The most difficult book you've ever read

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The most difficult book you've ever read

1shelagh
Nov 12, 2006, 10:42 am

Is there a children's book you found particularly difficult?

2Jenson_AKA_DL
Nov 13, 2006, 10:56 am

I found Sunshine by Robin McKinley rather confusing to read and it took me a lot longer than most books because I was trying to keep track of what was happening. That said, I loved the book. I wish she would write a sequel. But, I guess she's not known for writing sequels which is too bad.

3Rachael
Nov 15, 2006, 10:49 pm

Aaagh! I just wrote out this long post in reply to this and it vanished into the ether! I'm posting THIS to see if it arrives. ::grump, doesn't want to type all that out again::

4Rachael
Nov 15, 2006, 10:56 pm

Ok. That worked. Let's try this again.

Did you mean "difficult" as in literally difficult to read (confusing, boring, hard to understand), or as in emotionally difficult (emotional, heart-rending, scary, sad)?

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis is definitely emotionally difficult; I love the Chronicles of Narnia, but remember really having a hard time with this book as a child and even now, still don't completely enjoy reading it. But I do read it, because I re-read all those books and love them all, really.

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck is emotionally difficult, but the difference is, I hated it as a child, and hate it now, and don't re-read it. I keep it for odd sentimental reasons, and also because Wesley Dennis illustrated it.

The Satanic Mill by Otfried Preussler is an emotionally difficult book from my childhood but it's one that I loved in spite of the difficulty, and still love re-reading it now.

In terms of literal difficulty, I'd have to say Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. When I was a child, my mom gave me these books along with them being read aloud on record. So I'd put on the record player and listen while I read along. I loved them in spite of the fact that I didn't get half of it, and didn't really get the other half till I was an adult.

5SimonW11
Editado: Nov 16, 2006, 5:26 am

Thanks for reminding me of the excellent The Satanic Mill I did not find it at all an emotional stress. age is soimportant in these things.
I suspect most children find The mouse and his child challenging.

6Jenson_AKA_DL
Nov 16, 2006, 9:32 am

I read Alice in Wonderland when I was in highschool and honestly, the story completely creeped me out. I can't even sit through the Disney cartoon version of it anymore.

7SimonW11
Nov 16, 2006, 4:33 pm

Hmm I have heard people relate a strong reaction to Alice in wonderland (usually in favour of it) to various sorts of bad parenting. The rules you see keep changing. Jam is always tomorrow and poor Alice has to run as fast as she can to stay in the same place.

8jenn2d2
Nov 16, 2006, 5:57 pm

I still remember the visceral terror of trying to read The Fellowship of the Ring when I was 10. I'd loved The Hobbit, and the language and general themes weren't a problem - but the Ring Wraiths scared the heck out of me. I didn't even make it past Weathertop in the books until I was 14.

9marfita
Nov 17, 2006, 3:53 pm

Of all things, I had to stop reading The dark is rising by Susan Cooper because ... it was so dark and it kept ... rising and I couldn't take it. Later, though, I got the audio version of it and managed to listen to it. The building suspense was just unbearable for me to read.
As a children's librarian (sort of, I play one on TV anyway) who used to be a child, I find it hard to recommend books to kids. I was given some horrible thing when I was in the fifth grade by some school librarian (before they were media specialists but after scrolls went out of fashion) that made me wonder what she thought of me. It was some realistic piece of twaddle with angst and all. Ick.
Next time she offered James and the Giant Peach by Dahl and I loved it. To this day, though, I remain leery of recommending anything. I ask what they last read that they really liked and go from there.

10fyrefly98
Nov 18, 2006, 8:10 am

Oooh, marfita, the raven scene in The Dark is Rising completely creeped me out and I read it when I was in my early twenties! Don't know if I could have handled it as a kid.

11marfita
Nov 18, 2006, 12:11 pm

Right-o, and I was in my 40s!

12nicoletort
Nov 18, 2006, 9:29 pm

I have never considered Sunshine to be children's fiction. I always assumed it was meant to be adult, or at least YA, mainly because it is rather dark.

I read it, I want to say two years ago? Either way, when it had just come out. I was around 14-15 and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I've always been one to pick up books that others consider too old for my age.

