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Currently I'm trying to read a book called FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I'd like to think I'm atleast of average intelligence but this book is making me doubt my level of comprehension lol. I do get the big picture he is trying to draw, but I end up reading passages over and over again to make sure I've understood the details.

Has anyone ever come across a book where you think you can barely grasp what the author is getting at?

There are a couple of novels I gave up on because I was having difficulty comprehending them.

"The Egoist" by George Meredith
"Dr. Faustus" by Thomas Mann

I will give them another try someday.

The first book that made me feel this way was The Prince And The Pauper by Mark Twain. I read it when I was in my early teens, around twelve. And I had to reread it again at around 16 to understand it fully. LOL. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn also, I read around 13 or so (both books were gifts from one of my sisters), though not as archaic in its English, the dialect used is hard to grasp for a foreign reader like me. LOL

Nothing really mind-boggling. I only felt stupid because at the age I read those books, I should still have been reading comic books.

Sedative I gave up on comic books when I was 11! At 13 I was reading mystery stories and The Lord Of The Rings. For non-fiction "Jane's Fighting Ships" reference books. I moved on to Churchill's History of The Second World War when I was 16 or 17. It was kind of long, but very interesting (6 books and over 3,500 pages).

For a really interesting and bizarre read, try Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast" trilogy. Very unique to say the least. The first two books are great, the third is maybe a bit too out there.

I was always have two or three books on the go, from the very simple to read (e.g. The Hardy Boys) to the more complicated (History or Henry James for example).

the book that got to me was This Side of Paradise by fitzgerald. I read about 10pages and didnt understand one thing.

I usually don't have this problem (I've even read Tristram Shandy a couple of times, and it's a doozy). However, I will stop reading a book if it's pretentious and a painful exercise in self-indulgence on the author's part.

I will admit that I've given up on James Joyce at least twice.

I'm with art...Joyce and I don't get along so well. It's not so much a matter of understanding or complexity so much as one of my interest and the corresponding amount of effort I was willing to put in. Melville's Moby Dick does the same thing to me after the first few pages.

So make me question whether I'm stupid? No. Question whether I might have ADD? Yeah.

I hate when I read a classic and it turns out I don't like it. I just read Brave New World for the first time (believe it or not). Ugh. I hated it. Makes me wonder why some classics are classic.

Have I ever read a book that made me feel stupid? I don't think so, but I've read books that challenged my analytical discernment and ability to concentrate.

Now, I'm just about to start reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. There's a good chance I might feel stupid after reading that. I'll let you know.

Global_Citizen saidI hate when I read a classic and it turns out I don't like it. I just read Brave New World for the first time (believe it or not). Ugh. I hated it. Makes me wonder why some classics are classic.

Maybe the historical background makes a difference.

Have I ever read a book that made me feel stupid? I don't think so, but I've read books that challenged my analytical discernment and ability to concentrate.

Now, I'm just about to start reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. There's a good chance I might feel stupid after reading that. I'll let you know.

LOL thanks. You know misery loves company.

closetsinger saidCurrently I'm trying to read a book called FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I'd like to think I'm atleast of average intelligence but this book is making me doubt my level of comprehension lol. I do get the big picture he is trying to draw, but I end up reading passages over and over again to make sure I've understood the details.

Has anyone ever come across a book where you think you can barely grasp what the author is getting at?

Just cuz you dont get it doesnt mean you are the one at fault. The guy could just be a lousy writer. In fact, I would say he is a lousy writer if he cant write so people can understand it.

I love history and I am totally capable of understanding books written about history. But I have a book on the Austrian-Hungarian Empire that is impossible for me to read. The sentence structure that this guy uses is ridiculous. Like you, I was having to go back and parse his sentences to figure out what he was saying. I finally said, fuck it, this isnt worth it. It wasnt my fault; it was his lousy writing style.

Wasn't it your 5th grade teacher who always pressed upon you to write to your audience? Maybe he did.

Try reading Vanity Fair in Old English. 2 Pages and done!

Global_Citizen said

Now, I'm just about to start reading Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. There's a good chance I might feel stupid after reading that. I'll let you know.

Oh I hope not. I <3 Carl Sagan ^-^

Anything by Jacques Lacan or Derrida.

Not only do I feel stupid but I can't stand that strand of philosophy.

I just finished "the singularity is near" by kurzweil. though I understood most of it, I thought several times throughout the book "Am I understanding this or do I just think I understand this?"

