The 5 Most Difficult Books Ever! (Fiction) 

I once read the first page of “Finnegan’s Wake” out loud to show someone how absurd it is, but when I got to the “koaxkoax” they said “Wait, isn’t that how the frogs speak in Aristophanes’ ‘The Frogs’.” They were correct. They had identified an allusion, though what it mattered in context remained a mystery.

I read Gravity's Rainbow and I can honestly say the only thing I remember about it is that I finished.

I read Ulysses while living in Dublin. I think you need a knowledge of Dublin and it helps if you’re familiar with Irish music. My friends and I did Bloomsday one year. We hit every pub mentioned in Ulysses, one drink allowed in each pub. By the time the pubs closed, always after the last bus, we staggered home. It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

"The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole Life to reading my works." James Joyce

There is a book club in California that read "Finnegan's Wake". It took them 28 years.

Hegel's "The Phenomenology of Spirit" also deserves a mention.

The Sound and the Fury is a terrific book and well worth the effort to read and comprehend.

I remember loving The Sound and The Fury So Much. Thank you for bringing it up, time for a good old reread

On the other hand, "Dubliners" by James Joyce, a collection of short stories, is very readable and quite good. It's hard to believe it's even the same author as Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.

Once I asked my literature teatcher what was the hardest book he ever tried to read, he said immediatly "Ulysses, I took 6 years to finish and I still dont get it". And just for curiosity, here in Brazil we have a writter called João Guimarães Rosa, who is our James Joyce, he also spoke several lenguages and made a truly masterpiece called "Grande Sertão Veredas", maybe the greatest and hardest brazilian novel.

Great video; of these I’ve only read “Ulysses", but I loved your take on these...uh...classics. Thank you!

Infinite Jest is my favorite novel of all time. My first time through I had never read anything like it before and I was enthralled. Like Gravity's Rainbow, it rewards you the second time through. These authors chopped up the narrative in a way that significant details are presented before sometimes many pages later you are provided a reason to recognize their significance. While overall I enjoyed GR, the obscene scenes in that book are over the top for me. I got most of the way through Ulysses and enjoyed it for the most part, but I had help from an explanatory text that I read at the same time. I appreciated Joyce's experimentation, helping usher in modernist literature. Truly, Ulysses has humor as you say - but so does Infinite Jest, in spades - and Gravity's Rainbow as well. I like works of art that make me think, that don't reveal their mysteries so easily, that I can return to again and again and find new things each time. I am now intrigued to check out Finnegan's Wake.

This was a lucid and well-written survey of difficult books. In graduate school, I spent an entire semester on “Ulysses,” starting by carefully reading Homer’s “The Odyssey.” If you’re reasonably familiar with that classic, Joyce’s cascade of allusions makes more sense. This was pre-internet, so I had to rely on published articles and guidebooks to decipher the multitude of other allusions and languages. It would be easier to solve the puzzles today by using online material. But (as others have pointed out), the real pleasure of reading this difficult book is Joyce’s masterful wordplay, which often is more accessible if read aloud. Doing so definitely increased my appreciation. Joyce’s quip about professors spending their lives on his book has turned out to be so true. As for “Finnegans Wake,” I agree with William Faulkner’s assessment: “This is a case of the artist getting too close to the divine fire and being electrocuted by it!”

My father used to say that Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" was the hardest book he had ever attempted to read. This is a person who read the entire dictionary from start to finish. Multiple times.

Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are both so worth the effort. Actually Joe Campbell co authored a book titled A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake that is very helpful. Thanks for making this video and encouraging us all to keep on reading!!

I LOVE this video, especially the sections on Joyce. Quite apart from the actual content, your delivery is spot on. Difficult as they are, I love 'Ulysses' and' Finnegans Wake'. In comparison with 'Finnegan's Wake', 'Ulysses is fairly straightforward - but to be honest, I read them mainly for the fun of the language.