When I was 7 I tried to read Bunnicula late one night, and became absolutely terrified. It scared me so much that didn't pick it up again until I was 9. I don't really remember much of the plot, or why it was so scary, but I distinctly remember not wanting to fall asleep that night.

13t1bclasslibrary
Nov 27, 2006, 2:15 am

I'm going to agree with nicoletort- Sunshine is one of those books that sometimes gets put into the children's section because it's fantasy or because someone sees it's written by Robin McKinley and says, "Oh, she won a Newbery- she's a children's author." Any child who can read a four hundred page book with tiny print and adult content is ready for adult reading (by reading ability, not necessarily content). It's also considerably thicker than what's currently going as young adult lit. I should specify that adult literature means, to me, high school and up (we read Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Shakespeare, etc. when I was in high school, so I'm going by my school system's standards.) YA I consider middle school and up reading level (for average students in my school system based on ability and content). I think it's an important point to make because I worry about the content of some books that get put in children's sections just because they're fantasy which really aren't appropriate content wise (by which I mean they have content that would be rated r in theaters, or at least pg thirteen).

I would call this young adult rather than children's but we read The Red Badge of Courage in eighth grade and it was a particularly awful- I remember trudging through it was like eating sewer sludge. Yuck.

14AngelaB86
Editado: Dez 23, 2006, 6:46 pm

The Dark is Rising book was hard for me, I still haven't finished it even though I have the whole series.

t1bclass, I agree with books being put in the wrong section. I'm always confused when I see His Dark Materials in the children's section, since I would definitely not classify these as children's books!

15RuneFirestar
Dez 3, 2006, 5:56 am

For me most recently my most difficult read was Dream Merchant. I really did try to finish it and read it all the way through but I kept getting confused and mixed up. I was very unsure of the story.

Maybe it wasn't my type of read or maybe it was the style the book was written or maybe it was just a combination of things. Either way I found it really hard going, in the end I didn't finish.

16Storeetllr
Dez 3, 2006, 2:45 pm

OK, you are all going to laugh at me, but here's the book that scared the heck out of me when I was a kid and still occasionally causes me to worry about putting my feet too close to my bed in the middle of the night: The Friendly Little Bunny. It was a Wonder Book. It had a weasel in it. It was a really really scary weasel with really really sharp teeth and it really really wanted to catch and eat the friendly little bunny. It would lay in wait for the bunny under bushes and in the high grass of the meadow and behind trees.

I was SURE that weasel was hiding under my bed. I remember many nights when I was little taking a running leap into my bed so my feet didn't get too close to where that darned weasel was laying in wait in the darkness under my bed to take a bite out of my ankle.

I want you to know that I was NOT afraid of ANY other book I ever read until Salem's Lot came out in the 70s when I was an adult in my mid-20s. That one scared the heck out of me too.

17ciciha
Dez 3, 2006, 5:43 pm

Oh storeetllr, that is sweet. Sure and why shouldn't you have been scared? One of my all-time favorite books from childhood, The giant golden book of elves and fairies with assorted pixies, mermaids, brownies, was wonderfully transporting but had scary scary illustrations by Garth Williams. I could only read it while sitting in the sunlight, got too scared otherwise! Even now, those pictures give me a frisson.

Difficult/hard-wise, I'd have to say Dr Doolittle which I just could not manage. I guess I was too young, plus the Britishisms really threw me, but the pictures were so fascinating that I was dying to read it and tried to many times! I should try again...

18dragonrider_eragon
Dez 11, 2006, 9:15 pm

The hardest book i ever read was the fith hp book. it was pretty long.

19SimonW11
Dez 12, 2006, 4:37 am

Oh yes I remember the first very long book I read it was The Lord of the Rings an older cousin had told me it was good and I had read the Hobbit. It was very expensive even in the cheap paperback version I had. And when the salesman found it for me i nearly said, No thank you its too big, but I was embarrassed. It took me ages and ages to read when Things were getting really bad For Sam and frodo In Mordor It lay on my bed for months and months because I despaired of them surviving. But after that I knew I could read anything. When I saw how Thick The HP books were becomeing I thought If she had been any other childrens writer she would have been told to shorten it. But now that you have read a book that long like me you know you can tackle anything.

