I got through the first slog in this book, but the most unbearable one for me was Moby Dick. At some point I took a multiyear long break from it after getting 75% of the way in, and finally finished it off for completions sake. I was pretty young when I dug into it so maybe that was it, but I couldn't stand the random chapters that just talked about whales and didn't have much to do with the plot

Try this version of War & Peace. Beautifully made and gets the core concepts across nicely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_%26_Peace_(2016_TV_series)

Now to wait for the same of Proust..

I don't like Proust, but I'll play devil's advocate.

Overly long meandearing sentences are very much the point of those books. The form and content reflect each others.

War and Peace is also just a style exercise fashionable at that time among russian (and elsewhere) literary authors.

It's like a fantasy author writing an "epic fantasy", what makes it "epic" compared to regular, largely it's the number of words.

Yeah, Proust's works are almost meditations. For me it took a concerted effort to get into his rhythm and not tire, but once I did, I found it more rewarding than most of the fiction I've read. There's a deeply personal effect to following him interrogate, for pages and pages, the experience of a fleeting sensation we're usually only subconsciously aware of. I think about this[0] passage a lot.

[0] http://art.arts.usf.edu/content/articlefiles/2330-Excerpt%20...

It’s a book written for a world that doesn’t exist anymore

It’s not worth the struggle if you have the movie

Did you read in English? I read it in french and loved it, then looked at Montcrief's translation - I would not have made it through. Montcrief turned Prousts clear and precise (but long) sentences into a kind of esoteric word puzzle. Lydia Davis' translation looked much better.

For War and Peace, I didn't know russian, so I tested different translations going ahead. The translator makes a big difference, I found some translations hard to read.

I had your feeling with Ulysses, though. No translation issue there. Couldn't make it very far.

Very insightful comment. If possible, always read the original, otherwise look for a translation that fits the style or sentiment of the original.

For example, Don Quixote, ideally read it in Spanish, but otherwise look for a translation that is funny in the language that you are reading it in.

Which translation do you recommend? I'm 40% of the way through the Ormsby one and I find it pretty funny.

It lost me at riverrun.

Wrong book.

My French is simply not up to it. A neighbor said that he tried reading Proust in high school French class (Richmond, Virginia, many years ago), and only at the end of the year realized that the kids who got As had used cribs.

But Nancy Mitford wrote about how much better Proust is in French.