Which looong novel are you currently reading? (Why?)

Boccaccio's Decameron. Because I should - and I need something amusing. I am also slowly carving my way through The Thousand Nights and a Night, for the same reason.

Alexander Theroux's Laura Warholic or the Sexual Intellectual Why indeed? This tome weighs 1685 grams (3 lbs 11.5 oz) and is deforming my rib cage (I read in bed). I've started taking Vitamin D supplements, just in case my marrow collapses on the 'morrow.

Last summer, on MySpace of all places, a friend called my attention to D'Arconville's Cat, Theroux's minor masterpiece. It was unlike anything I'd read to that point, and its digressions (longueurs) were as interesting as the storyline. This lead to some background reading on Theroux, and his "take it or leave it I'll write whatever I damn please even if no one reads it" philosophy. A philosophy I have a very soft spot for, I might add.

Thence on to An Adultery, another, not quite as long, novel devoted, again, to an obsessive relationship of an artist for his raggedy ann Beatrice.

And now, I find myself halfway through Laura Warholic. Theroux's "heroines", by the way, have become increasingly odd and unappealing over the course of his three novels, and Laura is such a wreck that I find myself reading on just to see how many different ways Theroux can describe her decrepitude.

One summer, many years ago, I sublet an apt on West 95th street. It was next to a SRO welfare hotel. On hot nights, I could hear the street noises through my open window. One Friday, a black woman with a very urban NYC accent, deep into her wine bottle, began berating someone else on her stoop regarding touching her dog. For the best part of an hour, she conjugated, subjugated, declaimed, and destroyed every possible variation of the phrase and the concept "Don't touch my fucking dog!" She was symphonic, avant garde, tapped into the universal energy source which exploded in the big bang. Even John Cage would have been astounded at her stresses and pauses, and at a loss to score them.

Until Theroux, I never came across another human who could similarly say the same thing so many different fascinating ways. The reason I'm now reading Warholic is 1) to see how many more times he can say IT and 2) to understand just exactly what IT is that he is saying.

I'm pretty sure his message is "Girls are nutz!" but at the same time it could be "Hah hah...Turn of the Screw on you... "Men are nutz!"

And finally - and not the least - there are the factoids. Theroux's novels, if stripped of the descriptive and narrative elements necessary to the "stories", would constitute, like a block of exotic swiss cheese, a proteinaceous nourishing mass of odd facts about art, history, sex, famous personalities, curious customs. A weirdo's Golden Bough of western culture. The ultimate desert island novel.

Wonderful review - and it brings on the guilt... I was ranting about this novel before it was published and yet I have not read it.

Theroux's work is a dense homage to literature and the English language. Just in Darconville's Cat, everything is there - the epic, the university novel, social satire, metaphysics, the occult, the revenge tragedy, romantic poetry, decadence and the gothic novel (and, like in Adultery, the wraith of Baron Corvo). But it is the language, rich and ripe to corruption, that either either allures or repels you. Theroux says that he has "lexical ambitions" (like another famous curmudgeon of English literature). All of his work is a love song to the English language. In the words of Dr. Crucifer (a devil, a cross-bearer, a cabbage): "How I love the language that can tell you this"

1) to see how many more times he can say IT and 2) to understand just exactly what IT is that he is saying.
Lol

Thanks for alerting me to this writer. I am dying to read him now.

I am reading Oblomov. it is making me very sleepy...

Peggy Guggenheim used to refer to Samuel Beckett as her "Oblomov" - and Beckett's novels should be on every reading list, particularly if you interested in language and density (and everything else. By the way, Alexander Theroux's dissertation was entitled "The language of Samuel Beckett". Like Theroux, Beckett, most evidently in his earlier writings, required of the reader that s/he had steady access to the OED). Along with Oblomov, of famous dense/modernist, if not voluminous, 19th century Russian novels, we should put in our homage to Andrei Bely's St. Petersburg and his forgotten fellow symbolist/decadent compatriot, Fyodor Sologub - particularly the Created Legend trilogy and The Petty Demon.

Andrei Bely absolutely! I have not yet read Sologub, but everything is pointing in that direction.

I'm just a few hundred pages into The Man Without Qualities for the love of Musil's Torless and am hoping the book hits its stride soon. A season into A Dance to the Music of Time which is turning out to be a strange odyssey in the ambitions of a very mediocre author. Also nearly finished with the remarkable Raintree County.

