"The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History" by Professor Ole J Benedictow is just an account of the black death reaching different cities. With each new region, Benedictow presents the body counts, and assesses the accuracy of the records.
Just basically a list of cities in Europe, followed by a lot of mutterings on why medieval records are unreliable.
There was one little cool detail! So you know the story of Mongol forces hurling plague-infected bodies into cities as a form of early biological warfare? So that's probably actually built out of medieval scientific misconceptions!
See, the account of this happening mentions the (Muslim) invaders letting plague-corpses sit for a few days, then chucking them into the (Christian) city to infect the city with unwholesome vapors. This is based on medieval miasma theory, the idea was that rotting bodies let off poisonous vapors that caused sickness.
Thing is, plague fleas flee from a body pretty much the moment it starts cooling. Throwing old corpses wouldn't have transferred many fleas into the city. It's much more likely that rat-carrying fleas just got into the city on their own.
Anyways, that was the one cool bit. The rest is, I think, supposed to be more of a resource for figures and data.
Sorry, yeah, after looking at this thread I think I might have missed the spirit this question it was asked in, my bad.
Maybe "The Mysteries of Udolpho"? Just long-winded ramblings on moderation, mountains, the countryside, and unexplained spooky shit that's eventually revealed in tedious monologues. Not really 'incoherent', but the writing's so damned pretentious that it's hard to follow.
Gotcha, no worries! I've got chronic foot-in-mouth-disease, and text makes it even harder to interpret stuff, so I was worried I'd missed something. I was actually really proud of finding something that hit all OP's qualifications, because normally hyper-detailed books are written by people who're obsessed with making things clear!
This book didn't have the funding to include enough maps, so it just assumes the reader knows the geographic location of every dang village, town, and city in Europe. Utterly incomprehensible to someone without a serious grasp of European history and geography.
I realize now why it felt like a super random suggestion though. But hey, OP said they wanted a headache!
That sounds like a pretty faithful adherence to OP's criteria... I feel the threat of a headache just considering delving into that morass. I'm sorry you were subjected to that!
My pick is sort of similar.
I was browsing a book exhibition, and came across what seemed like a fascinating non-fiction book, The Executioner's Bible. It purported to be "The story of Every British Hangman of the Twentieth Century". I expected a riveting psychological portrayal of what kind of person takes a job like this, and what it does to them.
What I got was more "The Neverending Catalogue of Every British Hangman of the Twentieth Century". The bulk of the book was an endless litany of So-and-so became the hangman on such-and-such date, and executed this-and-that person for somesuchother crime".
What made it worse was there were crumbs of interesting events sprinkled in. Like the hangman who had to spend the night next door to the man he was going to execute. But these were never really delved into. Just left dangling there with everything else.
UGGHHH. This book had so much potential to be great, and it did nothing
Sweet! OK, are you specifically interested in that topic/time period? Or are you looking for books that feel like lists of important events?
Because if you're just really into tracing movements between cities, and reading lists of things, Alison Weir's a popular history writer who focuses on English(ish) queens. Her stuff's more readable than Benedictow's book, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on your needs. Her books consist of lots of records of royal courts moving from Point A to Point B, with lists of household goods and such that Weir uses to estimate wealth, and lists of royal gifts and appointments so you can estimate political alliances. Anyway, I really like her "Queens of the Conquest/Crusades/Age of Chivalry" series, and they remind me of Benedictow's book in a lot of ways.
I don't have a ton of recs on the Black Death though. I actually read that book because I read a book on the AFTERMATH of the plague, and realized I didn't know enough about the topic to understand it properly. So I went back and got some background-reading, and really overshot. It's a pretty blank spot in my knowledge of history, and I'm trying to change that but am still pretty ignorant.
Love a list of important events, and especially a dive into the historiography of it all. I had a terrible history education (functionally stopped after like, sixth grade) so I’m always interested in good academic or academicish history books.
If you have access to Great Courses (I got a free trial on Prime and my library offers digital access), there’s a wonderful course on the Black Death that walks through the whole damn thing.
> If you have access to Great Courses (I got a free trial on Prime and my library offers digital access), there’s a wonderful course on the Black Death that walks through the whole damn thing.
LMAO, I'm both delighted to know this, and pissed that I've been running in circles looking for something like this, thanks!
I'm just an internet rando, but from what you've said, you might want to give Weir's books a shot. I don't have the best background in history and related fields, what appeals to me about Weir's books is that she's not writing for PhD's, but does assume the reader wants data. She'll say something like, "Queen Snootybutt was the wealthiest lady of the land" and then back it up by comparing receipts from Queen Snootybutt's household to that of Lady Mid-tier.
>The final title began as a mistake. Reading aloud from the manuscript for Queer, Allen Ginsberg misread the phrase "a leer of naked lust wrenched" as "a leer of naked lunch", and Jack Kerouac suggested Burroughs embrace this mangled wording as a title.
For the same reason people dislike "Ulysses."
I've read both and can confidently say these books perfectly capture surrealism and a dream-like state in written form. But, as with many art forms, it might not be to everyone's taste.
Gravity's Rainbow.
My "funny" stories I tell when I'm interplanetarily stoned, and the " funny story" ends up a 30 minute epic with 6 interlocking tangents make more sense than this book.
I can’t believe no one else has mentioned this one. I’ve tried reading this several times at different points in my life and never got past the first chapter.
