Seven great but notoriously hard-to-finish books

For me Gödel, Escher, Bach is a better example of a great book I kept bouncing off of for various reasons even though I read it much later in life. Gravity's Rainbow in fiction.

Some of my favorite books are ones that I started three or four times before pushing through and loving them by the end.

Edit: (maybe both of them suffer from the 1940's context?)

Then one time I picked it up and something was different. I read it cover to cover over a few days and loved it.

To anyone who gave up American Gods: you're right, they're wrong.

But then again, I really loved the philosophical ramblings on history and leadership and how much Napoleon sucked. Honestly feel it should be required reading for anyone in a leadership position. But then again, if you just want to read the story, the parts can be easily skipped.

Granted you need to have some baseline knowledge of Russian culture and with some philosophical concepts like materialism to really grok it, I guess. I think hard to read can be very subjective anyway depending heavily on what books one have read before and general background.

In retrospect, I should have read a Cliffs Notes version before attempting the novel. I'd recommend anyone interested in reading Ulysses to go in knowing the story and what the chapters are about ahead of time. It's not going to spoil anything.

Finnegan's Wake, I gave up after 20 pages. That thing makes Ulysses seem like a YA novel by comparison.

I read it 25 years ago, and at one point, I realized that I did not have to continue reading it.

I will try, though.

This being said, it provides a wonderful perspective on how the stories that define us come from a magical yet misty history.

And hey, maybe the prose is like Faulkner or McCarthy in the native language and you can gallop your way through those sections, I dunno.

I still put it in my top 10!

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."

"His white knit shirt and name-brand shorts were soaked through so you could see the straps of his jock biting into the soft ass I was handing him."

"Jim, [Marlon Brando] moved like a careless fingerling, one big muscle, muscularly naïve, but always, notice, a fingerling at the center of a clear current. That kind of animal grace. The bastard wasted no motion, is what made it art, this brutish no-care."

"The key to the successful administration of a top-level junior tennis academy lies in cultivating a kind of reverse-Buddhism, a state of Total Worry."

"Yes, I'm paranoid -- but am I paranoid enough?"

‘Hey Hallie? I think I’m being followed.’ ‘Some men are born to lead, O.’