[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by Ned

How about Salman Rushdie?
I waded through a few pages of Midnight's Children and all that came across was Rushdie shouting "Look at me, how clever I am" - I couldn't get past that to what he was actually on about.
...

(Asked empathetically) But you agree he is indeed "clever"? I have started The Satanic Verses a few times, and I'm always very impressed by his writing, and yet I peter out in interest and put it aside after about 50 pages. I've never really grasped why, since, as I say, his writing is for me quite extraordinary. Perhaps it's an over-cleverness that's exhausting me.

I was going to recommend you try something else by him, but the book I have been told to read first, to get past my "reader's block", was, I think, Midnight's Children. It may have been Grimus though...maybe we should both give that one a go, hey?

And Ulysses - yes, very clever, but I can't see for the life of me how anybody could enjoy it.

I not long read A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. I found it quite dull. Saying that, I've opened Ulysses a time or two (as it used to be on my smartphone of the time) while waiting for something, and enjoyed the hell out of the small bits I've read. It's one on my TBR pile/list. I think I'll skip Finnegans Wake though...at least, not without professionally-guided "group therapy".

I just tried Moby Dick last week for the first time and lost interest in the first few pages. Think I'll stick to the film.

Which "film"? I've a liking for Patrick Stewart, and I've always wanted to see him in Ahab's skin, but have yet to do so.

And finally Dickens - the problem I have with him, apart from his over the top sentimentality - is that he's clearly writing in instalments at so much per word and everything gets dragged on and on and on.
...

My dad loved Dickens, but he's never something I much liked (or ever completed a single work of). He's one I'm prepared to approach again though, awareness that I've changed a lot since those many years ago (hell, I've changed my reading preferences just in the last couple of years).

Originally Posted by nomesque

My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin (Aussie classic). I had an almost overwhelming urge to slit my wrists and end this cruel existence by the time I finished it. Holy dooly. If you like depressing reads, give it a try!

I don't mind depressing reads (Primo Levi's If This Is A Man, will always be on my bookshelves, though it's no picnic to read), but I've never read My Brilliant Career. Perhaps you don't mean that particular kind of "depressing" though. At school, we hit some Aussie poets, but rarely Aussie novelists (An Imaginary Life by David Malouf, was about the extent, and thankfully I enjoyed it). I'm surprised, looking back, that we didn't get near My Brilliant Career.

Cheers,
Marc