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What's the Heaviest Book You've Loved and Finished?

86 replies

NotQuiteCockney · 28/11/2006 07:52

For me, it's Infinite Jest. I loved loved loved it, all 8 gazillion pages of teeny tiny footnotes about tennis.

I'm debating starting up with Gravity's Rainbow, or maybe Mason & Dixon again. I loved what bits of Gravity's Rainbow I got through, but I didn't get through much.

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Original poster
NotQuiteCockney · 28/11/2006 18:26

Oh, I keep meaning to read more Levi, an ex recommended it. I think I've read the one that's all about the elements?

I struggle with W. G. Sebald, somehow, too. Not sure why.

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Pruni · 28/11/2006 18:17

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Pruni · 28/11/2006 18:15

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donnie · 28/11/2006 18:09

I was thinking more of the thematic content than the style. If you want heavy style then all of Toni Morrison - all fab, especially Paradise.

Original poster
NotQuiteCockney · 28/11/2006 18:05

Steinbeck is not heavy! He's good, but he's not heavy!

East of Eden is long, I'll give you that, but Steinbeck has a really really simple writing style. It's what makes him good, granted.

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donnie · 28/11/2006 18:04

all of Dickens's novels ( polishes smug emoticon) except Edwin Drood - I like Hard Times the best though and it's probably the shortest!

East of Eden is quite heavy but also wonderful

loved A suitable boy

Heathcliffscathy · 28/11/2006 18:03

i've read the drowned and the saved PPH. is it heavier than that....i cried a lot during reading that.

DimpledThighs · 28/11/2006 17:56

oh oh oh I want to read master and margarita after my friend told me it was the most powerful thing she ha ever read - she even bought it for me but the book seems to have a strange power that repels me whenever I go near it - please tell me something to break the spell and make me read it!!!

PrincessPeaHead · 28/11/2006 17:53

Oh I also love Master & Margarita

I'm still an arse though

Oh also love the Leopard (Lampedusa) which is also heavy. In both senses, actually

PrincessPeaHead · 28/11/2006 17:51

hahahahahahahaha I only read the title and I assumed you meant literally!!!!!

god I'm an arse sometimes.

I thought it was along the lines of "is it worth starting epicly long books because I'll never finish them...

no, I'll stop the excuses, I'm just a twat.

OK, let me nominate Primo Levi's If this is a man then. Heavy doesn't cover it.

Original poster
NotQuiteCockney · 28/11/2006 17:43

(PPH, lots of people have mentioned A Suitable Boy, but I think the consensus is, it is heavy only in the most literal sense of the word ...)

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Original poster
NotQuiteCockney · 28/11/2006 17:43

Oh, I liked the Master and Margerita. But I think it's like Kobo Abe, harder going for foreigners than natives, as we don't really "get" the humour.

I didn't think it was actually hard going, though.

I'll have to try more Russians, I really didn't mind Anna Karenina, at least not in the new translation.

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PrincessPeaHead · 28/11/2006 17:40

has anyone mentioned A SUitable Boy?
I love it love it love it love it
and have read it at least 10 times, though it weighs a ton

clerkKent · 28/11/2006 17:38

Alibaldi, I like plague books - Camus, Daniel Defoe. Never really liked Dickens, nor many Russians. Would The Master and Margerita qualify for this list (if I had loved it)? I agree with NQC that Marquez is light.

Alibaldi · 28/11/2006 15:42

Most of the Dickens ones - Our Mutual Friend. Loved Brothers Karamazov but had to keep turning back for the Russian Names . Vol de Nuit - St. Exupery. Camus - La Peste.

doyouwantfrieswiththat · 28/11/2006 15:34

expat - impressed by Les Miz in french, my french isn't that good. I know some things get lost in translation like the whole 'horns & woods' pun in Dangerous Liaisons, should try a bit harder really I suppose.

Marina · 28/11/2006 14:35

Mumj06, have you also read Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie's fabulous Montaillou (in translation in Penguin). Deeply moving book of eyewitness accounts of life in a French mountain village at the time of the Cathars.

Original poster
NotQuiteCockney · 28/11/2006 14:14

Lots of interesting-sounding books in here. VIF, why did you hate Infinite Jest?

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Original poster
NotQuiteCockney · 28/11/2006 14:13

I have nothing against other people reading French works in translation! I read Spanish stuff in translation (although I don't think GG Marquez is heavy at all! I love him, and find him quite light, really). The no French in translation rule only applies to me! (I wouldn't read English books in French, either, come to think of it ...)

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venusinfurs · 28/11/2006 14:13

I hated Infinite Jest, but made myself finish it!

Does Midnight's Children count? Is one of my all-time favourites, but I did find it hard going at the beginning.

mumj06 · 28/11/2006 14:09

I would suggest "The Autumn of the Middle Ages" by Johan Huizinga. It is an incredible book by an historian on several aspects of ordinary life at the end of the Middle Ages -love, war, etc.-, with anecdotes from chronicles of the period. I expected to hate it, instead it fascinates me.

clerkKent · 28/11/2006 13:16

Jackie, I really enjoyed it too. That was years before the stage production/films came out - I think my brother was studying it in French for A levels, and I borrowed his English language text.

JackieNo · 28/11/2006 13:10

clarkKent - I loved Dangerous Liaisons (the translated version), but Tristram Shandy is one book that I actually haven't managed to finish. Just couldn't do it. And I don't think there are any other books I can say that about: I'll continue to plough through things with metaphorical gritted teeth even if I'm not enjoying them.

clerkKent · 28/11/2006 13:07

I read every word of all 6 volumes of Winston Churchill's History of the Second World War, and several others by and about Churchill.

I gave up on Vol 2 of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, and Proust. I have read Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in English - sorry NQC), Tristram Shandy, A Suitable Boy etc. There are several heavyweight hardbacks that I have started and put aside, e.g. Alan Bennett. I really only read on the underground to and from work, and heavy books are a pain to carry around.

pollypeachum · 28/11/2006 12:43

Finegan's Wake - but that was at university and not by choice.
I love and re-read War and Peace and Vanity Fair.

Foucault's Pendulum in hardback, also loved but not perhaps as much as the woman who came up to me when I was reading it on a train, clasped my hand, looked into my eyes and said it was the best book I would ever read. I remember she was exquisitely groomed, Italian and, as I then thought, middle-aged but in fact the age that I am now.

The physical heaviest was a hardback copy of Gone with the Wind that belonged to my mother.

My favourite books are the Flashman ones though. Neither heavy nor heavy but I like!

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