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  1. #141
    House of Leaves... I have started it at least four times.

  2. #142
    Scarab Lord AceofHarts's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kasierith View Post
    When rereading Wheel of Time books, I skip every single chapter that's from the perspective of Nynaeve. And I'm overall far happier for it.
    i usually skip any chapter thats from one of the 3 super girls perspective (Egwene/Elayne/Nynaeve) too much tugging of braids and folding hands under breasts etc etc etc for me. that and its just so...bland reading about them...when the books mainly revolve around Rand/Mat/Perrin.

    oh and i cant stand Faile either.

  3. #143
    Stood in the Fire
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    3rd grade science textbook

    nah, just wanted to introduce a little randomness to this before revealing my personal choice of worst book ever: Star Wars - Splinter of the Mind's Eye. NOW granted, it was written in between the original movie and Empire, so nobody knew all the character relations yet (aside from maybe George, yet he still had them kissing in the movie...) but, it's basically 250ish pages of Luke having wet dreams about Leia, then he kicks the snot out of Vader to the point that Darth Vader, the most powerful evil character in the known universe (at the time) goes whimpering off into the night...
    22 miles of hard road
    33 years of tough luck
    44 skulls buried in the ground
    Crawling down through the muck
    Ah yeah...

  4. #144
    The Insane apepi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alenarien View Post
    Most Norwegians I know beyond Oslo, my Norwegian girlfriend included, hate Nynorsk with a passion and see it as pointless/useless.

    As for me:

    Most difficult: The Canterbury Tales, given that I also had to translate them.

    Most boring: I think i've a good eye for books, because none of what i've read is particularly boring; save perhaps, for Lord of the Flies.
    I never read all of it but I never really had a problem with the Canterbury Tales. I don't think that it is too difficult is it?
    Quote Originally Posted by Zafire View Post
    I had to read "Old Man and the Sea" in high school. Let me sum up the whole book for you:

    *MAJOR SPOILERS INC*

    ** Old Man fishes a lot
    ** Old Man goes fishing far out to sea in a boat
    ** Old Man catches a shark and it drags him through the water for about half the book
    ** Old Man kills shark and has to fight other sea creatures to keep his shark "Kill" for roughly the second half of the book

    The End.

    I zoned out so many times reading that book I think I re-read every page at least twice. I have never struggled to get through a book like that in my life.
    http://www.southparkstudios.com/clip...5/writing-eses

    Quote Originally Posted by fumblz View Post
    Farenheit 451....... Out of every book ive ever read, I hate this the most. I don't know why, it may be associated with the fact my teachers forced us to read this, but I despise this book and the movie with every fiber of my being.
    I had problems reading that book also, The Golden Compass is also another book I could never seem to finish. I absolutely hated the magic circle, worst book I have ever read. The most difficult must be most of Nietzsche writing's, I swear the dude has no idea what a period or paragraphs even mean.
    Time...line? Time isn't made out of lines. It is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round. ~ Caboose

  5. #145
    Merely a Setback Adam Jensen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by marcelos11 View Post
    i usually skip any chapter thats from one of the 3 super girls perspective (Egwene/Elayne/Nynaeve) too much tugging of braids and folding hands under breasts etc etc etc for me. that and its just so...bland reading about them...when the books mainly revolve around Rand/Mat/Perrin.

    oh and i cant stand Faile either.
    Egwene and Faile don't bother me much. Elayne didn't . . . until Crossroads of Twilight was all about what color fucking dress she should wear.

    But Nynaeve . . . gah, how can Lan or any man stand a woman like her? She's such a self-righteous, bossy, prissy character.
    Putin khuliyo

  6. #146
    Scarab Lord AceofHarts's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by orissa View Post
    Egwene and Faile don't bother me much. Elayne didn't . . . until Crossroads of Twilight was all about what color fucking dress she should wear.