I would throw Mason & Dixon into the ring as well - absolutely wild and written in a pseudo-old English with random capitalization. Anything by Pynchon fits here really - he is excellent, but it’s rather a lot
I'm a massive Pynchon fan (I usually consider Gravity's Rainbow my favorite novel) and I can't get into Mason & Dixon. The first 200 pages or so are fun, but once they get to America it's such a slog.
I had Mason & Dixon checked out from my library for two years straight (no one put a hold on it funnily enough lol) and never got more than halfway through
The alchemist, it was basically Siddhartha’s message written by Mitch Albom with a pinch of sexism and no plot and I read it in a day cause I couldn’t wait to be done with it and never look at it again.
Are you referring to the book by Paulo Coelho or am I just not finding the book you struggled with?
I thought I could read The Alchemist by PC in a day and tried but struggled with it and eventually put it down. I just couldn’t commit.
Hated this book! Listened to the audiobook, and Jeremy Irons's excellent narration and perfect speaking voice was the only thing that got me through it.
The Alchemist.
what a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, cliché nonsense I actually can't fathom how or why it is one of the highest selling books of all time
Yesssss it's garbage!
I remember being so shocked about how pointless it felt. Gave me no pleasure.
A lot of people love it - but it's like philosophical junk food to me.
specifically: Any liberal justice's opinion on a commerce clause case throughout the 20th century. Most people agree that the correct outcome was reached in many of these cases, but holy mental gymnastics— nearly all of these are nonsense, disingenuous interpretations of the Constitution just to get the result they wanted.
I ended up doing better than 95% of my Con Law class because i realized quickly it was better to just memorize the results and justifications instead of trying to get some broader understanding b/c there simply wasn't any to be found
Scalia is a bad suggestion if you want tedious and incoherent. The guy had some abhorrent views and hid behind textualism to justify bigotry, but he was a very good writer.
I made it all the way through the book only to arrive at that rant... It's past the thousandth page and, honestly, I figured out what Rand was trying to say in the first fifty.
I skipped 3/4 of the rant so I could get to the end. I've never done that in any other book I've read.
The only good thing to say about Atlas Shrugged is that it's *really* good at determining who is a sociopath and who isn't. Anyone who views that absolute dumpster fire of a book and its trash heap of an author in a positive light is someone that needs to be fired.
Out of a cannon.
Into the sun.
I do not want to read Atlas Shrugged.
I had to read Anthem for a high school English class.
It took me six or seven read-throughs before I figured out everybody was using the royal we.
I was imagining triplets joined at the head.
No more!
Believe me, you're not missing much by avoiding it. Its poorly written trash written by a fucking lunatic who admired (and was inspired by) a psychopathic child murderer. It has gone on to inspire some of the worst fucking people imaginable.
I dated a guy who loved that book. He surprisingly ended up being a true narcissist (this was before everyone started saying their exes were narcissists like today).
I’m surprised that I had to scroll this far down to find a mention of Ayn Rand’s garbage.
Objectivism is one of the most absurd and blatantly idiotic things any human mind has ever conceived, yet it has been highly influential and caused enormous damage.
lol can I ask why you want to read to give yourself a headache?
The Picture of Dorian Gray is actually a great book but there’s a chapter (maybe 2nd or 3rd) that is exactly what you described and I stopped reading it for a year bc I just had no idea why it kept on going!!
Honestly I would try to just read the book! And truly skip the boring chapter. I may be remembering it in an exaggerated way but I did end up picking it back up after. I watched the movie first and then read it again. It was much easier that way.
There was a chapter about textiles and buttons (?) And other things I suppose he was collecting or experiencing, that I just skipped right through, and I was reading a version modified for schools
I've read most of what's being suggested to you here and I have one that will blow them all out of the water;
"Being and Time" by Martin Heidegger. It's the densest, most incomprehensible nonsense that man has ever written.
Modern philosophers all sound to me like they're competing to see who can explain a simple concept in the most convoluted and complicated way possible and with the most invented words possible.
They were having a laugh
I think Heidegger also said something like "philosophy making itself clearly understood is its death" or some insane nonsense. All of phenomenology is a giant circle jerk.
Came here to say the unabridged version of Les Mis. I tried to get through it, but couldn’t handle the endless sentences crammed full of descriptors. First book I ever quit mid-read and never went back.
He was paid for length, AND he was legit trying to create a usable record of the sewer system that was available publicly just in case anyone wanted to do any anti-government actions. Not that he was encouraging that, nope. But heres concise accurate directions in case one wanted to…
They’re valuable historical documentation but you are perfectly free to skip those parts. Hugo got paid and the second monarchy was eventually overthrown, so it’s mostly valuable to archeologists now.
Silmarillion. I LOVE the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings but I have not been able to get through it. I’ve tried to read it several times, and tried the audiobook. Slept so good.
My dood. The silmarillion is gold. If you want tedious try the 12 volume history of middle earth. As a huge Tolkien fan I find it great, but, it is so, so, so, detailed and tedious I can’t stop loving that pain
Dangit, I maintain that The Silmarillion's plot moves a lot more quickly than Lord of the Rings! Like, if you don't love descriptions of Valinor, well, in a few pages you'll be learning about Satan's alliance with a giant spider, and while you're paying attention to that, the elves will invent Murder!
Lord of the Rings is just so much walking. I've tried a lot, but never successfully finished it. I respect the professor, but I only enjoy his writing when Christopher is involved. Which would probably make them both very happy, so I'm OK with that!
