I have been reading Finnegans Wake over the course of this year, a few pages a day, along with a group over on reddit. It is one of the very few things that still keeps me visiting reddit at all.
Since the group are aiming to have a few weeks to review the book, I now have only two weeks before finishing it. It has been quite a ride, hovering right on the edge of comprehension at best - and usually some way beyond.
Last year, I read Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and the year before War and Peace - which makes particular sense in this format, since there are 365 chapters.
Anyhoo, I am now giving thought to my next annual big read. Some options are The Brothers Karamazov, Gravity’s Rainbow, and Crime and Punishment but I sm undecided and would like to consider some others.
Have you done anything of the sort? Do you have any suggestions?
EDIT - and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms sounds like an interesting one too.
I like the idea of having one big book to read in a year. I have done that with East of Eden and the Glass Bead Game. Both of which are meaty epic books. I tackled them initially as a rebellion against the short attention span world we live in. Even in reading niches, I all too often see reading challenges that set # of book goals. I think it’s absurd to claim that someone has read 20 books in a year that are short, verses one long book. The former is often applauded while the latter is not.
Karamazov has been one that I’ve been wanting to read all my life, so maybe I’ll attempt it in 2024 myself.
Non linear writing is a struggle for me, but I try to challenge myself with it. I’m currently reading The Waves by Virginia Woolf which is incredibly abstract but beautiful. I assume Gravity’s Rainbow to be similar. But it’s a thick book too.
What’s considered a short book vs a long book?
I am a voracious reader and can go through a dozen 400-500 page books a year. 700+ pages is where I really feel like I can get into a story.
Problem is, there just aren’t that many 1000+ page books anymore in the genres I enjoy the most. I’ll see mostly book series of 3-5 books all in the 400-500 page range, and I can devour several different entire series over the course of a year.
There’s really no perfect standard for length in any format. I read on my phone so one page to you may be 5 pages to me.
I could see the word standard itself being the only reliable format. Like Standard Ebook uses as a measure for book length, but it may be hard to adopt generally.
“I read 567,000 words last month,” may come off oddly. But certainly not unreasonable.
“Let’s do a 200,000 word/month challenge!”
Oh I love this idea. It’s this a private group or open to newcomers? Do you think something like that would work here on lemmy?
It is over on /r/TrueLit
The have been doing FW over this year - and they also vote for other, shorter, readalongs (just voting for another now, I think), but I have not joined any of those,
I don’t know whether it would work here. I feel that getting enough people interested in a particular title to make it viable would be the issue - since a lot of people will inevitably drop out for one reason or another over the course of the year.
With the other titles in previous years there were dedicated subreddits - but not private or anything.
Great write up. Thanks for making the post and this follow up comment. For what it’s worth, to answer your original question, you can’t go wrong with Brothers Karamazov. It’s one of my personal favorites, and if you’re into character-driven vs plot-driven reads you’re in for a treat
Yes I have done something similar on a bigger scale. I’ve participated in a reading/discussion circle that spanned about 200+ people in different countries. We’ve all read a philosophical book and there were cards that had most of the chapters’ contents on them, so you didn’t necessarily need the book. We were encouraged to find a reading partner close by to discuss a chapter per week. I still meet up with my reading partner regularly even months after the project ended.
It was the only way I would have worked through the complex book. I wouldn’t have done it alone.
To throw another recommendation into the mix: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Currently my favorite book and could certainly take a year to read
I would suggest The Brothers Karamazov. I read it recently and it’s become one of my favourite books. However, I read it over a period of just over a month. So not sure about the whole year thing.