Now I'm reading "Nanoconvergence" by some idiot...I'm only 4 chapters into it and I already hate the author.

boob.

I dont think I've ever read fiction that made me feel stupid, but I read nonfiction sciencey stuff all the time that I dont understand. When I get to a part I dont understand I just start humming really loudly and pretend I'm more interested in the song I"m humming than in the words I'm reading. That way I dont feel like I"m stupid, I just feel like I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. I may look stupid, but it wouldnt be the first time someone had said that...

coolarmydude saidTry reading Vanity Fair in Old English. 2 Pages and done!

Do you have a copy? ...

coolarmydude saidTry reading Vanity Fair in Old English. 2 Pages and done!

You think English of the early twentieth century is hard to read? Try real Old English...something from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, ish. Makes Shakespeare sound like Suess and Thackeray read like...hmmm...Reader's Digest?

coolarmydude saidTry reading Vanity Fair in Old English. 2 Pages and done!

Yeah, man . . . Middle English is kind of fun, 'cause you can tell what about half of it means and make up the rest. But Old English . . . whoo.

Got to agree about Joyce. And though I enjoyed some of his stuff, I always feel like Faulkner's trying to shoot over my head.

coolarmydude saidTry reading Vanity Fair in Old English. 2 Pages and done!

I must admit I loved "Vanity Fair". Becky Sharp is one of my favourite fictional characters.

I am with Zdrew, "Moby Dick" until near the end was a real snoozefest. Maybe I should read it again to cure my insomnia? I had to read it in 3rd year university as part of my American Literature course. Give me English or Modern Literature any day of the week.

Actually if you want to really wrack your brains, read late Henry James novels (post 1900). His philosophy of writing seemed to be why say anything in 10 words when you can use 30? Incredibly complicated and convoluted sentences. For the most part I still enjoy his writing though. Formidably intelligent and wise about human beings and their behaviour.

closetsinger said Has anyone ever come across a book where you think you can barely grasp what the author is getting at?

The Poky Little Puppy

The metaphysics were too arcane to follow, the characters too self-examining, the plot too contrived, and the digressions on Byzantine architecture belonged in footnotes rather than the text.

Caslon4000 said

coolarmydude saidTry reading Vanity Fair in Old English. 2 Pages and done!

Do you have a copy? ...

No. A friend of mine recovered a late 19th Century copy that her Aunt was about to throw out. But if I had come across it first...

zdrew said

coolarmydude saidTry reading Vanity Fair in Old English. 2 Pages and done!

You think English of the early twentieth century is hard to read? Try real Old English...something from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, ish. Makes Shakespeare sound like Suess and Thackeray read like...hmmm...Reader's Digest?

Yeah, I've seen it. The friend I referenced in the above post Mastered in English and she had to do some assignments dealing with 13th Century Old English.

Green Eggs & Ham. Sam I am.

the Poetic Eddas and the Mabinogian

czarodziej saidthe Poetic Eddas and the Mabinogian

Hmmm, you reminded me that my brother-in-laws poetry books I find can be very obtuse. He is published and sold on Amazon so some people undertand him.

The Mabignogion and Candle in the Dark from this list I actually enjoyed. But I fully agree that there are books which are considered classics for reasons I just don't understand. I couldn't stand Cry the Beloved Country or Heart of Darkness or The Red Badge of Courage...heck, I also didn't like Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451 or The Time Machine (interest concepts which I feel were very poorly written).

But the book which made me feel the stupidest was...Molecular Biology of the Cell, by Lodish. I find it a useful reference now, but as the textbook in my first upper division biology course, it made me feel like a complete moron. Until I found out that basically no one in the class understood it, because the book was not written for an undergraduate audience. On the other hand Principles of Neural Science by Kandel remained impenetrable even after I made it to grad student status. I'm not sure how much was due to my being uninterested in the material and how much depended on it being extremely poorly written (for instance, the author routinely uses outdated terms without including a glossary or index. It took me a while on the net to find out that the plasmalemma is an outdated term for the cellular membrane), but that's one book I find it essentially impossible to learn from.

Fun With Dick And Jane confused the shit out of me.

Ug.............A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. My GOD, that book went WAY over my head. The only thing I remember about it is that I read it!

A la recerche du temps perdu / In Search of Lost Time by Proust. Hoooooly shit....

Trying to first read it in French, I thought, ok, clearly my French isn't up to snuff. So I got the translation and realized nope, it's just the equivalent of trying to eat a whole cheesecake in one sitting.

