Kierkegard's Fear and Trembling comes to mind. We had to read 1 chapter and I had to totally rely on my class notes as the book might as well have been written in Greek.
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?
Riveting and breathtaking, even!
I like all of Neal Stephenson, although the Baroque Cycle was a little too long... especially like Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age (title?), Snowcrash.
No, no, no... In King James I's time, that referred to what we term the "heart".
I just started that book and I was hoping it would get better. I guess not!
It's been about 15 years since I last had a go at it... maybe I should try it again...
Shame on you. C.S. Lewis called it a "gossipy, formless book which can be read anywhere" (i.e. open it to any random page and start reading) and used to read it while eating meals.
Cheers!
It did seem interesting as far as being ground-breaking (blank pages, pictures, puzzles, etc.).
Let me know how it goes!
;)
It took a while to get through The Brothers Karamazov but it was worth it. It's easily one the best books I've ever read, if not the best.
Amen to that!
Pirsig's Pursuit of Quality is an expansion on my father's admonition to "never force things".
While my father used the phrase in the mechanical/engineering context, it's essence can be found on many levels.
Ah yes - Science Fiction
I would argue, as I often do, that Neuromancer is more prophesy than SF.
Remember that Gibson wrote this work in 1984.
I am not sure what your interests were in that time frame but I had no vision of surfing the Internet.
Gibson coined the term Cyberspace, and foretold a world that you and I inhabit this morning.
Prophesy.
I recommend this work to everyone who spends any time out on this Matrix that links us all.
Regards
Anything--and I do mean anything--by Noam Chomsky.
My favorite Nietzsche quote:
"One must have chaos in one's life
in order to give birth to a dancing star"
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. Totally incomprehensible.
Kierkegard's Fear and Trembling comes to mind. We had to read 1 chapter and I had to totally rely on my class notes as the book might as well have been written in Greek.
As an adult - "Atlas Shrugged." I've already tried 10 times, and can't get interested enough to get past the first chapter.
The word A Priori comes to mind when you mentioned Kant's Crituqe of Pure Reason.
While reading through many posts, some people have also listed books that they just found really boring. So I'll add one here too.
"Babbit," by Sinclair Lewis. Mind-numbingly boring!
Mark
There was a Motorola book, kind of a users guide, to a small microcontroller that had a DSP embedded. Anyway the book started out normally but as it went on it got more and more unreadable, not due to technical stuff but just incomprehensible english until at the end it was almost useless. It was like the guy was getting drunk as he wrote it. I leared later that the guy who started it was moved off the project and someone else completed the book (Motorola is like that). The guy who finished it must have been a hurry to move on to something else or perhaps he botched it all up as a way to cover up his technical incompetence.
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