Thursday, November 11, 2010

Literary Blog Hop: A difficult literary read

In the past when I've participated in blog hops I've taken part of the welcome-to-anyone hop hosted by Crazy-for-Books.  I have found some great reads over there but the majority of the blogs are not my style.  As such I'm happy those over at The Blue Bookcase have started their own literary blog hop.  Not every book I read and talk about on this site is a literary masterpiece, but this is far more my thing.  I missed the hop last week as I had already posted for the other hop when I saw this one going around so I decided to wait around until this week to join in.  I also would have probably held off on my final World War Z post until tomorrow had I realized this hop started today.  I'm not good at the small details or planning in general so I suppose doing it this way is more my style anyway.

Sorry for the rambling and now onto the question: What's the most difficult literary work you've ever read?  What made it so difficult?

When I saw this question Toni Morrison's Beloved instantly came to mind.  There is so much to take in, so many themes and devices and it can be difficult to follow what's going on, not because the book is poorly written but because it is so rich there are so many different ways to see each scene, particularly the character Beloved.  And the subject matter itself is heartbreaking.  The experiences the characters have gone through are hard to read and hard to believe that while the characters themselves are fictional the abuse they went through was true for so many. I've mentioned in a previous post how other novels by Morrison deal with such heavy topics but Beloved is at the top of that list.  It's hard not to emotionally start to shut down while reading it.  But having said this, it is worth it.