1. Anything by Saul Bellow - A cure for insomnia
2. Anything by Malmund - Sheer torture.
3. Proust - Is he better in french?
4. Kant's - Critique of pure reason. Couldn't decide whether the man was a genius talking about stuff I couldn't understand or just a windbag incapable of writing clearly. Stopped reading after about 50 pages.
As for Joyce and Moby Dick. I got "Ulysses" and "Moby Dick" on Books on tape and enjoyed both of them. Listening -as opposed to reading them - made me realize what great books they are.
Well, he does tend to go on for too long. He's another novelist whose real talent is for the essay or the sermon. But it was good to find a writer who wrote about the America that we (more or less) live in, and did so without scorn or abuse. That goes pretty far in making up whatever faults Bellow has.