Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I'm thinking about my 2025 reading challenges and I'd like to change things up a little. So for one challenge, I plan to read six doorstops that I haven't read in decades, if ever.
This is what I've got so far:
- Middlemarch
- Moby Dick
- Don Quixote
- Les Misérables
- The Magic Mountain
Here are my requirements: English language, at least 100 years old, an "important" work, long. I'm preemptively nixing the obvious choice which would be a third English-language nationality and meets all my requirements: Ulysses. I've read it and I'm not feeling it for this challenge. Also, no Dickens or Trollope. I've been immersing myself in Trollope for several years now and I've already picked a Dickens as my fallback sixth choice: Our Mutual Friend. Oh, and not Villette which I loved but am not ready to reread. I am also open to non-Western works, just nothing too ancient. A novel, not runes. 
None of this is set in stone, so an appealing recommendation could lead me to jettison another choice. I'm also flexible, within reason. Not English, not quite hitting the century mark, longish instead of long. You get the idea.
So what have you got? What weighty tomes am I not considering? |
The Complete & Uncut version of
The Stand by Stephen King
Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
Shōgun by James Clavell
Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton
London by Edward Rutherfurd
The Complete version of
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Way of the Kings by Brandon Sanderson
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Under the Dome by Stephen King
Great North Road by Peter F,. Hamilton
The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon (all the books are tombs)
Alaska by James A. Michener
The Century Series by Ken Follett (all the books are tombs)
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry