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Post by mrsphyllistorgo on Jun 3, 2009 12:32:17 GMT -5
I have officially started War and Peace. It will take me a while to finish, because A) It's freakin' long and B) it's freakin' heavy, so I will be reading it at home instead of toting it about.
I'm really looking forward to it because I've been on a Tolstoy kick--I recently finished Anna Karenina after two tries and a batch of his short stories. But when I tell people I'm reading it they look at me like I just announced I enjoy repaving highways by hand to relax.
My personal feeling is that a book, no matter how long or weighty or cannonized, is just that. A book. It's not the Matterhorn. There are plenty of books out there that I wanted to like but just couldn't get into (Love in the Time of Cholera, for one) and others I tackled too early in my reading career and got discouraged (I tried Proust in school--waaay to early. The new Penguin translations made him readable to me, a good fifteen years later.) But I find the translations of Tolstoy, so far, to be lively, modern seeming in their pace, and fun to read.
What's the biggest/most ambitous book you've ever tackled? Why did you select it? What did you think?
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Post by Mighty Jack on Jun 5, 2009 2:33:44 GMT -5
Good for you! I love Tolstoy and Dostoyevski... but I don't know what the biggest or ambitious was, maybe the Russian lit. I was a little scared when I started Brothers Karamozov, I thought it might tax my brain cells, but it was surprisingly accessible and I got it. I think I understand Fydor, I know where he's coming from. Even the much-debated ending to Crime and Punishment was beautiful and perfectly understandable and perfectly right to my mind.
Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a pretty hefty book as I remember.
I think I read these because there were a lot of classics that I'd never read and I thought I should at least try them out. There is one I keep avoiding - I've picked up, look at and pondered, but never read "Ulysses" by Joyce. One day I'll muster up the courage.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Jun 10, 2009 22:55:55 GMT -5
Part of my diss in on Mary Wroth's _Urania_ (more properly titled _The Countess of Montgomery's Urania_). It's in two volumes, about 1800 pages, has over 400 recurring characters, not to mention the ones that just appear in a single scene, and basically tells the same story of jilted lovers over and over and over.
But it was the first prose romance written by a woman in English.
It has some awesome parts, but I can't say I'd recommend tackling it. Luckily, there's an abridged version coming out (if it isn't already, I should check), so if you have any interest in the history of women's lit, I'd definitely say to pick that up.
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Post by Satchmo on Jun 11, 2009 22:45:52 GMT -5
Good for you! I love Tolstoy and Dostoyevski... but I don't know what the biggest or ambitious was, maybe the Russian lit. I was a little scared when I started Brothers Karamozov, I thought it might tax my brain cells, but it was surprisingly accessible and I got it. I think I understand Fydor, I know where he's coming from. Even the much-debated ending to Crime and Punishment was beautiful and perfectly understandable and perfectly right to my mind. Dostoevsky is easily the most readable of the 19th-century authors in my opinion. |
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Post by callipygias on Jun 12, 2009 8:36:24 GMT -5
^THAT'S^ the kind of thing that will start WWIII, mister. I think I'd even take Russia's side in that one.
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Post by angilasman on Jun 12, 2009 20:35:19 GMT -5
I have several old Dostoyevsky books on my shelf, but my good friend has assured me on multiple occasions to get the new translations which are a bit expensive.
same goes with Don Quixote. Always wanted to read it, have it on my shelf, but now there is this acclaimed, new, easier to read translation....
Hardest? Well, I read Gulliver's Travels in about three days because of a class (where I was only supposed to read books 1 and 4, but I wanted to go through all of it). Loved it immensely.
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Post by callipygias on Apr 21, 2010 14:04:48 GMT -5
Tried for the second time to read Proust's In Search of Lost Time, recently, but I barely get started before the enormity of the six books and their 1.5 million words drags me down. When it comes to books and movies I don't like to force it, I know that eventually I'll be in the perfect mood for whatever it is, so I wait for it and hope I recognize it when in hits.
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