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Short Little Difficult Books

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Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#61

Post by QuercusMax »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #59
QuercusMax wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with things like (picking at random) The Great Gatsby and a lot of literature having to do with adult relationships and romance. How on earth is a 16-year-old in 2025 going to understand what's happening in Gatsby? I read it, wrote some papers and got As on them, but didn't really make sense of it at the time.

That's more a commentary on 2025 than 16 year olds I assure you. In the 90s adult relationships weren't particularly mysterious to your average 16 year old.

I was a 16 year old in the 1990s and it was mysterious to me.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#62

Post by layer8 »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #59
QuercusMax wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with things like (picking at random) The Great Gatsby and a lot of literature having to do with adult relationships and romance. How on earth is a 16-year-old in 2025 going to understand what's happening in Gatsby? I read it, wrote some papers and got As on them, but didn't really make sense of it at the time.

That's more a commentary on 2025 than 16 year olds I assure you. In the 90s adult relationships weren't particularly mysterious to your average 16 year old.

…or so the 16-year old still thought.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#63

Post by tptacek »

I don't have anything to say about the overall subject of this post because I am terrible at reading difficult books but do want to chime in to say that Exercises in Style is pretty fun to read (it's the same dumb story told 99 times in different ways, most just a page or so long).

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#64

Post by miltonlost »

pklausler wrote: post #58
idoubtit wrote: post #46

I share many of the author's delights. I would add another source of "short little difficult books": old books, written in an old form of your modern language. My native tongue is French, so in my case it was Rabelais' "Gargantua" (~1500) and "La Chanson de Roland" (~1100). Both books require some motivation to get used to their respective languages. After a while, I could read almost fluently Rabelais' prose ; it wa…

I think that English might have fewer opportunities for this sort of thing; I found Beowulf to be surprisingly dull in the original. Greek, on the other hand, has lifetimes' worth of good stuff in its ancient forms, and can really reward the time spent in learning to read them.

Shakespeare is from around the same time period as Rabelais in OP. If you haven't read Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, As You Like It, they also take some getting used to but are worth it in the end.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#65

Post by pklausler »

miltonlost wrote: post #64
pklausler wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that English might have fewer opportunities for this sort of thing; I found Beowulf to be surprisingly dull in the original. Greek, on the other hand, has lifetimes' worth of good stuff in its ancient forms, and can really reward the time spent in learning to read them.

Shakespeare is from around the same time period as Rabelais in OP. If you haven't read Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, As You Like It, they also take some getting used to but are worth it in the end.

I don't think that English changed as much, but I could be wrong. Shakespeare's not hard for a modern English reader, given a decent edition with vocabulary hints in the footnotes. I got through most of it as a sophomore.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#66

Post by [deleted] »

pklausler wrote: post #65
miltonlost wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shakespeare is from around the same time period as Rabelais in OP. If you haven't read Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, As You Like It, they also take some getting used to but are worth it in the end.

I don't think that English changed as much, but I could be wrong. Shakespeare's not hard for a modern English reader, given a decent edition with vocabulary hints in the footnotes. I got through most of it as a sophomore.

[deleted]

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#67

Post by stonemetal12 »

allknowingfrog wrote: post #29

Do what makes you happy, but don't pretend that reading "difficult" books makes you morally-superior to the rest of us. I read fiction for fun, and non-fiction for personal growth.

Some people find Dark Souls style games fun, I assume this is the book reader's version of that. I don't get it, but whatever floats their boat.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#68

Post by IAmBroom »

beams_of_light wrote: post #21
watwut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very likely that a book funny to adult you would went over 9th grade you regardless of reading speed.

This is a problem I have yet to see schools tackle. A kid in junior high school has no mental context for the Russian Revolution of 1917, for instance. Having them read Animal Farm is a pointless waste of time.

Poor choice. Animal Farm is way, way more than an allegory of one historical event. It's a broadbrush statement on the kind of people likely to seize power at every opportunity (or if you prefer, the effect unrestrained power has on most people), and a humorous jab at authoritarianism.

The other books mentioned (Gatsby et al.) really require context, but literal pigs sitting down to dinner with powerbrokers is something a 14yo can grasp.

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#69

Post by robot-wrangler »

robot-wrangler wrote: post #23
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #17

If anyone is looking for a reading list, or even just a book-downloading-binge list, I pulled 18 titles off of this one. There are, of course, even more, but if you're doing that then you probably already have the McCarthy and Dick titles. Usually HN loses on any given day, but with a score like that I doubt all the other sites I skim will be able to beat it even together.

Agreed, good list for HN. Especially Calvino, Cormac, and PKD tend to be popular with math nerds. Also if PKD qualifies as difficult enough, maybe Borges can fit here too. Not fiction or difficult, but I suggest Calvino's "Six Memos for the Next Millennium". It's novella-length lecture series for writers/readers, but I'd say it's really a critical/creative framework that's as relevant for math as it is for myth, or n…

Brainstorming more on this and checked my shelf, I got a few more. If not difficult per se, I remember them at least as experimental or otherwise postmodern.

Pynchon short stories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner

Delilo has many short ones including some of his best: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Noise_(novel), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americana_(novel)

Haddon's breakthrough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curious_Incident_of_the_Do...

DFW's breakthrough (maybe pushing it on "short" though) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broom_of_the_System

Ludwig still the reigning champ of short/difficult: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus

Re: Short Little Difficult Books

#70

Post by IAmBroom »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #59
QuercusMax wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with things like (picking at random) The Great Gatsby and a lot of literature having to do with adult relationships and romance. How on earth is a 16-year-old in 2025 going to understand what's happening in Gatsby? I read it, wrote some papers and got As on them, but didn't really make sense of it at the time.

That's more a commentary on 2025 than 16 year olds I assure you. In the 90s adult relationships weren't particularly mysterious to your average 16 year old.

So you were born circa 1979?
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