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? |
Les Miserables, was one of those door stops I conquered. The first time I read it I pulled the plug on the battle of Waterloo. Why so much on the battle with only one item in all those pages with any relevance to the story. (I won’t say what that was). Years later, I tried again and pressed through. It all made sense. But that’s the whole book, many lengthy side stories that ultimately tie together nicely into the ‘main story’. It took patience.