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

[NotQuiteCockney]

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.

(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 ...)

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.

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

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!!!

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

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

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.

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.

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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.

NQC, oh where to begin! I think I just hated the style. It was pre children and I NEVER would bother to finish something I was hating that much now. Mind you, I managed to finish Cloud Bloody Atlas recently . There's a week I'll never get back.
I loved Master and Margharita too.

I think One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich deserves a mention here too!

I liked A Suitable Boy but certainly wouldn't describe it as heavy in the intellectual sense, it was very readable I thought. Hated Proust, utterly turgid with great long sentences going on for pages, but I realise that's my problem. I agree about the Drowned and the Saved- searing and utterly fantastically written.

periodic table NQC.

positively light fare compared to the other two. i think he writes maginificently (even tho it is translation).

pruni...i couldn't stop reading it though.

he commited suicide after writing it didn't he.

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ha. heavy. i've got it.

as i lay dying. who is it who wrote it??? erm....william....er....help me here....

stylistically heavy heavy...but worth the effort imo

Ha, Venusinfurs, we appear to have truly opposite writing tastes - I loved Cloud Atlas, although I know many didn't.

I do think that Infinite Jest is a bit wanky, but I loved it all the same.

I'll have to get more Levi.

Sebald talks about WWII a fair bit, too, I think.

The Decameron is heavy, but not 'heavy' though, Californi... I love teaching it... so much fun. (Remember the story about 'putting the devil back in hell'?)

Re. Primo Levi, If This is a Man is, in some ways, easier to read than The Drowned and the Saved, as it tells the story of his experiences in more 'narrative' way, whereas The Drowned and the Saved is more like a series of essays - more analytical. Yes, he died very soon after finishing The Drowned and the Saved. The idea that it was suicide has been questioned, but it seems more likely than not that it was suicide. Did anyone see that The Periodic Table was recently voted the best book about science of the C20th (or something...)? It is great. And if you like Levi, his fiction is also interesting. If Not Now, When? tells the story of a group of Eastern European Jewish partisans fighting their way across Europe, from Russia to Italy. And I really like some of his short stories, although they are not that well known. (Some have been translated into English in a collection called 'The Sixth Day', I think....)

Sorry, for being boring... Levi is wonderful, but personally I wouldn't describe him as 'heavy'. 'Heavy' to me means that it's a bit of an effort to read (but worth it). But part of Levi's beauty is that he describes these harrowing events in a way which is, on the whole, not hard to read or inaccessible.

Yes, ellbell, you owe us an apology for going on about heavy interesting books on a thread about heavy interesting books. How dare you!

Seriously, I should give Primo Levi more of a chance. Well, I did like the Periodic Table.

Ellbell - I totally agree with you, in one sense. His writing isn't difficult or inaccessible. It's very beautiful and astoungingly honest and direct. But for me that very fact makes it "an effort to read", or, shall we say more of an effort than it would be anyway given the subject matter. perhaps that's a form of cowardice on my part. I've read and studied quite a lot about the holocaust and my work involves pretty grim stuff but Levi's eloquence and dignity and human-ness gets me and mades me want to run away from it.

moby dick - qualifies as heavy in both senses, i think? what a great book though

mao
heavy in weight

Bleak house-charles Dickens, love, love loved it. Despite it's "bleak"opinion of lawyers, still became one (and, not surprisingly, Dickens was right in his opinions).