James Joyce was an author who was designed for audiobooks. I've read Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake twice, the first time in paper and the second time by audio, and the listening experience was so rich and satisfying.

At the high school where I worked, there was a paper bound Finnegan’s Wake in the fiction section. It survived “weeding” by three long serving librarians. I hope it is still there. A librarian’s little joke.

It's "Finnegans" not "Finnegan's." There's a reason why it's written that way.

"The Castle" by Kafka should be on any most-difficult-to-read book list. That novel will most certainly put your patience to the test.

After the first read through, Sound And Fury is not that bad. I have gotten to the point where I can tell where we are and who is telling the story in about any part. The beauty of the writing is what got me through the first read. The writing is intoxicating. It is one of the books that has shaped the way I think about reality since I first read it almost 50 years ago.

5. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace 0:24 4. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon 1:12 3. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner 2:13 2. Ulysses - James Joyce 3:53 1. Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce 5:54

Of all of these, I think _Ulysses_ is the only one I've attempted. I bought it and decided to read it, and probably got 100 pages in. Thank you, thank you!

four easy steps to appreciating Finnegans Wake: 1. Figure out if you appreciate the basic musicality of it, if the sound and vibe of the language alone pleases you. Look up the video of Joyce himself reading the section where washer women are laying out laundry and gossiping. Follow along with the text while he speaks (the video I'm thinking of has a link). You'll get a sense of the bare rhythm of the text and pronunciation wordplay. On the second page Finn McCool is said to have "lived in the broadest way immarginable." Does the idea of a book stuffed with puns like this tickle you? You may be interested. 2. Read everything and anything. Read Joyce's previous books. Read Ellmann's biography of Joyce to get a whole lot of context and analysis you wouldn't otherwise get. Read Samuel Beckett, Joyce's apprentice, who borrows a lot from FW era Joyce but in a far more pared down way (also amazing in his own right). Read some secondaries if you want, like Joseph Campbell's book. Read a bunch about myth and folklore while you're at it, as the themes and story of FW work the way myths do. 3. Get the Oxford edition, not the Penguin. Oxford has a great introductory essay going over the general themes and recurring symbols, as well as a section by section outline of what is actually happening plot-wise in a given set of pages. 4. Read it, enjoying the basic rhythms of the language; don't worry about getting lost so long as you are generally following the outline and recognizing the story beats as they happen while recognizing the thematic point of the language and the story beats. The challenge now will just be connecting your sentence by sentence reading with all of the above; it helps to loosen control and just vibe to it, knowing you have your whole life ahead of you to grind out every minute detail if you want; right now you're just reading it. Read out loud in your worst approximation of an Irish accent. And really that's the

Gravity's Rainbow may be confoundingly difficult in some ways. But I recall parts that were utterly beautiful, and others that were utterly, utterly hilarious. A character looks out over a city at sunrise and sees "crystals growing in the morning's beaker." Some great writing.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski definitely needs an honorable mention.

I definitely see the argument for all of these books. I personally own two of them, and I've been told One Hundred Years of Solitude belongs with them as well. (Which is why it's been on my shelf, untouched, for two years now.)

I began “Ulysses” in high school on a sort of dare from my English literature teacher; I finished it the summer between junior and senior years in university. 😂 . I actually read it again a few years ago while on extended vacation and found it to be much more comprehensible. Speaking of university days, I knew a young woman who was a drama student and she memorized “Molly’s soliloquy” for her MFA performance piece.

I think you should also have mentioned "The waste land" by T.S. Eliott. It is basically a poem-novel featuring time shifts, language shifts, full of literary references both modern and ancient. It is basically Joyce, but in verses.

"The Sound and the Fury" was one of the most amazing reading experiences I had in high school. It remains one of the most important milestones in my life for myriad reasons. I love that exasperating but ingenious deconstruction of the "normal" storytelling process. I'm so glad I stuck with it until the entire picture began to develop like a Polaroid photo. And, yes, I love both Joyce books, too.

