Last year, I rekindled my affair with the city that I live in. (As other aspects of life got busier, I had started to take it for granted.) But books and exploring? They don’t always mix.
While I was doing a lot of walking and riding and commuting from one side of Toronto to the other last summer and autumn, I was choosing my books based on their size, on how easily they would slip inside a bag or a pocket.*
I’ve got no issue with that, really. Muriel Spark and Penelope Fitzgerald can play defense for the skinny book any day.
But what to do with all the bigger books that kept getting left at home, left on the shelf.
What to say to the bound pages of Robert Bolano and Gregory David Roberts, to those reading friends who have sworn on their merit and nagged me (nicely!) into buying those weighty tomes.
What to do with that idea I’ve had, of re-reading Tolstoy and Elliot, and picking up A Suitable Boy again (hoping, at long last, that I’ve forgotten having been told who the suitable boy is, which was spoiled for me 500-some-odd pages into reading this novel).
Well, here’s one solution. The Chunkster Challenge. Hopefully sharing reading space with other chunky-minded readers will bode well for new reading habits.
But already I have found that my original reading plans with this challenge in mind have ballooned.
Somehow, in making my list, I had overlooked the mass market shelves in my library; I forgot that a seemingly innocuous pocketbook can conceal an incongruous page count.
So what about Marge Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers? And Joyce Carol Oates’ Them? Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man? And Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much Is True?
And what about the Penguin classics nestled in there? The Trollope novels: Can You Forgive Her? The Way We Live Now?
And those fantasy novels that I collected years ago, with the best of intentions? Melanie Rawn’s The Golden Key? Tad Williams’ The Dragonbone Chair? And one which is constantly dangled about these days: G.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones?
To say nothing of the other novels that I overlooked while making my original list. Because I was in a particular mood that day.
Though I have been in other particular kinds of moods since. Moods which made these books look all-the-more-inviting:
Image Links to Challenge Page
Elizabeth Arthur’s Antarctic Navigation
Ann-Marie MacDonald’s The Way the Crow Flies
Julie Orringer’s The Invisible Bridge
Leslie Marmon Silko’s The Almanac of the Dead
Ann Fairbairn’s Five Smooth Stones
Fanny Burney’s Cecilia
Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, and
Marguerite Young’s Miss MacIntosh, My Darling
Right now, my big read is Tiina Nunnally’s translation of Sigrid Undset’s trilogy of novels published as Kristin Lavransdatter.
But even though I’m not mathematically inclined, I know that I need to be more than 100 pages into this novel (which does seem to read remarkably quickly) if I am to read more than one book of this size in this reading year.
That doesn’t stop me from making loooong lists of biiiiiig books to read in 2012, in my reading lifetime.
How about you? Are you reading any big books right now? Are you planning to?
Are any of these (or those on my original list) particular favourites of yours?
* And most often it had to share book space with Coach House Press’ Stroll by Shawn Micallef, which is a delightful companion with which to travel.
I agree that chunksters can be off-putting, especially when I’m trying to fit them into life. Shorter books tend to just suck me in and spit me out a few hours later and I can get on with life again. For longer books I (normally) have to stop to go and eat or work or sleep.
I keep meaning to take a pile of big fantasy novels off my TBR pile and have a 24 hour readathon at some point, but I’m terrified my courage will falter and I’ll give up.
Eva highly recommends Kristin Lavransdatter, I think. I really want to read it, but I’m saving up to buy it atm.
I want to read Burney’s Cecelia as well, but at least that is public domain and thus I could read it on my ereader (though, apparently, if I do it doesn’t count for the chunkster challenge).
Looking at your original list, there are lots of books on tht list I own. Very curious to hear how you like them!
I get that; I wanted to read it for a long time before I finally bought this edition, too. (Thanks for the heads-up on Eva`s opinion; I`ll have a look for that when I`ve finished reading.) But I don’t tend to have any problem *buying* chunksters (once I set my mind to it, it happens, even if it takes awhile), but it’s another thing entirely to actually get to reading them, hence all these options on my shelves. Let me know if there are any in particular you do have that you’re aiming for: it would be fun to read-a-long together!
I have somehow ended up on the “chunkster” path this year starting with Kristen Lavransdatter: I am on page 452. I have almost finished the first book in the Martin series, A Song of Ice and Fire which is 100 pages short of the 900 page limit. From your original list above I have read Five Smooth Stones (would love to reread it),Gone to Soldiers, and The Way the Crow Flies. My present list includes Clarissa and Anna Karenina along with Kenneth J. Harvey’s Blackstrap Hawco which weighs in at only 825 pages. I have also wanted to do Silko’s Almanac of the Dead since forever: maybe this will be the year.
