You tried, you did not conquer: When a book becomes unreadable

Most of us have books that we just can’t finish, no matter how many times we try. This hour, a look at those books that we find unreadable, whether they’re too long, too difficult, too confusing, or too dated. What makes a book unreadable? Plus: The Voynich Manuscript, an unreadable and undeciphered book housed at Yale University’s Beinecke Library. We asked our listeners for their list of unreadable books. Here are those responses: The Bible Mansfield Park by Jane Austen Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt Rim by Alexander Besher The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins Collapse by Jared Diamond Great Expectations by Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens S. by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald anything by William Faulkner Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter Les Misérables by Victor Hugo A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James The Dubliners by James Joyce Ulysses by James Joyce Wicked by Gregory Maguire One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez Moby Dick by Herman Melville Faithful by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon How to Write by Gertrude Stein Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace GUESTS: Ray Clemens: Curator of early books and manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Rand Richards Cooper: Fiction writer, contributing editor at Commonweal, and restaurant critic for The Hartford Courant Dennis Duncan: Lecturer in English at University College London and the author of Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age Juliet Lapidos: Ideas editor for The Atlantic and the author of Talent The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired September 14, 2022.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.