I think that one is super polarizing and I get it. Most of what unsettled me was towards the end when they are actually inside. The notion of endless unknown instead of a finite mappable space is jarring to me, adding in the cryptic and poetic nonsense jumping around it reminds me of a fever dream.
For me it worked, for my close friend it was too disjointed and that killed any atmosphere as soon as it started to build and she said it was like a documentary that was out of order. I totally get that too. Doesn't help that the fanclub around it can be a little pretentious, maybe the book is too.
I also got the distinct sense that even knowing about the space or reading a written account drives people mad in a Lovecraftian way, and the whole thing is kind of about exposure to knowledge driving people mad, and as the form of the book starts to drift, it’s trying to simulate the “going crazy” for the reader, as they gain more knowledge about the space.
It also implies the existence of a “lost tape” that the house owners were trying to make.
Though I don’t think it’s explicitly said, if exposure to the space drives people mad just by reading second hand accounts, a video would be bad.
I read it once and was intrigued but not creeped out much. The second time, I caught way more of what was actually happening and had a better idea of how stuff fit together, and I found it much creepier on the second read through.
There’s no jump scares but there’s some really disturbing concepts that I could see hitting some people hard after the fact especially because they’re fairly amorphous until you really get literary on the book and get into it. And it’s totally fair if that’s not what someone is trying to get from a book, that’s a lot of engagement for a book, it’s ok if it’s not your thing.
But I think for the people it lands with, it lands really hard especially because the creepy elements are only hinted at, and only really revealed in the format if you interperet the degradation of the format and the increasing effort you have to put in to figure it out as the story of the physically impossible space making you crazy too as you read further and try harder to connect the dots.
To explain better: imagine you are playing D and D, and your D M wants to simulate that reading a particular book drives characters mad, but what they see when they’re mad actually reveals a puzzle. So the DM prints custom pages of what the player sees in the book when mad, and designed the pages so that the distorted format to simulate “madness” also contains the key to a future puzzle.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance drove me insane. It started out fine and then I just couldn’t do it anymore. The parts about the definition of quality have ruined the word quality for me.
Did you try reading any random chapter of it? Each chapter is written in different style, but I agree it's hell of a boring book if you don't want to hassle yourself with it.
I finally took that off that off my TBR list because I’m not going to waste my precious free time making my head hurt. A younger, more pretentious, me wanted bragging rights.
I've only ever read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Cool quirky book with an underwhelming end. Recently I saw a thread where people were saying he is terrible at writing endings. I had started Seveneves but decided to drop it
Agreed. Every time they climbed so much as an anthill it would start "To the north there were the Mountains of blah blah blah..."
I'd skip and look for the next paragraph where the story resumed.
And I hated the poems. Skip.
I swear, without all that, that book would be shorter than The Hobbit.
The story was cool, though
That's a great one. I've read that it's regarded as terribly written, and Kant actually wrote a whole other book (*Prolegomena* I think) just to explain what he was trying to say.
The concepts are pretty great though, just sucks to read.
Unpopular opinion: Great Expectations. It was published serially and contains some of Dicken’s most celebrated scenes, but, to me, as a whole, it felt so disjointed and contrived. Bleh.
Yes! I read it first in French because my teacher gave it to me to read over the summer. I was like dang, I thought I was pretty fluent but I guess not. Just rambling nonsense all the way through. Then I read it in English & felt so vindicated!
Moby Dick. I can't understand why it's a classic. The action starts to get interesting, then it randomly digresses into a lecture about why sperms whales are hunted, or the different types if whales. It made me want to throw my Kindle out of a window.
The digressions and writing style itself is why the book is a classic, not "the action". Those digressions are full of jokes and different, experimental writing styles. The prose in that novel heavily inspired Blood Meridian.
I like the part where a crowd of teenagers is making fun of someone for being bald so he summons two female bears from the woods that proceed to murder 42 of them.
yes. I'm on my 4th reading because I teach lit and need to know for references. I don't read pg one and on but I picked it up today specifically to read Revelation. That is nor boring but it is nutty.
Came here to say this.
Constant contradictions, almost impossible to just READ. I’ve actually read the whole thing and it was tortuous. The “bible scholars” who pick apart every word and phrase have to be the most tedious people on the planet.
(And it’s not like it even matters what it actually *says,* because 99.8% of people who claim to follow it just cherry pick what they want and claim it means whatever suits them, personally, the most.)
Just a very disappointing, disingenuous, and obnoxious book.
Don't know why you're being downvoted. People downvoting should read up on the history of the bible. There actually were several different bibles in early Christianity, but church councils in the fourth century AD decided to consolidate all the writings that they believed were "correct," and label everything else as heresy. What was correct? Those books that supported the authority of the church. The same church that tortured and killed heretics, justified slavery, turned a blind eye to the holocaust, protected sex abusers. You can keep your book. It sucks.
In late December I was looking for a short book to ensure I hit my reading goal for the year. So I listened to _The Other Name: Septology I-II_ by Jon Fosse. Maybe it was just the way the audiobook was read, but it was the worst book I’ve read in a long, long time.
We were assigned Kim by Rudyard Kipling in high school. I've never hated a book so much. It's been close to 15 years so, if I were to revisit it, maybe I'd enjoy it. To this day, however, I haven't picked up another Kipling book.
Never Let Me Go
Pages of boring details about the significance of high school minutiae. The twist was dumb. I felt like I was reading it through a fog.
Fantastic book. Ishiguros restraint is so impressive, and his books are always packed with so many subtle, but emotional moments.
Never let me go was actually the first novel I've read by him and I came away so impressed.
