The Gift of Hard Books: Why Some Texts Make Us Better Readers

It is tempting, in an age of scrolling, to expect reading to be frictionless. We often hear praise for books that are “unputdownable,” as though ease and immediacy are the highest literary virtues. Yet some of the most enduring works of literature are those that resist easy consumption. They ask us to slow down, to reread, to puzzle through syntax, symbol, or silence. Difficulty in literature, rather than being a barrier, can be a form of invitation—an act of trust between writer and reader.

When James Joyce wrote Ulysses, he was not trying to make things simple. He filled his book with linguistic acrobatics, shifting styles, and interior monologues that defy straightforward narration. But for readers willing to linger, Ulysses becomes a kind of map of consciousness, a celebration of the human mind in all its tangles. The effort it requires deepens the reward. The same can be said of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, whose rhythmic prose and shifting points of view offer an experience of interiority that leaves readers changed by its insights.

The pleasure of such books lies in discovery. Each rereading opens new doors. When we wrestle with a challenging work, we participate in its creation. Difficulty transforms reading into a dialogue, a collaboration between reader and text. It demands engagement, patience, and humility—the very qualities that literature, at its best, helps cultivate.

Consider the poetry of T.S. Eliot or Anne Carson. Both writers make their readers work hard, but the work feels purposeful. Eliot’s The Waste Land weaves together myth, theology, and fragments of multiple languages, mirroring the fragmentation of modern life. Carson’s Autobiography of Red fuses poetry, myth, and queer coming-of-age narrative, asking readers to move fluidly between forms. These writers remind us that the most profound encounters with art often arise from the willingness to be disoriented.

Still, difficulty can also alienate. Readers may feel intimidated, unworthy, or excluded. For many, the fear of “not getting it” becomes a reason to avoid certain authors altogether. This is where literary coaching or mentorship can play a transformative role. A literary coach helps bridge the gap by offering readers tools to enter a text more fully. Just as a music teacher helps a student hear structure in what once seemed chaotic, a coach can illuminate a novel’s design, helping a reader trace the hidden patterns that make its complexity meaningful.

For writers, the principle is the same. Difficult writing—dense with structure, layered with subtext, resistant to summary—often arises from an equally demanding creative process. A literary coach helps a writer navigate this difficulty without sanding it down. Rather than urging simplification for its own sake, a good coach asks: what kind of difficulty is productive here? Is it the kind that deepens the reader’s involvement, or the kind that obscures emotion? These distinctions matter.

A coach might, for instance, guide a novelist through revising a passage that is rich in meaning but convoluted in syntax. The goal would not be to make it “easier,” but to make its challenge intentional. The same applies when writers struggle with the density of their themes. A coach can help shape a writer’s ideas into forms that invite rather than repel.

When we labor over a complex text, we learn to tolerate ambiguity, to hold contradictions without forcing resolution. This is a psychological as much as an intellectual act. It trains empathy and attention. In a culture that rewards speed, such slow reading feels radical. It reminds us that understanding is often cumulative, born of sustained attention.

Think of readers who spend years with Proust, or who return every decade to Middlemarch and find that the book has changed—when in truth it is they who have changed. The work of reading becomes the work of living. When writers confront their own difficult material—subjects too large, too painful, or too abstract to approach directly—a literary coach can provide the scaffolding needed to build something that endures. The relationship is not unlike that between reader and author: one of curiosity, patience, and mutual discovery. Through conversation, analysis, and structural feedback, the coach helps the writer remain faithful to their artistic intent.

To read or write difficult work is to accept that literature is an exploration of what consciousness can hold. The pleasure is not in finishing, but in staying with it—in the slow accumulation of meaning, the small recognitions that come only through persistence. Literary coaching helps both writers and readers inhabit difficult spaces. The great books that stay with us—the ones that refuse to yield their secrets too quickly—teach us the art of sustained attention. They ask for something rare: our full presence.