Which is the toughest book you have read?

Submitted by LuckElectronic t3_10kb62i in books

I tried to read Stefan Zweig after New Year's Eve for the first time and it hit me hard, I wasn't expecting at all that. I read "The Royal Game" where we learned a chess player got totally broken by Nazism. The edition I read, they spoke about how it was Zweig last book just before his suicide...

For a couple of days I didn't feel well at all because of that book. Some days after I just thought about which books pushed me to feeling bad. I don't mean that they are bad books, rather the contrary, i.e., that literature can also treat those dark sides of human nature. I can only remember of another book that put me in the same state of mind: Kafka's The Castle. It's funny but only german speaking authors have put me in such state. Not that I'm particularly fond of this kind of writing, but having said that:

Which is the toughest book you've read and why?

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pohovanatikvica t1_j5pq1rs wrote

Ulysses by James Joyce, at least for me it kinda was a bit difficult.

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LuckElectronic OP t1_j5puy67 wrote

Sorry I wasn’t that clear: I wasn’t taking about difficult books. I meant books that hit hard and put us in a deep depressed mood.

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chortlingabacus t1_j5qrd0p wrote

No need to apologise. You were perfectly clear. A few replies are from people who read your OP in too much haste, and that's hardly your fault.

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AgeofSmiles t1_j5pkubo wrote

Blood Meridian was very hard to read. Not because of the overwhelming amount of violence, I actually liked that.

But the language is on another level. I thought my english was pretty good but the poetic style really challenged me.

One of the greatest books I've read so far.

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brokenwolf t1_j5qf4qn wrote

This is my pick as well. It's just the densest read ive ever attempted and I didn't come close to absorbing it all when I read it.

I'm looking forward to revisiting it later in life though.

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Bubbagumpredditor t1_j5pu7zv wrote

Umberto eco focoults pendulum. Great book, just hurt my brain

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530SSState t1_j5pvr2f wrote

MAUS by Art Spiegelman, which details his father's experiences in the camps during the Holocaust.

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NoContextArcticFish t1_j5rrq3d wrote

Lolita. Every five pages it made me so angry because the POV character is such a horrible manipulator that I had to put it down and do breathing exercises. But it's such a masterful example of an unreliable narrator and the prose is so beautiful that I couldn't help but finish it.

It's probably the best book I've ever read and will never read again due to the animal rage it elicits within me.

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Tankstravaganza t1_j5pontk wrote

Maybe not difficult, but one I struggled with recently is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Too much spy lingo/slang, whatever you call it, I couldn't follow what was actually going on in the story. I had to DNF. I would like to read some le Carré, so maybe I'll try somewhere else to start.

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Albert_Feynman t1_j5qi1w2 wrote

Talking about books that hit you hard and make you feel depressed, look no further than The Book of Despair, by Fernando Pessoa. No other book that I know of goes even closer to that one, at least for me. It it greatly written, but I couldn't finish it, because it wasnt good for my mental health at the time.

EDIT: I've seen that they translated it into English as The Book of Disquiet.

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Nenechihusband t1_j5qoohx wrote

Norwegian Wood fucked me up for awhile.

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TreyRyan3 t1_j5qpnho wrote

I once read an article about how “The Velveteen Rabbit”, a beloved children’s book hits people left behind from suicide extremely hard. If you’ve ever been close to sufferers of depression it can be extremely difficult as well.

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AtraMikaDelia t1_j5pl88v wrote

Grey Steel and Blue Water Navy

Supposedly a book looking at the creation of the American military-industrial complex by covering the creation of the modern military shipbuilding industry. By itself that seems like a relatively dry topic, but I really think there's interesting things to be looked at there.

Instead it just kept going into incredible detail on the specifics of various contracts, spending so much time on details that just seemed entirely irrelevant. Like, the overall process of selecting contractors for the Navy does interest me. But the book just kept going into absurdly specific levels of detail on certain contracts, contractors, and requirements. X contractor could only make steel plates of Y size, but that was too small for Z ships, so Congress put off expanding the Navy for a year, and then next year they set a deal up with contractor A who could make steel armor of B thickness in the correct size, etc.

