Posted on 03/09/2007 11:22:35 PM PST by Blind Eye Jones
What is the most convoluted, opaque, impenetrable book you ever read?
I must disagree! Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is on my all-time top ten list. Of course, the author had a mental breakdown earlier (which is what led to the book and is one of the story arcs) so maybe that adds to it's difficulty.
I still think it is a masterpiece, and re-read it every few years. It is three story lines interwoven, and I always catch something new.
Read it. Fiction though it is, it is a history of the times that were and that threaten to yet engulf us. It is not convoluted but it is long.
Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
I was totally fascinated by Moby Dick and was frustrated that it seemed so short. I hated it when I was 12 but at 34 it was a different case. It is the only book I ever read that truly made me feel the time and place and the action.
Huh ?
Keynes is not intelligent enough to be convoluted. Theory Of Money&c. is simply nonsensical. I read, nay, studied that book and kept getting caught up in the self contradictions and inconsistencies throughout.
Can we nominate one of Clinton's SOTU Addresses?
See Spot run. Run Spot run. Run run run.
Anything Gurdjieff, particularly "Life is real then, only when I am.." followed closely by "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson".
Green Eggs and Ham
fun thread idea!
Tops for me is Ulysses, no question. I finished the whole thing, it became a challenge like climbing a mountain just so I could, but I didn't understand much about it other than it's set in Dublin and the guy's wife masturbates at the end.
Atlas Shrugged was pretty bad. I made the mistake of reading it in the dead of winter shortly after being dumped. Once again, I finished the whole thing just so I could say I did - I hate not finishing novels, even cruddy ones.
Anything by Heidegger or Hegel. These guys make Kant look like airplane reading.
My copy is falling apart now. I have turned the pages too many times.
The Tax Code
Not that it isn't good in parts, but convoluted, definitely.
If you were going to pick the "most boring" book, I'd have to put Atlas Shrugged right up there in the pantheon of boring books.
Ms. Rand said what she had to say in the first chapter and then repeated it over and over for 400 pages. Eventually, I shrugged too and put it down.
Oy! Talk about overrated. Self-indulgent blovation.
Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"
I probably only actually comprehend 10-20% of what's written. In addition, I pick up frequent sporadic fragments which are creatively stimulating on their own.
Even the writers don't understand it.
Silas Marner. Not so much impenetrable as boring. I had to read it in high school English.
Let me preface the next part by saying I read 2-3 books a week--everything from archeology to history to all kinds of fiction. (well, maybe not chick fiction)so I really love books.
But when I go to a book fair and see a copy of Silas Marner, I just flip out. I buy it and tear it to pieces in front of the seller, muttering things like, "You're never gonna prevent some kid from enjoying reading books."
Jonathon Swift - Gulliver's Travels ..for some reason.
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