Who do you think are the authors whose description are the most arduous to read and understand and the longest

Well, this is one whose descriptions I love, NOT hate. J.D. Salinger. In Catcher in the Rye, the description at the start of the book was awesome.
Who do you think are the authors whose description are the most arduous to read and understand and the longest
Any number of pretentious writers. Try the journalist Kipling for the most succinct prose style.
Who do you think are the authors whose description are the most arduous to read and understand and the longest
When it comes to "setting a scene" I find that Stephen King sure takes his sweet time describing every last, minor detail, whether significant or not. In some of his books in adds depth, in others I have to skim-read through certain bits cause it goes on and on.





Admittedly, it's not quite as tough as reading Ulysses, but there you go!
Reply:I just tend to skim those passages.
Reply:The summer I went to Alaska I read James Michener's book Alaska. The parts about the gold rush, salmon fishing, logging, and native peoples were interesting. HOWEVER, he started the book by explaining the arrangement of the continents due to continental drift before the days of the woolly mammoth. I could have skipped the first 3 chapters.





He is one of the very few authors I like to listen to on ABRIDGED books on tape.
Reply:There are several authors whose books have proved to be a challenge to get through because of their neverending descriptions.





Christopher Paolini (Inheritance Trilogy)- He tends to go on and on about settings and people. A good description of the atmosphere, surrounding area, and characters is important, but his unnecessary thesarus type (often out of context) words and his attempts to sound older and more mature make a lot of his writing seem like Purple Prose.





Stephenie Meyer (Twilight Series)- She never stops explaining how perfect Edward his. I think the reader understands that Edward has "dazzling" eyes and a "godlike" appearance. There's no need to redescribe him on every page using the same words. All of the vampires in her books tend to be overdescribed. However, with the character of Bella, the reader never gets a full description, which can become a bit annoying.





Charles Dickens (Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, and others)- I love Dickens work. However, he gets overdescriptive when it comes to settings. Metaphors and analogies are great, but when they come heaped one on top of the other, it reads more like arduous purple prose than the great literature he is famous for.





Timothy Zahn (several Star Wars novels and his own original works)- I haven't read his original novels, only the Star Wars ones. My complaint with him is that he overdescribes one character: Mara Jade. The reader doesn't need to be reminded that she has red gold hair and piercing green eyes every time she appears in a scene. It can become irritating to read the same description of one character over and over.





I think description is a balance. The author should want to give the reader enough information so they can get a clear picture of what is being described (whether it is a character, landscape, weapon, or whatever), but not so much that the reader is overwhelmed with endless descriptions full of metaphors, unnecessarily large words, and purple prose. Too much description is difficult to read through and understand. Less is often more.
Reply:Tolstoy - Reading Shakespeare,is a breeze compared to any of his books.They are good though.
Reply:Charles Dickens. Nor difficult to understand, but sooo meticulous that I skipped them. I wanted him to get on with the story. Had to read his novels at school and a few years back I thought I'd give him a second chance. No, I still feel the same. Didn't like his novels in the 60s and I still don't like them.