Thanks for your detailed review! I'd throw an honorary mention to 'Dhalgren', by Samuel R. Delaney. It's far more understandable than the one's you've listed, but to gain that understanding you have to suffer through some significant psychological torment, including embarrassing and uncomfortable dinner parties in nearly empty housing developments. It borrows from Finnegan's Wake by starting with the last half of a sentence and ending (after perhaps a thousand pages) with the first half of the same sentence. I read it every few years - it is a painful literary masterpiece.

My father rarely spoke of his college days in the engineering school at Stanford. Everything to do with engineering came easy to him, but he also took a required English class that he mentioned more than once over the years. He was so proud to have gotten through "Ulysses"!

I struggled with The Brothers Karamozov. It is not that it's some unreadable thing, but it is difficult ( much more so that Crime and Punishment), and it's just so damn dark. It's worth it in the end, but boy, was that a trudge for me.

After reading one of Stephen Hawking's books, I looked at the 'Further reading" section at the end. It recommended a book by Roger Penrose, which I subsequently bought. It was a lengthy book, and the first sentence in the preface read ( I'll never forget this) - "In order to appreciate the work in this book, it is necessary to have a firm grasp of mathematics, so the first seventeen chapters of this book are dedicated to mathematics". After returning to the store that same day, I pointed this sentence out to the girl who sold me the book...and I had no trouble getting my money back.

Concise and very informative.

In the St Patrick's day parade in Toronto in 2004, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, there was a float celebrating it, followed by groups such as "People That Tried to Read Ulysses"where there were about 100 people marching. Then it was "People That Finished Ulysses" with about 20 people in that group. Then there was the group, "People That Understood Ulysses." There was no one in that group.

I'm currently reading Finnegans Wake, and it is much easier to read than I initially thought. It is pretty much impossible to understand everything thats going on, but if you are willing to go through a few pages without much comprehension, then you'll still be rewarded with a ton of poetic language and very witty puns. It's only as hard as you want it to be, I guess, depending on how deep you want to go.

I would add "Riddley Walker", a post-apocalyptic novel written in a devolved form of English that is difficult to understand at first, but gets easier as you continue to read it...

Very funny, charming, educational, wonderful video. So glad RU-vid showed it to me. That's what I get for joining my library's reading challenge, I guess.

Ulysses and Finnnegans Wake are really worth reading. I never regretted spending two summers reading them.

Somewhere at the bottom of the Baltic Sea lies a copy of "House of Leaves", thrown off a cruise ship by a PHD in biochemistry fully capable of completing and understanding it. He's as green as it gets and still he dispatched it to the deep.

These books are pretty nuts. Remembrances of Lost Time was the most difficulty book I've ever read personally; there's sentences that go on for entire paragraphs.

My BA is in English. Read a lot of stuff just bc it was assigned and would be on the final. Joyce’s “Ulysses” was the only book I ever bought “Clift’s Notes” for. Go through the final. Amen.

Love this so much, Thank you! 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚

I think the key to "read" Finnegans Wake is in what you said about the Sirens chapter of Ulysses. Joyce is not using language to convey meaning, but to convey music, in all its parameters: melody (sentences), harmony (clusters of words), timbre (the different languages, rhythm (word spacing & punctuation), etc. So, the book works more as a symphony, than as a novel. You don't listen to Beethoven's Fifth to rationalize every note that is being plucked, but to submerge in the mass of sounds & flow with the music. That approach to Finnegans Wake make it very enjoyable, in spite of you understanding what is going on (which does not mean that it's utter nonesense, but rather that the motifs are scattered all along the work). It was something not unusual in its time: Kandinski made music with his paintings, Schoenberg was thinking his music in terms of colors, &c. As you said, Joyce is, in his core, very playful, & if you let go with the flow of it, eventually will be able to play with him in the game he's proposing. It's quite intimidating at first, for certain.

