♥ Nothing Better Than Reading!! ♥ discussion

Which, till date, has been your toughest challenge (book) in your reading life?

Mine was definitely War and Peace. I read it more for the sake of saying I've read it, as it's one of those where people will often ask if you have. I didn't really understand a lot of the story, and I just kept on plodding along, determined to finish it. I did. It took me almost 3 weeks over Christmas last year.

Love in the Time of Cholera was the toughest one for me... I took this book because it had great reviews and my father had recommended it to me... But I could not live with the principles of the characters in it... But I wanted to finish the book and hoped I would be proved wrong when I finish... I took more than one month to finish it...

PS: It could be just me, I know there are lot of people who loves this author and his works... :)

War and Peace... started reading it 15 years ago and yet to complete it :P :P Hopefully 2014 will be the year when I overcome this challenge and become successful. Feels like climbing Mt. Everest to me at this moment :P

@Niranjan - i agree with you about Love in the Time of Cholera. Although I did finish it, I was and still am not fond of that book. I preferred his One Hundred Years of Solitude, which according to me was by far the better book.;)

I tried to read 'the art of war' but it was too difficult to comprehend

@Sri: 15 years.. Lol..!! :D

And yeah.. I have to try the 100 years as well.. :)

@Niranjan.. ya.. its a long time isn't it?? :P

Try 100 years and let me know what you think.. :)

Sure.. :)

Tuntematon sotilas by Väinö Linna. I had to read it because it is one of the finnish classics and every student in Finland has to read it when she or he is in the 9th grade. The book is war literature and I think that war is really boring topic so I didn't enjoy that book at all. Another reason why I didn't like it was that the book is old so the language was really weird. The book was so boring that I couldn't even finish it.

Midnight's Children..gave up after 30 odd pages.. Hope to read it sometime later though! :)

Shilpa... I'm sitting with Rushdie's Children for almost a month now :-D:-D:-P

@Shilpa and Mish.. Looks like Midnight's Children is gonna take another several years for me as well :P :P

Ohk I'll get back to this post when I remember the name of that book :/

@Misha....u shud try it at midnight...:-D:-D

Meera... I'm not Midnight's Child :-P:-P

I really got so frustrated with that one that I deleted it from my goodreads shelf for a while! :P

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne...was the book I started reading around 6 years back, gave it up then, picket it again around 3 years back and its still in "Currently reading" phase :P
nowadays am facing Lolita as the challenge.....have been months that I started it.....but somehow I am unable to finish it.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai...I know it's not that 'huge' or difficult...but at the time I read it, maybe in 7th, I couldn't make heads or tails of it...it didn't make any sense and it was too tough! Hope to read it some day again...It was even tougher than the few 'chunksters' I've read...

Misha wrote: "Shilpa... I'm sitting with Rushdie's Children for almost a month now :-D:-D:-P"

a month is not that long mish :P :P :P

War and Peace

The girl who loved Tom Gordon ..

Either I sleep often while reading it or the story is going nowhere ..I dont know ..

It was a nasty read for me

Iniya wrote: "Misha wrote: "Shilpa... I'm sitting with Rushdie's Children for almost a month now :-D:-D:-P"

a month is not that long mish :P :P :P"

*feels relieved that i can spend some more time with it* :P:P:P

The most difficult book for me to read was misery by stephen king and also the one i am reading currently (a game of thrones) but both were and are not difficult but a game thrones is a very long story with a lot of characters, and misery was the most boring book i have ever read.

And also the one i have put down to complete some other books then i will read it again from the chapter i have left it with, Harry potter and the order of the phoenix :-D

A Tale of Two Cities. The old English is hard to follow. It is the type of book that made reading guides popular.
I started it and got in about 20 pages and then put it down. I still haven't removed it from my To Read list!!

Journey to the centre of the earth
not like I tried to read it many times
I abandoned it after one sitting :\
maybe I should try again

"hobbit" was very challenging.
never read past half of it

My hardest was probably The Arabian Nights Entertainments. I couldn't finish it.

