What is the book that you most regret spending your time on?

Ulysses.

IJ was really unfulfilling
Women And Men too

>>8431540
Ulysses is great you pleb

>>8431540
Is Ulysses really that bad? This is not the first time that I have heard someone say that they didn't like it..
I've always thought that I would enjoy it but I haven't gotten to it yet. what was so bad about it.

Also, whats unfulfilling about IJ?

The Better Angels of Our Nature

Some of the individual 'factoids' were interesting (I don't want to say ideas because that might be glorifying it) but overall I got memed into reading hundreds of pages of bunk.

IDK maybe some of the people he cited were important in their own right, I should have just read Lawrence Keeley for my fix of indian bashing.

>>8431503

Right now i'm about halfway through 100 years of solitude and i have to take a break from it and seriously considering just dropping it. Every chapter ends the same with some random fucker from the town dying, someone is introduced with the same name as someone else, one of these people has some weird premonition shit and im just becoming numb to all of it. I don't care anymore and niggas only halfway through. it seems like its just the same shit over and over again, is it worth it to continue lit?

>>8431555
IJ just really didn't feel succinct or focused enough in the points that it was trying to make and just ended up being really bloated; now, most of the details tie back and form a larger overarching structure, but the novel is digressive as fuck for really no reason at points, a la most contemporary postmodernism. DFW had a knack for character and worldbuilding, but he just needed to tone it down and make something more focused

Also, Ulysses isn't bad as much as it's just not some people's cup of tea. Ignore the difficultly earnings, it's mostly comprehensible and there's no need to be pedantic about references unless you're writing a detailed analysis. What really loses some people is the general tone of the book, which veers between more oddball inner narration and reference to both surprisingly poignant character study and ribald humor. It's an acquired taste but certainly worth a read

>>8431560
>wow why does a book about absurdism and people repeating the mistakes of their ancestors have repetition in it

Also man there are tons of twists and turns in that book, I can't see how you think that

Who's the boner honer?

>>8431503
My book club makes me read some hot garbage. We just read Red Rising which is probably the worst book I've ever finished. I lose sleep thinking about how awful that book is.

A more /lit/ answer would be Master and Margarita. Aside from a couple parts I honestly can't see where the praise for this book comes from. My translation could have just been shit though.

>>8431503
The Idiot.

>>8431503
Naked Lunch

>>8431503
source me sempai

2666

>>8431503
I Just spent 4 hours on thus spoke zarathustra, it was dreadful. Only an edgy teenager would find it to be anything but tedious.

I rarely regret what I read. I'd have to say I'd like the time I spent reading Pride and Prejudice back.

>>8433511
>He didn't get boners

the line of beauty by alan hollinghurst
without a doubt the worst thing i have ever read

Blood Meridian was such a drag to read that getting even 60 pages in is a chore

>>8433779
no no no

>>8433783
Violence boots yeehaw violence The Kid violence no god violence

It's so heavyhanded

>>8433746
>he doesn't like reading 200 pages of extremely detailed murdered whores
Faggot

Catcher in the Rye. I'd be able to stand it if it didn't feel like purgatory narrated by Donald Trump

>>8431503
American Psycho

>>8431503
Complete Collection of Plato. I read every single goddamn page of this 1000+ page book and then I read a book about Diogenes that was around 200 pages and Diogenes made Plato look like a fool.

Ulysses. Currently halfway through "Ithaca" and have just been forcing myself through. Still would likely reread it when I've read more and have more literature under my belt.

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>>8434243
>and then I read a book about Diogenes that was around 200 pages
this?

>>8434250
Yeah, that.

>>8434245
It's a book that takes maturity and just generally knowing how to read; don't get hung up on references and just think about your own thought process and how it compares to the prose (psst, they'll probably be pretty similar)

Anyway Ithaca means you're almost finished regardless

>>8434260
Don't agree with this. Its NOT a book that you can skim through and ignore the allusion. The whole book is constitued of allusion. If you're familiar with the KJB, Greek myth and Shakespeare and generally pretty well read Ulysses is just a massive block of nonsensical words.

