The Importance Of Reading Difficult Books Intellectual Takeout

In his work The Western Canon, Harold Bloom wrote that a “reader does not read for easy pleasure or to expiate social guilt, but to enlarge a solitary existence.” The apparent message in Bloom’s flourish is that a reader ought to be after something more difficult to attain than mere pleasure. Passive consumption of entertainment will simply not do. Instead, readers are to be fully engaged with the work in front of them, especially when the process is difficult. It’s through this difficulty that a reader inevitably enlarges what Bloom refers to as a “solitary existence,” or, put another way, an existential engagement with the human condition. However, it appears that readers, especially young Americans, aren’t invested in excavating the existential questions often presented in books.

They don’t seem all that committed to investigating the philosophical implications of Nietzsche’s eternal return or the way paranoia often preys upon the mind of someone deeply entrenched in the world of John Barth’s... As a former university and high-school teacher, I have often heard students proclaim that books are too hard and too boring to be worth their time. This diagnosis has become even more evident with the advent of uber-addictive social media platforms. Complex novels, such as Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport, Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans, and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, cannot effectively compete with dopamine-riddled dance and mukbang videos. Short, well-produced content on TikTok and Instagram and the endorphin rush they provide are comparable to illicit drugs. Difficult texts require more of the reader than passive attention, and most young people simply refuse the challenge.

Even for those who wish to read difficult material, it can feel like searching for a diamond in the rough. The so-called serious fiction of today features didactic tracts promoting the latest in progressive politics. Often, the inherent—albeit contradictory—message in these tracts features a heavy criticism and dismissal of white men and, ultimately, the Western world. Though this may be an attractive literary neighborhood for some, it doesn’t scratch the same intellectual and spiritual itch that, say, Albert Camus’ The Stranger does. In our modern era of instant information and bite-sized entertainment, reading intellectually challenging material can seem like an unnecessary burden. Why struggle through a dense classic novel, a difficult philosophical treatise, or an intricate historical account when easier, more accessible options are available?

However, those who embrace the challenge of “hard books” often find their intellectual lives enriched in ways that lighter reading simply cannot provide. In the context of classical education, where the cultivation of wisdom and virtue is paramount, reading hard books is not just beneficial — it is essential. Reading a difficult text requires patience, focus, and perseverance. When a book is challenging, the reader cannot simply coast through it in a passive way. Instead, he or she must engage actively, rereading passages, looking up words, and considering complex ideas. This process strengthens the mind much like physical exercise strengthens the body.

In an age where attention spans are shrinking, the discipline developed through reading demanding works is invaluable. A student who has struggled through The Republic by Plato, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, or The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer will develop the ability to sustain deep thought. This intellectual stamina prepares individuals for rigorous study in any discipline, whether in law, medicine, theology, or philosophy. Even more importantly, it enables them to engage with the weighty questions of life with clarity and insight. Many of the greatest works of literature, philosophy, and theology do not provide easy answers. Instead, they invite the reader into a serious intellectual and moral struggle.

Consider Augustine’s Confessions, where the author wrestles with questions of sin, grace, and divine providence. Or regard Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which raises profound questions about justice, revenge, and the meaning of existence. These works challenge us not just to understand but to engage, to debate, and to form our own reasoned conclusions. By reading hard books, we learn that truth is not always simple. Life’s most significant questions — What is justice? What is virtue?

What is the good life? — are not easily answered. Grappling with these texts prepares us for the complexity of real-world ethical and philosophical dilemmas. If you’ve considered yourself an avid reader for any length of time, you likely remember the first challenging book that actually left an impression on you—and, consequently, helped you ease into the vast ocean... (Mine was Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which I have written in length about here.) And if you’ve yet to experience this dare I say delicious paradigm shift coupled with a hefty yet healthy boost of confidence, just wait; you are in for something truly nutritious and satisfying.

(I would apologize for the comparison of books to food but I can’t exactly help it; reading is a feast and there is no more appropriate analogy.) Aside from the obvious expansion of vocabulary you will inevitably acquire by reading books that are seemingly beyond your capacity, you will develop a love for the art of the written word that won’t... Lengthy descriptions will immerse you into a world you won’t be easily pulled out of. And the period infused dialogue will leave you wondering just how exactly the English language has deteriorated so quickly. In middle school and high school, your teachers probably encouraged you to seek out primary sources, which are original accounts of a topic, as opposed to secondary sources, which are retellings or summaries of... However, teachers often don’t acknowledge an important fact: Primary sources are really boring and hard to read.

If they’re historical texts, they’ll have different writing conventions, which makes them much harder to parse. Or, if they’re from the present but are academic, they’ll use language that is uncommon outside of their field. Reading a modern account that summarizes the topic, such as a Wikipedia article, can help you understand a concept much more quickly than you would’ve by reading primary sources. With the advent of the internet, summaries have proliferated. It used to be that if you wanted to learn something, and your professor’s curriculum wasn’t working for you, the best way to learn was to go to the library and find a book... But now we live in a more advanced world where challenging subjects have been summarized and popularized in YouTube videos and Wikipedia articles.

