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[jjaynes]

I am in a spectacularly sour mood that has been worsening all day. I suspect a major contributor is reading "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison. I thought I was fairly able to handle textualy conveyed violence, but I have had to put the book down and walk away to breathe deep and settle my stomach a half dozen times today. It's some challenging

Comments

[safiya_shirazi]

There is no shame in walking away from the book. If it displeases you or if your issues with the book or the writing or whatever make it impossible or very difficult for you to get to the point or actually enjoy the book, you can just walk away.

There's a very popular fantasy series right now that I keep trying to read, just so I can try to understand what all the jokes are about. I can't get more than six pages into the first novel before I want to kill all the characters with fire. I'm sure it marks me as a bad person but I don't think I much care anymore.

[jjaynes]

Well, it's not meant to be an enjoyable book. It's meant to be a challenging work of literature. I'm taking today off, but I'll be back to it.

[safiya_shirazi]

Challenging is one thing. Unreadable is another. If you think that it's worth trying to get through it by all means, I'm not going to try to dissuade you, but it seems a little counterproductive to me for an author to try to make his work so very unpleasant that it's the wrong kind of "challenge."