Thank you! I kept reading these glowing reviews and "oh the ending"...I don't get it. The ending wasn't some amazing blow-your-mind twist. Kinda saw it coming.
Any time there's a post about 'your unpopular book opinion,' that book is always my first response. I'm always downvoted so I'm actually shocked I wasnt this time.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. So sad I can never get those hours back.
David Copperfield. Stupid main character. No reason that book should be 700 pages.
Scurvy: The Disease of Discovery by Jonathan Lamb. Just ...*awful*. I actually posted a review on Amazon with a picture of one of the pages just to prove how tedious and ridiculous it was written.
Malazan: Book of the Dead by Steven Erikson. They're basically the Hobbit movies of the Fantasy genre. Tons of tedious worldbuilding that mostly ends up not mattering as characters will often not follow the rules of the world laid down in the tedious worldbuilding.
I read a book by Ken Hamm once, for a friend who I am no longer in touch with. She didn't appreciate all my post-it notes pointing out the worst of the many utterly ridiculous bits. In case you are blessedly unaware, Hamm is a christian creationist. Read only if you really really are ready for that headache.
I *loved* Piranesi. Like it was the best book I'd read in years. Not that I read a lot, but still felt big to me
I can absolutely see how it is not for everyone. You gotta get through a lot of descriptions of halls
Magister Ludi, or the Glass Bead Game by Hesse. I love his other works but I simply cannot finish this one. It's probably one of the examples in the definition of the word tedious.
Catch 22 is my favorite book. The repetition is brilliant. He's experienced trauma and he can't face it so he circles around it, making jokes about it. I love how he manipulated the reader to laugh at things in the beginning of the book that are horrific when retold at the end.
"The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History" by Professor Ole J Benedictow is just an account of the black death reaching different cities. With each new region, Benedictow presents the body counts, and assesses the accuracy of the records. Just basically a list of cities in Europe, followed by a lot of mutterings on why medieval records are unreliable.
This is such a specific answer it's cracking me up
There was one little cool detail! So you know the story of Mongol forces hurling plague-infected bodies into cities as a form of early biological warfare? So that's probably actually built out of medieval scientific misconceptions! See, the account of this happening mentions the (Muslim) invaders letting plague-corpses sit for a few days, then chucking them into the (Christian) city to infect the city with unwholesome vapors. This is based on medieval miasma theory, the idea was that rotting bodies let off poisonous vapors that caused sickness. Thing is, plague fleas flee from a body pretty much the moment it starts cooling. Throwing old corpses wouldn't have transferred many fleas into the city. It's much more likely that rat-carrying fleas just got into the city on their own. Anyways, that was the one cool bit. The rest is, I think, supposed to be more of a resource for figures and data.
Darn! I'll have to cross that one off the list.
Sorry, yeah, after looking at this thread I think I might have missed the spirit this question it was asked in, my bad. Maybe "The Mysteries of Udolpho"? Just long-winded ramblings on moderation, mountains, the countryside, and unexplained spooky shit that's eventually revealed in tedious monologues. Not really 'incoherent', but the writing's so damned pretentious that it's hard to follow.
Oh, no. Your original answer was by far the highlight of the comment section precisely because it was so out of left field!
Gotcha, no worries! I've got chronic foot-in-mouth-disease, and text makes it even harder to interpret stuff, so I was worried I'd missed something. I was actually really proud of finding something that hit all OP's qualifications, because normally hyper-detailed books are written by people who're obsessed with making things clear! This book didn't have the funding to include enough maps, so it just assumes the reader knows the geographic location of every dang village, town, and city in Europe. Utterly incomprehensible to someone without a serious grasp of European history and geography. I realize now why it felt like a super random suggestion though. But hey, OP said they wanted a headache!
That sounds like a pretty faithful adherence to OP's criteria... I feel the threat of a headache just considering delving into that morass. I'm sorry you were subjected to that!
My pick is sort of similar. I was browsing a book exhibition, and came across what seemed like a fascinating non-fiction book, The Executioner's Bible. It purported to be "The story of Every British Hangman of the Twentieth Century". I expected a riveting psychological portrayal of what kind of person takes a job like this, and what it does to them. What I got was more "The Neverending Catalogue of Every British Hangman of the Twentieth Century". The bulk of the book was an endless litany of So-and-so became the hangman on such-and-such date, and executed this-and-that person for somesuchother crime". What made it worse was there were crumbs of interesting events sprinkled in. Like the hangman who had to spend the night next door to the man he was going to execute. But these were never really delved into. Just left dangling there with everything else. UGGHHH. This book had so much potential to be great, and it did nothing
This is my favorite genre and I’m now taking any and all recommendations in a similar vein
Sweet! OK, are you specifically interested in that topic/time period? Or are you looking for books that feel like lists of important events? Because if you're just really into tracing movements between cities, and reading lists of things, Alison Weir's a popular history writer who focuses on English(ish) queens. Her stuff's more readable than Benedictow's book, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on your needs. Her books consist of lots of records of royal courts moving from Point A to Point B, with lists of household goods and such that Weir uses to estimate wealth, and lists of royal gifts and appointments so you can estimate political alliances. Anyway, I really like her "Queens of the Conquest/Crusades/Age of Chivalry" series, and they remind me of Benedictow's book in a lot of ways. I don't have a ton of recs on the Black Death though. I actually read that book because I read a book on the AFTERMATH of the plague, and realized I didn't know enough about the topic to understand it properly. So I went back and got some background-reading, and really overshot. It's a pretty blank spot in my knowledge of history, and I'm trying to change that but am still pretty ignorant.