On my fourth read-through of Finnegans Wake currently. The first time took about a year with an average of roughly two pages a day. Felt I understand about 20 pages worth of it, but what I did get was stunningly beautiful, a way of linking what things feel like to experience with the abstract concepts and symbols the words represent. The second read-through blew my head off. I've never found so much in a single work to enjoy in any piece of art, not just literature. On the third read-through I compiled my own version of the text out of some of the more poetic and comprehensible passages, which comes in around a hundred pages. For the fourth read-through I'm now supplementing it with the Naxos recording read by Barry McGovern and Marcella Riordan. At this point it's just an endless wormhole of ideas and inspiration. Hope you get into it one day as it's well worth it!

Perfect countdown. I have never been able to get more than 50 pages in to Finnigan’s Wake.

My father, an amateur Joyce scholar, is the only person I've ever met who read "Finnegan's Wake." The best explanation he had for it was [paraphrasing from recollection] "Using as many different words as possible to tell a bit of everything about everything in a way that sounds good when read aloud."

I read Gravities Rainbow. I was astounded at the breadth and depth of his knowledge of WW2 history and facts. I enjoyed it very much. I thought remembrance of things past was much more difficult.

There's no explanation for why I read Gravity's Rainbow the first time. Without a chart of the characters, I was adrift for most of it, even as I was catching hold of some of the better vignettes. The second reading was a revelation as it became as easy as pie to fit not only the characters together, but their organizations as well. Pynchon runs a pretty tight ship. On the third reading I had the pleasure of remembering these small stories within the story, as they were coming up for review. In one of them, the tragedy of an isolated submarine and its skeleton crew sees them "so lonely that their only hope was that they might die of it." Something that could be useful to anyone reading GR would be an index, but who ever heard of that in a novel? Still, if one could look up the entry at Byron The Bulb, the risk of addiction to GR would go way up. It is an intensely humane and ghastly and hilarious story, and so is Gravity's Rainbow. EDIT: The adjectives chosen by the Pulitzer board are an embarrassment; they're finding "unreadable" a book they haven't read. The "turgid" crack reminds me of William Hazlitt's lamentable misfire while criticizing Samuel Johnson: "He always writes on stilts," indicating that William looked into Johnson about as diligently as the board looked into Pynchon.

I’ve read two of the five, and started FW. Ok, I’m a chemist, not a lit. person. But I would love to join your book club!

Brilliant analysis of hard to read books. Thanks. Enjoyed Dubliners. Finnegan's Wake was impossible. Enjoyed James Joyce's Ulysses drama on BBC radio 4.

This may sound a little crazy, but I tried to pour through Joyce's Finnegans Wake a month ago while taking help from my 13-year-old cousin. I seriously took every input he gave, and tried to view each paragraph, heck, each word through that lens. We couldn't get past page one but we did make a couple of fun discoveries on the way 😂😂

Lists like these always make me appreciate the writing of Virginia Woolf, even when she isn't mentioned. Despite how notoriously difficult stream-of-consciousness writing is to read, I have always found Woolf's writing very readable while still having as much substance as anything by Faulkner who is the only other stream-of-consciousness writer I regard at being at her level (I have yet to read Joyce).

I've begun Finnegan's Wake a few times. I haven't made it past page 77. I will. In my retirement I hope to start and finish it. Thanks for your insight. Very helpful!

Oh, I REALLY enjoyed this!

Hegel deserves to be on the list. I haven't read Phenomenology, but I have read Elements of the Philosophy of Right and it felt like an achievement to be able to dissect and analyse it.

Once upon a time, I was tripping on LSD and idly flipped through Ulysses. Up to that point out had been impenetrable. I was not sure that I was really reading what I was reading because it was funny and lucid. Some kind of S&M scene between a husband and wife. So, I bookmarked the page and resolved to look at it again when I was sober. I was astonished that it was definitely there and just as weird and wonderful as it was when I had been tripping.

