Hey /lit/, what do you do when a book is too hard for you?

>>7681084
Just work your way up I suppose, maybe try The Road or No Country for Old Men?

btw prepare to get mocked a lot in this thread. Sorry

>>7681084
Keep trying. I finished at my 3rd try.

Just start with easier books, keep coming back to it to give it another try.

I dont wanna be that guy, but i was able to finish Blood Meridian when i was 14 and i was an idiot when i was 14. Im just stating that anyone can finish it if they put in the effort if faggot 14yo me could

>>7681084
keep reading. you don't need to understand or comprehend everything on your first read through. A reread a year or two later will make a text even more illuminating. Just do it!

>>7681084
In your case, give up. Sorry, but it's true. Blood Meridian's prose is easy to decipher, and its symbolism is incredibly easy to pick out.

>>7681102
Took Bloom 3 attempts to read it.

So fuck off ya pretentious cunt.

It isn't quite as easy mode go dog go tier as everyone is making it out to be but it is a pretty accessible book. Keep trying maybe Google some notes on the book and push through it, it's a good one. Maybe find an easier novel, don't go anywhere near a book called to the lighthouse.

>>7681111
Probably because it's so boring. Stop acting like BM is hard.

OP here
I got into reading very recently because of a liberal I had to take September last year. Other than more McCarthy, what else can I read to help me understand more complex books and the allusions within them?

>>7681111
Bloom said it was hard because his old man heart was too pussy for the violent scenes, a 14 year old will gobble up the dead baby tree and similar scenes too edgy for an old hack like Harry B.

>>7681119
Pretty much this, i loved that shit when I was 14 if it hadnt been for the extreme violence i wouldnt habe been able to get by the prose, but edgelord that i was i managed

>>7681084
I don't get what's hard about this book. I know there are allusions and such but it's not like Cormac McCarthy comes to your house, takes the book out of your hands and won't let you keep reading until you explain them to him.

Just finished this yesterday. Are you struggling with the archaic words? The allusions are not the main focus of the book

>>7681399

That might be it, I'm pretty pleb but I didn't have any trouble reading BM. But my favorite author is Lovecraft so that might be why it was easy for me.

BM is only hard to read because he dosent use punctuation to help pace things out.

Take your time with each word and you'll get it

>>7681084
I bought my Computer Science Professor this book as a gift for his Wife's boyfriend's house warming. He told me 'you fucking idiot, I asked for The Silmarillion, not Blood Meridian!'

>>7681479
Your Computer Science Professor sounds like a classy man

>>7681102
It's not hard at all. It's also not good at all either.
>>7681111
Have you seen his fanfictiony fantasy book? Yale professor or not, he's not as smart as you'd think.
>>7681159
Literally nothing. Bits of it are in Spanish, and the ending is vague, but that's not "hard".

It is not hard if you have a dictionary.
Or if you ignore the imagery.

>>7681084
no book is really 'hard' or 'easy' once you have read enough (and have patience). you just aren't used to this style of prose, return to it at a later date. some people can't stand victorian prose at all, some people read Dickens in 6th grade with no problem

>>7681478
This. It's not a hard book and it's not a lengthy book, but it's written wit absolute care and you really need to read it meditatively to get anything out of it.

>>7681084
Unless it is a book for school I put it in my donations bin. If it is needed for a class I will try to get the general ghist of it online, and try to dive back in. I had issues with some Victorian literature, so watched a film version first. That pretty much always helps.

>>7681084
What do you mean by hard?

If you mean the text's too dense, either plough on (you *can* do it; >>7681102 is right) or just read something easier. Think of it as like buttplugs; you can bite the leather and shove a huge one up your arse, at which point your stretched arse will take other huge plugs pretty well almost immediately; or you can slowly work bigger and bigger ones in until you're able to take the big bad dragons.

>>7681118
Greeeeeeks.

Just read nigger. Borges is pretty cool while also being easy to read. But read whatever the fuck it is that most interests you; you won't do, read, or understand shit if you're reading books because you feel like you *have* to, rather than because you legitimately find it interesting.

But do make sure you're reading good shit. You can do that by generally asking around.

>>7681084
Have you read any McCarthy before? I started reading The Road and felt lost for the first 10-15 pages before I fell into pace with the prose

>>7681084
Search Youtube for Blood Meridian Yale, there's a course on the American novel after 1950 online that you can watch. Made some interesting links to history, Moby Dick, the poetry of Wordsworth and Paradise Lost. Made it easier to read for me.

>>7681084
blood meridian a shit

>>7681118
Seriously, the greeks. Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, Thucydides.

The Bible, old and new testament (reading this with a historical-critical guide like the one bart ehrman did [not his pop histories but his textbook] is very helpful).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics

If you can read this stuff, you can read anything except maybe Kant, Huysmans, Proust.

>>7681084
>Blood Meridian
>book is too hard for you
fucking pleb

File: heart20of20darkness2.jpg (276KB, 624x486px) Image search: [Google]

276KB, 624x486px

I just finished Heart of Darkness by Conrad. I thought it was great, but do you really thing it was written to warn of the dangers and costs associated with colonization? I never picked up on that. I thought shit just went down because of plot.

Listen to it on audiobook. Give it a try you really won't be disappointed. The audible reader for Blood Meridian did a great job imo.