>>5
I don't want to oversell it; if I could exchange that extra bit of understanding of the book with actual fluency I would in a heartbeat. After all, it took me a month to read a book that would take a native a handful of hours, time that I could have spent getting many more insights from many more books. It's a good thing to have to experience once or twice, though.
Do you have any recommendations for contemporary stuff, particularly experimental fiction? I haven't delved too deeply into it as it seems to me that most English publishers nowadays are unabashedly mercenary in their choice of what to publish, and that authors are similarly uninterested in pushing boundaries. My impression is that the situation is better in other languages, but I don't think much of that is being translated.