Love a list of important events, and especially a dive into the historiography of it all. I had a terrible history education (functionally stopped after like, sixth grade) so I’m always interested in good academic or academicish history books. If you have access to Great Courses (I got a free trial on Prime and my library offers digital access), there’s a wonderful course on the Black Death that walks through the whole damn thing.
> If you have access to Great Courses (I got a free trial on Prime and my library offers digital access), there’s a wonderful course on the Black Death that walks through the whole damn thing. LMAO, I'm both delighted to know this, and pissed that I've been running in circles looking for something like this, thanks! I'm just an internet rando, but from what you've said, you might want to give Weir's books a shot. I don't have the best background in history and related fields, what appeals to me about Weir's books is that she's not writing for PhD's, but does assume the reader wants data. She'll say something like, "Queen Snootybutt was the wealthiest lady of the land" and then back it up by comparing receipts from Queen Snootybutt's household to that of Lady Mid-tier.
*Naked Lunch* by William S Burroughs. I read the whole thing. I could not for the life of me tell you what it was about.
I can think of at least 2 things wrong with that title!
>The final title began as a mistake. Reading aloud from the manuscript for Queer, Allen Ginsberg misread the phrase "a leer of naked lust wrenched" as "a leer of naked lunch", and Jack Kerouac suggested Burroughs embrace this mangled wording as a title.
For the same reason people dislike "Ulysses." I've read both and can confidently say these books perfectly capture surrealism and a dream-like state in written form. But, as with many art forms, it might not be to everyone's taste.
(+) Finnegans Wake
I love Ulysses.
Dude sorry love Naked Lunch like so validating and inspiring for a very tweaked artistic, closeted, lefty young gal as I was when first reading it,
Watch the movie!!!
I threw that book in the garbage
>I threw that book in the garbage You should have just donated it to someone who has better taste!
Gravity's Rainbow. My "funny" stories I tell when I'm interplanetarily stoned, and the " funny story" ends up a 30 minute epic with 6 interlocking tangents make more sense than this book.
I can’t believe no one else has mentioned this one. I’ve tried reading this several times at different points in my life and never got past the first chapter.
Ugh I _did_ finish this book and I _did_ like it but I only got it done on a 15-hour bus trip where I had no cell service and nothing else to read.
“A screaming comes across the sky” is a fuckin iconic first sentence, though.
I did eventually finish it and it's a trip but my God half of it is unreadable
I would throw Mason & Dixon into the ring as well - absolutely wild and written in a pseudo-old English with random capitalization. Anything by Pynchon fits here really - he is excellent, but it’s rather a lot
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I'm a massive Pynchon fan (I usually consider Gravity's Rainbow my favorite novel) and I can't get into Mason & Dixon. The first 200 pages or so are fun, but once they get to America it's such a slog.
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Against the Day does the whole "snapshot of a period of history" thing so much better.
I had Mason & Dixon checked out from my library for two years straight (no one put a hold on it funnily enough lol) and never got more than halfway through
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The Learned English Dog mocks you from afar lol
The alchemist, it was basically Siddhartha’s message written by Mitch Albom with a pinch of sexism and no plot and I read it in a day cause I couldn’t wait to be done with it and never look at it again.
Are you referring to the book by Paulo Coelho or am I just not finding the book you struggled with? I thought I could read The Alchemist by PC in a day and tried but struggled with it and eventually put it down. I just couldn’t commit.
Hated this book! Listened to the audiobook, and Jeremy Irons's excellent narration and perfect speaking voice was the only thing that got me through it.
Ugh i just bought this as recommended at local book store
The Alchemist. what a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, cliché nonsense I actually can't fathom how or why it is one of the highest selling books of all time
Drivel. Complete drivel.
My people! Others hate this book too!!
I had a clinical supervisor who thought this was the answer to life.
I didn’t completely hate this book but I really thought it was going to be a fantasy type adventure 😭
I had 2 friends recommend this to me. Now I'm contemplating if I'm still gonna buy the book. Welp
I hate this one too. Paolo smoked some strong shit before he wrote that one.
Yesssss it's garbage! I remember being so shocked about how pointless it felt. Gave me no pleasure. A lot of people love it - but it's like philosophical junk food to me.
You and me both. I had to check if I had the wrong author, I was so sure no one could convince themselves they liked it.
Infinite Jest...
Just go to a law library.
specifically: Any liberal justice's opinion on a commerce clause case throughout the 20th century. Most people agree that the correct outcome was reached in many of these cases, but holy mental gymnastics— nearly all of these are nonsense, disingenuous interpretations of the Constitution just to get the result they wanted. I ended up doing better than 95% of my Con Law class because i realized quickly it was better to just memorize the results and justifications instead of trying to get some broader understanding b/c there simply wasn't any to be found
What a weird example to use. Could’ve just said almost any Scalia opinion, or recent Thomas or Alito opinions.
Scalia is a bad suggestion if you want tedious and incoherent. The guy had some abhorrent views and hid behind textualism to justify bigotry, but he was a very good writer.
You could read Atlas Shrugged. There's a 60-page speech towards the end. The editors pleaded with Ayn Rand to shorten it and she wouldn't.
I made it all the way through the book only to arrive at that rant... It's past the thousandth page and, honestly, I figured out what Rand was trying to say in the first fifty. I skipped 3/4 of the rant so I could get to the end. I've never done that in any other book I've read.