20thatpalechick
Dez 18, 2006, 7:48 pm

I read the first book of The Dark is Rising series when I was nine or ten, and it was one of the most difficul books I've ever read. I reread it much later and loved it, it's just a little much for a child that age. I made the same mistake when I tried to read The Silmarillion as a youngster. That book is not to be trifled with, even by adults.

21elwing
Dez 18, 2006, 10:54 pm

The most difficult book i've read recently is Spindle's End by Robin Mckinley. It's just the way the words seem to wander, like a long staircase winding up and down, until i couldn't make the head and tail of it. Sometime I had to go back to the beginning coz the whole page just slipped of my mind.
That is not to say that I dont like the story or the characters. Robin Mckinley sure has a way of re-telling a fairy tale into more exciting bedtime story (and not to mention surprising ending).

22blbooks
Dez 19, 2006, 4:38 pm

The most difficult book I've read recently is M.T. Anderson's Octavian Nothing. Despite its acclaim--is there a best list it's not on???--I found it not to be worth all the effort of deciphering its so-called beautiful and outstanding language which I merely found dull, archaic, and overrated. I love historical fiction, but Octavian did little for me.

23hydrangea
Dez 20, 2006, 11:00 pm

I must agree about The Dark is Rising series! I tried to read Over Sea, Under Stone when I was about nine, and gave up after the first few pages. I revisited it as a college student, and absolutely loved ithe whole series... but even then, I could see why the first few pages totally lost me as a kid! It's rather dense and heavy, and takes a little while to get into the action. Wonderful books, though. Definitely a stand-out series!

24Jenson_AKA_DL
Dez 21, 2006, 9:49 am

I first read The Dark is Rising series in 6th grade for a class project. Maybe that's why it worked out well for me to read it at a young age. We had class discussions and had to break the book down and analyze it.

25criseyde Primeira Mensagem
Dez 21, 2006, 9:56 am

I was completely freaked when my dad read The Witches to me when I was 8 or 9. I spent the whole summer with my windows closed, afraid that a witch was going to seek me out and turn me into a mouse or worse. I think the only reason I'm not afraid of the book now is that I'm too old to be a witch's prey.

26nicoletort
Dez 21, 2006, 11:25 am

I'll probably regret saying this, but after reading The Witches I tried to stop bathing just like the boy in the book so the witches wouldn't be able to smell me. Thankfully, my mother made me shower.

27AlysonWonderland
Jan 13, 2007, 6:24 pm

I tried to read the Series of Unfortunate Events series, but only managed to get halfway through #4. They were simply too depressing and nothing good EVER happened, which I know, is the whole point, but I just didn't find it entertaining.

28ellaminnowpea
Editado: Jan 14, 2007, 9:32 pm

My problem with the Snicket books wasn't so much that they were depressing but that the first four or so books were essentially the same, just in different places with different guardians. Snicket didn't really do anything to move the plot along until the Quagmire triplets showed up, and by that point I had lost interest. I did read The End, though, and I'm curious to hear what people thought about it.

29ulan25
Editado: Jan 18, 2007, 9:15 am

Wow. I am not alone in finding The Dark Is Rising difficult. I tried reading it years ago. Until today, I haven't finished it.

I do remember the scene with the black birds. That was creepy. But it wasnt the creepiness that bothered me. I don't know, I just couldn't get through it.

Maybe I'll revisit that series soon.

30kageeh
Jan 18, 2007, 9:49 am

I suspect Alice in Wonderland makes more sense if you've ever "smoked". Lewis Carroll was a known user of hallucinogenics.

31bluesalamanders
Jan 18, 2007, 10:54 am

I was looking at "Talk" about "my books" and this popped up because I am a big Robin McKinley fan and have most of her books.

I am often surprised that McKinley is classified as YA, particularly her more recent books - the two that have been mentioned here, Sunshine and Spindle's End, specifically, which are more difficult and more adult than most of her other books. The same goes for Pullman's His Dark Materials, which many adults, even fantasy readers, will swear up and down are YA books, not Adult books.