Sandra, I’ve heard there is a year-long read-a-long of Clarissa and wondered if that would appeal to you. (The hosts are here and here. But given how quickly you’re moving through both the Undset and the Martin, you might not want to take a whole year! Depends on reading style, really…
I’m hoping to read The Warmth of Other Suns this year and I know there will be a few more chunksters in the mix before 2012 has ended. A good chunkster is incredibly involving and even epic. I basically live in that book for a while and it’s a good feeling.
I have a tentative list of books I want to read in 2012 but of course it keeps getting longer and more unwieldy the more I think on it and remember books I want to get to sooner rather than later.
Of course you’re right: I tend to focus on the downward side (gravity-wise) when I think of reading such big books, but the up-side is the total, complete sense of immersion.
I was obsessed with Melanie Rawn for awhile in high school and college. I devoured a bunch of her trilogies and wanted more. I think The Golden Key was the first I read, and if I remember it was quite good.
Oh, I know, I know. *sighs* I should read it. I know. *laughs* I don’t have any others by her, but I do remember one series in particular being recommended…
Big books are difficult. Last year, I made a resolution which I miraculously kept: 3 long books that had been on my to-read for 4+ years (The Count of Monte Cristo, Team of Rivals, and Middlemarch). I loved all three, the latter two even made it onto my favorite-reads-of-2011 list. I’ve made the same goal this year but I just can’t seem to get going on it. I’ve got Tom Jones on my Kindle but no prodding on my part seems to do the trick.
But I do want to read Warmth of Suns after my current book. It isn’t a big book in the sense of last year (my personal definition then was 900+ pages), but it might be this year’s starting point. I haven’t joined the Chunkster Challenge officially but I would imagine that doing so invites you in to an instant support network.
Isn’t it funny how even having a fantastic reading experience with reading big books, we still find reasons to avoid doing it again? And that’s true, too: Wilkerson’s book wouldn’t’ve made your 900 page requirement. See, it’s like a skinny book in comparison, now!
Glad you’re joining in with the Chunkster Challenge – I do think it helps to have support of other readers when reading some of these really fat books!!
That’s true, Wendy: I’m looking forward to seeing which you take on!
I keep meaning to read some of the big chunksters on my shelf, but I never find the time. Some of mine are part of fantasy series, so I’m careful when to read those, as I have the habit of reading to long and missing things like sleep. Which is fine, unless you work the next day. 😉
I also have Cecilia on my shelf which has been wanting my attention. Along with many others. I hope you get a chance to read Les Mes. It was a fantastic book, it’s long, but was well worth the time, some of the most memorable characters I’ve read about.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? You’re always willing to take time for smaller books, but the big ones keep getting shoved aside. Though obviously you’ve made time for Les Mis (which is definitely one of the biggest books on my shelves, along with Cecilia)! Are you as bad as I am for starting fantasy series and then leaving the whole world hanging?
Yes I am. I have 4 or five of them on the go at the moment, most notably the Wheel of Time. Also have Terry Brooks series on the go for some time, Ian Irvines saga, and woman of the other worlds to name a few. Oh well, they’ll get finished, I swear!
I just picked up a copy of Patrick Ness’ The Knife of Never Letting Go yesterday (just under 500 pages, so a slim-ish chunkster): I’m not sure anyone would believe me if I tried to swear for myself along with you there. But you, at least, do seem to be actively reading in your series, which adds credibility to your curses; I remember seeing one of Kelley Armstrong’s books on your site not long ago (such fun!).
Armstrong’s series is the one series I’m keeping up in. They’re my guilty pleasure reads, and usually read quickly. Unlike some of the other epic fantasy novels I’ve read. I don’t think anyone would believe me either when I say I won’t buy book in a series.
I’ve got Kristen Lavransdatter on my TBR shelf! And I just moved the TBR shelf so that as soon as I look up from my book, there it is across the room (rather than hiding in the corner). Should I pick it up next? How far in are you?
Ooo, I’d say moving them into full view is a good plan. I always find there is a certain allure to the book-in-view rather than the book-in-hand. I’m only 100 pages in and if that sounds like a lot, it’s not; that first segment reads very quickly after the first few family-history pages are digested. It’d be fun to read it simultaneously!
You started another chunkster?! You know, I’ve been pretty scared off by Kristin Lavransdatter. I don’t know if it’s the size or the subject. I’m still reading the same two big books right now but I did start The Best American Essays 2011 edited by Edwidge Danticat and it is excellent so far! 🙂
Heh. Technically The Warmth of Other Suns is filling my non-fiction category these days (now that I’ve finished Danticat’s Create Dangerously, which was so worthwhile), so, yes, I’m reading two chunksters, but I doubt that trend will hold.