2012 reading challenge

Well DarkMuse is reading around the world in 80 books (which is a fab idea, by the way) and Scher is still doing the Pullizer and BBC Big Read and probably the around the world thing (I don't know how she finds the time) and I too am looking for a 2012 reading challenge. My 2011 challenge was to read significantly more books by female writers and I've achieved that, so for 2012 my new challenge is:

wait for it....

don't get too excited...

MAMMOTH NOVELS

So, to explain, I'm trying to slow myself down, get myself deeper and deeper and deeper into a story and to do this I think I need to read some much longer books. Books of 600+ pages. So far I have the following on my list of potential candidates:

The Tale of Genji
War & Peace
Anna Karenina
The Poisonwood Bible
Mickelsson's Ghosts
The Corrections
The Women's Room
The Three Musketeers
Middlemarch
Don Quixote
Gravity's Rainbow
Infinite Jest

and something by Dickens, I haven't decided exactly what yet (I was thinking The Old Curiosity Shop). I'd also still like to keep some kind of gender balance in this too, difficult as that might be.

So:

1) would anyone like to join me on the mammoth read challenge, and
2) any suggestions for great mammoth books to read? I'm up for pretty much anything so long as it's long :D

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Originally Posted by TheFifthElement

Books of 600+ words.

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You mean 600+ pages, right?

:D

How about A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth? It is the longest book in English language that's printed in one volume or something along those lines and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed American Gods by Neil Gaiman and Pickwick Papers by Dickens (one of the funniest things he wrote, I think).

I wouldn't mind reading Poisonwood Bible with you, for example, if you start group discussions on them :)

Dur, yes 600+ pages. I've changed that now.

I'll try and remember to start a thread when I read Poisonwood.

I have a list of books that I call "The Monsters"...Books that are either very long or very complicated that I want to read. Originally, I was going to make this year a giant book year, then I decided to go for American lit instead.

But, the monsters are:
Ulysses by James Joyce
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

And, the biggest monster of them all, clocking in at the smallest page count of the group...
Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

I suggest you read Henryk Sienkiewicz's Trilogy. The English Translation I read had the titles as follows: With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, and Fire in the Steppe. It totals over 3100 pages and it is, in my opinion, far more exciting, interesting and humorous than War and Peace. Sienkiewicz truly deserved his Nobel Prize.

2666 by Roberto Bolaño. 912 pages, very good.

Surprised to not see Les Miserables on there.

Also, Three Musketeers, which by itself may not be as long as you want, is actually the first book in a trilogy. You can add Twenty Years After or go whole hog and include Ten Years Later as well. Note that the latter is also very long, so publishers generally lop off the first 2/3 to 3/4 and publish the remainder as Man in the Iron Mask. Oxford Worlds Classics has the entire thing in three volumes (five total for the series). Just FYI.

For that matter, Count of Monte Cristo is plenty long itself.

Lord of the Rings was intended to be one novel, but the publisher split it up into a trilogy.

Bleak House, David Copperfield, Our Mutual Friend, Nicholas Nickleby all by Charles Dickens.
He Knew He Was Right and The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

......

Anna Karenina
The Brothers Karamozov
The Idiot
Moby Dick

Not sure where it comes in on the page count, but it's a good read. I'm not too big on Kingsolver's prose, but I like her storytelling.

Not sure if you have any interest, but The Bible could be thrown into this group (as well as other religious writings from other religions). I'm trying to tackle it currently myself (in the King James version), and I actually find it very fun. I've read about 550 pages of the Old Testament (it has a little over 1,000 pages) currently. I'm going to finish the OT, move onto something else, then come back and tackle the Apocrypha and New Testament. If you haven't read it yet, I wholeheartedly recommend it! Even if you don't read anything, there are a ton of great books in it (so far, Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, The Books of Samuel and Kings).

Several books on your list are on mine, also, so I'll try to read those with you, although I've noticed I'm not very good at reading on a schedule.

Demons (or in other translations: The Possessed) by Dostoevsky
Also voting for Les Mis
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
East of Eden by Steinbeck (just over 600 pages)

Sitting on my To Be Read shelf, giving me sadly neglected looks, are two whoppers left from my Read-about-New-York-to-Get-the-Most-Out-of-Your-Trip plan: Don DeLillo's Underworld (827pp) and Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale (748pp). The opening pages of both really grabbed me but somehow I've never got around to reading the rest of either. Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections joined them shortly after my return and again, only the first few pages have been read. And Moby Dick and Don Quixote have been there ever since the TBR shelf was just a TBR-When-I-Retire box - perhaps I should join you in your 2012 challenge? :smile5:

There is one that I'm saving for a long, indulgent read - C J Sansom's latest Shardlake book, Heartstone (631pp + Author's Afterword). I need something absorbing for the dark, wet afternoons ahead.

I'll second Brother Karamazov and Moby Dick which are both excellent.

East of Eden is good as well. If you like steinbeck you will like this.

I will give a negative recommendation for American Gods. I feel as though I'm the only person who didn't like this book. I really feel like over the quality of Gaiman's prose is fairly poor, thought the concept of the book is pretty cool as are all of the grifts that occur in it.

