| CARVIEW |
Thanks Smithereens! And wishing you and your family a Happy Festive Season as well. I hope you will like Amor Towles. He is one of my favourite authors. Not sure where to start – perhaps A Gentleman in Moscow.
]]>Hi Clint. Yes I agree. Thanks for the comment. I still think his advice is excellent – and The Road Less Travelled is one of my favourite self-help books. I was just commenting on the complexity and the contradictions. We are all flawed as you say.
]]>I humbly disagree with your analysis, as well as your followers brother.
Just because someone is flawed as a human being (as we all are) doesn’t make anything they’ve written less universally true.
I’ve used some of Scott Peck’s excerpts with the clients I work with in recovery, and it seemed to help them. And perhaps that’s all that matters.
In love,
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Thanks Jacqui. I was thinking the concept might appeal to teenage boy readers – but actually once they are hooked in a story, then they don’t need more XP points or to battle any bosses, they just need to keep reading. But it’s a cute idea for us book nerds.
]]>1. The Tale of Genji — Murasaki Shikibu (11th century)
Often called the first novel ever written, it’s also one of the most intricate. Some sections require footnotes just to understand etiquette rules or poetic allusions. Moving through Genji is like wandering an enormous palace with thousands of delicate rooms — beautiful but labyrinthine.
Boss Rewards:
- Courtly Intrigue Mastery
- Ancient Poetics Decoding +10
- Historical-Cultural Deep Dive XP
2. Middlemarch — George Eliot
(Mary Ann Evans, writing under a male pseudonym)
Virginia Woolf called it “the first novel written for grown-ups.” It’s challenging because of its emotional realism, moral nuance, and lack of shortcuts. You don’t battle dragons here — you battle human nature. It’s a subtle, cerebral boss.
Boss Rewards:
- Moral Complexity +999
- Eliotian Patience Perk
- Character-Psychology Mastery
3. The Golden Notebook — Doris Lessing
Lessing intentionally destabilises the reader. The novel is both a story and a critique of storytelling — a bit like if a boss kept switching forms mid-battle. The political content (anti-colonial struggle, communism, gender politics) adds weight and intellectual complexity.
Boss Rewards:
- Metafiction Resistance Level 5
- Political Consciousness Boost
- Structure-Breaking Comprehension Skill
Bonus boss books:
• To the Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf
Stream-of-consciousness that rivals Joyce, but quieter and more emotionally internal. Difficult because everything happens inside perception rather than plot.
• Beloved — Toni Morrison
Linguistically exquisite but structurally non-linear, emotionally devastating, and myth-soaked. A battle of beauty and brutality.
• The Man Who Loved Children — Christina Stead
A psychologically intense, often claustrophobic novel. Crushingly challenging because of emotional difficulty rather than linguistic density.
• The Argonauts — Maggie Nelson
Hybrid theory–memoir with precision prose and conceptual density. Short but diamond-hard.
• Pilgrimage (13-volume sequence) — Dorothy Richardson
Radical stream-of-consciousness and extremely slow-paced — a proto-modernist challenge.
]]>These aren’t traditional academic references (since the post is creative), but they reflect the cultural sources and literary reputations behind the descriptions:On “difficulty” or “boss-status” in reading
- Calvino, Italo. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. (Explores the idea of reading as adventure.)
- Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. (Accessible guide to reading complexity.)
- Grossman, Lev. “The Joys of Difficult Books.” Time Magazine.
On notoriously difficult books
- Gilbert, Stuart. James Joyce’s Ulysses (classic companion on Joyce’s complexity).
- Burgess, Anthony. Re Joyce (explains Joyce’s linguistic experiments).
- Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon (famously puts War and Peace, Ulysses, and Proust at the peak).
On epic/long novels
- Wood, James. How Fiction Works (talks about narrative scale, including Tolstoy).
- Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending (on long-form narrative and meaning).
On playful or gamified thinking about books
- Carroll, Lewis. The Hunting of the Snark (nonsense literature influencing whimsical tone).
- Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions (labyrinths, challenges, and philosophical puzzles).
- TV Tropes (“Literary Difficulty” and “Boss Fight” entries—useful cultural knowledge rather than formal sources).
On the humor of literary reputation
- Nick Hornby’s The Polysyllabic Spree (a humorous celebration of reading habits).
- The Millions, Literary Hub, and Slate often publish humorous essays on “hard books to read.”
On video game tropes
Classic RPG structures from Final Fantasy, Zelda, and platformers like Mario inform the levelling system used in the text.
Janet Murray. Hamlet on the Holodeck (literature and gaming metaphors).
Jesper Juul. The Art of Failure (psychology of game difficulty and rewards).
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