I just read
an article on the The Worlds' Most Difficult Books. Which have you read?
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
The Phenomenology of Spirit by GF Hegel
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
Women and Men by Joseph McElroy
The only one I have read is
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I have to say that I am really not a fan of her style of writing. I've read
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and thought it was a much harder read than
To the Lighthouse, and also a much better book (even though I'm not really a Faulkner fan either).
I've read some of
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. If you have ever seen a painting where the artists just throws paint on a canvas and the critics ooh and aah (e.g. Jackson Pollock) then you have the gist of
Finnegans Wake . It is nothing but gibberish. I could only read a little bit of it.
I also don't think
The Phenomenology of Spirit by GF Hegel and
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger belong on this list. These belong on a philosophy list and most philosophy books are difficult reads -- the more difficult they are, the more the critics like them.
Personally, I prefer simpler reads, like Hemingway, Steinbeck, and even Stephanie Meyers. I can't wait until Brent Weeks next book comes out. It definitely won't be a difficult read, but I don't think a difficult read is what makes a book good.