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.

  • CarrierLost@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • PanaX@lemmy.world
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      1 year 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!”