I was no slouch of a reader when I was in my early teens (which is what YA is, right?) but I think I would have had some trouble with those books. I go back now and reread some of the "big" books I read at that time - the Redwall series, for instance, and Madelaine L'Engle's books - and they're still decent or even good books, but not as difficult or as long as Sunshine or The Amber Spyglass.

32ellaminnowpea
Jan 18, 2007, 8:02 pm

I have to jump in to support The Dark is Rising - it's one of my favorites, and I re-read it every year the week before Christmas. Good quest, scary bad guys, Christmas cheer!

33AngelaB86
Jan 18, 2007, 8:06 pm

Well, I am about to finish the Dark is Rising sequence, I've just begun Silver on the Tree, and I love them. They don't seem as difficult to read as they did when I was in middle school, though there is a lot of suspense and creepiness. And frustration. Am I the only person who wanted to yell "The fox is RIGHT THERE!" at the crowd of oblivious men in The Grey King, during the sheep chasing part near the end?

34marfita
Jan 19, 2007, 10:20 am

Here is my advice, for what it is worth, on what looks to be a Tough Read: start 1/3 of the way in. That way you bypass all the "long, boring" set-up material. If it grabs you, you can go back and start over (this helped me immensely with Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse - I thought, A novel in verse?! No way! But I got caught up in it by just starting partway in and immediately went back to read from the beginning.). I often suggest this to kids who balk at the sight of a "huge" book.
The other method is to get the audio of it, if only to start. You know how kids will get interested in a book that the teacher is reading in a class and will suddenly be impatient to know how it ends! They come to the library all the time telling me that their teacher is reading it.
I also used this effect with a friend who simply could not read Candide despite how short it is. I picked it up and read her the first chapter, after which she snatched it from my hands saying, "Gimme that!" and started reading. She hadn't gotten past the most perfect of all expositions to get to the naughty bits.

35kidsilkhaze
Jan 19, 2007, 7:12 pm

When I was a kid, the only book on my age level that I had to put down for difficulty was... Little Women. For some reason, I find this embarassing. There were several adult classics that I picked up and didn't finish, but I'm not embarassed by not getting through Les Miserables in 6th grade. I still haven't picked Little Women back up.

But the scariest thing I read was The Dollhouse Murders. I still shudder a bit when I walk by it on the shelf at work.

Bluesalamanders-- In my system and in my general opinion, YA is all teens, not just the early years. One of the big YA problems is that what's appropriate for 19 isn't for 13.

36bluesalamanders
Jan 19, 2007, 7:24 pm

35 kidsilkhaze -

Really? I always assumed that YA was...sort of 12-16ish. It doesn't really make sense for it to be all the way to 19.

Although that's one of the big problems with a lot of J/YA/A, at least in the fantasy and science fiction genres - assumptions. I've found so many series that are split between J and YA or YA and Adult. It's almost as irritating as when the library as the 3rd book in a series but not the first two - both of which I've experienced with my library in the past few months. *sigh*

37Jenson_AKA_DL
Jan 19, 2007, 10:15 pm

I have been kind of confused by the teen/YA difference. In the library I go to they are in totally separate rooms. The Teen books seem to be for middle school and up and the YA books appear to be for High school and up.

38AlysonWonderland
Jan 20, 2007, 10:41 am

#30 kageeh I'm glad you pointed that out. Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite books and sure, it makes more sense if you're stoned, but it's a great book anyway. Unfortunately, he was also a pedophile.

39hailelib
Jan 20, 2007, 1:00 pm

I've seen a lot of early teens reading mostly adult books and a lot of adults reading YA so the catagories are pretty mixed up and are at best guides to what's appropriate. I really like the books that give me an age range like '9-12' or '14 and up' somewhere on the cover. That way I don't have to have read the book to know that it's not at all appropriate for the seven-year-old who wants to check it out.

40IreneA.
Jan 22, 2007, 12:26 pm

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one freaked out by The Dark is Rising! I got so creeped out one day while I was reading it, about a year ago; outside it was snowing, but there was this break in the clouds right where the sun was, so it was all sunshiny and bright, and the snow looked out-of-place and weird. To top it off, there were a couple of big ravens hopping around in the yard at the same time. Creepy.

