The Long Books: War & Peace, The Best & the Brightest, Infinite Jest, Anna Karenina
To paraphrase George Mallory, I read long books because they are there.Way back in 2009 I resolved to read more classic books, and I have knocked few quite a few of them in the last six years. However, the biggest one of them all, War & Peace, was still out there.
For some reason, War & Peace was lodged firmly in my mind because of a Peanuts TV special. It's kind of intimdiating, so I decided that if the book ended up being dull, the easiest way to push through would be to have no other reading materials. I therefore bought myself a copy of War & Peace (the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation) at Mac's Backs and brought it with me on my Southwestern baseball road trip. It turns out that War & Peace is fantastic. I really enjoyed it and found that I could not put it down.
Later in 2015 I went on my annual trip to Boundary Waters Canoe Area with my father. I didn't specifically bring a book with me, but my father had brought a copy of David Halberstam's mammoth examination of the foreign policy that got the United States into Vietnam, The Best & The Brightest. This was oddly compelling and incredibly depressing, which may not be the finest recommendation but I certainly found it worth reading.
With two successful sequestrations of myself with long books succeeding, I decided to bring a long book with me to Europe. Having failed to read Infinite Jest in 2014, I opted to buy a copy and bring it with me. The woman at Mac's Backs remembered me from War & Peace, which was sort of entertaining. Anyway, this time it worked. Infinite Jest is definitely a more challenging read than the other books here. The prose is dense and filled with slang. Much of it does not seem to advance the plot so much as set the scene. None of this may sound like a plus to you, but I really enjoyed it once I get into it. The depictions of addiction and the results of addiction felt scarily like reports from the front lines of a war, and were really more interesting than the main plot (such as it is). It feels a tad dated with a tech base that just barely predates the internet and cell phones, and the future history is a little over the top, but the most jarring flaw in my mind is that the end really really made me angry. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed the first 98% of the book and the last 2% made we want to throw my copy through a wall.
Lastly, on my trip to NYC over Thanksgiving I brought along a copy of Tolstoy's other great novel, Anna Karenina. I liked it well enough, and I'm glad I read it, but it definitely did not appeal to me as much as my other three long travel books did. I found myself having to push through it instead of being pulled into it. If you only read one Tolstoy, go with War & Peace.
I'm sure there are other long classic books out there (and suggestions gratefully accepted), but the two Tolstoys and Infinite Jest knocked out my immediate buffer. Bring large books on trips with me where I'll have no other reading material is definitely a viable tactic for future use.
For some reason, War & Peace was lodged firmly in my mind because of a Peanuts TV special. It's kind of intimdiating, so I decided that if the book ended up being dull, the easiest way to push through would be to have no other reading materials. I therefore bought myself a copy of War & Peace (the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation) at Mac's Backs and brought it with me on my Southwestern baseball road trip. It turns out that War & Peace is fantastic. I really enjoyed it and found that I could not put it down.
Later in 2015 I went on my annual trip to Boundary Waters Canoe Area with my father. I didn't specifically bring a book with me, but my father had brought a copy of David Halberstam's mammoth examination of the foreign policy that got the United States into Vietnam, The Best & The Brightest. This was oddly compelling and incredibly depressing, which may not be the finest recommendation but I certainly found it worth reading.
With two successful sequestrations of myself with long books succeeding, I decided to bring a long book with me to Europe. Having failed to read Infinite Jest in 2014, I opted to buy a copy and bring it with me. The woman at Mac's Backs remembered me from War & Peace, which was sort of entertaining. Anyway, this time it worked. Infinite Jest is definitely a more challenging read than the other books here. The prose is dense and filled with slang. Much of it does not seem to advance the plot so much as set the scene. None of this may sound like a plus to you, but I really enjoyed it once I get into it. The depictions of addiction and the results of addiction felt scarily like reports from the front lines of a war, and were really more interesting than the main plot (such as it is). It feels a tad dated with a tech base that just barely predates the internet and cell phones, and the future history is a little over the top, but the most jarring flaw in my mind is that the end really really made me angry. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed the first 98% of the book and the last 2% made we want to throw my copy through a wall.
Lastly, on my trip to NYC over Thanksgiving I brought along a copy of Tolstoy's other great novel, Anna Karenina. I liked it well enough, and I'm glad I read it, but it definitely did not appeal to me as much as my other three long travel books did. I found myself having to push through it instead of being pulled into it. If you only read one Tolstoy, go with War & Peace.
I'm sure there are other long classic books out there (and suggestions gratefully accepted), but the two Tolstoys and Infinite Jest knocked out my immediate buffer. Bring large books on trips with me where I'll have no other reading material is definitely a viable tactic for future use.