>>8431574

Ya but i get it already, i don't feel it needs another 200 pages to get that message across. imma keep trudging through it though

>>8433753
>Reading Zarathustra in 4 hours.
Clearly you didn't read with the pace and effort of a philologist. Also guessing this was your first Nietzsche. Bad move.

>>8434236
THIS. Thank god i only spent an evening on it before it went sailing across the room. But since it's a book many love to hate, i'm sure a bunch of whiny internet contrarians will rush to its defense. sorry, it sucks

Book of disquiet

>>8433069
What translation did you read? I just bought it today, the burgin oconnor translation

>>8434279
What this anon was trying to express is completely wrong (and was a source of facepalms and fistbites for Joyce himself, incidentally). Ulysses can stand on its own legs.

>>8431503
American Gods was pretty fucking retarded

Probably IJ, at least I didn't force myself to finish it. Granted my time spent on that book was probably more profitable than the.countless hours I spent on generic genreshit novel #13123 in my youth.

Atlas Shrugged

>>8431503
Dune. Still mad i read the whole thing. Frank is a fucking untalented hack.

>>8433811
You actually think your uninspired over simplification is anything but petty bait, faggot?

>>8431503
My diary desu.

>>8431503
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. Good title, good premise, long and dull as balls.

>>8431572
IJ made me realize that one important thing about reading/writing is that a common idea can be reintroduced in way that makes it somehow more important. At first we can all agree, without feeling any significance in the idea, that anything is unhealthy in massive doses. But I found IJ was creative enough to present this idea by writing a plot in which drugs/commercial entertainment are metaphors for one another. This is actually clever.

A lot of people tend to think that IJ is anti-drug, when in fact it's not at all. IJ actually condones the use of drugs, but only in moderation. DFW says the same about commercial entertainment, that it's "a hell of a lot of fun..." but in massive doses it makes us lonelier, because there's no interactive quality in it. IJ puts these two statements together to show that there is a fine but visible line between fun and danger.

At first, these ideas seem basic and unoriginal, but if a book manages to make them much more important to us, I think it's worth reading. I'll agree IJ is too long, but it's still one of my favorite books of all time.

>>8431503
11/22/63 i think is the date by stephen king. im interested in the kennedy assasination and had never read anything by king, chrichton, etc.

i finished it because i have ocd, but the prose was easily the worst ive read since whenever i can remember

nicholas nickleby was horrible trash. It was like one of grandpa simpsons stories

>>8431560
>it seems like its just the same shit over and over again
thatsthejoke.jpg

>>8433069
>>8431560
Btw not liking Bulgakov or Marquez makes you a pleb.
>>8433511
I full-heartedly agree.

Self-help books that relies on motivation.
>if you think hard enough, it'll happen!
>just beelieve in urself!
>every morning, think Y ten times!

Other than those, there are shitty jap novels like Haruki Murakami.

I had to read The White Tiger for a class. I'm not sure if it is because I had to read it, poo in the Loo memes, or because the protagonist is a freakish retard but I disliked it.

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>>8431503
the greeks.

>>8436470
>>>>he fell for the meme

>>8436473
so where should I start with philosophy? and don't say Christians.

>>8434616
>effort of a philologist
>Bad move.

I had a reply half written before I realized. Rated 7/8

>>8433811
you forgot all the poetry

>>8433702
Her name is Laura Pol.

>>8436494
The Greeks, literally

You need to filter it through critical review of the Greeks, though

The History of Philosophy podcast is a good introduction

>>8434242
Second

>>8434671
I hope so because love of lit shouldn't be work. I'm sorry, but fuck having to put time in reading referenced literature. In fact, this is how writers end up with dated novels. It's like musicians who reference social media. Not gonna be a classic when no one uses twitter anymore.

>>8431503
War and Peace.