Open Thread: Big-Ass Classic Novels?

Help Me Pick 12 for Next Year

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find long books daunting. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is easily distracted, discouraged, disappointed, and disappointing. For my classic novel goal this year, I’m reading 24 mostly short ones. But next year? I’m thinking of going big. How big? At least 600 pages, but I’m open to much longer.

Photo by Trung Manh cong on Unsplash

I’m not entirely hopeless. I don’t mind long nonfiction and read it all the time, and I occasionally overcome my discomfort and tackle lengthy fiction. Last year I read Middlemarch, and I recently finished Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed; I loved them both.

Buoyed by such small successes and the full and embarrassing knowledge that I’m missing out on gobs of great fiction, I’ve been keeping a list of long novels I might tackle next. These are all books that qualify as genuine classics or as modern sensations that might eventually earn the designation. A few are middle brow, but pfft! I don’t care. If people keep raving about them, I’m intrigued.

Here’s my question for you: What do you recommend? What am I missing that I simply must consider? Here’s my running list, sorted by author, title, and a one-sentence description Grok was good enough to provide. Help me fill out the holes. I plan to whittle this down to just 12 for next year so I can read them per month. Please also vote for whatever else you think should make my final list.

1. Roberto Bolaño, 2666. A sprawling narrative converges on unsolved murders in a Mexican border city, blending literary criticism, history, and the banality of evil across five interconnected parts.

2. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote. An aging man obsessed with chivalric tales embarks on delusional quests as a knight-errant, satirizing romance and reality alongside his loyal squire Sancho Panza.

3. Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White. Walter Hartright’s encounter with a mysterious white-clad woman on a moonlit road draws him into a web of deception, identity theft, and villainy surrounding the vulnerable heiress Laura Fairlie and her scheming suitors in Victorian England.

4. Don DeLillo, Underworld. Interconnected American lives from the Cold War era to the present revolve around a famous baseball, exploring themes of history, waste, and cultural paranoia.

5. Charles Dickens, Bleak House. A protracted legal battle over an inheritance exposes the fog of bureaucracy and social ills in Victorian London through a cast of entangled characters.

6. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield. An orphaned boy’s path from hardship to success mirrors the author’s own life, filled with memorable figures and reflections on ambition and kindness.

7. Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers. The comical misadventures of Samuel Pickwick and his club members across the English countryside highlight human folly and camaraderie.

8. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Three disparate siblings grapple with faith, doubt, and familial murder in a profound exploration of morality and spirituality in tsarist Russia.

9. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. A destitute student’s rationalized murder spirals into psychological torment and a quest for redemption amid St. Petersburg’s squalor.

10. Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo. Betrayed and imprisoned, Edmond Dantès transforms into a vengeful count, orchestrating elaborate retribution against those who wronged him.

11. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda. A privileged Englishman’s revelation of his Jewish roots intersects with a young woman’s desperate escape from an oppressive marriage in Victorian society.

12. Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra. A surreal tapestry reimagines the history of Spain and the Americas, merging myth, conquest, and identity in a labyrinthine narrative.

13. William Gaddis, JR. An 11-year-old prodigy amasses a chaotic business empire from his school, satirizing unchecked capitalism and communication breakdowns in postwar America.

14. William Gaddis, The Recognitions. A disillusioned artist’s forgeries of Old Masters delve into themes of authenticity, faith, and artistic integrity in a fragmented modern world.

15. Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate. Amid the Battle of Stalingrad, ordinary people confront the brutalities of war, Stalinism, and human resilience in a sweeping Soviet epic.

16. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables. In post-revolutionary France, ex-convict Jean Valjean’s lifelong pursuit of redemption and justice intersects with the fates of an orphaned girl, a relentless inspector, and revolutionaries.

17. Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke. CIA agents, soldiers, and civilians navigate the moral ambiguities and chaos of the Vietnam War in a hallucinatory tale of espionage and loss.

18. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones. Foundling Tom Jones embarks on a rollicking journey through 18th-century England, filled with romance, misadventures, and social satire, as he pursues true love while uncovering secrets of his birth and navigating class divides.

19. James Joyce, Ulysses. Over one ordinary day in Dublin, Leopold Bloom’s thoughts and encounters parallel Homer’s Odyssey, revolutionizing narrative with stream-of-consciousness techniques.

20. Stephen King, The Stand. In a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by a superflu, survivors align in an epic struggle between good and evil forces across a desolate America.

21. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook. A novelist’s compartmentalized journals capture her battles with creativity, politics, relationships, and mental fragmentation in mid-20th-century Britain.

22. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. A young engineer’s brief visit to a Swiss sanatorium extends into a transformative exploration of time, illness, and pre-World War I European ideas.

23. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick. Captain Ahab’s vengeful pursuit of a colossal white whale aboard the Pequod becomes a meditation on obsession, nature, and the human condition.

24. Haruki Murakami, 1Q84. In an alternate Tokyo where two moons hang in the sky, a fitness instructor and a ghostwriter search for each other while evading a sinister cult.

25. Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. In the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a detached intellectual named Ulrich probes philosophy, society, and purpose amid bureaucratic absurdity.

26. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow. During World War II, an American soldier’s mysterious connection to V2 rockets unravels a web of conspiracy, technology, and entropy across Europe.

27. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. As innovative leaders mysteriously disappear from a declining society, a railroad executive uncovers a philosophy championing individualism and rational self-interest.

28. Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji. The charming Prince Genji navigates intricate court romances, politics, and personal sorrows in Japan’s Heian period, often hailed as the world’s first novel.

29. John Steinbeck, East of Eden. In California’s Salinas Valley, the Trask and Hamilton families reenact biblical tales of sibling rivalry, free will, and redemption across generations.

30. Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon. Codebreakers during World War II and their descendants in the 1990s pursue encrypted secrets, buried treasure, and digital frontiers in a techno-historical thriller.

31. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. In this wildly digressive and experimental 18th-century narrative, the eponymous protagonist attempts to recount his life from conception onward, but endless tangents, eccentric family members, and satirical asides on philosophy, birth, and human folly constantly derail the story.

32. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the Crow. In a corrupt African dictatorship, a shape-shifting wizard and his allies use folklore and rebellion to expose and undermine tyrannical rule.

33. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace. Amid Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, aristocratic families experience love, loss, and historical upheaval in an epic blend of fiction and philosophy.

34. David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest. In a dystopian future obsessed with pleasure, addicts, athletes, and separatists chase a dangerously entertaining film that could reshape society.

That’s my starting list. Tell me what I should read, what I should add, what I should delete. For that matter, what do you think of big-ass novels more broadly? Love ’em, hate ’em, what?

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