Big, Fat Novels

My limit is one a year. This year, it's Middlemarch.

 The serialized first edition of Middlemarch.

Anything over 500 pages is enough to make me leery, and Middlemarch weighs in at a whopping 800 pages. I've managed to read longer, but not often.

Why do I live in terror of long novels? I fear my inability to finish them (there's nothing I hate like starting a novel and never finishing it!), but I also worry that I've chosen poorly and will find myself committed to a dullard of a novel that I have ceased to enjoy. But I also love finishing a novel and adding it to my "Already Read" list on Goodreads. It's as thrilling as checking off a daunting item on a to-do list!

It's not that I'm incapable of committing to a long book. I read Bleak House (1000 pages) twice in one month for a class, I tackled Anna Karenina (850 pages) over my dining hall lunch tray during one semester at KU, and I worked my way through The Brothers Karamazov (750 pages) while I finished writing my thesis at Penn State. Obviously, I can do it, and, obviously, it's always worth the effort: I loved every one of those books, and Brothers is now one of my all-time favorites. But still, I never look forward to the mental fortitude that big, fat novels require of me!

I'm enjoying Middlemarch thus far--Eliot is scathingly funny, incredibly smart, and darkly satirical--but when I'm not reading it, I find myself daydreaming about reading something really cheap and tawdry and fast. Something with a werewolf in it. Or a dragon!

But I won't. This is my once a year--I'm in it for the long run, even if I find myself panting a little in the home stretch!