Any title that has "For Dummies!" attached to it!

Like "Dick Sucking For Dummies!"

The ones of Stochastic processes, risk and markov chains...

Texts books for college. It never fails, there's always something in them that stumps me and makes me feel stupid.

I'm with flako07 on stochastic processes and such. There are quite a few thing in probability that simply aren't inuitive (e.g. conditional probability). For me it was abstract algebra. 'Nuff said.

There have been several over the years but it's mostly because I just could not get in to the book for whatever reason....

THis one has me stumped big time!

"Reading For Dummies"???

Anything by Proust
Every Calculus II book I have ever seen.

- David

I couldn't stand Cry the Beloved Country or Heart of Darkness or The Red Badge of Courage...heck, I also didn't like Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451 or The Time Machine (interest concepts which I feel were very poorly written).

Not all books affect us similarly, but certainly 'Cry the Beloved Country' affected me deeply, as also did 'Heat of Darkness', and 'Fahrenheit 451', and I wasn't opposed to 'Brave New World'.

Different books affect people differently, and just because it is a 'classic' doesn't mean it will have an impression on every reader. That said I would consider at least some of the books mentioned as classics -- at least some cetainly impresed me for probably cultural reasons, but more than your average book.

closetsinger said

Has anyone ever come across a book where you think you can barely grasp what the author is getting at?

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

stonecoldfoxboy said

closetsinger said

Has anyone ever come across a book where you think you can barely grasp what the author is getting at?

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

I'll wait to see the movie version coming out in 2009 w/ Angelina Jolie

The Divine comedy By: Dante

Pattison saidThe Divine comedy By: Dante

If you hold the book right-side-up, it makes more sense.





Joking, Pattison! I had to say that - it's one of my all-time favorites. Sometimes with translated works, it makes a difference which translation you're using. Some are much 'cleaner' than others.

'The Stranger' by Albert Camus. No matter how many times I read it, I will never completely understand it. The way the main character is developed is just fascinating.

The Bible.

anything by toni morrison

flako07 saidThe ones of Stochastic processes, risk and markov chains...

What's really depressing is that I read the Wikipedia article on Stochastic processes to try and figure it out and get lost after the first paragraph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_process

Maybe it was because I was in fifth grade, but when I read The Last of the Mohicans (it was the longest book in our library at 1118 pages) I was just dumbfounded. I guess that's what I get for choosing a book based on length rather than content. Also, Leviticus, while interesting at parts, has expertly turned my brain into mush- and completely stopped me from reading more of the Bible, which is all beliefs set aside, a great piece of literature.

"A Brief History of Time" and "In search of Shroedinger's Cat" went right over my head.

Anything by Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida.

Math books

The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene

czarodziej saidthe Poetic Eddas and the Mabinogian

I love the Poetic Edda. Of the sagas its was the most enjoyable and had the most character depth. The Mabinogian however, I have read two different translations and it was about as enjoyable as a dentists waiting room. I hope it gets the same treatment Seamus Heaney gave Beowulf.

The worst saga is the Kalevala. No poet can make that readable. Sorry Fins.

MunchingZombie said

czarodziej saidthe Poetic Eddas and the Mabinogian

I love the Poetic Edda. Of the sagas its was the most enjoyable and had the most character depth. The Mabinogian however, I have read two different translations and it was about as enjoyable as a dentists waiting room. I hope it gets the same treatment Seamus Heaney gave Beowulf.

The worst saga is the Kalevala. No poet can make that readable. Sorry Fins.

I can't imagine any book making you feel stupid MZ. I don't think these sagas are my cup of tea. I have about 50 books in my condo along that I have not read yet.

I've tried to both listen and read Chaucer in His original English. Stimulating, but too hard to enjoy

SAHEM62896 saidAnything by Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida.

I can't believe I forgot about those. I think I understood something Derrida wrote once, but I might have imagined it. Foucault hurts my head in ways I didn't know were possible.

Crimthann saidI've tried to both listen and read Chaucer in His original English. Stimulating, but too hard to enjoy

If you're on broadband, you might enjoy my effort in kicking Internet culture up a notch:

http://www.munkyourself.com/us/?key=21c27734f5d5c6e033a124db5

JBE60 saidI can't imagine any book making you feel stupid MZ. I don't think these sagas are my cup of tea. I have about 50 books in my condo along that I have not read yet.

Here is the answer to that.

zdrew said

SAHEM62896 saidAnything by Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida.

