Anyone have a writer in mind who they just can't read though everybody else seems to be able to?

[applegrove]

I can't get past the first page of an Umberto Eco books. The vocabulary is just too dense for me. I don't even comprehend the first paragraph of any of his books and I've tired. Also, I usually can read Christopher Hitchens, but I'm finding "God Is Not Great" a tough read because there are so many allusions to other great ancient texts and I know nothing of those. It is so bad that I think I may actually give up on the whole book.

[Joe Fields]

1. Two writers, and I have really tried...

I can't get through a Hemmingway book or a Stephen King book.

[MiddleFingerMom]

2. Long after seeing the movie version with Sean Connery,,,

.
.
.
... I read and enjoyed "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco (though I've
read nothing else by him).
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Shakespeare. Huh? WTF? Whuh?
.
.
.

[applegrove]

3. That was a great movie. I cried at the end. I too thought I might like the book.....

:shrug: but to no avail.

[dimbear]

8. Eco is easier to digest in small bites.

Don't just jam thru to the end in one sitting.

As for hard to read: pretty much any romance writer. If you're a male, you need to read one to complete your education. They're all the same.

Read "Rebecca." It's the best one. Then you're done.

Philip Roth. You can have my share of him.

[Lucinda]

4. Frank Herbert

I loved the Dune miniseries and I thought I'd go back to read the original, but I couldn't do it. Very ponderous writing style.

[Odin2005]

5. Can't say I have. I've never found Eco difficult, honestly.

I had no problem with "God Is Not Great" because I know all those ancient texts, LOL.

[applegrove]

6. I don't have a fine mind for details. I'm much better with Hitchens vanity fair work or his

biography.

[MilesColtrane]

7. Dave Eggers

I recognize the man's talent, but I lost interest fairly quickly in "A Heartbreaking Work..".

There's just not much in that novel that resonated with this guy pushing 50.

[Chan790]

9. Heartbreaking Work...

it helps if you read the last two pages somewhere in the middle. They don't actually give anything away and the theme is universal: "Dealing (or more precisely, not dealing) with the mortality of one's parents until it smacks you in the face like a dead fish." It's a universal theme for Eggers and everything comes back around to it in everything he writes.

Watch the film "Away We Go" which he co-wrote to see what I mean.

Now for something not so entirely different:

Death Sets A Thing Of Significant

Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly

To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With "This was last her fingers did,"
Industrious until

The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then 't was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.

A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,--
At rest his fingers are.

Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.

-Emily Dickinson

(If you understand the poem, you can understand the book.)

[Richardo]

10. David Foster Wallace

The guy just tried too hard to have a style, in my opinon. A few essays I liked, but overall, I don't see what all the fuss was about.

[Arugula Latte]

11. I tried to read Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavailier and Clay"

I was bored silly. I couldn't concentrate. I'd have to go back and re-read a paragraph two or three times, then it still wouldn't sink in. Don't know why.

I did like his book of essays, though.

[pink-o]

12. jonathan franzen

just a little too precious and self-consciously in love with his own writing!