What were your two most daunting reads? The ones you really had to keep pouring over every sentence and phrase to follow and digest and realize even after that you could go back and read them a hundred times and with each read gain new insights.
I have read Le Morte D'Arthur in its original old English form, most of Shakespeare's works, Sophocles, Socrates, Aesop, the Federalist Papers, the unabridged King James Bible, the Gospel of Thomas, translations from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Tao, Mere Christianity and the Screwtape Letters, the legal transcripts of the Nuremburg Trials contained in the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and ALL of Tolkien's writings. Nothing has ever been as all consuming and demanding as...
Immanuel Kant's treatise on Logic, and...
any William Burroughs novel.
Kurt Vonneget does get an honorable mention. He goes pretty far out there at times, but always brings his intentions home with a sardonic punch you cannot ignore.
Oh, and cannot forget Feyneman, but he is too full of himself and it becomes annoying at times (see baby I know exactly how you feel when I get all superior and full of myself). I will say though he is definitely brilliant enough to wear it.
And yes I know I mention Kant as daunting due to the depth, complexity, eloquence, and insight evidenced in his writings, but also in tongue and cheek fashion denigrate him with the intimation he is below me in my blog description. Kant was a staunch believer in racially biased eugenics theories. That is all I will say on it, the paradox is quite undeniable and diminishes his thinking and validity greatly. Imho Lao Tsu (father of Eastern Philosophy) > Immanuel Kant (father of Western Philosophy).