I can't believe I forgot about those. I think I understood something Derrida wrote once, but I might have imagined it. Foucault hurts my head in ways I didn't know were possible.

paradox said

Crimthann saidI've tried to both listen and read Chaucer in His original English. Stimulating, but too hard to enjoy

If you're on broadband, you might enjoy my effort in kicking Internet culture up a notch:

http://www.munkyourself.com/us/?key=21c27734f5d5c6e033a124db5

Excellent. Sounds like Chauncer speed reading at a mellow coffee shop. He might've been a beatnick in the right decade.

heart of darkness - so much depth that you drown

great expectations - i never hated literacy more

atlas shrugged - working on it, got about twenty pages in and realized i'd need to reread every line...may turn out like conrad...

trailBLAZER saidheart of darkness - so much depth that you drown

great expectations - i never hated literacy more

atlas shrugged - working on it, got about twenty pages in and realized i'd need to reread every line...may turn out like conrad...

I didn't appreciate "Great Expectations" until I was 32. We read it in High School and it did not leave much of an impression on me. Read "Heart of Darkness" in University and the same thing happened. There is something about being forced to read a book, then having to write an essay about it that takes away the pleasure!

Oh God I LOVE Heart of Darkness. The language is dense as the jungle. MAN, Conrad makes me croon. It's good stuff.

If anyone else enjoys them Conrad, be sure to check out his novella "The Secret Sharer". Its high stakes secret operations for a good 60 pages, and its merciless.

Someone mentioned Faulkner, and I have to agree. I usually breeze through most books, but The Sound and the Fury was definitely one I had to reread.

Sorry to be so long... its hard to explain phenomenological stuff. As one of my genius friends told me "ontological correctness is lexically cumbersome."

If anyone is interested in philosophy and/or anthropology at all you need to check out The Acting Person by Karol Wojtyla, (Pope John Paul II before he became pope). I haven't read the whole thing, but I plan on it. It is described as a phenomenological approach (primarily Husserl) utilizing Schelerian theories to Thomistic Metaphysics. If you haven't had much background in phenomenology or thomistic/aristotelian metaphysics, you may want to read those first. I'm going to try to put this as simply as possible. I read parts for a class I took on philosophical anthropology.

In it KW takes Thomistic (building on Plato and Aristotle) philosophy of the being-itself (the suppositum, the entity/person as a whole) and combines it with the phenomenological concept of being-in-relation (or Heideggerian being-in-the-world). He synthesizes these to argue that the Human Person is fundamentally a being-in-action. (Note the hyphenated words represents the unity of what it represents. The continual action of that being and the being itself are in unity as the fullness of the being.)

In other words... the actions of a person mutually exhibit and condition the who and what that person is. You are what you do and the choices you make.

List price is over $80, but I bought mine through Amazon for around $40. There is a lot of debate over this edition, some argue that in translating from the Polish to the English, the translator injected more phenomenology than Wojtyla originally intended, changing the meaning. But... it is nonetheless, still a debated work. But one that scholars argue will be another major hinge upon which humanity's concept of itself will turn.

Disclaimer for those who gasp at the mention of a pope: It is primarily philosophy, not theology, although it forms the basis for much of his later theology. So don't worry for those of you who are timid about theology or about JPII and the Catholic Church.

I don't know if I've really felt stupid per se, but there are books I've read that I can only digest one paragraph at a time, because I have to give my brain time to form new wrinkles from all the information being conveyed.
THE ILLUMINATTI PAPERS by Robert Anton Wilson is one.

Anything by Shakespeare is another. After reading him, I feel like the rabble in Julius Ceasar; ]"You blocks. You stones. You worse than senseless things!"

Parts of Major John Wesley Powell's journal of his voyage through Grand Canyon in 1869 is another. Dig this:
"The river shrinks us into insignificance. Though more violent than the sea, the waves are puny ripples against the majesty of the cliffs which rise to the world above. We are but Pygmies, running up and down along the sands or lost among the boulders."
But there are other parts that are crystal clear:
"Tomorrow we start our way down The Great Unknown. We have an unknown distance to run, an unknown river to explore. It is with anxiety and misgiving we enter the canyon below. What falls there be, we know not. What walls beset the canyon, we know not. What rapids or danger, or treacherous disaster awaits us, we know not but press on... God willing."
I'm paraphrasing a bit, I'm sure...

scottshard2 said

flako07 saidThe ones of Stochastic processes, risk and markov chains...