I don't know, maybe it was just written for people who are more nerdy than I am, but regardless I found it incredibly boring.

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SkyOfFallingWater t1_j5pnq2u wrote

Weirdly enough the first book I thought of was "The Royal Game" by Stefan Zweig.

But two others come to mind as well:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (though for me the movie was even darker)

Young Gerber by Friedrich Torberg (now that I think about it this is probably my definite answer, but I don't know if it would still have that effect on me because it might have just been due to the time I read it in... then again, I think it would still be devastating)

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LuckElectronic OP t1_j5porkw wrote

What’s the young gerber about?

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SkyOfFallingWater t1_j5ptyy9 wrote

It follows the student Kurt Gerber as he's approaching the final exams at his school. He's basically disoriented, depressed and well, you know... the typical stuff lots of young people deal with. It also talks about oppressive authority from the teachers and the ending is unfortunate and devastating.

It was published when Torberg was only 22 years old. He was inspired by his own experiences and the fact, that there were a lot of student suicides in the year 1929 (in Austria I'm guessing).

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tresfaim t1_j5qayj0 wrote

I remember The Sound and the Fury as hard to read when I was younger, but I haven't revisited it as an adult

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FarSeaworthiness3322 t1_j5sj0vm wrote

Kite Runner, Homegoing (some chapters), Secret Daughter, and Long Bright River were some of the hardest reads for me!

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McGilla_Gorilla t1_j5pjbjd wrote

The Tunnel by William Gass really challenges you to wrestle with what makes an individual evil, sort of how the everyday unfairnesses of life can create a hateful ideology. It’s also at times challenging prose so it’s “tough” in that sense as well.

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crzhaiti t1_j5pjz6u wrote

No One Like Him by Feinberg.

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PBYACE t1_j5pqr66 wrote

Both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Gave up part way through both and just read the Wikipedia entry.

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ViolaNguyen t1_j5pujr0 wrote

Assuming we're not counting non-fiction here....

(Otherwise the winner would be a textbook that I guarantee no one here cares about.)

I'll go with Mason & Dixon. It's a difficult read and it's also by far the best book of the 1990s, in my opinion.

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sjsmac t1_j5q52te wrote

M&D was a walk in the park compared with Gravity's Rainbow, though!

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creeph t1_j5qadd9 wrote

Rothschild's Violin by Anton Chekhov. It's short story but it cut me to the heart and immersed me into the great grief. Sometimes I read it again and still feel the same way. Another similar one is The dead by James Joyce.

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cAt_S0fa t1_j5qdjz8 wrote

Stefan Zweig's writing is truly beautiful but it is also heartbreakingly sad. If you read his autobiography it explains so well why his writing is so sad. He really cared about people and his beloved Europe. Seeing it ripped to pieces by war, economic collapse and the rise of Nazism utterly destroyed him.

Some of W Somerset Maugham's work is just as hard to read. His short story The Unconquered is really hard to get through.

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Blue_Tomb t1_j5qkdiv wrote

Geek Love was like that for me. Remarkably imagined and strikingly told, but when things go south, they get hard. Whole concept is twisted of course and we know early on something bad is going to happen, but early on things are bright, they're intriguing, they're fun, they get you really locked in, and then...

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Jbob9954 t1_j5qkxa5 wrote

“Know my name” by chanel miller was quite tough to get through, as you might imagine. There were multiple points where I needed to take a break just to rest emotionally

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Ambitious_Frosting_9 t1_j5qneyv wrote

Honestly light from uncommon stars as I was reading it early in my transition.

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MoochoMaas t1_j5qnfju wrote

Finnegan's Wake was by far the most difficult.
Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow a distant second/third.

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GrudaAplam t1_j5qprjy wrote

Being and Nothingness probably because I was reading it during my daily commute to/from work.

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Dependent_Company_92 t1_j5qsfje wrote

Game of thrones. It's just politics with 1000 characters you have a really hard time keeping up with. I'm almost done with the series and I had to put it down.

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mintbrownie t1_j5r00ci wrote

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward just slapped you in the face over and over with highly emotional and upsetting things. And yet it’s absolutely beautiful writing and an amazing read (as are her other books that also get difficult, but this was the hardest for me).

