I’ve read books.  Let’s say hundreds.  Maybe more. (That’s not to brag, the point is coming.)  Rather than focus on the wonderful books that I’ve read and the vast amounts of information, learning and pleasure that I’ve derived from this pastime, I spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the less than 1% of the books that I haven’t finished.  The incomplete.  My inability to finish.

Resting firmly on top of this list is Ulysses by James Joyce.  That’s the cover on the right.  The book, the same hideous cover, has been sitting next to my desk for eight years.  It stares me down.  It torments me.  Here come the low guttural whispers:  Quitter.  Not capable.  Not good enough.  Over your head.  Farm boy.  Loser!  Public school project.

I happened to come across a recent article in Publishers Weekly titled “The Top 10 Most Difficult Books” and the festering sore opens wide again.

“…The “Difficult Books” series is devoted to identifying the hardest and most frustrating books ever written, as well as what made them so hard and frustrating…If you can somehow read all 10, you probably ascend to the being immediately above Homo sapiens…”

Here we go.  Intelligentsia slapping me around again.  You want to hit nerve – – hit me here.  Hit me.  Neanderthal man immediately surfaces.

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