It’s a work you don’t understand but experience

Is spot on. I read it at Uni (studying English Literature) and at the time found it utterly brilliant.
I tried re-reading it a year or so ago and barely understood the notes I’d written about it, let along the book itself.

Salman Rushtie is awesome, BTW, I remember staying on the train for several stops longer than I should have due to being so engrossed in The Satanic Verses (a Virgin train, I mean, not some little local thing!)

Any pleasure in reading Ulysses is like the pleasure of finally squeezing out that brick after an extended bout of constipation. Over-rated pretentious literary ****.

Over-rated pretentious literary ****

Would also cover a lot of the rest on that list, especially the alarming amount of Rand, Heinlein and Hubbard.

I’m going to read it and enjoy it just so I can be much cleverer than you lot.

Just as soon as I manage to finish Gravity’s Rainbow.

Just as soon as I manage to finish Gravity’s Rainbow.

Don’t bother. It really isnt worth it. Give me Jack Reacher or Myron Bolitar over Slothrop and Enzian any day.

finbar – Member

Sorry don’t understand, nicer?

For the most part Tolstoy writes about beautiful rich people, much like Jane Austen. Dostoevsky is obviously a bit grittier.

Ah, most definitely. But I think that’s what attracts me. The aristocracy was pretty much the same everywhere but all the details about the lives of the serfs etc I love and haven’t come across elsewhere.

I did give up on ‘House of the Dead’ just found it a bit rambling and incredibly depressing, even by his standards!

try William S Burroughs – Naked Lunch

slightly more coherent (ish) but with added (very) naughty sex and violence

Yunki – they’ve made that into a film… why waste any more that 139 mins of your life?

Will Self is good too, I’ve read Liver which is a good starting point as it’s 3 short(er) stories and just finished My Idea Of Fun which dragged a bit in the middle but was totally worth it for the ending.

He has a unique style.