2012 reading challenge

[Rores28]

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.

That's what she said. HI OOOOOOO!

[hawthorns]

I think it's obvious by my avatar which one I'm going to recommend . 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

[kevinthediltz]

East of Eden by Steinbeck (just over 600 pages)

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.

[CarpeNixta]

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

[PabloQ]

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.

[hawthorns]

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:

[TheFifthElement]

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

[Voivod30]

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

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..

[jake21221]

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.

[PabloQ]

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.

[Calidore]

Of the stuff mentioned, I've got Les Miz, Moby Dick, and the two big Tolstoys on the to-read shelf, along with Neal Stephenson's huge Baroque trilogy, which hasn't been mentioned but would also fit this topic. I have Genji and the Paul Scott quartet in storage, meaning hopefully someday. I've read and can heartily recommend Dumas' complete Musketeers trilogy and Monte Cristo. I gave up on Don Quixote and Winter's Tale: the former because the humor was too broad and the situations too repetitive, and the latter because the writing was too precious, as if the author was too much in love with his own writing.

I'm currently reading a mammoth sci-fi trilogy: Night's Dawn by Peter F. Hamilton. Each of the three volumes is over 1000 pages. Despite the length, it's quite the page-turner. Next will be Alexandre Dumas' gigantic Marie Antoinette series, with books 2 & 3 roughly 800-1000 pages and books 1 & 4 running 1500-2000 each (in the unabridged editions). I'd meant to start that concurrently with the Night's Dawn trilogy, but both have so many characters that I'd never be able to keep them straight.

[JBI]

Read The Plum in the golden Vase. It is long (something around 2000 pages) but the most interesting book you will ever read in your life, I guarantee it.

[Desolation]

For my 2012 reading theme, I'm trying to decide between Monsters, Re-Reads, or the inevitable Whatever-the-Hell-I-Want. All I know for sure is that I would like to read a lot of Beckett, at least one volume of Proust, some Pynchon (I made a promise about Gravity's Rainbow, and I plan to keep it), Infinite Jest, and the greater deal of my currently unread books sitting on the shelf.

[Love_Aud]

Last year I made a list of 200 books I wanted to read for the year. I only read like 50 of them. So, this year, I'll just try and knock out 50 more!

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Read The Plum in the golden Vase. It is long (something around 2000 pages) but the most interesting book you will ever read in your life, I guarantee it.

That's quite a gyrate.