41kidsilkhaze
Jan 24, 2007, 12:48 pm

We have a lot of adult fiction also catalogued in YA -- Kite Runner, Joy Luck Club, and Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time come to mind.

The best thing though happened when we stated going the opposite way-- we just got a bunch of copies of The Book Thief in for adult fiction!

Demonlover-- I find it odd that your library has a split between YA and teen! I usually see the terms used interchangably-- the librarians call it the YA section, but the patrons refer to is as the teen section.

bluesalamanders-- Why doesn't it make sense for YA to go all the way up to 19? I've read some books in the YA section that would definetely appeal to the older YA crowd-- 17-19, but not necessarily adults. Don't ask me for titles-- they were rather forgettable.

Also, the splitting of series thing is annoying, but a bit of a necessary evil. The first few Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor are definetely children's books, but the later ones, as Alice grows up, are not. The most annoying for me, though, is that my library system has split of Harry Potter! 1-4 are kids books, but 5-the rest are YA. It makes sense when you think of it, but everyone asks me for Half Blood Prince and I don't have it! ;)

42AngelaB86
Editado: Jan 24, 2007, 2:44 pm

#9, Marfita: "because ... it was so dark and it kept ... rising and I couldn't take it"

More than half-way through Silver on the Tree, and now I know exactly what you meant when you said that! Everything that's going on feels so...heavy? I dunno, but I'll read and read, and so much will happen, and at the end of a chapter realize it was only a few pages!

43Jenson_AKA_DL
Jan 24, 2007, 4:49 pm

>41 kidsilkhaze: It is strange. I kept searching for books in the teen section that were in when I looked them up on the computer, and weren't there when I looked. I finally asked and she told me it was in the young adult section over there *pointing to the other half of the building*

44bluesalamanders
Jan 25, 2007, 10:43 am

41 kidsilkhaze

It doesn't make sense to me because there are things that are fine for 17-19(ish, obviously) year olds to read that may not be at all appropriate for your average 12-13 year olds. Ten (or 8) years in children or teenagers is a much longer time than it is for adults. It would make sense to me to have the teenage years separated into two sections.

45alyssa1997
Maio 7, 2007, 7:41 pm

the most difficult book i ever read is probably harry potter in the first 10 pagesi read from it.

46nymith
Maio 10, 2007, 3:48 pm

Mensagem removida pelo autor.

47nymith
Maio 10, 2007, 3:50 pm

It took me an entire month to read Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates! I can't think of another book that took me so long to get through.

48Legoman Primeira Mensagem
Maio 14, 2007, 12:24 pm

Uh... Mossflower by: Brian Jacques, good book, just hard to stay with.

49bookgal77
Maio 14, 2007, 2:58 pm

I have been having trouble getting through The Horse and his Boy by C.S. Lewis. This Chronicles of Narnia book seems to have no relevance to any other book in the series, and I am finding it a bore to get through. But I want to get through all of the Narnia books, so I am suffering through it.

50blueguru
Maio 14, 2007, 7:38 pm

The Little Prince was so hard to read. And I tried the little kids picture book one!

51collsers
Jun 8, 2007, 11:17 pm

It took me months to finish The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett when I was in fifth grade or so. Surprisingly, A Little Princess is one of my favorite books ever, that I can tear through in a day or two.

52Corinne
Jun 9, 2007, 11:29 am

I still feel a little guilty about convincing my dad (probably 15 years ago) to buy me an expensive, but beautifully illustrated hardcover edition of Anne of Green Gables...I promised him I would read it, but I still haven't managed to get past the first few chapters. I haven't tried it in a few years, so I'm hoping I can read it this summer. Never could make it through Wind in the Willows either, though I really wanted to because the animals were so cute.

As for books that terrified me, the Goosebumps series scared me so much that my mom made me stop reading them. I think The Dollhouse Murders was another one that really freaked me out. My cousin once gave me a duffle bag full of Christopher Pike books, which I liked because they were from my older, cooler cousin, but I had to give them away because they gave me too many nightmares. Some of the Sweet Valley books scared me, too - The Evil Twin especially.

#13 - I also had trouble with Red Badge of Courage in eighth grade. I love reading and history, but that book was just so boring.

