Five Books You Probably Haven't Read, and How to Pretend That You Have

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Book lovers and avid readers may find reading books very enjoyable but it depends on which books you're reading. I find that there are certain books that, no matter how much you love reading, you just can't bear to finish.

Some of these may be on this list which includes Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, James Joyce's Ulysses, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and John Milton's Paradise Lost.

These five books may well be some of the most difficult books to read, partly because they're very thick, and partly because they have very difficult themes and subjects to understand without a proper background on them.

However, there is a way for you to talk about these books even if you haven't actually read them.

Most Difficult Books to Finish Reading

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Many high school students these days probably don't have to finish reading the books in their English reading list, since there are many resources online that summarize the salient points of the books including the plot, characters, and themes explored in the story.

For book lovers and avid readers, these may not at all seem daunting. However, there might be some books out there that even the most tenacious of book lovers find difficult. Here's seven of the most notoriously hard-to-finish books.

20 Award-Winning Novels of 2023

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LitHub has recently published an article collating all the award-winning novels of the year. The awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award, the Booker Prize, the International Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Pen/Faulkner Award among others.

If you're searching for the next book to read, then you might want to check out the curated list. -via Nag on the Lake

The Poignant, Tragic Life of Sonia Orwell

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George Orwell is famous for his novels, 1984 and Animal Farm. What is probably often not mentioned is the fact that he married his second wife, Sonia Brownell, three months before he died.

Many people had accused Sonia of being a gold digger and it was pretty easy to jump to conclusions with the timing of their marriage, and the fact that Orwell left his vast fortune and estate to her.

However, according to the biography by Hilary Spurling titled "The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell", Sonia died penniless. More than that, she died fighting to protect her late husband's works against Jack Harrison, Orwell's accountant, the man they trusted but who defrauded them.

She won her lawsuit against him and gave all the rights to Orwell's estate to his adopted son Richard. Two weeks later, she died.

13 English Words That Have Greek Origins

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English is the third most spoken language in the world today with 373 million native speakers, only surpassed by Spanish with 485 million, and Chinese with 1.3 billion.

It is a West Germanic language, so much of the etymology of English words come from Anglo-Saxon roots, which is why its grammar and core vocabulary have similarities with German. However, English also has influences from other languages like Latin and its derivative Romance languages.

There are also English words which originate from Greek, and most of these are associated with myths. But some are related to Greek medicine, philosophy, art, and science. Check out these 13 English words with Greek origins.