I love Infinite Jest and have read it 3 times, and it is a very difficult read. Extremely funny, prescient and unique. The footnotes are really part of the book, not afterthoughts. We lost a great one when DFWallace left this life.

My professor supervising my thesis on Samuel Beckett's oeuvre first told me he found it impossible to read Beckett, and then accepted the challenge. Beckett's plays are easy-peasy compared to his trilogy of 'Molloy', 'Malone Dies', and 'The Unnamable', the last one of which was my introduction to his prose, all three of which had an immense impact on my understanding of life/literature. Neither is on my list of the 10 best novels I've ever read, however, because most people find them hard to read, if not incomprehensible.

Here's the key to Finnegan's Wake: read it aloud. You'll be surprised at how much you get when you hear the words spoken.

I took a graduate class that just studied Ulysses. The best way I figured out how to approach it was to first follow along with an audio book, then I read it again while looking at the Gifford Annotations and the Hastings Guide. Then I began to see character motivations, heartbreaking loss, Stephen's entire journey, and I wrote a short screenplay dissecting Molly's "Penelope" episode, and then presented a different paper on why the "Circe" episode was written as a play. Ulysses is my second favorite novel.

I think Finnegan's Wake is to be read as a emotiauctor (yes I just made that up) simply to give emotions and feelings.

Great list and commentary. I did manage to get through Ulysses on the third try, but only by taking two days and reading it straight through. Finnegans Wake lost me around the middle of page 2.

Samuel Beckett's "Trilogy" - Stream of consciousness, but icy and clipped, with that consciousness slowly dissolving throughout. Joyce's protege, but the minimalist to JJ's maximalist. Beautiful prose!

Russel Hoban's novel _Riddley Walker_ deserves mention here. It's written entirely in first person from the title character's viewpoint, but in a hypothetical British dialect of the far distant future. It's definitely a challenging read, though ultimately very rewarding.

I figured House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski would be on this list when you mentioned footnotes within footnotes.

Love your sound affects.

I bailed on Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, and Finnegan's Wake. Life is already too short to read all the books I would like to read. I read Ulysses because it was assigned in an Irish Renaissance class and was glad for the experience. The Sound and the Fury I would not put on the list. I loved how the succeeding narratives filled in the blanks left by Benjy. It remains one of my favorites.

Another thing that makes The Sound And The Fury difficult to read: Two characters have the same name, and it being all stream of consciousness, it is really hard to figure out a) that there are two Quentins, and when you know, b) which Quentin is talked about at the moment.

Before I watched this I knew Joyce would be numbers one & two. Also, I love that you have a copy of Gustav Dore's illustration from Don Quixote on your wall!

This is kind of intriguing me - which of these would you recommend if I were to give one a shot?

I really enjoyed reading Derrida although it's not easy to read full page sentences with heavy footnotes. It was a real mental training to juggle the complex details he includes and relationships between them.♡ Thank you Derrida♡

Melanie, I stumbled upon this video while browsing RU-vid. Your presentation of these books is so enjoyable! Subscribed and eagerly awaiting more content from you. 📚🎉

My first thought when I saw the title of this story was "Gravity's Rainbow". I tried three separate times over ten years. Couldn't make it to that 100-page threshold.

I have read all 5 of these books... I find your evaluations truthful..... 👍👍😉

Both Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest are hilarious. The Sound and the Fury is not as hard as its reputation. Joyce is funny -- and Molly Bloom soliloquy at the end of Ulysses is incredible.

“The Golden Bowl” by Henry James was probably the most difficult novel I read in college. Probably not as difficult as these 5, but it was still very challenging.

Finnegans Wake was also the source of some vocabulary! "Three *quarks* for muster mark" is the origin of the word for subatomic particles that make up protons and neutrons!

As someone who once attempted to read Infinite Jest, I knew it would be on this list. I'm not surprised to see Ulysses, as well - I've never read it, but it was my grandfather's favorite book, and my mother has unsuccessfully attempted to read it several times.