Also "The Recognitions". I haven't read it, but the handful of people who have always seem to rave about it.

EDIT sorry didnt see that you already had the corrections on your list.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone :) I hadn't realised Les Miserables was quite so long which is why it wasn't on my list (I didn't really do much research, just mainly had a look through what was already languishing unread on my shelves :D ) but I think if I was to read one book by Dumas I'd probably rather read The Three Musketeers, can't exactly say why. It is just long enough - my copy is dangerously 666 pages long. Spooky.

I think I'd like to add The Brothers Karamazov to my list of reads and the Sienkiewicz trilogy looks really interesting but is hazardously expensive here so I'm not sure about that, but in my investigation I noticed he wrote Quo Vadis and I think I'd like to add that to a future reading list. Phew. I also thought of The Woman in White which is also a whopper and could be interesting, and discovered I own David Copperfield so that might be my easy choice for a Dickens. Magic Mountain is also on my possible hit list. At this point, the difficult bit might be narrowing the field! All the books suggested sound good and I haven't read any of them.

I'd love to have company on the journey so I might just start a thread each time I begin one of the mammoth ones and if anyone would like to join me for the slog you'd all be more than welcome. I reckon it's easier to keep going when reading with friends :)

There are some on your list that I haven't read and would love to get around to....Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest have been on my list for some time.

Winter's Tale was put out there....I add my recommendation for that one...a great book!

One title that I didn't notice (if you should be so adventurous) is "Clarissa" by Richardson. It is an 18th century novel written in the epistolary style, and for that reason it turns many away, but as far as getting into a story and getting to know a character - I place Clarissa Harlowe as second only to Leopold Bloom in my list of "characters who readers best get to know.

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Originally Posted by Charles Darnay

There are some on your list that I haven't read and would love to get around to....Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest have been on my list for some time.

Winter's Tale was put out there....I add my recommendation for that one...a great book!

One title that I didn't notice (if you should be so adventurous) is "Clarissa" by Richardson. It is an 18th century novel written in the epistolary style, and for that reason it turns many away, but as far as getting into a story and getting to know a character - I place Clarissa Harlowe as second only to Leopold Bloom in my list of "characters who readers best get to know.

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Hi Charles :) I hope you get chance to join some of the readings next year. Clarissa scares me, I'm not sure I'm ready for that one but it was in the back of my mind. Certainly your recommendation has made me think twice if not quite turning me to it. Looked up Winter's Tale and it sounds fantastic! It's now on my wish list, thanks :)

Just one to add to my own list: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Books 1 & 2 arrived today. Very excited.

Another to add to the list (I think someone mentioned it) is Ulysses by James Joyce. I had a cycle down to the secondhand bookshop on Satruday and picked it up along with Middlemarch and The Old Curiosity Shop (and Old Goriot - it's too short for my challenge but it is a very sexy example of a book so I had to get it :D ).

My list so far (these are the ones I currently own):

The Tale of Genji - 1184 pages
Middlemarch - 838 pages
Mickelsson's Ghosts - 823 pages
Anna Karenina - 853 pages
War & Peace - 1215 pages
The Poisonwood Bible - 614 pages
The Corrections - 653 pages
The Women's Room - 636 pages
The Three Musketeers - 666 pages
Gravity's Rainbow - 902 pages
The Old Curiosity Shop - 674 pages
Ulysses - 742 pages

Actually I'm a bit scared to read Ulysses :(

Ulysses does take time, I find, and if you are only leaving yourself about a month for each - it will probably slow you down.

Your copy of Old Curiosity Shop is over 100 pages longer than mine....curious.

Maybe I'll leave Ulysses until last.

I'd imagine there is some variation in page numbering depending on font size and layout and those sorts of things, though 100 pages seems an awfully big margin of error...

I'm in the process of reading anna karenina right now.. about 20 chapters in I think... its very good so far.

This thread has inspired me to start reading my "Monsters."

I'm going to start with the new P&V translation of Doctor Zhivago, and then from there it's Gravity's Rainbow, Invisible Man, Light in August, Ulysses, and Proust.

I think that longer novels go down best in the winter. I'm not sure why.

I just put Count of Monte Cristo on my kindle, so I'll be reading that.

If you want to read "monsters" and are planning to read Dickens, the proper choice has to be Bleak House, which weighs in at over 1,000 pages.

And I'm surprised no one has mentioned that portly masterpiece Tom Jones, around 1,400 pages.

Edit: I just checked my editions of Bleak House and Tom Jones and they are only 800 and 900 pages, respectively. I guess they just felt a lot longer.

I'm really glad this thread has inspire some people to pick up a weightier (if only in kgs) novel. Desolation - I agree, winter feels like the right time for digging in to a nice thick book. Will you start a thread when you start reading? In Search of Lost Time, Gravity's Rainbow and Ulysses are all on my radar.

Stuntpickle - thanks for the recommendation of Tom Jones - looks like an excellent read. I deliberately avoided Bleak House for my Dickens pick because I'm already familiar with the story and I wanted to read a Dickens I hadn't encountered already (the BBC has done a lot of Dickens adaptations). Did you enjoy Bleak House? I think I would still quite like to read it, all things considered.

