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What is the most convoluted, opaque, impenetrable book you ever read?
Blind Eye Jones

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?


TOPICS: Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: books; zenandtheartofmotorc
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To: bkepley; SE Mom

I cannot with any truth say that books like "Ethan Frome", "The Good Earth", or "Great Expectations" focused my mind.

That last one almost turned me off Dickens forever, which would have been a damn shame and I'm lucky my mother talked me into giving "The Pickwick Papers" a shot.


281 posted on 03/10/2007 7:59:56 AM PST by Xenalyte (Anything is possible when you don't understand how anything happens.)
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To: ansel12
Earth in the Balance. Yup. Virtually indistingushable from the ramblings of Ted Kaczynski.

Gore-Unibomber Quiz

282 posted on 03/10/2007 8:01:37 AM PST by null and void ("If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." - Charles F. Kettering)
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To: Irish Rose

But your login name, is wonderful. Greetings from an O'Malley.



From Answers.com

http://www.answers.com/topic/grace-o-malley


If our women are as tough as Grace O'Malley, our enemies are doomed.

http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/eire/orosedob.htm


Hail O bereaved woman
It was our sorrow you being in fetters
Your fine heritage in the possession of robbers
And you held by the foreigners!
Chorus:
Oh welcome home,
Oh welcome home,
Oh welcome home,
Now at the coming of summer.
Grace O'Malley is coming over the sea
Armed young men with her as guards
Gaels themselves not French nor Spaniards
And they will put a hurt on Foreigners (Brits).
Chorus:

Thanks to the King of Miracles that I see,
Even if my life ends in but a week,
Grace O'Malley and a thousand volunteers
Proclaiming the scattering of the Foreigners
Chorus:





283 posted on 03/10/2007 8:01:47 AM PST by Kevmo (Duncan Hunter just needs one Rudy G Campaign Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVBtPIrEleM)
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To: Blind Eye Jones

Raintree County, Hands Down; the author committed suicide after the galleys came back.


284 posted on 03/10/2007 8:01:56 AM PST by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Blind Eye Jones

Dosteovsky boring ass books. But I'll try again!!!


285 posted on 03/10/2007 8:03:04 AM PST by Porterville (Bullies love Peace and the Peaceful fight Wars.)
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To: goldstategop
I'd have to give the vote to Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Funny you pointed that one out, because I was going to say Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell, which is about just that.

I had to force myself to finish Rule of Four, hoping it would get better - and it never did.

286 posted on 03/10/2007 8:05:30 AM PST by Mannaggia l'America
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To: Blind Eye Jones

2nd nomination goes to Portnoy's Complaint; here the author spends a month of the reader's time leading him through the mire and the muck that adolescent sexual self-mutilation wallows in, more, I think as a sly attempt to poke fun at the permissive, self-absorbed society of his time which still echoes in every teenager's bedroom.


287 posted on 03/10/2007 8:05:46 AM PST by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: MarkL

I've seen the book at book stores. The name seems even boring.


288 posted on 03/10/2007 8:05:50 AM PST by Porterville (Bullies love Peace and the Peaceful fight Wars.)
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To: fish hawk
"The Book of Love: understanding women". I wrote it my self and still don't get it.

Send me a copy?

289 posted on 03/10/2007 8:08:02 AM PST by null and void ("If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." - Charles F. Kettering)
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To: OwenKellogg

Had he only quit with the prologue; the imagery there remains with me now, 50 years later.


290 posted on 03/10/2007 8:08:51 AM PST by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: bkepley
Hi, bkepley:


Wolfe is a social critic who uses fiction.

Kinda gathered that. Which might explain why "Bonfire of the Vanities" was such a great novel critiquing New York Liberalism evolved into such a convolutedly bad Hollywood disaster.


Jack.
291 posted on 03/10/2007 8:09:17 AM PST by Jack Deth (Knight Errant and Resident FReeper Kitty Poem /Haiku Guy)
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To: sully777

It's all about bones. And skin. And the children of Israel coming together. And the spirit being breathed into them. And UFOs. Or at least wheels within wheels. What's so impenetrable about that? ;-)


292 posted on 03/10/2007 8:10:43 AM PST by Kevmo (Duncan Hunter just needs one Rudy G Campaign Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVBtPIrEleM)
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To: Victoria_R

AMEN and April 15th looms


293 posted on 03/10/2007 8:12:38 AM PST by pcpa
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To: Savage Beast

I never knew that sharks had such magnificent tails...


294 posted on 03/10/2007 8:12:49 AM PST by null and void ("If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." - Charles F. Kettering)
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To: Gamecock
The Book of Mormon followed by the Koran You forgot Dianetics by L.Ron Hubbard!
295 posted on 03/10/2007 8:13:24 AM PST by ABN 505
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To: MarkL
"Babbit," by Sinclair Lewis. Mind-numbingly boring!

That's a big 10-4 good buddy!

Although I didn't find it quite that exciting...

296 posted on 03/10/2007 8:15:35 AM PST by null and void ("If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." - Charles F. Kettering)
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To: Blind Eye Jones
William S. Burrough's Naked Lunch Here is an exerpt:

"The Rube has a sincere little boy look, burns through him like blue neon. That one stepped right off a Sator-day Evening Post cover with a string of bullheads, and preserved himself in junk. His marks never beef and the Bunko people are really carrying a needle for the Rube. One day Little Boy Blue starts to slip, and what crawls out would make an ambulance attendant puke. The Rube flips in the end, running through empty automats and subway stations, screaming: "Come back, kid! Come back!", and follows his boy right into the East River, down through condoms and orange peels, mosaic of floating newspapers, down into the silent black ooze with gangsters in concrete, and pistols pounded Hat to avoid the probing finger of prurient ballistic experts."

297 posted on 03/10/2007 8:15:57 AM PST by jonrick46
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To: Blind Eye Jones
The End Of Certainty, by Ilya Prigogine
298 posted on 03/10/2007 8:18:02 AM PST by MHGinTN (If you've had life support. Promote life support for others.)
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To: Xenalyte
I could not for the life of me figure out why Salman Rushdie was in so much trouble.

Now that you understand møøslimbs better, is it clear why he's in Dutch with them?

299 posted on 03/10/2007 8:20:23 AM PST by null and void ("If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong." - Charles F. Kettering)
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To: Cyclopean Squid

Time the reading of this description of the motion of a second hand on a typical wall clock:

It was a clock. The kind of clock that hangs on every schoolroom wall; the nemesis of both student and teacher alike and it was imposing and large.

The second hand was master of all; its ponderous pause between each precious, passing moment lasting longer and longer each minute as it pushed the stubborn minute hand forward but one degree on that huge wheel that ground so slowly toward freedom.

God, how I hated that clock...


300 posted on 03/10/2007 8:20:24 AM PST by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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