Epic Summer Novel

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i need something epic to read this summer. im planning on giving ulysses its first good reading (while simultaneously going through the odyssey). ive got 6 books to read for my english class next summer but its all standard high school fair (the invisible man, the awakening, tess d'urbervilles, etc.) and i want something to obsess over. something huge and life changing. im not particularly well read so anything you throw at me i probably havent read.

― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Thursday, 10 June 2004 22:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Ulysses is a great start.

― clellie, Thursday, 10 June 2004 22:48 (twenty-one years ago)

try 'The Brothers Karamazov', I am

― fcussen (Burger), Friday, 11 June 2004 00:09 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah go for Dostoyevsky - i'd recommend "Crime and Punishment" but there is alot of "Brothers K" love on ILB. i haven't read it (yet) so i cant say but im sure its terriffic. If you are not particularly well read i would say that you should put Ulysses on the back burner for a bit; i hope that doesn't sound patronising.

― jed_ (jed), Friday, 11 June 2004 00:15 (twenty-one years ago)

i would alod highly recommend DeLillo's "Underworld" (although this could result in some DeLillo hatred futher down the thread!)

― jed_ (jed), Friday, 11 June 2004 00:29 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, i'm trying that one too stopped around page 200 about three months ago and haven't touched it since.

― fcussen (Burger), Friday, 11 June 2004 00:32 (twenty-one years ago)

You can't go wrong with the Brothers Karamazov. Or The Idiot. The U.S.A. trilogy by Dos Passos is a good long one. Or The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. The Richard Yates thread reminds me that it is my duty to recommend Revolutionary Road. It was huge for me.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 11 June 2004 01:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Valley of the Dolls.

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Friday, 11 June 2004 01:15 (twenty-one years ago)

ive already read crime and punishment and the idiot this year and brothers k was next in line. i was actually hoping for something huger though, if you understand what i mean.

and i know what you mean about putting ulysses on hold jed, but i promised myself i would read it before the 100th bloomsday and i plan on coming back to it after this reading anyway, as i have no ideas of having a full comprehension of it the first time through. as i doubt anyone really does.

ill look into all these other ones as well. by epic i mean something that will feel like a journey when im through and something i can reread endlessly and analyze and find connections to other authors and works. i just need a new obsession.

― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Friday, 11 June 2004 01:37 (twenty-one years ago)

A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry

― marisa (marisa), Friday, 11 June 2004 05:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Read Don Quixote and hope it doesn't change your life.

― Fred (Fred), Friday, 11 June 2004 09:01 (twenty-one years ago)

'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon if you want something mind-blowing, life-changing and totally worth obsessing over.

If you want something a bit easier to read, but equally absorbing and weighty, 'Foucault's Pendulum' by Umberto Eco or 'Infinite Jest' by David Foster Wallace.

If it's a really long summer you could have a go at Proust - never quite got round to this myself though...

― Mog, Friday, 11 June 2004 09:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Give Proust a go. I'm 2,000 pages in. Nothing has happened yet, although he does know how to describe a church.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Friday, 11 June 2004 10:29 (twenty-one years ago)

hah, yea proust does seem a good direction to go but my summer isnt completely without plans. i was considering a pynchon book as well anyway. and don quixote is sitting on my dresser staring at me. ill look into all of these though.

― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Friday, 11 June 2004 10:49 (twenty-one years ago)

hm, maybe i will delve into proust though...any translation recommendations?

― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Friday, 11 June 2004 10:52 (twenty-one years ago)

if fact you are right about Ulysses, just dive in - if you flounder a bit what does it matter? thats most of the fun!

― jed_ (jed), Friday, 11 June 2004 10:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Moncrieff I think is the Proust translator to go for. I wouldn't worry about that too much, mind. Unless you're fussy about that sort of thing.

If I was you though, I'd go for Don Quixote. It is just the most amazing and hilariously funny book.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Friday, 11 June 2004 11:03 (twenty-one years ago)

this summer i am reading (and FINISHING) 'the recognitions', 'unknown london', 'in search of lost time', and 'rising up and rising down'

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 11 June 2004 11:29 (twenty-one years ago)

he said, shitting a brick

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 11 June 2004 11:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Read Ulysses NOW. Don't wait or leave it. Start it now. (I don't mind when you finish it. It took me till the end of August, when I started in June.) But be reading it now.

