ya, i did the same, took a few tries - i actually ended up reading the pale king first, might be worth trying that. it's shorter (around 500 pages) and i think written in a more digestible/measured manner - still a DFW work, the plots are barely discernible until pretty late in the work but there's less gymnastics to the writing, i like to think because he was more mature at that point but maybe the editor played more of a role since it was posthumous, who knows!