mahsdad's (Jeff) Big Book Reads 2024

Created a new thread to be consistent name-wise with my 75 threads

I usually hang out in the 75 Book Challenge. But I saw this group in Tim's State of the Thing email. I don't normally read big books, but I do on occassion and I think I'll keep track of them here.

Late last year, I decided to tackle IQ84, at 1157 pages, its probably the biggest book I've read in a while. I just broke thru 1,000 pages. Should be done in another week or so.

If you need some suggestions on big books to read, here's the lists I've compiled over they years from the folks in the 75 group.

The 75'r Chunkster List

1. The Overstory by Richard Powers READ
2. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
3. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco READ
4. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
5. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell READ
6. The Witch Elm by Tana French
7. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
8. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr READ
9. Little, Big by John Crowley
10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides READ
11. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
12. Possession by A.S. Byatt
13. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel DNF
14. The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
15. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
16. The Parisian : A Novel
17. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
18. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
19. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami READ
20. Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
21. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie READ
22. American Gods by Neil Gaiman READ
23. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon READ
24. The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
25. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen READ
26. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
27. A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava
28. An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
29. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James READ
30. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson READ
31. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
32. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
33. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin READ
34. JR by William Gaddis
35. Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
36. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
37. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
38. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett READ
39. The Stand by Stephen King READ
40. Underworld by Don DeLillo
41. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
42. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
43. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry READ
44. 2666 by Roberto Bolano
45. Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
46. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
47. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
48. Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas
49. Women and Men by Joseph McElroy
50. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

Paul's Alternative 20

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon READ
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The Far Pavilions by MM Kaye
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
Saville by David Storey
To Serve Them All My Days by RF Delderfield
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Sophie's Choice by William Styron
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving READ
The Singapore Grip by JG Farrell
Magician by Raymond E Feist
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
A Chain of Voices by Andre Brink

Bill's Alternative Weird Dozen

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis READ
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger READ
Cider House Rules by John Irving
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo
The Book and the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak READ
August 1914 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams READ
11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King READ
His Dark Materials Omnibus (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) by Philip Pullman
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling READ

Jeff's how the heck did this not get on the other lists list
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami Read
Alaska by James Michener Read
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst Read
Moby Dick - Herman Melville Read

I've read about 15 of these titles over the years. They only feel like chunksters if they get boring! And no one mentioned Moby Dick.

>3 ffortsa: Absolutely, I think I coined the term Chunksters cause it sounded better than door stops. LOL

Regarding Moby Dick, I guess it depends on who printed your book. I just googled for it, and saw one answer that said 427, another that said 458 and saw one on Amazon that was 652. So the argument could be made for an against the arbitrary 500 page threshold.

Its still beefy, I'll add to my how the heck list....

Most of these are still waiting for me, hoping to be read, but some I have finished and enjoyed. Particularly Sea of Poppies, that was enlightening in many ways – once I found a glossary online to help with the strange words. I notice you DNFed Wolf Hall: so did I. I never engaged with the character and her writing style.

Welcome to the group Jeff and thanks for the lists, I have managed to read 54 of the books listed with many to go, good luck with your big book reading.

>5 MissWatson: Hi Birgit, thanks for stopping by. Wolf Hall, I'm not precious anymore when it comes to stopping books I'm not connecting with. This was definitely one of them. Oh well, so many more fish in the sea.

>6 bryanoz: Thanks Bryan. I am known for my lists. Over on the 75 group, I have at about 6 or so that I'm maintaining. I really like the idea of the Running Total thread. Looking forward to contributing. I've got another 4 or 5 days on IQ84

Good idea, Jeff. I ought to apply myself and read some chunksters I listed—My Alternate Weird Dozen. I've read only five plus all the Potter books (how many of them are there? I'm too indolent to look.)

Welcome to the BFB group, Jeff. I've read 16 of your first list. Interesting list, I must say

>8 weird_O: Hi Bill, I'm not sure if I'll make it a habit, but its nice to have a specific group who's keeping track. BTW, there's 7 Potter books. She's another one that goes to my theory about popular authors and editors. Each book kept getting longer and longer. :)

>9 connie53: Hi Connie, thanks for stopping by. Always glad to have visitors.

Hi Jeff, welcome to the group, have a good BFB reading year.

After breaking up series books (Potter and His Dark Materials), my "alternative weird dozen" comes to 26 novels. Well, I'll pledge four individual books in that weird dozen will be read by me in what's left of 2024. Don't know which ones.

>11 johnsimpson: Thanks John

>12 weird_O: Hey Bill, glad I could nudge you into reading the beefy tomes. :)

BFB #1 - IQ84 by Haruki Murakami 1157p

I realized just recently that I got two doorstops from my Secret Santa about 6 weeks ago.

One I've elevated to the first chunkster read of 2024. It is A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes. Runs to 638 pages, including all the back matter.

The second is Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate, which clocks in at 646 pages. Don't know when I'll even approach it.

>15 weird_O: I think we all probably have some BFB's sitting around. Now that I've joined here, they are a little more towards the front of my brain. When ever I'm picking up a slightly larger book, I'm always jumping to the end to see how many pages.... only 495? Close but no cigar. LOL.