Perhaps you already are.

― the junefox, Friday, 11 June 2004 11:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Don Quixote, while at first archaic, is more dynamic than Ulysses, as are Tristram Shandy and Gargantua & Pantagruel. Ulysses of course is amazing, and will certainly provide you with thoughts for life (chief among them, every real day, lived with artistic awareness, is more epic than The Odyssey could ever be), but Joyce is just such a show-off that at times he's hard to relate to on a practical, life-changing level. Not to say that Bloom isn't as much the loveable, believable goon as his predecessors in DQ, G&P, and TS (and The Brothers Karamazov), but so much high-handed experimentation mediates the reader's relationship with him, it's harder to take him to heart. Also, in a similar vein as Ulysses, At Swim-Two-Birds and Beckett's Trilogy are safer bets. While neither are quite the epics Ulysses is, they have a bit more of the quixotic adventurousness to them to temper their stylistic innovations than is evident in Joyce's tour-de-force sublime.

― otto, Friday, 11 June 2004 12:25 (twenty-one years ago)

just read the first 50 pages of ulysses this morning. not the first time, mind you. ive picked it up many times but then i wouldnt have the time to devote myself to it or i would have school work to do but i feel i have the energy and patience to spend time with it now.

all this is great. keep em coming.

― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Friday, 11 June 2004 13:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I basically disagree with Otto.

Ulysses is life-changing.

But so is everything?

― the finefox, Friday, 11 June 2004 13:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Everything?

I mean your basic disagreement, bloomfox.

― otto, Friday, 11 June 2004 14:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm thinking of trying Ulysses soon. Is there any football in it?

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Friday, 11 June 2004 15:04 (twenty-one years ago)

The word occurs three times in Ulysses:

"Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to show"
"If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you."
"(Halcyon Days, High School boys in blue and white football"

― Fred (Fred), Friday, 11 June 2004 15:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Tom West - i will be joining you in "the Recognitions", i bought my copy yesterday, good luck!

― jed_ (jed), Friday, 11 June 2004 22:19 (twenty-one years ago)

I second the Infinite Jest recommendation above, and I'm a little hesitant about Ulysses for a summer read. I tried it earlier this year, and though I spent the first eight or so chapters thinking that this was the greatest book I'd ever read, by about 9 I was looking for any excuse not to pick it up. What about Haruki Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle?

― David Elinsky (David Elinsky), Friday, 11 June 2004 23:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Fred impresses me: I was about to type sth like: no, alas, the book has no footy. It has boxing and hockey, that's for sure.

I think that maybe the meaning is Gaelic football, or rugby, not football as we know it?

'Everything' means : 'everything is life-changing, maybe?'.

― the junefox, Saturday, 12 June 2004 09:19 (twenty-one years ago)

my god, i've acquired capitals

― tom west (thomp), Saturday, 12 June 2004 09:44 (twenty-one years ago)

put them to good use.

― jed_ (jed), Saturday, 12 June 2004 10:21 (twenty-one years ago)

I would choose Tolstoy: War and Peace.
Tom if you are going to spend the summer on the beach, where there´ll be lots of noice and you´ll be disturbed over and over again, then choose something else.
But if you´re going to loock yourself up with a book book for a couple of weeks, then go for War and peace.
I read it a least every second year, which I´ve done since I was 20. It takes me 10-14 days, where I do absolutely nothing but read. Every time I just get totally caught up with it and I can´t put it down for a minute. I grab it before I get out of bed in the morning and I never put it down again before my head is spinning and I´m about to faint with fatigue. I hardly eat, I don´t go out, I don´t answer the phone.
War and Peace has everything a great book should have.

I´ve recently bought Proust and I hope the get the same experience here. Except I suppose it´ll take me more than just a couple of weeks. So now I´m just waiting for a time, when I can lock myself up for 4-5 weeks.

― Jens Drejer, Sunday, 13 June 2004 12:07 (twenty-one years ago)

thats exactly the kind of thing im looking for jens.

― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Sunday, 13 June 2004 14:38 (twenty-one years ago)

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