Books - long and awful.

[Matthew Strongin]

But... but... It's not only another wonderful, rich, perfectly told story of palpably real characters, he does that whole postmodern-before-there-was-even-modern digression into analyzing Napoleon, injecting the authorial voice out of nowhere for 50 odd pages.

Interesting how 40 words on an internet forum might compel me to reread 560,000+ words of Tolstoy.

[davids]

Interesting how 40 words on an internet forum might compel me to reread 560,000+ words of Tolstoy.

You can thank me later. Just be sure to get the Pevear - Volokhonsky translation: Tolstoy’s Real Hero by Orlando Figes | The New York Review of Books

[Nathanrtaylor]

I'm starting to feel bad about the sheer number of books mentioned in this thread that I read and liked

[Human Epic Jolt]

Dickens for everyone.

[boxerboxer]

I'm starting to feel bad about the sheer number of books mentioned in this thread that I read and liked

Stop.

[lumpy]

I picked up a copy of The Gulag Archipelago, and got most of the way through the book before I noticed it didn't seem to be winding up and checked the title page to discover it was just volume one. When I went to the library to get the next volume, I discovered it was published in three volumes. So I still had about a thousand pages to go.

I finished it though. Far from awful, but long.

[Human Epic Jolt]

Don't let steveP get the Encyclopedia Britannica out. That's all I gotta say.

[EricKeller]

the sound and the fury by faulkner.

always thought i should read it...
tried 3-4 times and by page 25 couldnt figure out what the hell was happening or who was who.
gave up. its over.

been a while, the fact that most of the story is told by someone with a really low IQ generally makes it difficult to understand since he sees a lot of things that he misinterprets. My edition contains an epilogue which actually lays out the story. Funny thing is there are something like 3 sentences spread over many pages. But it still makes more sense than the book itself. I wished I had read it before starting, that much I remember. Seems like Faulkner actually tells the same story in other books, at least peripherally. However, it's been so long I don't remember.

I once read an abridged version of War and Peace, or at least I got a few hundred pages in. What a waste of paper/time that was. I think I started reading it with the notion that I just wanted the executive summary.

[Badonkadonk]

been a while, the fact that most of the story is told by someone with a really low IQ generally makes it difficult to understand since he sees a lot of things that he misinterprets. My edition contains an epilogue which actually lays out the story. Funny thing is there are something like 3 sentences spread over many pages. But it still makes more sense than the book itself. I wished I had read it before starting, that much I remember. Seems like Faulkner actually tells the same story in other books, at least peripherally. However, it's been so long I don't remember.

I once read an abridged version of War and Peace, or at least I got a few hundred pages in. What a waste of paper/time that was. I think I started reading it with the notion that I just wanted the executive summary.

i read war and peace over spring break in the 8th grade, largely on two planes then on the beach in antigua. i remember it mainly as a fascinating story about napoleon getting the shit kicked out of him by the weather and terrain, and then a soap opera about a bunch of other people that i didn't get too invested in. for a long book, though, it's not like it's a tough read or anything. just think of it as three or four books and hit it.

put me in as a DFW fan. infinite jest was the first time i'd read something really different in years, and i thought it was delightful. trying, but delightful. nice minor reference for pharmacology geeks too.

[davids]

been a while, the fact that most of the story is told by someone with a really low IQ generally makes it difficult to understand since he sees a lot of things that he misinterprets. My edition contains an epilogue which actually lays out the story. Funny thing is there are something like 3 sentences spread over many pages. But it still makes more sense than the book itself. I wished I had read it before starting, that much I remember. Seems like Faulkner actually tells the same story in other books, at least peripherally. However, it's been so long I don't remember.

I once read an abridged version of War and Peace, or at least I got a few hundred pages in. What a waste of paper/time that was. I think I started reading it with the notion that I just wanted the executive summary.

Been a while for me and Faulkner too. What I remember is that the first section is narrated by the mentally handicapped character, and other sections by other characters. It made a lot more sense once I was into it. And I personally loved it.