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ri-mackin t1_j5r2n2r wrote

I read a book about rocks and other solids. It was hard.

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Grace_Omega t1_j5r8bck wrote

Probably The Discomfort Of Evening, for kind of a silly reason: I’m really squeamish about bodily fluids of all kinds, and this book really likes bodily fluids and also things that look, feel or taste like bodily fluids

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DarthDregan t1_j5r8xpa wrote

Nothing so far. I have PTSD from violent happenings in my childhood so I don't react the way normal people do. I tend to like when the difficult is done well. Makes it feel like I'm less alone.

If it's difficult just to be difficult it turns me off. Stop caring and stop reading.

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lucia-pacciola t1_j5r9esb wrote

My parents had The Gulag Archipelago, by Alzexander Solzhenitsyn, on the shelf. At sixteen I pulled it down and read it through, both volumes, cover to cover.

My parents were worried that it would send me into a depressive spiral. This was probably a valid concern, but for some reason it didn't. Instead, I felt saddened, but also in a strange way uplifted. Like I'd borne witness to something that more people should know about and remember.

So nowadays I feel like everyone should read at least one book in their life, that calls them to bear witness to man's capacity for inhumanity.

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Ed_Kelley t1_j5rnttw wrote

For the reason you meant: Freakonomics. It really opens your mind to a few things that people still debate over. For the reason you don’t mean: cant hurt me by david goggins. I have never read such hilariously awful shit in all my life. It’s weirdly frequently suggested and it baffles me.

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fruitcupkoo t1_j5soe5u wrote

i've read many emotional and violent or tragic books but on earth we're briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong sticks out, probably bc such a bleak story was written so beautifully.

also i think abt the part about veal at least once a week so

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cowardguys t1_j5t1g6q wrote

Yeah I’m having a hard time emotionally with American Psycho. Not surprised though. I flew through more than 100 pages Monday night and then yesterday got to the part about the homeless guy and I only read about 25 pages all day yesterday and I haven’t picked it up at all yet today.
1984 is on my list of books to read soon.

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tohava t1_j5tlc0l wrote

Michael Kohlhaas, original German version, written at the 19th century with fake 16th century German on purpose

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ok_lemonpop t1_j5u6ywz wrote

Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma. I read this book four years ago and don’t remember my exact feelings on it, but I did love it. It was definitely a “forbidden” topic that I thought the author portrayed very well. It might be due for a re-read to see if my feelings about it are the same.

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chummybuckett t1_j5ujgak wrote

I love Sylvia Plath and I love the Bell Jar, but reading it always puts me in a really weird place. It's all just way too uncomfortably relatable for me.

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Radiant-Signature879 t1_j5wy1tj wrote

The Power of the Dog series by Don Winslow. It was a tough read for me because it felt more like nonfiction than fiction, and the violence in it was extraordinary. I didn’t finish the third book.

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Janelle_1809 t1_j5yrjza wrote

  1. The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was arrested because he criticised Stalin. it was just hard reading in what awful conditions people were living in these camps.
  2. War and Peace - Tolstoy. I think it doesn’t need any explanation 😂 story is pretty dense, four books, sometimes it’s just boring
    Andrei Bolkonsky is crush and love, but after Tolstoy kills him , I just stopped reading
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conservio t1_j60kr52 wrote

Really depends on what you mean by “toughest”.

For me, it would be The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I was doing a buddy read with a coworker and it was incredibly boring. I could only read it in 70 page chunks before I’d doze off.

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arcoiris2 t1_j6as481 wrote

Brothers Karamazov

The Glass Bead Game

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dawgfan19881 t1_j5prwkd wrote

Gardens of the Moon. Steven Erickson.

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70ishwpm t1_j5qtzcn wrote

One fish two fish red fish blue fish, such big words

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chenu124421 t1_j5pidkh wrote

Dune Only read 15 pages and then drop it Shesssh

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LuckElectronic OP t1_j5pj349 wrote

Why? What’s so tough about it?

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mooimafish33 t1_j5pshve wrote

It has tons of sci-fi gibberish all the time. Once you catch on the book isn't that hard to follow, but the beginning is pretty rough.

I think the appendix in the back has like 100+ made up terms

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