What's really depressing is that I read the Wikipedia article on Stochastic processes to try and figure it out and get lost after the first paragraph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_process

What makes me feel depressed about this ones is that when I get the idea of what they're trying to make us understand... the idea is so simple and easy, Ifyou want I can explain you about this, its very interesting

I'm having trouble with "The Little Engine that Could".....just kidding....actually I've inherited a lot of mathematical books that belonged to my uncle. I look them over now and then. I feel stupid as soon as I open the book! I'm selling them on Half.com.

Gigadu saidA la recerche du temps perdu / In Search of Lost Time by Proust. Hoooooly shit....

Trying to first read it in French, I thought, ok, clearly my French isn't up to snuff. So I got the translation and realized nope, it's just the equivalent of trying to eat a whole cheesecake in one sitting.

Oh yes! I felt the same as you, Gigadu! Proust's "A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu" is A PIECE OF WORK, you hear me.... A PIECE!!! I failed at my first attempt - a 7-volumes novel is no small work! - and it took me a WHOLE summer to finish it the second time around.

I had a similar experience with "L'Allee Du Roi" by Francoise Chandernagor, written in 17th century French - it was on the damned middle school curriculum!!

Gravity's Rainbow.
It's such an exercise in fancy pants writing. Yuck.

Anything by Michel Foucault.

SAHEM62896 saidAnything by Michel Foucault.

I second that. Mind you I was introduced to him after reading Camile Paglia's eviscerations of him..but most of what he argued just made no good sense to me.

We're all different and have very different minds. Some people can grasp certain things quicker than others. Just because you can't get the meaning of something doesn't make you stupid, it means your mind is better at other things than understanding that particular book/sentence/whatever.

Don't beat yourself up about it.

Lozx

I was an English major in college, took a semester class on Faulkner. I had to get the Cliff's Notes for both The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! I also started reading some Proust and that's pretty tough to get through.

26mileman saidThe Bible.

I was waitin for someone to throw that in there...

My friends bought me a book titled "Q". That is my name and I thought it was a cool gift.....until I tried to read it. I reread pages and started the book over so many time until I almost threw it up against the wall.

It is, to this day, the only book I have ever started and not finished.

...but it looks cool on my shelf

Annie Proulx tales about Wyoming, I got so lost and had no idea what was going on. Plus I don't know how to say the name

DanBasil saidAnnie Proulx tales about Wyoming, I got so lost and had no idea what was going on. Plus I don't know how to say the name

It's prounounced 'proo' like poo with an r.

I found that Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by Milton to be a challenge.

My dyslexia came in handy here as it naturally forces me to read slow and therefor makes difficult language or dense content far easier to comprehend. "Sometimes, slow is good."

RunintheCity said

SAHEM62896 saidAnything by Michel Foucault.

I second that. Mind you I was introduced to him after reading Camile Paglia's eviscerations of him..but most of what he argued just made no good sense to me.

I know. I couldn't understand a word this guy was writing myself, but you should have heard the way they sang his praises at the University of Chicago. Made me feel real stupid. Then came Jacques Derrida... and I thought I had dropped some bad acid!

I never understood why, as a Japanese historian, I had to know French philosophy anyway.

Virgina Woolf, I've read a couple of her books and while the stories are compelling, they are presented in a very odd narrative.

!00 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it was one weird book.

after reading "the name of the rose" by Umberto Eco I moved on to the " Foucault's Pendulum" and I just did not get it, I read later that pretty much everyone felt like this in the start and you just had to keep reading, but I never got past that point, I decided to read it another day, which never came. I usually read very fast and on this one I had to reread almost every 2nd page I hated it.

London Fields by Martin Amis gave me nightmares. I couldn't complete the book. The main narrative is a story about a straight, traditional, love triangle, but the backdrop is this " vaguely defined political/ecological/cosmological crisis".
I was living in London at the time, away (mostly) from my bf, so maybe that had something to do with it (lol).

closetsinger said
Has anyone ever come across a book where you think you can barely grasp what the author is getting at?

Computational Financial Mathematics using Mathematica by Srdjan Stojanovic.

I was completely lost. LOL.

One was "Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global Energy Industry." I wanted to learn more about the topic but I'm not great at understanding hard sciences or all that knowledgeable about energy systems. I definitely could use a Dummies Guide for that topic.

the Alchemy of Finance

anything by toni morrison

On The Shoulders Of Giants by Stephen Hawking
I should have gotten the illustrated edition.