Top 10 Difficult Literary Works

[hubag bohol]

according to Listverse


Reading a good book or poem is one of life’s joys, and once in a rare while a good book can change your life forever. Great literature often demands we meet the authors’ ideas on their own terms, and the experience is not always comfortable. Growth seldom is. Submitted for your review are ten literary works that demand much of the reader. Some of you may scorn the choices here, but who among us hasn’t struggled with a book or poem that failed to capture our attention? If that’s you, then congratulations. I have a near-mint copy of “Great Expectations” you can read while the rest of us go through this list.


10 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

9  Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

8  Moby Dick by Herman Melville

7  The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

6  Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

5  The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

4  The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

3  Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

2  The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

1  Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce

[islander]

where did homer's works go?  and virgil's?

[hubag bohol]

where did homer's works go?  and virgil's?

Di man to sila lisod basahon. In fact, they are absorbing reads. (He he, maybe you read them to meet academic requirements, mao nga wa ka mo-enjoy...)

Incidentally, I read all the above works, except for Ayn Rand's. Needless to say, I didn't finish some of them (guess which ones).

[Lorenzo]

If I may add:

Paradise Lost

Devils, Women and Jews

The Phenomenology of the Mind

[Lorenzo]

where did homer's works go?  and virgil's?

ah yes, homer's works were a particular favorite of mine. Iliad, for example, is one of my favorite ancient Greek writings.

a college professor, professor shapiro, regularly made reference to this--during his class on European Classics, which relegated some ancient greco-roman philosophies with that of the French Revolution.

how i loved that class...

[hubag bohol]

If I may add:

Paradise Lost

Devils, Women and Jews

The Phenomenology of the Mind

Even the most liberal of definitions will not admit Hegel's book as a literary work.

[islander]

Di man to sila lisod basahon. In fact, they are absorbing reads. (He he, maybe you read them to meet academic requirements, mao nga wa ka mo-enjoy...)

Incidentally, I read all the above works, except for Ayn Rand's. Needless to say, I didn't finish some of them (guess which ones).

absorbing, yes, but difficult just the same.  if you read the summaries, fine.  they're absorbing enough.  i read the direct english translation, in verse, hehe.  i even tried the original greek and latin works ( ), hahaha!  tell me if they're still easy reads.

let me guess what you didn't finish.  ayn rand's.  i feel your kind wouldn't go for her.

[hubag bohol]

absorbing, yes, but difficult just the same.  if you read the summaries, fine.  they're absorbing enough.  i read the direct english translation, in verse, hehe.  i even tried the original greek and latin works ( ), hahaha!  tell me if they're still easy reads.

Hmm. Lattimore's or Fitzgerald's translation?

[hubag bohol]

let me guess what you didn't finish.  ayn rand's.  i feel your kind wouldn't go for her.

I didn't not finish Ayn Rand. Never read her. And I'm completely clueless as to your last statement. 

[hofelina]

War and peace of Leo Tolstoy needs a lot of time and patience, taas jamo.

[hubag bohol]

War and peace of Leo Tolstoy needs a lot of time and patience, taas jamo.

Wa jud nako ni mahuman. Real life just wouldn't be shut out hangtod nawala na ang momentum sa fictional world depicting life in Tsarist Russia. Nibasa na lang ko sa summary.