An abridged version of War and Peace? That's more fucked up than a Faulknerian family.

[cody.wms]

You can thank me later. Just be sure to get the Pevear - Volokhonsky translation: Tolstoy’s Real Hero by Orlando Figes | The New York Review of Books

This is one thing to keep in mind when reading books written in foreign parts* -- the translation is everything.

*I've been reading a lot of crappy westerns this week. I like the William Johnstone ones cause they have a kill K:F ratio**

*Kill:Fuck ratio. I want to read about death, not a gussied up romance novel.

[steve garro]

Awesome!
Allot I liked as well.
Confederacy of Dunces I loved.
Man.......Moby Dick - not even Queequeg can save it from being a treatise on Whale processing and **** eroticism. I mean, how many pages does one need to describe the bearings of Starbuck?

The Book of Mormon. Try it out.

As much as I also like it, "Autumn of the Patriarch" by GG Marquez - no punctuation either.

Ayn Rand, Any.

Irvine Welch - "Filth"

The Simarillion.

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Forced my way through it.

- Garro.

[72gmc]

The Silmarillion. I finally made it but only in the last 5 years. I think it was my third try. Once I got to the second book (past the singing into creation, check out my 40-letter name bit) it became a series of short tales that were challenging but not utterly demoralizing. Not necessarily not awful.

Moby Dick surprised me. The story beneath the baroque descriptions worked for me.

[EricKeller]

An abridged version of War and Peace? That's more fucked up than a Faulknerian family.

yeah, I decided the book had promise and went and got the full version. It was much more interesting. I have read many of the long-winded books in this thread and liked a lot of them, so going with the abridged version was stupid of me. It must have been handy, I don't think I would have paid for it. I remember at one time "war and peace" was what people would say when something was long and boring, that seems to fallen out of use.

The Silmarillion. I finally made it but only in the last 5 years. I think it was my third try. Once I got to the second book (past the singing into creation, check out my 40-letter name bit) it became a series of short tales that were challenging but not utterly demoralizing. Not necessarily not awful.

Moby Dick surprised me. The story beneath the baroque descriptions worked for me.

My son tried to get me to read the Silmarillion to him. It's impossible to read out loud. I did read the Hobbit and the LOTR to him, which was hard enough.

I thought Moby Dick was hilarious. Some people had to read it in high school and hated it, those must have been the smart kids or something.

[Nathanrtaylor]

The Silmarillion is one I can agree on. Once you remove the human element (which in the case of Tolkien isn't technically human, but hobbit) the stories become too big and general and the frame of reference falls apart. Just can't do it.

Cryptonomicon is one of my favorites though. It really is. Though I like nearly everything Neal Stephenson has ever written. If you don't love the opening to Snow Crash, then don't read anything else he's ever written. 3 pages in Cryptonomicon about the proper way to eat Cap'n Crunch? Awesome.

I want to like Godel, Escher, Bach, and kind of do. but I can't really read it. I liked Le Ton Beau de Marot better and it's way way way more geeky and erudite.

Not mentioned yet, but Dan Simmons' books Ilium and Olympos are awful. And long. This coming from someone who likes his Hyperion Cantos way more than I should.

The further I get into the Song of Ice and Fire series, the more I realize huge sections of it(whole books, even) are crap.

Like I said though, I like a lot of the books mentioned here. Some of them for simple reasons that don't fully redeem the books, but hey. Stranger in a Strange Land? Interesting take on language defining consciousness (Snow Crash did it better). Catch-22 is fun. A Confederacy of Dunces had me in a near constant state of embarrassment and discomfort, like watching the Paul Thomas Anderson movie Punch Drunk Love. Several others, but you get the point. There's no accounting for taste.

[Dorman]

I swear you guys would have enjoyed the Silmarillion much more if you had spent more time studying the appendices.

I'm still trying to decide if I'm being sarcastic or not. I wore out several copies.

[zetroc]