Okay, so I guess we have to begin with what is a hard book? And to be honest, it likely varies from reader to reader. Now, you're probably thinking "Oh, great, she really knows where she's going with this." Fear not, I kind of do... In my Venn diagram of interests, you will likely not be surprised to hear that I watch a lot of content about books and reading. Part of the discussion online (that the algorithm is feeding me), is that attention spans are struggling. As a Millennial -- yes. There's always the next thing, the next video when we are scrolling, the next clickbait article, the next opinion designed to enrage or annoy. And so, we are fed a steady stream of "the next thing".
This is the video that first got me thinking about this topic, opens a new window. I do recommend giving it a watch.
In my opinion, the "hard books" can be books that maybe are outside preferred genres. They are the classics, they are perhaps non-fiction, maybe science fiction, maybe something else. The point of reading hard books is to keep curiosity alive. We have the wealth of all of human knowledge in our pockets, and I know at least for me, I visit the same sites, and check the same social medias every single day. The place where I still demonstrate my highest levels of curiosity is in my reading. Reading (and I mean that in a consuming books kind of way as audiobooks and ebooks ARE reading) allows us to develop empathy for people and groups we don't intimately know, allows us to develop opinions on current events, allows us to unplug and be more present in words that were maybe written six months ago or one hundred years ago.
I feel so personally connected to the act of reading. And it has meant so much to me. It has been a lifelong comfort, and I missed it when I wasn't able to read a few years ago. Do I read for pleasure? Yes, absolutely I do. All reading is valid reading, I am merely suggesting if you feel a disconnect that maybe reading that "hard" thing for you will help bring you back to the reading you've loved before.
These are my "hard" books. Books I enjoyed in spite of myself, books I wasn't sure I'd finish, books that made me think, books that changed (or validated) my opinion, and books that I felt made me a different kind of reader.
This was the first non-fiction audiobook I ever listened to. At the start I was worried it was too long, that the subject matter would lose me, that I'd spend all the time I was listening to it wishing it was over. But I loved it. I started to want to find moments where I could listen, when I could go back. I became obsessed with wheat and how it played a role in basically domesticating humans -- I told EVERYONE who would listen.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Once upon a time I hosted a book club where we read classics, and then right before we would've discussed this title the world shut down, and the book club was never re-established (or at least hasn't as yet...) Personally, I have always struggled with translated works as I worry some of the emotional resonance of the author's original words will be literally lost in translation. This was the definition of a hard read for me, and I am sorry I was never able to discuss it with the book club members I had come to enjoying dissecting these classics with.
I read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart for the first time in my early twenties. It was assigned reading in a college course I was enrolled in. At the time, it felt like all my reading was for school. I missed reading for pleasure. I missed being immersed in a story that meant something to me. And then I read this. It is one of the few books I have kept on my shelves from those years to this day. I had never read a perspective like this, embarrassingly I had never even thought to look and I still think about this book on a regular basis.
This one might have you scratching your head, but for me it was a big swing in my reading. This was not my first fantasy read, but it was the first fantasy that I felt I actually understood. I read it at the beginning of the year, and have since even read its sequel while the final in the trilogy awaits me on my coffee table. I was so afraid of fantasy. It had everything that I liked, and somehow I never really connected with a book in the genre.
This one was hard in a very personal way. Here we have a book that takes place during one of the worst times in recorded history. It features a main character, Liesel, who is basically the same age as my Polish Oma was when she too was trapped in the circle of war and uncertainty. The narration from Death's perspective is one of the single most inspired ways to help tell Liesel's story. It was an incredibly emotional read, and was hard to finish but so worth the journey.
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