

I would start getting a headache and feel nauseous after 45 minutes or so of reading. I'd have to stop and get some fresh air.

Struggling with those works carved new pathways in my brain and gave me a huge IQ boost.

After that, books that others considered challenging were bedside reading to me.

But those books were literally sickening.

Post: #24

I believe a strategy for some writers is to make their work so dense that even people who don't understand it will claim to love it so that they can show intellectual superiority to others.

Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

Post: #25

(09-06-2013 08:08 PM)Roosh Wrote:  I believe a strategy for some writers is to make their work so dense that even people who don't understand it will claim to love it so that they can show intellectual superiority to others.

Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

The author of the "Name of the Rose" intentionally made the first 100 pages much harder to read than the rest of the book. If you get past that point, you feel like a genius since it becomes a lot easier to read.