Learning class material via YouTube isn’t bad by itself—I’ve certainly saved many hours by watching videos by The Efficient Engineer instead of reading my textbooks—but using YouTube as your professor won’t work forever for... First, as you continue to learn from the internet, you’re bound to notice diminishing returns. For example, there must be hundreds of thousands of videos, articles and websites out there that explain how to multiply and divide fractions or factor polynomials. Once you get higher up into mathematics and have to deal with concepts such as derivatives and Laplace transforms, though, things get trickier. There’s still information out there, but it gets much harder to find resources that will explain it better than the textbook you paid an extortionate amount of money for. Eventually, once you reach math concepts that I’m not educated enough to know the names of, you will have to accept the sad truth that not all knowledge is free and easy to find...

Some of it can only be gained from an expert in the field, which is why becoming a part of an academic community is useful. But, much more often, it’ll exist in a textbook or journal, completely unsummarized. If, up to that point, you’ve been avoiding textbooks like the plague, what happens then? Second, a person who relies on summaries can be abused by them. The act of summarizing itself involves making value judgments about what parts of a text are important, and the person making that video may not even be aware of the judgments they made. More importantly, there’s active disinformation: Someone could simply lie about what’s in the text that they’re summarizing.

How would you know that they’re wrong? This risk of misinformation isn’t just unique to us college students, though. Most people get their facts and opinions not from primary sources, but from news outlets or commentators that do the research for them. Obviously, if you relied solely on primary sources at all times, you’d spend all your time doing research and never come to any conclusion. But being a responsible agent of knowledge means that when your brain tells you that something doesn’t seem right, you have to do the research the hard way. Still, being good at reading complex works is important in other ways.

Being able to parse legal documents, tax forms or contracts can help you catch important points that you otherwise would’ve missed. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about why we should read those “difficult” books— the ones that challenge you and make you sweat a bit trying to figure them out. I know, I know, it’s tempting to stick to the easy stuff, especially when you don’t have much free time and responsibilities are calling. Growing up, I had no problem picking up lengthy books, but once I got into college I had so much studying to do that any book above the 400-page mark used to be a... The same went for classics, fantasy epics, and anything on the philosophical side. But that has long since changed.

And I’m glad because embracing challenging reads anew opened up a whole new world of literature for me. You see, you might not finish these books in a single sitting (okay, you definitely won’t). You’ll probably find yourself re-reading paragraphs, pondering sentences, and reaching out for your dictionary. They might make you sweat a bit, but the payoff is huge. Is there a book that you want to read but scares you? It’s too long, or too technically demanding, or its subject matter is challenging — is there such a book on your virtual or physical bookshelf?

I have several such books waiting to be read. I also make a point to read several such books each year. They’re nearly always worth the effort. Goodreads and its annual reading challenge make readers favour short, quick reads, skim reading and light reading. This is not by chance, but this isn’t a post about the failures of Goodreads as a platform. This is a post about reading difficult books, and the point is that if you want to challenge yourself you’re going to have to make a concerted effort on your own.

You will have to motivate yourself because reading platforms and book clubs skew towards books that can be read quickly and relatively easily, and we’re being trained daily to shorten our attention span and... To read difficult books is to go against the grain, to retrain your mind to deep, meaningful thought, to long stretches of concentration, to a higher level of empathy. It’s the difference between a fast food burger and an evening with a 3 star Michelin chef showing off his best work. It’s worth it, but it costs more. If you chose to go on that challenging but worthwhile journey, here are some tips to help you along the way: It seems obvious why textbooks are hard to read.

The material is dense; there’s a lot of information packed into relatively few words. Authors often feel obligated to give you a broad, complete understanding of a topic rather than to weave an interesting story from selected details. Teachers are ready to assign a textbook, even if it’s boring; it’s seen as a regrettable but unavoidable problem. But there’s a more subtle reason that it’s hard to stay engaged when you read a textbook. To find out why, read this paragraph, one you might find in a typical high school textbook. The Manhattan Project was the United States’ effort to produce a nuclear weapon, and it was the largest construction enterprise in the history of science.

People Also Search

• The Importance of Reading Difficult Books - Intellectual Takeout
• Why It's Important to Read Hard Books: The Case for Intellectual ...
• On the Importance of Reading Difficult Literature
• Why reading hard books is important, despite how difficult it can be
• Why You Should Read "Difficult" Books | by Margaret Pan | Books Are Our ...
• On Reading Difficult Books - Writing at Large
• How to Read Difficult Books - American Federation of Teachers
• Don't Set Reading Goals. Build Reading Habits. - Intellectual Takeout
• The Role of Reading in Promoting Lifelong Learning and Intellectual ...
• Should You Read Challenging Books? - HubPages