Big books

A challenge to sink my teeth into: Chunkster Challenge 2008.

I wasn't able to meet my own self-designed standards last year, but I better know my limitations for it, and I'm willing to play by more relaxed rules this time: 4 books of >450 pages, read between January 1 and December 20. (Hosted by So Many Books, So Little Time. Sign up before March 1!)

Ahem. My candidates:

1. Currently reading: The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction, by Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami (948 pages, including notes). This is the first book I started reading this year; I'm on page 162.

2. Up soon: The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon, by Alexandre Dumas (751 pages, including appendix), received recently. I've read a bit of the introduction, and it's hard not to find the existence of this manuscript a little suspicious. Of course, this increases my enthusiasm for reading it — I'm determined to prove it's a fake.

3. The book I couldn't finish last year: Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace (1079 pages, including footnotes). I'll try again. Really. I left off at page 85. I may or may not revisit those first bits.

4. Something else. Maybe The Brothers Karamazov. Or maybe this is Pynchon's year. Maybe.

(Via.)