ADTTMOT turning out to be a strange odyssey in the ambitions of a very mediocre author Ha!

Bang on!

I agree with tomcatMurr, but always thought I was alone in that perspective.

(and don't ask me about Shakespeare...)

I'm reading The Brothers Karamazov for the next millenium. It does seem long to me.

Hey benwaugh, ' know any good editions of The Thousand Nights and a Night?

World Without End.
Like some of the contributors above, I have never read Paul Theroux, but the recommendation is certainly convincing. Will try my best to get my hands on one or more of his books.
Definitely Samuel Beckett is one of my all-time favourites. Read a whole cluster of his novels some years ago: Watt, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable.

I am currently reading The Count of Monte Cristo and loving every morsel of it. I will admit that I am reading it for a group read, but have been unable to stop and go at the alotted chapters and just must read on. It is very good.
I began Infinite Jest for another group read. What a hefty Tome. But I put a hole in my front door with it after about 90 pages. I may be just too stoooooooooooopid for that one.
But "the count" is pretty hefty itself at 1276 pages.
I have never read Beckett but would love to try. I did read World Without End and Pillars of the Earth and enjoyed both of them.
What a neat group this is. I have never come across you before. Am only familiar with a couple of you but just wanted to throw in my two cents worth. Hope I have offended no one.
belva

#1. I'm reading The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon, which is volume 5 of the Outlander series. I happen to love historical fiction... especially when most of the historical bits are accurate.

#2. Now that I'm not in school anymore, I never read anything just because "I should." :) There are a lot of those "should read" books on my cumulative TBR list, however, they will only be read by me when/if I feel like I want to read them.

I am far enough into The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell to say that I am reading it but not so far that I am sure yet of finishing it. The reading is dreary for small reward. I started it because of all the favorable attention it has received. I haven't quit because I don't yet want having quit The Kindly Ones to characterize me.

Robert

Mr. Durick;
You a such a "kind" person Robert. Perhaps The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littel will take an up-swing soon and begin to fascinate you with it's literate value. (or some such).
xoxo ;-0
belva

I am attempting to correct the touchstones for this one and it just does not wish to accommodate me. Perhaps if I input the author's name within the post..........
but no, it just wants to give the credit to Neil Gaiman. :-(

Robert;
Did you read the reviews on this "thing" you are reading and see all of it's awards?

Awards and honors:
Prix Goncourt (2006)
Académie française (Grand prix du roman, 2006)
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2008 edition)
Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year (2009.21|Fiction (10), 2009)
Bad Sex in Fiction Award (2009)

It sounds like a really difficult book to read. Good luck to you. Does the reading of it put you at all in a sympathetic mindset for the officer? just curious.

I think I am about three hundred pages in, and I understand the officer. I think I am not sympathetic just because the whole thing is icky when it is much of anything at all. I don't know how I would have behaved in those circumstances, so I don't have grounds for sympathy; I could say that I don't, therefore, have grounds for antipathy, but I don't like the guy or his cohort.

I think that what I will get out of the book is that life is complicated for those involved even while they are murdering 6,000,000 Jews, lunatics, gypsies, homosexuals, Bolsheviks, ... Also that same banality of evil of which Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem spoke is demonstrated by this fiction, made real that is. This book has an important purpose. I can read it easily enough, but the first descriptive phrase that comes to my mind for it is, "It's unreadable." I wonder if that's because subconsciously I think a depiction of dreariness is a dreary depiction.

In another 600 or 700 pages I may be able to speak more definitively.

Repeatedly when I have selected 'other' in touchstones and selected this work, it has shown up clearly until I submit my message. Perhaps touchstones has also passed judgment adversely on The Kindly Ones.

I knew of a lot of favorable mention about this work. I can think of many reasons that people would claim that this is a good book without actually liking it. I wonder if that happened.

Robert

#13. Belva, The Count of Montecristo is, and has always been, one of my favourite books.

13/18: Mine as well!

I am truly loving this read. I guess we all have good taste!~!

#20> You bet we do!

>#5:

re: "I am reading Oblomov. it is making me very sleepy..."

I guess we should have been calling you "tomcatPurr" for the duration of that one. hee hee

I'm reading Against the Day. And reading, and reading, and reading....

I just finished The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt, which I warmly recommend to everybody. One of the best books I ever read, and my favourite ever.

