Booking Through Thursdays. Wake Up!

This week’s prompt:

What’s the hardest/most challenging book you’ve ever read? Was it worth the effort? Did you read it by choice or was it an assignment/obligation?

Didn’t have to think hard about this one — it was James Joyce’s Ulysses.

And I read it by accident.

I read voraciously as a kid, and it must have been summer, because it was mostly during the summer that I used to mine the Oxford town library for things to read.

And I ended up taking home this enormous book, probably because the title seemed vaguely familiar . . . and yes, I read it. Every word.

I couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13.

I had no idea what it was about. lol

I should probably re-read it . . .

(Side note — it just occurred to me —Finnegans Wake (koff) is one of those books where you don’t have to say the author’s name . . . like War and Peace or The Great Gatsby or Moby Dick . . . I wonder if there are any books written in the last 20 years that are that much a part of the lexicon?)

6 thoughts on “Booking Through Thursdays. Wake Up!

  1. I’ve heard Finnegan’s Wake is supposed to be one of the hardest books to read, and ditto for Ulysses. I think there are a couple of books from the last twenty years that don’t need the author’s name – like Harry Potter and Twilight, but that could be down to the movies.

    My BTT is here if you’d like a look :)

  2. Not read either book you listed but I have to agree with Claire on unneeded author names… Harry Potter and Twilight would be on the list. I read Potter before it was cool, lol.

    Here’s my BTT – House Millar series

    Aine

  3. @Claire, Harry Potter for sure!

    @Valentina — to be clear, I “read” it but I had no idea what was going on…nowhere near the literary chops at the time.

    I actually thought of another book that was probably harder, though — in college I read Rayuela (Hopscotch) by Julio Cortazar — in Spanish! Experimental fiction in your 2nd language — now that was a struggle.

    I own a copy in English but have never picked it up . . . really should. Oh, to have more time to read!

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