In the scifi world, Samuel Delany's Dhalgren also hops on the postmodern train. A great term for Gravity's Rainbow: "maximalism" - long and complex, digressive. To me, Gravity's Rainbow isn't much different from an epic fantasy, with lots of subplots and characters and flashbacks, and long descriptions of locations, clothing, and food.

A clockwork orange is a particular pain in the ass too

Attempted Finnegans Wake and gave up after one page. Might have to give it another shot sometime. I do sincerely like Faulkner's writing though.

I wrote three books that anyone can understand. I try not to confuse my readers.

I tried reading Gravity's Rainbow one summer, got halfway through and was totally lost. That Xmas my bonus was a big bag of the wacky tabaccy, and I subsequently finished GR in about 3 weeks. It's a blast. Easier to read in the chunky paperback edition than the massive tomes you usually see.

I can't believe you only have a thousand followers! The video quality is so good, and I love the fact that you include subtitles; it's really helpful as an English learner. Great video 💗

You might have mentioned Proust’s multi-volume In Search of Lost Time. I think it’s considerably more difficult than The Sound and the Fury. It’s rewarding, though, if you can manage it.

Can’t forget Bottoms Dream by Arno Schmidt. It’s not only nearly impossible to read but impossible to buy! Its not terribly well known with that being said, it is demanding, long, and complicated.

The Illuminatus Trilogy is hard to read despite being so delicious, but only because it jumps back and forth in time and has a huge cast of characters. They're so much fun to read though, and on re-readings you'll catch many new things each time.

Nice list. I've read and studied 4 out of 5 (Including my university senior thesis on Ulysses, independent study on Gravity's Rainbow, a graduate class on Finnegan's Wake, and The Sound and the Fury just for fun). Infinite Jest is on my short list to read soon.

I thought I'd dislike this video because it would be too subjective. You actually gave a very objective point of view. Bravo!

I only dared to read Ulysses as a single-text university course with a very engaging professor. We were still skimming it, but he really explained not just what was happening in the book as we went, but why it was that way stylistically at any given point. At the end a student asked if Finnegans Wake was a more difficult read, and the teacher scoffed and stared at them, saying "by orders of magnitude." I would add that I found Samuel Beckett's novel trilogy unreadable until I found the audiobooks, and then I was entranced.

Such a great video! We had to read Ulysses for class this semester, and while I found it to be a puzzle, it was quite good! I love Thomas Pynchon, I would highly recommend Mason & Dixon by him

Infinite Jest is like a dimestore pulp novel in complexity compared to The Recognitions or Women and Men. It's actually pretty easy to read for the most part, just really really long. All the others on this list def deserve a space in top difficult books though.

6:48 was Joyce a moderately structural conlanger? Does his language have a consistent grammar?

"Out loud" is the best way to read Finnegans Wake (in my opinion). The pleasure from the sound makes up for the baffling perplexity of looking for "meaning".

Finnegans Wake is an obscure, willfully difficult waste of time. Its also unique and rock n roll! Hearing it on audiobook , read by an irish person is a great experience. I have listened to parts of it many times. I don't understand most of it but it is pleasant to hear. It doesn't matter to me which bit i hear or read or what order it is in.

Having entered into the drafting stage in the 1910, its surprising Tolkien's "The Silmirillion" didn't get so much as an honorable mention. Tolkien created 7 languages for his legendarium, several of which are taught at University for foreign language credit, including Quenya. Also, its complex narrative structure, cartography, extensive world-building, and expansive prehistoric lore, which is foundational to his most notable works, absolutely makes "The Silmirillion "one of the most difficult books to read.

I saw Finnegan's Wake in a small Irish Independent film. The context helped my understanding immensely.

A fun fact about The Sound and The Fury: Faulkner wanted to have each character section have a different color text. That’s right, color of text other than black. But, apparently, it couldn’t be done at the time the novel was published.