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.

  • PanaX@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    8 months ago

    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!”