10 most difficult books to finish (from The guardian)

[merithyn]

Probably the most difficult book I ever tried to read was Rushie's Satanic Verses when it first came out;  but, after many years and many college credits in Islam later, I tried it again and enjoyed it immensely.

I used Tolkien's Silmarillion as a doorstop for decades.  Dear God, what a turgid mess.

I will agree with both of these. I've still yet to get through Satanic Verses. 

[Valmy]

My list would include War and Peace - and the Bible. I always get bored.

Yeah the Bible can be pretty brutal.  But then it is a combination of 24 books (if you are Jewish) to 78 books (if you are Eastern Orthodox) so I guess that shoud be expected.

[Duque de Bragança]

In French literrature it would just be anything written by the Naturalist movement authors. Damn things are long just for the sake of being long.

2-3 pages sentences are too often the norm.

2-3 page sentences would be more like Proust and he is not exactly a naturalist. The naturalist Zola is quite readable, more so than Balzac, specially when one has to read it before the age of 15 (biggest issue I bet).

[Pedrito]

Crime and Punishment would head my own personal list of "hard to finish" books.

Quoted. Every time I tried, I went a bit further than the time before, but I never reached page 250.

Other books strted and never finished:

Ulysses,
Silmarillion,
War and Peace,
The Golden Bough (redux, obviously),

and several others that don't come to my mind right now.

L.

[Grey Fox]

I was 20 when I had to read Balzac. I couldn't do it.

[DGuller]

There were definitely books that I just couldn't finish no matter how often I tried, and that I completely purged from my memory.  Unfortunately, I don't recall what they were.

[celedhring]

Only read "Under the Volcano" and "Finnegan's Wake" from that list. Didn't find them particularly hard to read, "Ulysses" from Joyce was much harder to get through, for example.

I'd list Shakespeare plays but that was more due to the language barrier (old English...), so I'll go with "The Phenomenology of Spirit" from Hegel. Nietzsche is also hard on philosophical allegory but at least pretty entertaining to read.

[CountDeMoney]

I've still yet to get through Satanic Verses. 

It's an acquired read.  But it would certainly help to get a decent reading and understanding of the Quran and early Islam under one's belt.

It's like trying to read Last Temptation of Christ without being familiar with the synoptic Gospels.

[garbon]

Actually now several have flooded back to me:

The Bible
War And Peace
The Second Sex
City of God
The Feminine Mystique
Anything by Norman Mailer
Of Grammatology

[CountDeMoney]

City of God

Which one?  Doctorow's, or the old one?

[garbon]

City of God

Which one?  Doctorow's, or the old one?

Yeah, Augustine's.

[Syt]

I did read War & Peace (twice), Crime & Punishment without problems. I still have to re-tackle Brothers Karamasov.

I didn't finish Ulysses. I found it funny in the annotated version, though, to learn that Joyce had made an elaborate spreadsheet of motifs/themes/colors and what not for each chapter, loosely patterned after the Odyssey (obviously). Years after the book was published he got so frustrated that no one recognized it that eventually published it.

It took me three or four attempts to get into Grass' Tin Drum, but once it clicked it was very smooth sailing.

[Valmy]

I'd list Shakespeare plays but that was more due to the language barrier (old English...), so I'll go with "The Phenomenology of Spirit" from Hegel. Nietzsche is also hard on philosophical allegory but at least pretty entertaining to read.

Well plays are not written to be read, but performed.  And don't make me slap you, Shakespeare is not written in Old English.  It does not even remotely resemble Old English.

[CountDeMoney]

I'd list Shakespeare plays but that was more due to the language barrier (old English...), so I'll go with "The Phenomenology of Spirit" from Hegel. Nietzsche is also hard on philosophical allegory but at least pretty entertaining to read.

Well plays are not written to be read, but performed. 

Yeah, I've always found Shakespeare a little easier to comprehend during performances than in reading him.  But you've got to be dialed in and paying attention.

[Pedrito]

Speaking of doorstops, I've recently acquired Canetti's Crowds and Power and Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus, a treatise on the hindu caste system.

I highly doubt I'll ever finish one of those, but they are very, very, very good-looking when sitting on the living room bookshelf.

L.