Top 10 Most Difficult Books? Oh, it's ON, Publisher's Weekly!

Last week, Emily Colette Wilkinson & Garth Risk Hallberg of the "Difficult Books" series over at The Millions selected ten of the hardest of the hard tomes for Publisher's Weekly.  Two were works of philosophy, but here are their picks for fiction:




1.  Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
I'd never heard of Djuna Barnes until earlier this week, when I read a piece over at BookRiot on women writers as bad ass or more so than Hemingway.  According to Scott Beauchamp, "Nightwood, Barnes’ best novel, has the distinction of being the only lesbian-themed Modernist gem to garner praise, and an introduction, from arch-conservative T.S. Eliot. Before writing it, Barnes was born in a log cabin, raped as a teen, and lived as a Bohemian journalist in Greenwich Village. She was ahead of her time in just about every way possible, even pioneering the kind of New Journalism that wouldn’t catch fire until mid-century. A poet, novelist, playwright, and illustrator, Barnes exemplified both the glory and isolation that come with being a perpetual outsider. Hemingway wouldn’t have known what to make of her."  I'm intrigued!

2.  Women and Men by Joseph McElroy  
Apparently, this is a postmodern mega novel on par in terms of complexity with Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.  

3.  A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
A religious satire.  Allegory.  Written in the late 1600s.  All things that scream "find a copy with an awesome introduction and some thorough footnotes!"

4.  Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson
According to Wikipedia (so take it with a grain of salt) this is the longest real novel in the English language.  I still haven't finished Infinite Jest and I LOVE me some DFW.  So check in with me when I'm 40 and I'll let you know my thoughts...

5.  To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
I just finished Mrs. Dalloway, and I've really enjoyed my time with Woolf so far!  This reminds me of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but was a far more enjoyable reading experience.  Bring it on!

6.  The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser
An incomplete epic poem? Sign me up?

7.  The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
An epic chronology of a two fictional families interspersed with insights on the writing process itself.  Let's do this.

8.  Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce
Oh Joyce.  You are not my favorite.  And he actually made up a language from other languages to write this book.  Probably the only book on the list I can't imagine every willfully picking up.

Now, I'm one of those really obnoxious people who takes pride in doing the intellectually challenging, and doing it well.  Lists like these do nothing to deter me.  In fact, I read them like personal challenges. So the gauntlet has been thrown down.    To the Lighthouse and Nightwood are both now on my holds list. 

EVERYBODY loves LISTS: 10 Classic Books I Feel Like I Need to Read

I am a list lover.  I actually keep a running master list in a notebook of books I want to read. (Prior to that, book recommendations lived in the margins of my planner...and in my phone...and on tons of random post-it notes...I needed to consolidate!).  Over the course of my literary self-education, I feel like there are several classic tomes that keep coming up as essential reading.  I've narrowed my list down to ten for the next year or so...or more... (in the spirit of manageability):

 

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot    I feel like I keep coming across this title, and I've never read anything by Ms. Evans, so the time has come to see what all the fuss is about.
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Foydor Dostoevsky   Crime and Punishment was required reading back in high school, and I think enough time has gone by that I've sufficiently recovered enough to give him another go.
3. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf     Last time I was in Baltimore, I rescued some books my parents were ready to part with that were originally published in the 50s and 60s.  Among them was Mrs. Dalloway, which has been on my "must read" list since reading Bouillier's The Mystery Guest.  I'm about 2/3 of the way through.
4. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray   His middlename is "Makepeace."  'Nuff said.
5. Persuasion by Jane Austen   I'm an Austen lover, and was given her complete works for my 18th birthday by my Aunt Aimee, but as of yet haven't made it past Emma and Pride and Prejudice.
6. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens    Similar to Dostoevsky, I read Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities in 6th grade and haven't revisited his work since.  It's time.
7. Ulysses by James Joyce      I hated Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I read it in high school, but I feel like maybe with the benefit of age and perspective, I'll come to feel differently about Joyce...
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust     I accidentally bought Sodom and Gomorrah a few years ago not realizing (until I started the introduction) that it was 4 novels into a 6 novel set...so I'd like to start at the beginning and work my way through...or at least try...
9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee     I know.  I know.  It's time.  Past time, actually.
10. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence    I LOVED reading about Geoff Dyer trying to write about reading D.H. Lawrence.  So maybe reading D.H. Lawrence will be equally as enjoyable?

What do you think?  What should I add?  Omit?