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?)