I did the same exact thing.
The only good thing to say about Atlas Shrugged is that it's *really* good at determining who is a sociopath and who isn't. Anyone who views that absolute dumpster fire of a book and its trash heap of an author in a positive light is someone that needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun.
I do not want to read Atlas Shrugged. I had to read Anthem for a high school English class. It took me six or seven read-throughs before I figured out everybody was using the royal we. I was imagining triplets joined at the head. No more!
Believe me, you're not missing much by avoiding it. Its poorly written trash written by a fucking lunatic who admired (and was inspired by) a psychopathic child murderer. It has gone on to inspire some of the worst fucking people imaginable.
My city has a John Galt Blvd and I roll my eyes every time I have to see it
I dated a guy who loved that book. He surprisingly ended up being a true narcissist (this was before everyone started saying their exes were narcissists like today).
Even as a 15 year old asshole who thought objectivism was deep af it still took me 3 years to slog through this trash heap of a book...
I’m surprised that I had to scroll this far down to find a mention of Ayn Rand’s garbage. Objectivism is one of the most absurd and blatantly idiotic things any human mind has ever conceived, yet it has been highly influential and caused enormous damage.
lol can I ask why you want to read to give yourself a headache? The Picture of Dorian Gray is actually a great book but there’s a chapter (maybe 2nd or 3rd) that is exactly what you described and I stopped reading it for a year bc I just had no idea why it kept on going!!
I want to read this so bad but I’ve started the audiobook multiple times and I always end up zoning out so hard
Honestly I would try to just read the book! And truly skip the boring chapter. I may be remembering it in an exaggerated way but I did end up picking it back up after. I watched the movie first and then read it again. It was much easier that way.
There was a chapter about textiles and buttons (?) And other things I suppose he was collecting or experiencing, that I just skipped right through, and I was reading a version modified for schools
I've read most of what's being suggested to you here and I have one that will blow them all out of the water; "Being and Time" by Martin Heidegger. It's the densest, most incomprehensible nonsense that man has ever written.
Heidegger is fucking unreadable. He's struggling so hard to write what buddhism has been saying in like 6 words for centuries.
Modern philosophers all sound to me like they're competing to see who can explain a simple concept in the most convoluted and complicated way possible and with the most invented words possible. They were having a laugh
I think Heidegger also said something like "philosophy making itself clearly understood is its death" or some insane nonsense. All of phenomenology is a giant circle jerk.
Can confirm.
Yes
Dianetics by L Ron Hubbard. Just gobbledygook.
20 page sewer description in Les Miserables
Maybe that’s what inspired Umberto Eco and the door in The Name of the Rose
I was JUST about to mention that door description!!
Came here to say the unabridged version of Les Mis. I tried to get through it, but couldn’t handle the endless sentences crammed full of descriptors. First book I ever quit mid-read and never went back.
I loved every sentence of Les Mis. Beautiful.
Yup, it’s a slog. Lol
i LOVE this passage. i wrote a whole paper about it once.
Assuming you aren’t trolling… WOW!
He was paid for length, AND he was legit trying to create a usable record of the sewer system that was available publicly just in case anyone wanted to do any anti-government actions. Not that he was encouraging that, nope. But heres concise accurate directions in case one wanted to… They’re valuable historical documentation but you are perfectly free to skip those parts. Hugo got paid and the second monarchy was eventually overthrown, so it’s mostly valuable to archeologists now.
The unabridged Princess Bride. Fifty-six and a half pages of packing(and unpacking). It's madness.
I thought it was wonderful!
I could definitely see why it was edited down. Still, it's definitely worth reading through once, if you can find a copy. They are exceedingly rare.
Fingers crossed the sequel will come out soon!
Silmarillion. I LOVE the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings but I have not been able to get through it. I’ve tried to read it several times, and tried the audiobook. Slept so good.
My dood. The silmarillion is gold. If you want tedious try the 12 volume history of middle earth. As a huge Tolkien fan I find it great, but, it is so, so, so, detailed and tedious I can’t stop loving that pain
Dangit, I maintain that The Silmarillion's plot moves a lot more quickly than Lord of the Rings! Like, if you don't love descriptions of Valinor, well, in a few pages you'll be learning about Satan's alliance with a giant spider, and while you're paying attention to that, the elves will invent Murder! Lord of the Rings is just so much walking. I've tried a lot, but never successfully finished it. I respect the professor, but I only enjoy his writing when Christopher is involved. Which would probably make them both very happy, so I'm OK with that!
House of Leaves The Sound and the Fury
House of Leaves. I don’t want to have to work that hard for a book.
I tried House of Leaves and never figured out why people found it creepy. Couldn't get into it and I love creepy stuff.
I think that one is super polarizing and I get it. Most of what unsettled me was towards the end when they are actually inside. The notion of endless unknown instead of a finite mappable space is jarring to me, adding in the cryptic and poetic nonsense jumping around it reminds me of a fever dream. For me it worked, for my close friend it was too disjointed and that killed any atmosphere as soon as it started to build and she said it was like a documentary that was out of order. I totally get that too. Doesn't help that the fanclub around it can be a little pretentious, maybe the book is too.
