University of Kwazulu-Natal

How To Read Hard Books 7 Tips That Actually Work

Bonisiwe Shabane
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how to read hard books 7 tips that actually work

Katie Azevedo July 31, 2023good habits, reading comprehension, study skills If you’re a student of any age, you’re going to read hard books for school. This is a fact of life. But whether you consider yourself a good reader or not, reading hard books will always take more effort and sometimes different approaches than reading other types of books. In this post, I teach you how to read hard books with 7 strategies. The strategies below will help you get through difficult novels, including non-fiction, fiction, and biographies.

Priming is a strategy that involves getting a brief overview of the topic you’ll be reading about before you read it, so that what you read has a place to “stick” in your mind. Why is this important? Because the more you know about a subject, the better you’ll be able to process and understand new information about that subject. Think of it this way: If you’ve eaten an orange before, you’ll have an easier time describing the flavor of a grapefruit the first time you eat a grapefruit. Understanding the orange’s flavor (sweet, tart, citrus-y) helps you categorize and experience the flavor of a grapefruit. What a great post Shannan.

Like you, I read my “recovery book” (I never used that term but like it) while reading a “hard” book. I would also choose what time of day to read it. I might want to save my recovery book for evening reading in case the “hard” book lead to bad dreams. My book club also challenges me to read outside my comfort zone and gives me a “why” as I know there will be a great discussion to make it worth it. Thank you so much Janice. My reading time is limited but that is a great idea to read the “hard” book during the day.

I could probably do it during carline waiting on the Buddy Man! Thanks. Thank you so much for this post Shannan! I am someone who has so many books that I want to read but am afraid to because I find difficult themes really hard to read through, knowing that I might I feel uncomfortable... I don’t necessarily want to push myself to read all hard books just for the sake of it, but I do want to read some because the topics covered are important to me and... This post will really help me slowly but surely expand my comfort zone in my reading life and I so appreciate that!!

I’m so glad, Alexis! Thank you for telling me. Reading difficult things is “difficult” but so beneficial to all. Many long books are available as CD audiobooks. I got through “Little Dorrit” that way, 850 pages. Leah Rachel von Essen reviews genre-bending fiction for Booklist, and writes regularly as a senior contributor at Book Riot.

Her blog While Reading and Walking has over 10,000 dedicated followers over several social media outlets, including Instagram. She writes passionately about books in translation, chronic illness and bias in healthcare, queer books, twisty SFF, and magical realism and folklore. She was one of a select few bookstagrammers named to NewCity’s Chicago Lit50 in 2022. She is an avid traveler, a passionate fan of women’s basketball and soccer, and a lifelong learner. Twitter: @reading_while We all have those novels that sit there on our shelves, staring us down, too intimidating to pick up and yet they’ve been on our list for years.

Reportedly, they’re rewarding, exciting reads, but every time you think about opening one, dread sinks into your stomach. So how do you get started? That’s what I’m here to help with. Because I’ve thrown myself into a lot of books that were too hard for me, and come out the other side. In my senior year of high school, I decided to read Ulysses by James Joyce solely because my favorite English teacher loved Joyce. With no preparation, no knowledge of references, nothing, I just kind of dove in.

I didn’t understand it all, but I finished it, and enjoyed it. I truly believe that it’s our gatekeeping of the classics, our pressure to take them so intensely seriously, that makes hard books feel so inaccessible, when truthfully, most of us have the capacity to... So, as an expert in the long, twisty, and ambiguous, I’ve brought all my tips, tricks, and mastery to this article to help you jump into that intimidating book on your shelf, or that... Let’s get started! If you can get a copy that you can own and write on, fantastic. If not, invest in a hefty number of post-its, because you’re going to want to write on this book.

A lot. You want to be able to see your notes on the page, to be able to flip through the book and see all your notes as you go. To see, easily, exactly the passage you’re referring to. I’m a self-proclaimed avid reader (and audiobook listener), which has been a core part of my life over the last few years. However, I find myself gravitating towards the same literary genres, or books that I would describe as falling within my comfort zone: self-development, business, fitness/nutrition, and my guilty pleasure, psychological thrillers. My love of reading started off as a hobby, but has now turned into a big part of my workday.

