I was in the breakroom with my boss and he saw I was reading Middlemarch. He said he tried to read it once, but gave up. The writing was too difficult and he wasn't interested in pushing through. I get that. It is a book that resists rushing; Eliot's sentences sometimes thorny. I'm re-reading it two pages at a time, so having to read a paragraph a few times is built-in to my experience.

I don't always want that; I don't always want to "work" when I read. The other week, someone recommended Hart Crane's poem cycle "Voyages" to me. I had to look up nearly three words for each section and read it multiple times, and even then I'm not entirely sure I understand it. She said it was "all about gay sex." I definitely missed that. Still, I enjoyed the challenge. 

To be fair, my other reading was Our Winter Monster, which I very much enjoyed for its unpretentious quality.