I am currently 3/4 through John Adams, another G/R, but this is a wonderful book. I am really liking it. It makes me want to go out and get a book on Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson & Alexander Hamilton; which I probably will do at some point in time.
Wonderful G/Rs this year on L.T. Just too many & not enough time.
belva

I FINALLY finished Against the Day, in all its 1100-page splendor. Surreal SciFi, Historical Fiction, anarchism, anachranism, post modernism, time-travel, early 20th century Eurasian history, puns, guns, erections, mineralogical wonders, heavier-than-air wonders, World's Fair wonders - this was a great book and, like Ulysses it is one that I must return to, some day.

I'm reading The Manuscript Found In Saragossa which I found in a bookstore in Kingston or Saugerties or maybe Owego. I can't remember where because I'm using all my short term memory to stay focused on the story. In fact I'm thinking of getting a bionic USB implant so I can add on Hippocampic-RAM for reads like this. This is either the perfect long novel for someone with ADD or a nightmare - or else, maybe, just an Alzheimer's test for literary snobs. It's like listening to your black sheep boho aunt, on ritalin, talk about her clanking, clunky charm bracelet from her 1968 tour de Europe. What the hell...her medicinal weed is free...why not?

I'm into book 3 of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Plenty of dick and poo-poo banter in this one.

I've an ambitious grand strategy: Knock off this and The Anatomy of Melancholy as prerequisites for tackling Tristam Shandy.

I'm reading War and Peace. I guess everybody in this group has read it and doesn't think it's a feat worth mentioning - but I'm reading it a second time. Last time I read it was 10 years ago, and I wanted to reread it as soon as I finished it. But of course there are so many other things to read, and a 1700 page juggernaut slows down climbing Mount TBR considerably. So I vowed to myself to only re-read War and Peace once every ten years. I started in july, and had hoped to finish it before the year's end. But since I usually read more than one book at the same time, and since part II (of IV) is quite slow, I ended up losing a lot of time and I won't be able to read the last 600 or so pages before New Years day. I am happy to say that part III (mostly about the Battle of Borodino) is a real pageturner, I managed to read it in three days. On to part IV! Die already, Bolkonski.

I will need to let the Russians rest a bit after this, though...

I feel like Teddy Roosevelt, rifle in hand, beaming, my foot mounted on a rhino...waal, it makes a better image than my goofy grin holding a stack of seven books...I have my trophy: I read In Search of Lost Time from start to finish. I started November 1, 2010 and finished January 8, 2011. It is a masterpiece. It is unique. I bow to Proust. But I was underwhelmed. I appreciated his poetic charm, in comparing individuals mannerisms and personality quirks to non related phenomena. His humor always came as a surprise, especially as, for the most part, he pursued a thought or memory with the rugged, serious, determination of a terrier with a leather chew toy. And the salon dynamics were a whole 'nother world...my being too young to recall the turn of the 20th century and to old to recall middle school. Still, if someone were to ask me, I'd say it's better to spend the same block of time reading War and Peace, Kristin Lavransdatter, The Brother Karamazov, The Great Gatsby, and any other classic of your choice. I think of Proust not so much as being a novelist, but as being like a primitive artist who collects a cornfield full of hubcaps, or bluestone, or cadillacs and forms them into a Stonehenge, or a castle, or a kaleidiscope of glittering chrome. His work is also like a novel turned inside out, where the interest isn't so much in the story arc of the characters' interaction, or the drama of their lives, but the arc of their interior development and social status. He remains, thoughout his work, the little boy calling the readers back for one more "kiss" - one more reflection concerning the significance of a memory. I found it simultaneous charming and tedious, and often just wanted to whack him with a rolled up newspaper. The obscure gentlemen who wrote "As Time Goes By", and "Thanks For the Memories" got much of the job done much more simply.

29, 30

Great efforts, congrats! I guess, then, I've a few more years to chip away at the old TBR pile, before a second read of W & P. As for Proust, I don't think I'm ready, either.

I'm bogged down in Book 3 of Gargantua and Pantagruel and have been, for some time.

I have read W & P once every 20 years or three times so far.

Find it a different book each time.

Ur.

I FINALLY finished Rabelais. As Clifton Fadiman said, it is best to take this one about a dozen pages at a time.

I'm currently reading The Magic Mountain. Slow going...

As far as I'm concerned it is a fair estimate that The Magic Mountain takes forever. There are people who are happy about that. I am waiting for them to explain it to me.

