Top 5 Most Intimidating Books

On this final Tuesday of January, Shanah the Bionic Bookworm would like to know about books that we all consider to be intimidating reads. From massive lengths to complicated prose, there are lots of reasons for a book to be intimidating. Here are the top 5 books that intimidate me the most!

Mistborn
by Brandon Sanderson

There are a lot of books in this series. The 7th book is slated to come out late this year, plus there is a prequel book and a book that’s supposed to take place between 3 and 4. I don’t know the reading order of any of this, but it’s intimidating just to think about. This probably won’t stop me, though.

In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote

I have no idea what intimidates me about this book. Maybe because of that Capote movie where the author was played by Phillip Seymor Hoffman and he looked VERY serious throughout. A man that serious looking must write prose that I would be able to make heads or tails of, right?

House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski

It’s unconventional. It has so many footnotes that some of the footnotes have footnotes. I’m not kidding. That’s not the real intimidating part, though. It’s unconventional nature sounds similar to The Illuminae Files. What intimidates me is how many people have said the book leaves you feeling unsettled. I don’t read a lot of horror. So if this is the most horrific of all horror, I might be in some trouble with this book.

A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking

Hawking is a bonafide genius. And he’s going to talk about physics. Am I going to understand any of this? I read Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. It was supposed to be Astrophysics dumbed down, and most of it was still waaaaaaaaay above my head.

Discworld
by Terry Pratchett

And I thought Mistborn was a big series? Holy crap-weasels! Discworld is MASSIVE! And some of the books are grouped into series within the series, where others are standalone. From what I’ve been told, you can start from almost anywhere, but that’s not really true.

I stole this helpful graphic from lspace.org. As you can see, there are several ‘starter novels’ with oodles of sequels from each. There are illustrated novels, short stories, and ‘science novels’ in the mix as well. When (not IF) I start this series, I think I’ll start with Mort. I don’t know why.

Fun fact about this post: These books are scary enough that I can’t even bring myself to put most of them on my TBR!