I'd love to read Gravity's Rainbow with you. That one's been taunting me from my shelf for two years now. I think that reading it with someone else would give me the boost I need to get through it.

How about whoever gets to it first lets the other one know? :cornut:

this thread is also inspiring me to finally take on the monster that is gravity's rainbow.
but i only hope i don't have to take the whole of next year to read it.

Ooooo, this looks like barrels of fun.

Count me in.

Les Miserables!

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Originally Posted by Desolation

I think that longer novels go down best in the winter. I'm not sure why.

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Quite right. BTW, I recently read 'Doctor Zhivago' and would strongly recommend it.

I'd like to join this challenge as some of the books on your TBR list are same as mine. I've been planning to read The Tale of Genji, Ulysses, Les Miserables and Don Quixote for a long time but somehow could never bring it off. It would be fun to read these mammoths with others.

Right now I'm reading 'The Pickwick Papers'(801 pages) and am already half way through. Its really a great read! You may like to include it in your list if you wish to read sth by Dickens.

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

If you want to read "monsters" and are planning to read Dickens, the proper choice has to be Bleak House, which weighs in at over 1,000 pages.

And I'm surprised no one has mentioned that portly masterpiece Tom Jones, around 1,400 pages.

Edit: I just checked my editions of Bleak House and Tom Jones and they are only 800 and 900 pages, respectively. I guess they just felt a lot longer.

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That's what she said. HI OOOOOOO!

I think it's obvious by my avatar which one I'm going to recommend :smile5:. No need to tackle the whole thing either, as Swann's Way felt like a standalone (over 600 pgs too as I recall). My only regret was not knowing A LOT more about French literature, artwork, plays, poetry, and music before reading ROTP; He references them extensively in metaphors.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by PoeticPassions

East of Eden by Steinbeck (just over 600 pages)

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I ran downstairs to check the page count on this one, only to find that she beat me to it.

The Brothers Karamazov also popped into my head, as well as many other heads, it seems.

sounds very interesting, I'll try to read them for 2012 too

I have a list of "to be read"s. I keep adding to it all the time, but the 3 that I have that qualify as "monsters" for 2012 are:
The Brothers Karamazov
Tom Jones
Little Dorrit
among several others.

Not a monster (about 700 pgs), but I'd highly recommend this one if you want an adventure book that'll blow your hair back:

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/...118154012_.jpg

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, and it's nice to see a few more people wanting to try out the 'monsters' next year. I just read 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami which is over 1000 pages long (but could have been rather shorter) and didn't find that too difficult, but I'm guessing it's not quite as challenging a read as, say, Ulysses or War & Peace. Still, a positive start even though I'm not really technically starting yet.

Roll on 01/01/12 and The Tale of Gengi :)

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Originally Posted by PoeticPassions

Demons (or in other translations: The Possessed)
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (just over 600 pages)

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I just finished reading this a couple of months ago. It's quite depressing but I was extremely immersed in it just the same during the period of time when I was reading the novel. I haven't read any thing else by Dreiser but yeah I definitely second this suggestion. I've had a hard time reading long novels the past couple of years. I think this is a good thing to do in the new year so I suppose I'll take this challenge on as well, once I finish the current book that I'm reading. A few of the novels I'm considering are as follows: Les Miserables, Bleak House (Dickens), War and Peace, The Jewel In The Crown (and the other books in the series by Paul Scott), The Rainbow (D.H. Lawrence), Middlemarch, and of course the epitome of long fiction Finnegan's Wake etc..

I just started Infinite Jest. I'm 170-ish pages into it and enjoying it very much. Im over that initial hump where Wallace throws about 10 characters at you and doesn't bother to explain what he's writing about, and am into the story now. Still though I've got a packet of post-its to mark things I think will be important. (so far used about 10) Along with 3 bookmarks one to keep track of my place in the book, one to keep track of the story chronologically and the other to keep track of where I am in the footnotes. (There are so many footnotes, sometimes a single footnote can go on for pages.) While it's a lot of work it's the kind of reading I like best, you immerse yourself in it better and you carefully study each word and by the time I'm done with it I feel like I'll know these characters like I know my family.

Also thanks to a thing on my e-reader I get public domain books for free! So I have Anna Karenina, Ulysses, Crime and Punishment and The Count of Monte Cristo. None of these are really calling my name but I am vaguely interested in Ulysses. With classics like these I read bits of them before I sink into the story. I did this with Don Quixote and that became one of my favourite books so I'm wondering if any of these will grab me like that book.

Actually, my 10 books on the list for this year are predetermined. They aren't driven by page count, but as I have stated, it gives me much to look forward to. Here are the next ten:
The Duke's Children Anthony Trollope
Germinal Emile Zola
Great Expectations Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevski
It Can't Happen Here Sinclair Lewis
The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer
The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy
Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
Tom Jones Henry Fielding
Little Dorrit Dickens
Seems like a lot, but I'm looking forward to it. I'll be interested to see some of the comments on this string to see about reprioritizing my list. There's plenty on the list to move around.