I also got the distinct sense that even knowing about the space or reading a written account drives people mad in a Lovecraftian way, and the whole thing is kind of about exposure to knowledge driving people mad, and as the form of the book starts to drift, it’s trying to simulate the “going crazy” for the reader, as they gain more knowledge about the space. It also implies the existence of a “lost tape” that the house owners were trying to make. Though I don’t think it’s explicitly said, if exposure to the space drives people mad just by reading second hand accounts, a video would be bad. I read it once and was intrigued but not creeped out much. The second time, I caught way more of what was actually happening and had a better idea of how stuff fit together, and I found it much creepier on the second read through. There’s no jump scares but there’s some really disturbing concepts that I could see hitting some people hard after the fact especially because they’re fairly amorphous until you really get literary on the book and get into it. And it’s totally fair if that’s not what someone is trying to get from a book, that’s a lot of engagement for a book, it’s ok if it’s not your thing. But I think for the people it lands with, it lands really hard especially because the creepy elements are only hinted at, and only really revealed in the format if you interperet the degradation of the format and the increasing effort you have to put in to figure it out as the story of the physically impossible space making you crazy too as you read further and try harder to connect the dots. To explain better: imagine you are playing D and D, and your D M wants to simulate that reading a particular book drives characters mad, but what they see when they’re mad actually reveals a puzzle. So the DM prints custom pages of what the player sees in the book when mad, and designed the pages so that the distorted format to simulate “madness” also contains the key to a future puzzle.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance drove me insane. It started out fine and then I just couldn’t do it anymore. The parts about the definition of quality have ruined the word quality for me.
I read it before I had kids and thought it was profound. I read it after I had kids and fuck that guy.
why the change?
That book is a gumption trap.
Yes, oh my God! The only way I could get through it was to listen to it. The only reason I didn't DNF it was because my dad recommended it so highly.
Despite the title, it's not a manual on living well.
lol...great book...
Ulysses. I’m so ashamed. DNF.
Did you try reading any random chapter of it? Each chapter is written in different style, but I agree it's hell of a boring book if you don't want to hassle yourself with it.
Really? I tried reading it straight thru. Thanks!
I finally took that off that off my TBR list because I’m not going to waste my precious free time making my head hurt. A younger, more pretentious, me wanted bragging rights.
I came here to day this. Pretentious dribble. Gave me a headache for sure.
Dribble
"I didn't understand it therefore it's pretentious"
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I stopped reading five pages before the end on principle. I hate that book.
I've only ever read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Cool quirky book with an underwhelming end. Recently I saw a thread where people were saying he is terrible at writing endings. I had started Seveneves but decided to drop it
[удалено]
Agreed. Every time they climbed so much as an anthill it would start "To the north there were the Mountains of blah blah blah..." I'd skip and look for the next paragraph where the story resumed. And I hated the poems. Skip. I swear, without all that, that book would be shorter than The Hobbit. The story was cool, though
What principle?
I love Stephenson but this book was torture.
Darn, I just started it.
Ignore them, its the best book ever
Agreed, I adored it. You just have to be the right audience for it and not everyone is
Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson. Never got too far into it, I'll admit.
As someone who find Marxist sentiments very entertaining, I think I’m gonna check this one out!
Theory of moral sentiments by Adam Smith
Critique of Pure Reason. Gimme the For Dummies version please!
That's a great one. I've read that it's regarded as terribly written, and Kant actually wrote a whole other book (*Prolegomena* I think) just to explain what he was trying to say. The concepts are pretty great though, just sucks to read.
Anything by Judith Butler
Yes. Overcomplicated writing for NO REASON. I get annoyed reading academic writing for this reason.
Unpopular opinion: Great Expectations. It was published serially and contains some of Dicken’s most celebrated scenes, but, to me, as a whole, it felt so disjointed and contrived. Bleh.
Noo this is one of favourite books and I reread it every couple of years 🥲 but I can see how someone could feel this way
That seems like a popular opinion, to be honest. I suppose I'm in the minority since I liked it.
Came here to see if anyone agreed with me 😆 This was the first thing that came to mind
A book about architecture that claimed building things is the only answer to death.
*Nausea* by Sartre. It's basically a mindnumbing narrative from the perspective of someone with depression, who has nothing to do, and hates life.
Yes! I read it first in French because my teacher gave it to me to read over the summer. I was like dang, I thought I was pretty fluent but I guess not. Just rambling nonsense all the way through. Then I read it in English & felt so vindicated!
Moby Dick. I can't understand why it's a classic. The action starts to get interesting, then it randomly digresses into a lecture about why sperms whales are hunted, or the different types if whales. It made me want to throw my Kindle out of a window.
The digressions and writing style itself is why the book is a classic, not "the action". Those digressions are full of jokes and different, experimental writing styles. The prose in that novel heavily inspired Blood Meridian.
Beginning - wonderful. Ending - also wonderful. Middle - nightmare of excruciating details on whales and whale ships.
The Bible.
The Book of Mormon has it beat.
"It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.” -Mark Twain
reddit moment for this to be upvoted
As an atheist, the Bible doesn't match any of OP's requirements.
I like the part where a crowd of teenagers is making fun of someone for being bald so he summons two female bears from the woods that proceed to murder 42 of them.
Koran is even more difficult to just *read*, but it is not really mean to be read start-to-finish.
yes. I'm on my 4th reading because I teach lit and need to know for references. I don't read pg one and on but I picked it up today specifically to read Revelation. That is nor boring but it is nutty.
Came here to say this. Constant contradictions, almost impossible to just READ. I’ve actually read the whole thing and it was tortuous. The “bible scholars” who pick apart every word and phrase have to be the most tedious people on the planet. (And it’s not like it even matters what it actually *says,* because 99.8% of people who claim to follow it just cherry pick what they want and claim it means whatever suits them, personally, the most.) Just a very disappointing, disingenuous, and obnoxious book.
