Dublin, we have a problem.
Well, I just hit my first Black, White & Read Book Challenge quandary, and it's a good one.
Before I start each new episode, I review The Official List for that episode and then watch the episode myself. I found the list off somewhere on the interwebz originally, and there are some instances when it's not quite accurate... the reference is for the movie, not the book or a book reference was missed entirely. So I have the "tough" job of re-watching the episodes and vetting the references.
When I went to do this for episode 5, I saw that Finnegans Wake by James Joyce was one of the books on this episode's list. However, it's not referenced within the episode at all... the name of the episode ("Cinnamon's Wake") is apparently the reference. Some discussion commenced with a friend about whether or not this was a true reference. She didn't believe it was a legit mention, but apparently I was feeling ambitious. I decided "Hey... I enjoy James Joyce. I liked A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man... true reference or not, let's give Finnegans Wake a go!"
Famous.last.words.
When I got home last night, I decided to tuck into Finnegans Wake for the rest of the night. Instantly, I thought there was something wrong with my Kindle. The words on the screen were mostly complete gibberish. I figured I had a corrupted e-copy of the book and quickly decided to Google the book to see what was said.
Yeah... apparently Finnegans Wake is considered "unreadable" by scholars (SCHOLARS, people... so it's not me just being an idiot). Only .01% of the reading population of the entire world have attempted and finished Finnegans Wake. In many circles, you are considered "well-educated" if you're able to get through ONE PAGE of Joyce's last work. And of course... this book runs a measly ~670 pages.
So, my issue is this... do I remove Finnegans Wake from The Official List, or do I hunker down (with a guide to reading the book... and a good therapist) and just try to power through it? Part of me wants to read it out of sheer spite (and a little bit because I'd love to be a part of that .01% of the popular)... but part of me thinks it's a lot of time and energy wasted for something that isn't a true Gilmore girls reference.
To give you a better understanding of what I'm potentially up against, here is a screenshot from my Kindle Cloud Reader of the first page of Finnegans Wake. Don't be fooled, this isn't just a small, weird portion of the book. The entire book reads like this
Thoughts?