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by dundarious 1468 days ago
I think it’s a bit funny to judge it so forcefully along the axis of “readability”, especially with a huge bias towards “readability for a 2022 non-Irish audience outside the art scene” — you’re assigning “harm” to the book itself, so I no longer think you’re just giving your 2c about your experience. It’s famously and I’d say even canonically one of the most dense and quasi-academic pieces of literary fiction of its era — it’s not for everyone (I haven’t attempted it).

Even then, there are novels for all permutations of “readable (to me)” and not, and “good (to me)” and not. Fair enough though in the sense that I wouldn’t take a “barely readable (to me) but very good (to me)” novel to the beach.

1 comments

> you’re assigning “harm” to the book itself, so I no longer think you’re just giving your 2c about your experience.

Only to the extent in which I've defined "harm" (in quotations), which was to say that I don't like to invest free time into books that I probably won't finish.

In any case, while I do care about readability, it does look like I've stepped a bit too far over the line. Believe me, I have no desire in forming any sort of literary criticism against a book that many famous writers have said is great, especially having not read it.