What started as one hour in the morning with my coffee quickly turned into 2 hours, and eventually became 3-4 hours per day. Over the last 6 months or so, I really started expanding my horizons—diving into new genres, disciplines and tackling more difficult reads. While this takes significantly more self-discipline, patience, and an active reading habit, the payoff of getting through these challenging books has made it all worth it. Last summer, I attempted to read Ulysses by James Joyce without any sort of primer—I just read the back of the book and the introduction (which included a short history of the text). I thought I had prepared myself for this literary beast by reading some classic literature prior, including authors like Oscar Wilde, Slyvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I was feeling confident, and obviously niave.

After struggling hard through the first two chapters, I abandoned Ulysses entirely—feeling perplexed, discouraged, and slightly cross-eyed. While Farewell to Arms took me a bit to warm up to in terms of style, understanding the narrative, and getting to know the characters, with Joyce, I was completely lost and had no... If you’ve read—or attempted to read Ulysses, then you know what I’m talking about. I decided to try my luck again this year by picking it up again for the second time, but approached it in a completely different context. I just finished Ulysses last week; my hardest read to-date which provided the inspiration for this article. For those that aren’t familiar with Joyce or his work, Ulysses is a modernist novel that was published in 1920 and is considered “the marathon of literature.” Joyce is known for mixing different narrative...

He pushed barriers in language, and was prolific for his lack of censorship, and for incorporating controversial views or “taboo” topics into his work (ie. his sacrilegious views on the Roman Catholic Church). For example, in episode 14 (Oxen of the Sun), Joyce showcases the gestation of the English language by combining prose that spanned Latinate alliterative Anglo-Saxon, medieval, Elizabethan, early seventeenth-century, and Gothic prose…among others. Trust me when I say that this was by far the hardest chapter. You know that feeling when you DNF a book everyone says is brilliant? When you start something ambitious and by page 50 you’re thinking I’m just not smart enough for this?

The truth is, you probably ARE smart enough. You’re just trying to run a marathon when you haven’t trained for a 5K. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why people (and me) fail at challenging books (I’m looking at you Anna Karenina, I gave up on you and I still feel like an idiot for... And I don’t think it’s about intelligence. I think it’s about stamina, pacing, and knowing when you’re ready. Most people pick up Ulysses or The Brothers Karamazov with the best intentions and then feel like failures when they can’t get through it.

But that’s insane! Why on earth would you ever think that you could read a book like that when you just finished your 6th Harlen Coben book in 2 months (speaking from experience here, I love Coben). Think about running for a second. If you’ve been sitting on the couch all year, you wouldn’t sign up for a marathon tomorrow. You’d start with shorter distances. You’d build endurance.

You’d learn how your body responds to effort. Reading hard things works the same way. Hard books come in three basic distances. Jeremy Anderberg • September 3, 2019 • Last updated: October 28, 2025 In the last year, I’ve managed to finish a number of lengthy, sometimes hard-to-read books. Ron Chernow’s 900+ page tome on George Washington.

600+ dense pages on James Madison. Andrew Roberts’ massive biography of Winston Churchill. (Yes, I’m into biographies.) A couple of Dickens’ novels — they’re all big. Melville’s American masterpiece, Moby-Dick. Robert Caro’s legendary, epic series on Lyndon Johnson. And most recently, all 1,400+ pages of Les Miserables.

Even though these books were enjoyable, and I had a genuine interest in the subject matter, they were often hard to read, if for no other reason than their sheer volume. Large pages, small fonts, tiny margins. Les Mis, because of its actual weight, had to be read sitting up, and often in a chair with an armrest because the thing was so dang heavy and unwieldy. (While I could have read an e-version, as I’ll explain below, I often prefer hardbound copies of classics, even if they’re harder to wrangle.) While Hugo and Dickens are a delight to read, the reality is that their language is so different from today that it takes brain power to really digest. And while those biographies I mentioned aren’t necessarily old, they are dense with facts, especially when you’re new to that person/time period.

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I’m so glad, Alexis! Thank you for telling me. Reading difficult things is “difficult” but so beneficial to all. Many long books are available as CD audiobooks. I got through “Little Dorrit” that way, 850 pages. Leah Rachel von Essen reviews genre-bending fiction for Booklist, and writes regularly as a senior contributor at Book Riot.