What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc) (2 Viewers)

[chicky_pie]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

THE BIBLE.


srzy.

Same here.

 

[lsam]

Qu'ran.

 

[aussiechick007]

ah yes, as people have mentioned, the physics notes! oh my! i do it by distance so theres ALOT!!

 

[Silver Persian]

Hands down -----> Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Bright guy, but a terrible writer. I only made it about 20 pages after reading the introduction before I gave up. The ideas are complex enough without having to deal with paragraph length sentences the whole time. His sentences have the nested story structure of 1001 Arabian Nights. For example:

"The same is the case with the internal intuition, not only because, in the internal intuition, the representation of the external senses constitutes the material with which the mind is occupied; but because time, in which we place, and which itself antecedes the consciousness of, these representations in experience, and which, as the formal condition of the mode according to which objects are placed in the mind, lies at the foundation of them, contains relations of the successive, the co-existant, and of that which always must be co-existent with succession, the permanent."

Fuck Kant (Edit: or, in all fairness to Kant, fuck the translator).

God yes. Kant's categorical imperative is way better explained in wikipedia than the Metaphysicis of Morals.

Also, there is a book called Simians, Cyborgs and something or other by Donna Haraway which is pretty god damn awful

 

[KFunk]

I thought I'd post this for fun - I read a passage from Introduction to Metaphysics by Heidegger today which made me chuckle. Note the amusingly complex noun "attaining-the-ground-by-leaping":

Writing on the question 'why ask 'why is there something rather than nothing?'?' (a.k.a. 'Why the why?') Heidegger writes:

"Then we discover that this distinctive why-question has its ground in a leap by which human beings leap away from all the previous safety of their Dasein, be it genuine or presumed. The asking of this question happens only in the leap and as the leap, and otherwise not at all. Later, we will clarify what we mean here by "leap". Our questioning is not yet the leap; for that, it must first be transformed; it still stands, unknowing, in the face of beings. For now, let this comment suffice: the leap <Sprung> of this questioning attains its own ground by leaping, performs it in leaping <er-springt, springend erwirkt>. According to the genuine meaning of the world, we call such a leap that attains itself as ground by leaping an orginary leap <Ur-sprung>: an attaining-the-ground-by-leaping. Because the question "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?" attains the ground for all genuine questioning by leaping and is thus an originary leap, we must recognise it as the most originary <ursprunglich> of questions."

 

[Slidey]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

Hands down -----> Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Bright guy, but a terrible writer. I only made it about 20 pages after reading the introduction before I gave up. The ideas are complex enough without having to deal with paragraph length sentences the whole time. His sentences have the nested story structure of 1001 Arabian Nights. For example:

"The same is the case with the internal intuition, not only because, in the internal intuition, the representation of the external senses constitutes the material with which the mind is occupied; but because time, in which we place, and which itself antecedes the consciousness of, these representations in experience, and which, as the formal condition of the mode according to which objects are placed in the mind, lies at the foundation of them, contains relations of the successive, the co-existant, and of that which always must be co-existent with succession, the permanent."

Fuck Kant (Edit: or, in all fairness to Kant, fuck the translator).

Holy Jesus. And hear I was planning to read Kant's work next trip to the book shop.

 

[DownInFlames]

A book that I borrowed from my sister that she assured me was an excellent read... but I couldn't get past the first page due to its extreme shitness in writing style.

I also tried to read 'A Clockwork Orange' once but I couldn't understand a lot of it because of the slang, so I didn't get too far. Maybe one day...

And like Exphate, the Bible (the early bits that go on for pages and pages about a person's lineage, anyway.)

 

[efhat]

Emma by jane austen.......ahhh i could kill whover came up with that stupid old english language

 

[scarybunny]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

Immanuel Kant was a real piss ant who was very rarely stable
Heidegger Heidegger was a boozy little beggar who could drink you under the table

 

[nerdsforever]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

omg. OSCAR AND LUCINDA. its sooo boring................. its apparantely about love. Im half way through the book and the two lovers havent even met yet! i hate english. stupid english faculty. I ditched the book so yeh...

 

[u-borat]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

Gene Wolfe along with any pre-modern authors are usually quite hard to read.
I found Worm Ouroburos almost indeciperable.

 

[grundo]

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad for Extension English. Grrrrrr

 

[Lies Assassin]

Moby Dick, it wasn't the language that was difficult it was just really boring. Don't get me wrong the plot was fantastic but there was only a little bit of plot and the rest was all detailed descriptions of whaling. For example there are entire chapters devoted entirely to describing the atomical structures of whales and you have to get over halfway into the book before you learn about Moby Dick let alone see him.

 

[midifile]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad for Extension English. Grrrrrr

OMG! So fucking painful! How someone could write an entire book about going down a river I will never know

 

[u-borat]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

OMG! So fucking painful! How someone could write an entire book about going down a river I will never know

QFT.

That text was complete and utter fail; such that I couldn't bring myself to read it, and thus completely messed up a contextual point in my essay.

I blame Sparknotes for that one.

 

[midifile]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

QFT.

That text was complete and utter fail; such that I couldn't bring myself to read it, and thus completely messed up a contextual point in my essay.

I blame Sparknotes for that one.

Lol. That book was one of the reasons I dropped english extention even though I came first in it. The other reason was copenhagen which would have to be the worst play ever.

I was one of the two people in my class who actually read the book, which is probably one of the reasons I did well in english ext coz everyone else just used sparknotes like you

 

[nerdsforever]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

apparantely, most of our English faculty teachers reckons there stupid books like Oscar and Lucinda and other Moby Dick stuff are interesting. Its their favourite books.

 

[Rhanoct]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

Heart of Darkness was pretty difficult to understand at first, but, damn, it's a fucking amazing book.

Right now Dune is pretty difficult to read, not because it's hard, just that SCIFI IS SO DAMN BAD O________O

 

[withoutaface]

Re: What's the most difficult book you've ever read (or tried to)? (Lacan, Joyce, etc

Heart of Darkness was pretty difficult to understand at first, but, damn, it's a fucking amazing book.

Right now Dune is pretty difficult to read, not because it's hard, just that SCIFI IS SO DAMN BAD O________O

Or maybe you're just shit

 

[GET FREE]

Catch-22 by I can't remember who. Not because it was actually heavy reading or anything, jsut I couldn't keep up with all of the characters and their backgrounds. It was insane. I gave up pretty close to the beginning.

I also tried the Hobbit and that was intensely boring. As was its parody, the Soddit, I didn't finish that one either.