Robert

I made one attempt to climb The Magic Mountain and gave it up as a bad job.

I want to get on that Magic Mountain group read because it's been sitting unread in my shelf for two years now but I have almost 700 more pages of Ulysses to chewchewchew through which at current speed will take over three more months. I overestimated its appeal by an order of magnitude, and the aftermath is wreaking havoc on my reading schedule...

I found that the reading of the novel almost perfectly parallels the sense of ennui that characterizes Hans Castorp's none-so-brief sojourn on The Magic Mountain. I wasn't entirely sure I could surrender myself to the novel for the first 300 pages but, for me, it paid off very handsomely. One of the more extraordinary reading experiences of my life.

I believe I might take up The Magic Mountain next. It's been a year of loooong novels for me. Proust, then Bleak House. Then I stumbled upon Raintree County, which has been lingering in obscurity since 1948. Then A Glastonbury Romance - whew! And a few weeks ago I took a stab at Miss MacIntosh, My Darling...but that novel gives me a serious case of vertigo. It's the literary equivalent of Op Art. Has anyone here read it? Has anyone anywhere ever read it?

Now that must have been quite the journey, Ganeshaka. Great books, and loonnnnggg too.

I just finished The Magic Mountain recently, after many fits and starts, and now, I'm continuing with the masochism. 'Currently reading The Tin Drum.

I recently finished Mann's Buddenbrooks which is roughly as long as The Magic Mountain but much more accessible and involving. A family saga achieved perfectly, with significant characters and a meaningful conclusion, interesting and entertaining throughout. Alternately dramatic and contemplative, like a late romantic symphony.

I need to get back to The Magic Mountain for time #3. I keep thinking that I know so much more than I did the last time I read it, that it will be a completely different experience. No time soon though!
Right now I'm deep, deep into Life and Fate. It's hard to put down even for a reader like me who most appreciates fine writing. In fact, there is some fine writing - a sentence here, a paragraph or more there - but mostly it's the scope of the thing that keeps me going. (It's War and War, and it's unrelenting.)

Looooong readers, where art thou?

Proust, Ulysses, Bleak House, Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers.

Anyone read Little, Big, a favorite of Harold Bloom's?

Infinite Jest is sitting on the shelf staring at me. It may have to stare a while longer. Likewise, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I got bogged down in the middle of that one and couldn't go on.

I am reading South Riding. I saw it on Masterpiece a few years ago and decided I wanted to read it. I had never heard of Winifred Holtby. Even though this is set in the 1930s, the book has the feel of a Victorian novel: numerous character going about their personal struggles and bumping into each other. I find myself enjoying characters that I didn't think much about in the adaptation. This is probably one of the easier voluminous novels.

Lizzie, you want some fine writing? Look into Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers (I'm 2/3 along), the John Woods translation. So far, for me, only Proust is comparable.

This year I completed the Malazan series by Steven Erikson, that began with Gardens of the Moon. Ten volumes long, averaging 1000 pages each, seemed like a dream come true. Even with my love for large books though, I was feeling intimidated. I'm happy to say the entire journey was worth the trouble, so it's all good.

I'm making a second attempt at Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I'm just not sure what made it such a big hit a few years ago. It's as if it's attempting to be charming, but it just drags for me. Is there any encouragement out there or should I give it up? I'm about 200 pages in.

Definitely requires some patience. Its charm lies in the way it's told, and that doesn't alter. If you're waiting for it to get more action-oriented, that's not going to happen, lol

I take it all back. I'm finally winding up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and it's managed to redeem itself, so I bumped it up to 3 1/2 stars. It could have definitely used some judicious editing, but it finally picked up steam with me.

Interesting update, I've learned that the BBC is turning Jonathan Strange into a series. Sounds interesting. If or when will BBC America show it I wonder?

>51 varielle:, these things usually depend on how successful the ratings are on the original network. And whether it's considered too British by American network execs for American consumption, which sometimes happens.

I'm getting excited for this year's DVD re-release of The Jewel in the Crown, the British miniseries from the eighties based on The Raj Quartet. We aren't getting it in Canada until May, I think. I'm in the final stretch of reading it now, last half of A Division of the Spoils. I have one of the old single-volume hardcover editions that weighs like a pig; it's a beautiful thing, despite how beat up it is (I got it second-hand).