    But Nynaeve . . . gah, how can Lan or any man stand a woman like her? She's such a self-righteous, bossy, prissy character.
    ill say this. i Like Egwene, and to a lesser extent Elayne, but seeing as how any of the super girl chapters tends to have Nynaeve...i just tend to try to ignore those.

  7. #147
    Quote Originally Posted by apepi View Post
    I never read all of it but I never really had a problem with the Canterbury Tales. I don't think that it is too difficult is it?
    If he translated it, he was reading it in Middle English, I assume. There are cognates, to be sure, (or would they be considered doublets in this case?) but plenty in there for second-guessing. I remember having to recite some of it for an entry-level etymology course:

    WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
    The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
    And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
    Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
    Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
    Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
    The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
    Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
    And smale fowles maken melodye,
    That slepen al the night with open ye,
    (So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
    Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,


    I remember the professor docking me a point for using a French pronunciation of 'engendred' because the vowel shift hadn't occurred yet, which in itself was bogus as he gave us the recording from which we were to practice but didn't tell us he wasn't that satisfied with it until after we gave our recitations.

  8. #148
    The Undying Wildtree's Avatar
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    The Glass Bead Game ( also released as Magister Ludi) from Hermann Hesse.
    I tried reading it 4 times, and never got through it. I always noticed that I was a certain amount of pages into the book, and couldn't figure out what I read already.
    Very challenging.
    I really wanna try it to finish it one day.

    Hesse won the Literature Nobel Price for the book in 1946.

    Synopsis:
    The Glass Bead Game takes place at an unspecified date, centuries into the future. Hesse suggested that he imagined the book's narrator writing around the start of the 25th century. The setting is a fictional province of central Europe called Castalia, reserved by political decision for the life of the mind; technology and economic life are kept to a strict minimum. Castalia is home to an austere order of intellectuals with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools for boys, and to nurture and play the Glass Bead Game, whose exact nature remains elusive and whose devotees occupy a special school within Castalia known as Waldzell. The rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics.

  9. #149
    Pandaren Monk Mnevis's Avatar
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    Yeah, I never managed to finish the Glass Bead Game (or even get very far into it, I don't think) despite loving Steppenwolf and Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund in college.

    Thomas Pynchon: I really wanted to read Gravity's Rainbow, and maybe someday I'll try again, but it didn't work out for me back then.

  10. #150
    Deleted
    I found The Hobbit hard to read.

  11. #151
    Quote Originally Posted by dystin View Post
    The first quarter of each WoT book is pretty tough.
    You go from reasonably high octane action and lots of plot developments at the end of the previous one and then you get to recap everything that has ever happened in the series for the next 300 pages. Oh and the character idiosyncrasies get a bit much... *tugs braid*
    Yeah I got to the point where I wanted to punch a baby if another female folded her arms under her breasts. damn.

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-26 at 04:27 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by ciroryder View Post
    House of Leaves... I have started it at least four times.
    For real. This is on my list. The premise was pretty good, but damn all the avant garde shit just got in the way. I wanted to like it...i Just couldn't.

    War and Peace. Another one I've started several times but just can't get into. It's gotten to the point where I don't even know why I want to read it. Maybe so people think I am smart or something. Definitely not good motivation to read something.

    Gardens of the Moon by Erickson. I've heard so many good things about this series, but damn the first book is a hurtle. Tried it about 3 times. Get about 4 chapters in and literally throw it down with an exasperated "fuck this."

    Loathe anything by Dickens.

    Lots of people mentioning Tolkien and seeming worried about flaming. the truth is Tolkien was NOT a good author. One doesn't read Tolkien for the action of the prose, so much as to experience to rich world he created.
    Get a grip man! It's CHEESE!

  12. #152
    Free Food!?!?! Tziva's Avatar
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    Orientalism by Edward Said.

    Homeboy likes to just randomly drop large quotes in foreign languages into his book with the expectation that everyone is fluent in them. He also references a lot of other works, assuming that the reader has read them too, without enough information to glean what he's trying to say from his writing if you haven't.

