## Metadata - Author: [[Tim Parks]] - Full Title: The Books We Don’t Understand - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[books]] [[Reading]] - Summary: Early perplexities come across as exotic, part of the fascination. But after one or two hundred pages, we start to feel that things just don’t add up. - URL: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-books-we-don-t-understand ## Full Document [](http://www.nybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/parks-books-dont-understand.jpg)Aherontas River, Epirus, Greece, 1989 What is going on when a book simply makes no sense to you? Perhaps a classic that everyone praises. Or something new you’re being asked to review, something a publisher has warmly recommended. I don’t mean that you find the style tiresome, or the going slow; simply that the characters, their reflections, their priorities, the way they interact, do not really add up. You feel you’re missing them in the dark. And your inevitable reaction, especially if you are an experienced reader, is that this must be the author’s fault. He or she is not a good observer of life. The most dramatic example of this in my reading career is, or was, *Ulysses*. Leopold Bloom knows that his wife is planning to betray him with the vulgar braggart Blazes Boylan. It’s something he deeply cares about. It is distressing and humiliating. Yet he spends page after page reflecting on all kinds of other things, thinking of puzzles and puns, marvelling over shop window displays, sounds, and smells.  Continue reading for just $1 an issue! Choose a Digital subscription or our best deal—All Access—that includes print and digital issues, full archive access, and the NYR App! [View Offers](https://subscribe.nybooks.info/ecom/nyb/app/live/subscriptions?org=NYB&publ=NY&key_code=EPHXM01&type=S¤t_page=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/08/15/the-books-we-dont-understand/) Or register for a free account to read just this article. [Register](https://www.nybooks.com/account/register/?level_id=0).