Books that are hard to read

Finnegans Wake

The Sound and the Fury

Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault

Possession by A.S. Byatt.

This Is How You Lose the Time War… basically A.S. Byatt in space.

Quo Vadis.  A classical romance in ancient rome from polish literature

A Gentleman in Moscow,
The Count of Monte Cristo,
And then There Were None,
Eleanore Oliphant

Read Homer, Illiad\Odyssey, there are translations there that are so complex – that the book includes its own dictionary for words.

You mean short easy to read sentences like, “In this sky, upon the blue-washed stone, angels were flying with so intense a celestial, or at least an infantile ardour, that they seemed to be birds of a peculiar species that had really existed, that must have figured in the natural history of biblical and Apostolic times, birds that never fail to fly before the saints when they walk abroad; there are always some to be seen fluttering above them, and as they are real creatures with a genuine power of flight, we see them soar upwards, describe curves, ‘loop the loop’ without the slightest difficulty, plunge towards the earth head downwards with the aid of wings which enable them to support themselves in positions that defy the law of gravitation, and they remind us far more of a variety of bird or of young pupils of Garros practicing the vol-plané, than of the angels of the art of the Renaissance and later periods whose wings have become nothing more than emblems and whose attitude is generally the same as that of heavenly beings who are not winged.”

*Remembrance of Things Past*, by Marcel Proust.

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon’s new book, Shadow Ticket gets released 10/7

2 of William Faulkner’s most famous books, Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and The Fury are basically the same story being repeated by several characters but theyre pretty difficult to parse, and different characters reveal different information. The underlying plot is not all that complicated but you do require the repeated tellings to pick it up. They might be up your alley; The Sound and The Fury is one of my favorite novels ever. Modernist literature in general (Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Proust etc) is (in)famous for what you’re describing, if youre willing to engage with books that old.

Anathem. Lots of philosophical and mathematical discussions, but with a completely made-up terminology.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

I feel like Lolita had me re-reading a lot of sentences because of all of the metaphors and similes. If you can work past the subject matter, the plot also isn’t hard to follow.

I found the first book in Gene Wolfe’s trilogy The Book of the New Sun, The Shadow of the Torturer, to be dense as you describe. It was enough work that I didn’t read the other two parts. You might, though, if the story appeals to you.