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.
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.
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!”