53MyopicBookworm
Jun 9, 2007, 12:19 pm

It's hard to know whether some books are "children's" or not, but the two books I found most difficult when I first read them were Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones and The Owl Service by Alan Garner. Both of them involve highly complex interactions between ordinary characters and mythological or other-worldy goings-on, and they can be pretty bewildering. I've since read the Wynne Jones again and think it a very fine book; I haven't attempted the Garner again yet.

54DrCris
Jun 26, 2007, 8:54 pm

I reckon LOTR is an "adult" book and The Hobbit is a childrens/teens book. You need to be a lot more committed to read LOTR, where the Hobbit is much more like a fable and flows better.

My mum always wanted me to read Little Women as it was her favourite book as a child. I put it down lots of time. I finally read it as a grown up and can see why I had trouble - the characters are just not people I am interested in.

55Millennyum
Out 26, 2007, 3:30 am

I found Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll difficult to read. Luckily, I first saw Disney's movie. Later, when I was older and in high school, I had to read books for my English class and I decided to read Alice in Wonderland because I already knew the story and thought it would be easy. Only then I found out that it had many hidden meanings and puns in it (see also http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net )!
I am glad I read the books at a later age, because I may not have been able to appreciate all of it otherwise.

56TeacherDad
Out 29, 2007, 11:27 am

I guess I need to pick up a copy of Alice, she seems to be the popular/confusing choice...

>50 blueguru:... I remember trying to read Little Prince several times as a kid, and never quite getting it

57aviddiva
Nov 1, 2007, 6:39 pm

>54 DrCris: I read Little Women when I was 9 or 10 and hated it -- couldn't get into it at all. Then I read it again when I was in Jr. High and loved it -- read all the sequels etc. (though I have to admit, Jo was never my favorite character -- I think I aspired to be the saintly Beth who dies young and is beloved by all.) Anyway, I think it was a matter of age -- I'm not sure I'd like it now!

58dwsact
Nov 1, 2007, 9:10 pm

I was always fascinated by the illustrations in The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley but could never get interested in the story.

59atimco
Nov 8, 2007, 12:43 pm

I read War and Peace at age 13. All I remember is that everyone's names kept changing. It was really hard to keep track of the characters.

I can't really think of any children's books I had problems with. Something will come to mind, no doubt as soon as I post this.

60MrStevens
Nov 8, 2007, 1:39 pm

The only book I didn't complete, once starting, was Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. I chose it from a summer reading list in 8th grade and couldn't understand a word he wrote. One of my life goals is to complete that book someday.

61annamorphic
Abr 22, 2009, 4:18 pm

Lucie Babbidge's House by Sylvia Cassedy is a remarkably difficult although deeply rewarding children's book. I don't know what I would have made of it when I was a child. I have taught it to a group of freshmen at U.C. Berkeley and they all complained that it was too confusing. However, once you've read it two or three times, you do realize that it's a masterpiece.

62jennieg
Abr 22, 2009, 4:32 pm

I read Goodnight, Mr. Tom as an adult and found it very difficult emotionally. It deals with child abuse. I have never been able to re-read it, but my girls loved it and read it repeatedly.

63theretiredlibrarian
Abr 24, 2009, 2:04 pm

I always found Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales terribly depressing and morbid. None of them had a happy ending, that I can recall, except maybe The Ugly Duckling. Even that one, though, made me sad, because he was treated so miserably his whole life until suddenly he was a beautiful swan. Most people think of that as a "late bloomer" allegory...not me. To me it said if you're ugly, people will treat you badly; beautiful is the only way to be. I didn't much like that message (guess which category I fell in!); on the other hand at the same time as a child I had no problem watching the Miss America Pageant! I must have been a quirky little kid...

64ludmillalotaria
Abr 24, 2009, 2:33 pm

#61, I have that one in my TBR. I loved Sylvia Cassedy's Behind the Attic Wall, which seemed to me to be an emotionally complex novel that's best suited for at least middle school aged girls and up. It's also kinda creepy, and children might be a little spooked by it. It's too bad that Cassedy died young and we don't have that many books from her.

I also think Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials is better suited for at least teens and up.

65almanzo
Abr 26, 2009, 9:19 pm

The Little Match Girl also very depressing. I recently read Babe to my daughter (age 5) and found it a bit of a slog.

