I have a couple of classics in my home library that I would love to read, but it feels like I'm never ready to tackle them: Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake, Infinite Jest, War & Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Foucault's Pendulum… I have tried to read them since my early 20's, always thinking that I was simply not ready. Now I'm almost 40 years old, and it seems like I'll never be ready because reading hard books seems to get even more difficult instead of easier.
It's not the size; I've tackled Anna Karenina, Crime & Punishment, 2666, Clarissa, a translation of the Mahabharata of almost 1600 pages. Hell, I've even read Atlas Shrugged and Ducks, Newburyport. Hoewever, those all seemed to be much lighter and easier to follow.
I have tried to start all of the aforementioned unread books, but I gave up after reading the first pages of them multiple times, because they are so so so dense. Much goes over my head, and it feels like I should get every line to really appreciate these books. It seems like the only way to properly read them is to sit down every evening, read three pages and then spend hours on research (annotations, podcast, blogs, subreddits) to really get it. The idea to commit myself to one book for a whole year (or to read it multiple times over the span of a decade seems) very daunting.
How do you manage to read these monumental books in a balanced way (not like a PhD-cadidate) without getting lost in a struggle between constantly lingering FOMO and loss of concentration?
by derliesl