Great question. I have often dreamed of spending a whole year deeply immersed in just one book.
I guess you want something long. But you also want something with immense depth. It doesn't have to be hyper-intellectual or difficult, but it should be deep and wise – written by someone with immense learning and intelligence.
Proust and Dante and Shakespeare are the big three, I suppose. You could spend a lifetime on each of them alone.
Few recommendations:
- George Eliot: Middlemarch
Virginia Woolf said this was one of the few novels written for grown ups. It is long and deep and wise, and is a book to be savoured and meditated on. When she was planning it, Eliot kept a notebook in which she jotted down hundreds of quotations from philosophers, poets, historians, and so on, in eight different languages!! I do love Jane Austen, the Brontes and Virginia Woolf, but Eliot is the greatest female novelist this island has produced.
- Harold Bloom: The Western Canon
Bloom was the greatest literary critic of the late 20th-century, and this is his summary of who he considers the greatest writers of all time, and why. Bloom is wonderfully clear and entertaining – not at all heavy or academic or dry.
- Bertrand Russell: The Problems of Philosophy
Short but fascinating book that lays out the central problems of philosophy – the key questions that keep philosophers awake at night. Russell is famous for his crystal clear style, and his ability to simplify complex ideas. He's also a cheerful and uplifting writer. His History of Western Philosophy, or even The Conquest of Happiness, could also be meditated on over a year.
- Carl Sagan: Cosmos
Wonderful book. Get the illustrated hardback.
- Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything
This is the book I would take to a desert island (and I'm terrible at science btw). A wonderfully clear, entertaining history of science, filled with interesting stories, characters and facts.
- Eckhart Tolle: The Power of Now
A simple, clear guide to mysticism. It isn't an original work at all, as Tolle would be the first to admit. He simply lays out the basics of the 'enlightened' or 'transcendental' state. What Zen calls 'satori' and others call 'the beatific vision'. If you want to go into it in more depth, read Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy.
- Dickens: David Copperfield
For me, this is the novel. Dickens packed the whole of human life into this work – grief, loss, kindness, cruelty, love, loyalty, cowardice, courage, everything. Yes it has its faults, but I'd nominate it for greatest novel in English. It may not be the best written or most profound, but it is the most human.