    I am an avid reader and normally revel in what most people consider tedious nonfiction, but this is the only book I've ever encountered in my life where I felt like the whole thing was over my head and I was just too stupid to handle it.
    Last edited by Tziva; 2012-12-26 at 04:36 PM.


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  13. #153
    Quote Originally Posted by Tziva View Post
    Orientalism by Edward Said.

    Homeboy likes to just randomly drop large quotes in foreign languages into his book with the expectation that everyone is fluent in them. He also references a lot of other works, assuming that the reader has read them too, without enough information to glean what he's trying to say from his writing if you haven't.

    I am an avid reader and normally revel in what most people consider tedious nonfiction, but this is the only book I've ever encountered in my life where I felt like the whole thing was over my head and I was just too stupid to handle it.
    I hate this. I read a lot about 18th century French history and it pisses me off to no end when an author quotes something in French. Ok so I am reading a book about France, that doesn't mean I speak the damn language.
    Get a grip man! It's CHEESE!

  14. #154
    I'd have to go with the Silmarillion by Tolkein. I love the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but the Silmarillion reads like a fantasy history textbook, not a novel.

  15. #155
    Ask the Dust by John Fante in university. God, what a slog of a read. My professor (who was/is an extremely awesome human being, despite this malarkey) had some kind of giant, raging literature-boner for Fante and this book, and we spent almost the entire semester on it.

    It's a slow, slow, slow, slow, slow look at the false idealism faced by many people who moved to Southern California at the end of the Great Depression seeking a sort of 'paradise' that didn't exist.

  16. #156
    High Overlord Rigimi44's Avatar
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    Honestly, the book I found the most boring to read was the Wizard of Oz. Granted, I had to read it in grade 4 for school, but I ended up almost throwing it in the recycling bin.
    Formerly The Dwarf Lover (TDL)

  17. #157
    Quote Originally Posted by jrch5618 View Post
    I'd have to go with the Silmarillion by Tolkein. I love the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but the Silmarillion reads like a fantasy history textbook, not a novel.
    That would be... because that is exactly what it is

    Quote Originally Posted by The Dwarf Lover View Post
    Honestly, the book I found the most boring to read was the Wizard of Oz. Granted, I had to read it in grade 4 for school, but I ended up almost throwing it in the recycling bin.
    This made me giggle actually. Never read it but I would imagine I'd have a hard time with it for similar reasons that I found Dr. Jekle and Mr. Hyde to be a really boring book... I already knew they storyline by the time I read it so I really just couldn't get into it.

  18. #158
    Lord of the Rings/Silmarillion.

    I've read Lord of the Rings in bokmål (norway's most widespread language). I bought in in English. Not read it.
    Three years ago, I bought it in Nynorsk (our other language) and it contains different dialects. I really want to read it, but so far I've only gotten to page 110 or something. It is so slow. I have to force myself to read it, whereas with Game of Thrones, time and pages just flew by. In four-five days or so, I read two of the books (two remaining) and I'm eager to continue. Lord of the Rings? Not so much.

    Silmarillion was just boring don't remember any of it
    Quote Originally Posted by Vaerys
    Gaze upon the field in which I grow my fucks, and see that it is barren.

  19. #159
    The Lightbringer Lollis's Avatar
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    The Very Hungry Caterpillar, that book was a nightmare to read :[
    .
    .
    .
    But seriously, the Silmarillion is a pretty difficult read if only because it is a history book rather than a story in itself.

    Most boring cannot go wrong with The Lion the Witch & The Wardrobe or Tom's Midnight Garden, oh and Macfuckingbeth if you want to count it as a book.

  20. #160
    A lot of people are mentioning Silmarillion, I began reading it not long ago and it isn't very hard so far, probably it's the polish translation? And as for boring well it's a history book so yeah it's a bit boring but I like history.
    Again I'm not far into the book but the way he introduced the elves and their tribes when they where on their journey through Middle Earth was hilarious, he puts a dozen of elves, then a dozen of tribes, tells where they are with landmarks you don't know at all and tells you to deal with it

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