66theretiredlibrarian
Maio 3, 2009, 12:25 am

I found The Underneath by Kathy Appelt really difficult...it got so many great reviews and awards, and I just thought it very depressing. I seem to be in a minority, though.

67keeneam
Maio 24, 2009, 8:04 pm

I love this book now as an adult by as a kid I did not get all the little clues they give about language and numbers of the book, it was The Phantom Tollbooth.

68ASBiskey
Jun 6, 2009, 12:49 pm

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

Good books I would never read again.

69KeithC
Jun 7, 2009, 3:21 am

I found The Owl Service is best read after reading the underlying Welsh Mythology - the four branches of the Mabinogi: The Mabinogi. One of these stories has all the elements which underpin the book. I fortuitously re-read The Owl Service about six months after steeping myself in a load of Celtic Mythology, just at the point when it had begun to settle itself into my subconcious, but not so far that it couldn't be recalled. The result was electrifying.

70AvocadoPenguin
Jan 28, 2012, 1:46 pm

When I was about 7, I struggled with Swallows and Amazons because the children seemed so old-fashioned and their world was so unfamiliar to me. I tried again when I was about ten and I now love the whole series, but I had difficulty at first.

Somehow the absurdity of things like Alice in Wonderland never fazed me, but I thought the day-to-day life of 1920s schoolchildren was weird!

71roomsofbooks
Jul 15, 2018, 7:41 pm

I was given Black Beauty and told I'd love it, as it was about horses.

I wept for MONTHS

I can only presume they had never read it themselves or were psychopaths without any ability to conceive distress on a personal level.

72MyopicBookworm
Jul 16, 2018, 4:40 pm

I agree. I read Black Beauty because it was in the rather small collection of children's books at my grandmother's house. I found it very upsetting and I vowed never to read it again.

73roomsofbooks
Jul 16, 2018, 5:52 pm

>72 MyopicBookworm: It tore my heart out but it is a children's classic and a very important book, in that it did deeply upset many people and began a move to organise movements to protect working horses, so I think it should be read - but not by little girls who eat sleep and dream horses.

There is a very moving and positive book that will possibly take some looking for, written by a Mrs Brookes, I can't recall her first name. She was married to a major general ? She went to Egypt I think it was, with her husband, about 1930, and as a horse lover, saw the horses being treated terribly - skeletons beaten, falling exhausted and being beaten,,, and then realised some of these broken down skeletons had old army markings of WW1.

They were the horses people could not bring themselves to shoot or hand over for official slaughter.

It is a very moving and real story of the AFTERMATH of Warhorse that I don't think many people know about. She set up the Brooke Hospital and raised money to buy these now ancient skeletons of army horses and mules, to give them safe happy retirement.

She set up the hospital to treat the ones they couldn't buy and to help the native horses, mules and donkeys for free and they are still going strong.

In Australia, only one horse came home. A chestnut gelding, owned by an officer, who arranged and paid for all the costs. It lived on his property in happy retirement and when it died, he had it stuffed and presented it to the Australian War Memorial, where I believe, it still is...

So many horses COULD have come home...

It is still a knife in my heart, every time I remember the facts.

74Jarandel
Jul 17, 2018, 3:49 am

I think I was 13 when Lord of the Flies was studied at school, I still cringe at the memory. Not for the difficulty, I was already reading other classics and discovering adult SF/F at the time, but some episodes were upsetting.

75PatrickMurtha
Jul 15, 2023, 9:48 am

Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno / Sylvie and Bruno Concluded is not exactly a work you recommend so much as point out, because honestly, one in 500 people is going to care for this level of extreme eccentricity. Melville’s Mardi: and a Voyage Thither and Robert Browning’s Sordello are two other productions in this same WTF? class. However, it should go without saying by now that I am very fond of all these and similar demented creations. 😏

Sylvie and Bruno uneasily combines a daft fantasy with a realistic late Victorian novel, and ladles on the sentimentality in a way that many now find unappealing. But all that said, it is QUITE an experience. I even find Bruno’s oft-criticized baby talk very funny. ("I never talks to nobody when he isn't here! It isn't good manners. Oo should always wait till he comes, before oo talks to him!")