Now I've done it; I've gone and signed up for another challenge AND it's to read big, fat books - but just let me say in my own defense that most of these chunksters (as they are called in the official parlance) are part of other challenges or are already on my TBR pile, in fact their girth might be keeping it from collapsing in a heap on top of me while I'm sleeping and drowning me in books. The books of 450+ pages (hardly chunky in my estimation if it's under 600, but then I supposed I should start my own super-chunkster challenge, so I'll keep quiet about it) I have pledged to get through in this calendar year are:Lirael by Garth Nix (I was already committed to this one)
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (already on my Booker Challenge list)
Darkmans by Nicola Barker - (also on the Booker list and one I'm really looking forward to)
Nathasha's Dance by Orlando Figes (already on the Russian Challenge list, now if you are going to participate in a Russian challenge you are bound to have a few chunksters, the character's many names alone guarantee that the book is going to be as third as long as the same story written by, say, a Swedish author
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman (I'm already pushing it by putting this on the Russian Challenge list so what the hey)
Middlemarch OR Daniel Deronda by George Eliot - I'll be damned if these are both going to remain on the TBR pile for yet another year un-read
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann - ditto above
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - (This book of intense suffering in the Russian gulags should by rights make one feel as though one has gone through something)
There it is. Don't laugh. This challenge now means I will have Fats Wallers Fat 'n' Greasy going through my head for the rest of the day.
It is hosted (appopriately) by So Many Books, So Little Time
6 comments:
I have a feeling that some of those books are going to read much faster than you think despite the chunkiness of them! I really liked The Blind Assassin. I'm curious about Natasha's Dance--the title makes me want to go look it up. Good luck with your challenges, this one sounds tempting! And a little belatedly--A Very Happy and Bookish New Year!
Danielle - The Balkan Trilogy surprised me that way (even during finals!) so you may well be right.
...and I want to read that, too. I started, but as always got distracted.
I've been looking for an excuse to read Darkmans this year - this might be it! That, plus all those Russian names I'll be reading during the Russian Reading Challenge, should add up to enough titles to qualify :) Best of luck to you on your challenges!
I recommend Middlemarch over Daniel Deronda; I read them both last year, and while Daniel was good, I looooved Middlemarch!
I like big books too; the little ones seem to end so abruptly!
Ex - Yes, doesn't Darkmans look intruiging?
Eva - Thanks for that suggestion. The print (in my edition) is also much more legible in Middlemarch so I was drawn in that direction. Eliot may wait for the summer though.
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