Greetings, fellow readers! I am back after a brief hiatus from life: those of you who read my blog regularly will remember that I last wrote while ill with a sore throat. Apparently, I had some kind of chest cold virus which not only made it difficult to breathe, but also spread to my eyes, rendering them swollen, red, and alas, unable to read. This germ knocked me out of commission for about five days; today is my first full day back in the land of the living. I wish I could say my illness represented some kind of literary journey to the underworld and back, or that my temporary eye trouble drew my attention to my own metaphorical blindness; however, my life is not a book, so my sickness lacks any poetic significance.
As fellow book-lovers, I'm sure you've all thought about what reading you'd do if you were ill, not so ill as to be in any real danger, but ill enough that you'd have to stay in bed for an extended period of time. I once read a customer review on Audible written by a woman who was prescribed bed rest after having surgery. She chose to utilize her time by reading War and Peace as an audio book, though I can't help but wonder whether it was a good idea for her to mix Tolstoy with Percocet--from what I've heard of his writing, it demands full lucidity.
Anyway, it got me thinking about those books we approach as textual Mount Everests, the extreme sports of the literary arena. There are the classic tomes that everyone talks about but few have read, such as Moby Dick and War and Peace, but there are other, slimmer volumes which look deceptively simple, yet are about as tricky as navigating through quicksand in the Fire Swamp. I came across a list of "50 Incredibly Tough Books for Extreme Readers" and was surprised to learn that I had read more than I thought. Four out of fifty is not bad; others of these are on my "To Read" list. I'll post some short blurbs of the books I have read, then copy the link below so you can see how many you've read.
First is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I tried reading this book on my own and gave up halfway through, but returned to it as required reading for my Science and Literature class last spring. I ended up reading it multiple times for our class discussion; it's definitely a book which rewards re-reading. With this one, I found it helped to talk through the text in class. It made it much easier to keep track of the stream of consciousness narration, and reading the book in an academic setting allowed us to analyze the themes in more depth than I would have done on my own.
Conclusion: unless you have a Mrs. Ramsay to guide your vision, you won't make it to the lighthouse with James and Cam.
Next is Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. I know of only two other people who have read this book, which may surprise you when you see how short it is. This one is tough not in the sense that it is difficult to read, but in that it's a highly disturbing story. This book has haunted me ever since I read it as a junior in high school. My history professor mentioned it casually in class, and I thought it would be easy to get through in an afternoon. I was wrong--I am still working through this book and thinking about the weighty questions of war, ethics, and suicide it poses.
Conclusion: getting through it is not hard, but unless you have some way to communicate your experience of reading this book, you may be trapped in the same despair as the main character.
Then there's Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I know a lot of people who dislike this book. I love it, and, ironically, didn't find it difficult to read. It's a critique of imperialism written as densely as the jungles of Belgium's African colonies and a classic modernist text that inspired the 1979 movie "Apocalypse Now." I read it while on my way to a funeral several hours from my home, and I couldn't put it down. I think everyone should read this book.
Conclusion: if the malaria doesn't get to you, the spiritual malaise will. You have been warned of the horror ahead.
Finally, there's The Castle, by Franz Kafka. I also read this book for my Science and Literature class, and for a time, it held the dubious honor of being my Most Hated Book. Kafka left off writing it halfway through the last sentence, for crying out loud! I was infuriated that he couldn't be bothered to finish the book, and I found the villagers' provincial and bureaucratic customs annoying in the extreme. However, after reading the book multiple times for discussion and sharing some very interesting thoughts on the castle itself as a singularity (yes, we're talking black holes now), the book grew on me. Now I'm taking a Kafka seminar in the spring--Kafka would be so proud.
Conclusion: as Kafka himself said, there is an infinite amount of hope, but not for us. Once you accept this, you can laugh and get on with the rest of the book.
Now I'm interested to know which of these extreme books you've read and what you thought of them. Let me know in the comments! My money is on Ed Turner, fellow bibliophile and blogger, to have read the most of those on the list.
50 Extreme Books
