Time To Roll the Big Stones Up the Hill

This is going to be a catch up month with a limited number of big fat books that have been growing old in the back corner of my library. Luckily I now have digital verions of each of the titles so I cn put my squint back in the drawer and set my concentration level to maximum as I hope to plow through a couple thousand pages and read (or finish reading) so rather challenging books

First, there’s Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. This one isn’t really a challenge but it happens to be the book I was reading when time raan out in April so why stop? Note: I’m not in love with this book and my die of boredom before the month concludes.

The second title is the oldest must-read in my library. Since I have started Infinite Jest two times in the past only to relegate it to a doorstop par excellence, I hope I can pick up where I left off without too much disruption to the narrative … wait, this is David Foster Wallace … no problem.

The third title is a little fat novel by Steven Dixon that I have had on my shelf for many many years: Frog. I have had my differences with Dixon through the years and suggest that I have changed and now really appreciate Dixon’s writing.

Two additional titles I’ve added to the list are Gibson’s Zero History and Dos Passos’ The Big Money. Both of these novels are lengthy but the primary reason I hope to read them is that they are both a third volume of a trilogy in which I have read the first two books in the past.

As I looked around my bookshelves (real and electronic) I noticed quite a few big fat books I have ben avoiding. It might be a good idea to have a short reading list every once in a while so I can catch up on those fatties laying around in the dust. What about titles such as Against the Day or Clarissa or The Man Without Qualities?

Just in case I finish this challenging reading list (or need an infusion of minor reading success) I have saved a few titles from April’s list to read additionally this month or perhaps next:

• The Brief History of the Dead — Kevin Brockmeier
• Last Days of Pompeii — Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
• Alan Quatermain — H. Rider Haggard
• Growth of the Soil — Knut Hamsun
• The Ghost in the Machine — Arthur Koestler
• Tolstoy and the Purple Chair — Nina Sankovitch
• Throwaway Daughter — Ting-xing Ye