A Gentle Madness - I think that's a disease that we all have around here. :)

I completed my first blockbusting tank-trap of a chunkster, Lethal White. All 647 pages of it. It's a page-turner, so it went pretty fast.

Contrats Bill. Glad it worked for you.

            

Just want to report that I've tiptoed into another Big Fat Book. It IS the second quarter. I read one, here's the second: Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell. In the "Author's Note" Mitchell writes:

This book consists of four books that I wrote years and years ago and that have been out of print for a long time, and of latter-day additions to one of them. The four books are McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, 1943; Old Mr. Flood, 1948; The Bottom of the Harbor, 1960; and Joe Gould's Secret, 1965.

The note further delineates which stories are factual and which are fiction. He also points out that all originally were published in The New Yorker. Given that it consists of four previously published books, you won't be surprised that it is 712 pages long. It'll qualify for Jeff's "Big Fat Reads."

>20 weird_O: Hi Bill. More power to ya!

BB! This looks like an interesting read, on the WL it goes.

BFB #2 - Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - audio 37.22 hours (776 pages according to Amazon)

BFB #3 The Living Dead by George Romero/Daniel Kraus - audio 27:13 hours (656 pg Amazon Hardback)

Checking in, Jeff, to report another 500+ page doorstop completed. It would be The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Clocked in at 607 pages in the paperback edition I read. That's three for the year. I do have a foothold in Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell (712 pages).

I also have several biggies in the TBR stack that I set up in the wake of the NYT Best of the Century (so far) List. I have 24—unread, of course—of the books on the list, so there's a new stack (for those keeping count). The first off that stack is Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders, not hardly a doorstop.

Hope the rest of your weekend is good (however YOU define that).

BFB #4 Flag of Our Fathers by James Bradley 562 pages

just looking over these lists. I didn't recall that The Book Thief would qualify as a chunkster! I guess it went really fast for me.

Lots of great titles here. I must fit in one or two in the coming months.

Yeah, I just looked my paperback copy is 550. My memory of it was that it wasn't that long either.

Hey, Jeff.

I've begun reading another chunkster: A Brief History of Seven Killings, the Booker Prize winner in 2015, by Marlon James. Six hundred eighty-six pages. If I can believe myself (and how can I?) I'll follow this with Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, five hundred eighty-eight pages.

And why? Two primary reasons:

1) AAC September Challenge, which honors any foreign-born writer who makes the United States their home. James was born in Jamaica and now lives in some US state (ah! Minnesota). Adichie was born in Nigeria but now lives in the US. (I am desirous also of reading Trust by Hernan Diaz, an Argentinian choosing to live in the US; it's a snack of a book at a mere four hundred two pages, not qualifying as a chunkster.)

2) My personal challenge to complete the 25 books, which I own but have not yet read, that were listed among the best of the 21st century by the NYTimes.

If I can check a couple of boxes in the Chunkster Challenge as well, and another box on the Booker Prize list, why that's just icing.

Ooo, I loved A Brief History of Seven Killings, and I've been wanting to read Americanah.

Have you actually joined this Group? You should be sharing your reads on the shared tally thread

https://www.librarything.com/topic/356963#n8612545

Help pad the numbers. LOL

I also want to read Trust as well. I have In the Distance on the shelf

Interesting. I think I've read 17 of them over time, and I'm sure my Jim (magicians_nephew) has read many more, since I recognize the titles. Since we are usually reading books to be discussed in our book groups, and since not everyone can do one of these tomes in a month, our recent books are usually shorter. Did anyone list Middlemarch? I don't recall seeing that title above. Or The Count of Monte Cristo? And let us not forget Remembrance of Things Past or its new title, In Search of Lost Time. Maybe there's a requirement that the book be in somewhat modern times?

I'm sure my list is by no means a comprehensive one. They were just lists that various people posted a couple years ago that I dragged into my 75 thread.

Then this year, I stumbled upon this group https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/24196/2024-BIG-FAT-BOOK-CHALLENGE and started tracking for real. I usually don't tend to read the doorstops, at least not as a rule. 250-350 seems to be my sweet spot. But its fun to track the big ones here.

The "official" combined list for the year is this : https://www.librarything.com/topic/356963#n8612545. There are TONS in here that I've never read or even heard of. :)

>32 mahsdad: I found the thread (but not the list - that's ok) and was interested in the titles people have read. Some I really wouldn't bother with, based on the author or title. Some I've read. I see Dickens shows up, of course. And some books that are named were chunksters by page count, but I didn't even realize it.

>29 mahsdad: Huh? Have I joined the group? I thought your thread on the 75er's group WAS the group/thread (this one here that I'm writing on). So I dutifully followed the link. Ah ha. What a revelation!

So yes, I've joined that group, though I have yet to post anything. But I will get to it.

>33 ffortsa: Yeah, 500 is the arbetrary benchmark to be a Chunkster, or BFB as they call it here.

>34 weird_O: I thought that might be the case. Cause I named them similarly, its hard to see that this thread ISN'T in the 75er's group. LOL. Glad you joined.

5. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas : audio 46:56 hrs (1,276 p according to Amazon)

I think 5 is going to do it for me this year. I have a couple on the shelf that I'll probably try to tackle for next year.

Okay, I guess I was wrong

6. Lisey's Story by Stephen King, audio - 18:56h (544p from Google Books)