Midnight's Children for me too...i just finally finished it...had to do it for lit....*shudders*

Two books I started reading because they were 'greats of 20th century literature' - Ulysses by James Joyce and The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. Gave up on both after about 50 pages. Just found them tedious and I didn't care to know any more about the characters.

Ulysses by James Joyce... The book keeps staring at me from my bookshelf and yet I can't gather enough courage to pick it up.. :(
Maybe sometime next year :)

The Silent House by Orhan Pamuk. I had a period when I thought it was a good idea to read some Nobel Winners and I began with Mr Pamuk. I Think one part of the book was 19 pages long without any comma, pause or point. Just one long sentence that lasted 19 pages... that was tough to read! Really boring and the languagelover in me felt really bad about it!

The girl with the dragon tattoo. I have tried a couple of times but just can't get into it,

The Bible. By far that book is the toughest book for me to read and I still can't do it.

Emiliee wrote: "The girl with the dragon tattoo. I have tried a couple of times but just can't get into it,"

I'm reading it currently....:))

Jane Eyre. I like the story but for some reason I've never been able to finish it.

Ruchi, let me know how it goes. :)

Emiliee wrote: "Ruchi, let me know how it goes. :)"

Okay!

Lolita! I like it but it's kinda hard to read because of the subject, but it is very interesting.

The Egyptian by Mika Waltari. I just can't seem to finnish that darn book. It's too boring, too long... too something. I don't know, ugh.

Not one, but a few...
One Hundred Years of Solitude

My Name is Red

The above two I completed with sheer grit and determination. But if you ask me a synopsis, I would be unable to do justice...

Catch-22- never could complete

Smitha wrote: "Not one, but a few...
One Hundred Years of Solitude

My Name is Red

The above two I completed with sheer grit and determination. But if you ask me a synopsis, I would be una..."

Don't give up on Catch-22.. It's kinda boring for the first few chapters but it turns out to be absolutely hilarious. Yossarian is one of the funniest characters ever..

a few others have told the same :-)

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen...I couldn't really sync in with the ideology of Catherine & took a long time to finish it.

I can think of 3 different "challenging" books and all of them I have yet to finish and barely even started: The Bible, The Iliad, and Wuthering Heights. I find them challenging for different reasons but I'm not giving up on them yet. ;)

Brendan I'm reading it now for summer reading. Actually I'm supposed to be reading it now

the devil wears prada.....i had to start reading it from the beginning for like five times because i couldn't muster the courage to go past the sixth chapter. it definitely is the most challenging book i have ever read

@Marina-i second you. i have not been able to finish wuthering heights till date

Jyotsana wrote: "the devil wears prada.....i had to start reading it from the beginning for like five times because i couldn't muster the courage to go past the sixth chapter. it definitely is the most challenging ..."

I disliked that book so much...ughh...

If this thread meant for creating a deadline for finishing a book (as a challenge), mostly one focuses on its completion, while focusing on page numbers more than its contents; automatically loses intimacy with the book, it all becomes futile to begin with. (May sound corny but) Reading books are like having love affairs, should be treated like one...

Have never completed any 'reading challenges' whatsoever. (Even if I'm 'that' close).. Evidently, I find the lack of satisfaction, somewhat more satisfying hehe

If this thread meant for the toughness of the contents of a book; Reckon the toughest challenges were for me was reading some 10-15 books and couldn't finish those affairs, far from having dreams about them lol..
Maybe, just maybe, I was/am not old enough for them. So, saving for later!
(from the top of my head..)

5 - Absalom, Absalom! (Ah, nope!)
4 - Finnegans Wake (This one lost me big time!)
3 - 2666 (At it again)
2 - The Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the Universe (Read it ~4 years back...but dunno if I'm done with it, twas successfully confuzzled the proverbial crap out of me)

#1 - (Me Runs-n-hides, hehe I like math but not the comprehensive scrutiny of its entire History! Felt like R.Langdon while deciphering some of the ratiocination behind theorems, induced hypothesis, contradictions etc through Mr. Hawking's notes. Anyways was ~300 pages down, saved it for later and the later may come sooner!