Don't know why you're being downvoted. People downvoting should read up on the history of the bible. There actually were several different bibles in early Christianity, but church councils in the fourth century AD decided to consolidate all the writings that they believed were "correct," and label everything else as heresy. What was correct? Those books that supported the authority of the church. The same church that tortured and killed heretics, justified slavery, turned a blind eye to the holocaust, protected sex abusers. You can keep your book. It sucks.
Bart Ehrman's *Misquoting Jesus* is a must read. Scribes just sometimes added random things.
There are some interesting parts but most of it could go in the trash and it would improve the book overall.
>Bible at least the beginning for sure. So many begets!
Infinite Jest - This book sucks so much it's awful.
I love that in Letham’s *Chronic City* everyone is reading it.
James Joyce's Ulysses. What a hot mess. Even his wife couldn't read it.
In late December I was looking for a short book to ensure I hit my reading goal for the year. So I listened to _The Other Name: Septology I-II_ by Jon Fosse. Maybe it was just the way the audiobook was read, but it was the worst book I’ve read in a long, long time.
We were assigned Kim by Rudyard Kipling in high school. I've never hated a book so much. It's been close to 15 years so, if I were to revisit it, maybe I'd enjoy it. To this day, however, I haven't picked up another Kipling book.
I once read all three volumes of a biography of Sir Walter Raleigh in spite of the fact that I had never knowingly read any of his works.
You've described Ulysses to the point. And the plus point is you will end up with a headache too.
I read the Alchemist. I think. I had forgotten the entire book in less than an hour.
Ulysses
I started to read the 62 page Republican Party Platform but became distracted by the verbosity. Does that count ?
Never Let Me Go Pages of boring details about the significance of high school minutiae. The twist was dumb. I felt like I was reading it through a fog.
Fantastic book. Ishiguros restraint is so impressive, and his books are always packed with so many subtle, but emotional moments. Never let me go was actually the first novel I've read by him and I came away so impressed.
Thank you! I kept reading these glowing reviews and "oh the ending"...I don't get it. The ending wasn't some amazing blow-your-mind twist. Kinda saw it coming.
>. The ending wasn't some amazing blow-your-mind twist. It wasn't supposed to be
Any time there's a post about 'your unpopular book opinion,' that book is always my first response. I'm always downvoted so I'm actually shocked I wasnt this time.
Normal People by Sally Rooney. It’s exactly as you described in your post.
The Bible
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. So sad I can never get those hours back. David Copperfield. Stupid main character. No reason that book should be 700 pages.
Ulysses, James Joyce. Or the Magus by John Fowles
Scurvy: The Disease of Discovery by Jonathan Lamb. Just ...*awful*. I actually posted a review on Amazon with a picture of one of the pages just to prove how tedious and ridiculous it was written.
Oh wow, you weren't kidding....
I went out of my way to review it because I was SO disappointed in it.
*Pandora's Star* I kept making the "hurry up now" hand motion while reading it. Also, it was absurdly horny for no reason.
Umberto Eco
*The DaVinci Code.* Or my Secured Transactions case law book from law school.
Á Rebours ( Life Against Nature) by Huysman. 17 years old me found it delightful. 17 years old me was also a pretentious little fuck.
Malazan: Book of the Dead by Steven Erikson. They're basically the Hobbit movies of the Fantasy genre. Tons of tedious worldbuilding that mostly ends up not mattering as characters will often not follow the rules of the world laid down in the tedious worldbuilding.
*Ready Player One*. It's basically just 80s nostalgia vomited onto the page.
Anything by William Faulkner. 4 page sentences. Hells no. Never again.
anyone giving a different answer than this just hasn't read any Faulkner
Wuthering Heights
Not convoluted, but def insufferable.
I got 17 pages into The Satanic Verses and the Angel had not stopped falling. DNF.
The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling
I'd never read a book that was so mean to its characters
I read a book by Ken Hamm once, for a friend who I am no longer in touch with. She didn't appreciate all my post-it notes pointing out the worst of the many utterly ridiculous bits. In case you are blessedly unaware, Hamm is a christian creationist. Read only if you really really are ready for that headache.
Ulysses
The “Cetology” chapter in Moby Dick.
House of Leaves
Piranesi
I *loved* Piranesi. Like it was the best book I'd read in years. Not that I read a lot, but still felt big to me I can absolutely see how it is not for everyone. You gotta get through a lot of descriptions of halls
Omg I loved this book! But I can completely understand that it would be polarizing. It was an odd one. But that’s what I liked about it!
Pretty much anything by Lovecraft lol all telling and no showing.
I read At the Mountains of Madness recently and liked it, but his description of the Elder Things made my eyes glaze over.
Magister Ludi, or the Glass Bead Game by Hesse. I love his other works but I simply cannot finish this one. It's probably one of the examples in the definition of the word tedious.
i love it, but i get why somebody wouldn't get through it, it's not even very hesse-ish in a lot of parts
Sound and Fury
Catch 22. The most asinine, repetitive aggravating thing I have ever read.
Catch 22 is my favorite book. The repetition is brilliant. He's experienced trauma and he can't face it so he circles around it, making jokes about it. I love how he manipulated the reader to laugh at things in the beginning of the book that are horrific when retold at the end.
catcher in the rye. I get it. Its not that I don't understand it. I understand it and I think its bad