10 Big Books I Love

I like big books and I cannot lie.

10 Big Books I Love, Part II:

More on Gravity’s Rainbow:

More on Infinite Jest:

More on The Recognitions:

More on J R:

[noseonscent]

The great Umberto Eco sadly passed away back in 2016. One of my all time favourite authors. Great video. Thanks for sharing.

[timkjazz]

'The Recognitions' is also one of my favorite books, read it at age 16 and it blew me away, have since re-read it 6 times, total masterpiece.

[mrl]

The Sierpinski Gasket is a set of points of the plane. It's the set of limit points of a sequence : a line (a one dimensional thing) that bends and curls up more and more, the gist being that the line that is trying to cover a two dimensional space. It succeeds halfway through - that is, it becomes something that has a fractional dimension. If you define the dimension in a way that comes up what you'd expect in the cases you know but also works for new cases for which you didn't know what to say before (this usual in mathematics)
My guess is he was trying to say that the Novel is a linear thing, a line, but that comes back again and again on itself, trying to approach a sort of new dimension. In a way you should be able to move back and forth but also sideways with respect to that, jumping from distant (in the sense of the progrssion of the story) places that are close to each other in other sense.
Also the Sierpinski Gasket is self-similar (parts look like the whole, on and on as you close in), so I guess that's part of the metaphor as well, but that's easier to interpret.

[jordangaspard]

I know I’m late, but I just purchased “A Naked Singularity” based on your advice. I just finished “Ducks, Newburyport” and was looking for another long, enjoyable read with some humor infused. Thanks for the recs!

[chrisoleson]

So happy to have you mention my favorite novel: Gravity's Rainbow!

[maxhealy]

Great video! You've convinced me to read the Tunnel, the Recognitions, and Gravity's Rainbow next year.

I'm beginning the year with a reread of In Search of Lost Time and Infinite Jest, and I'm really looking forward to getting deeper into more big, beautiful, all-encompassing works of art. Thanks :)

[christopherpaul]

I have to read some of these! The Recognitions sounds great. I would definitely have to put The Brothers Karamazov and 2666 on my list of favorite big books.

[beyondtheepilogueagnes]

Quite a few of these are on my TBR list, but I often struggle with starting big books because they require such a huge time commitment. Of course, when I do pick them up, I’m rarely disappointed. Some of my favourite big books are 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich.

[richardoyama]

Middlemarch, by George Eliot; Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy; The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky; Moby Dick, by Herman Melville; Ulysses, by James Joyce; The Makioka Sisters, by Junichiro Tanizaki; The USA trilogy, by John Dos Passos (of which I've read only one but important for the author's focus on US labor, industrial power and innovative modernist techniques like collage and The Camera Eye); Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow; The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing; and One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Garcia Marquez (big in its scope and expansiveness; I think it was Vargas Llosa who said it encompasses a continent's whole history from Macondo's origin story to its destruction).

[skylarkportraitstudio]

My favorite ‘big book’ is Joe Gould’s “An Oral History of Our Time”. I’d like to read it again but I can’t seem to remember where I left it. Just as well, I guess, as it was indeed a tall and heavy tale. Love your work here, by the way. Many kudos.

[Echoesoflostlibraries]

The Recognitions and The Tunnel are two of my favorite books of any length with Foucault's Pendulum not trailing far behind. Magic Mountain, Darconville's Cat, Life: A User's Manual.. And here I wish I could pad Fragments of Lichtenberg by Pierre Senges by a 150ish pages, both because I can't get enough of the book and because I feel it fits in here but of course it's a little short. Then the next few spaces I could fill up with DFW, Pynchon, and Delillo and the likes but I don't really think they are on par with the rest of these. So I will fill it in with hopeful tomes from my shelf that I expect and hope to love: Larva by Julian Rios, Cain and Abel by Gregor von Rezzori and A Room by Youval Shimoni, and Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosby.

[kieselguhrkid]

I am a simple man. I see Gravity's Rainbow and I subscribe.

[Cristian.Dorelle]

That description of the Mad Patagonian reminds me to Borges's ''An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain
''. Obviously the reference of 9 diferent type of novels inside a big one is the key factor of conection.

[lukemosher]

Infinite Jest is my favorite big book, I've read it twice. I also love Neal Stephenson, and love his big technothrillers Cryptonomicon and Reamde. The Brothers Karamazov is my favorite capital L Literature book. I just read XX by Rian Hughes, a metafictional sci-fi novel, and dug that. Antkind by Charlie Kaufman. Pat Rothfuss's two Kingkiller Chronicles books, some of the only modern fantasy worth reading IMHO. If you count comics, The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and The Invisibles by Grant Morrison are both bangers.

[pinkzeppelintheater]

Late to this party but this channel is just fantastic. Been going through your videos and I feel freshly inspired to dig further and further down the literary rabbit hole. You've clearly far, far beyond me when it comes to big books and books in general, but one tome I can wholeheartedly recommend which doesn't seem to get too much credit is Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, the John E. Woods translation is just wonderful.
Cheers!

[ochaer]

You have inspired me to read even more. I just ordered a copy of The Mad Patagonian and The Recognitions. Thanks for this.

[cthulhstu]

So glad I happened upon your channel. I love taking on a good big book. As mentioned in another comment, Neal Stephenson is incredible. Anathem was my first by him, but his Baroque Cycle over the 3 big books is sublime. Adventure, science and generation spanning fiction that simply envelopes you. Another I feel is woefully underrated is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It is a very British novel based around two practical magicians who have very different ideas on magic. Set in the 1800’s through England it has a more grounded take on ‘magic’ and magicians but has such imagination and wit weaved into a story that shows both light and dark, cause and consequence. It is an epic I have read 4 times over.

[jayv]

Awesome list! Thanks for sharing! Glad to find a heavy, deep reader on here. 🙂👍👍

[OrcmanRepugnant]

I tried Infinite Jest in 2016 and put it down after 40 pages. Then last year I read it. Now months later I'm thinking I want to read it again.

[mps]

LOVED My Struggle! Happy to find someone that has read it as well! How good do you have to write to have us read thousands of pages about your everyday life. The Hilter history at the end was educational to say the least. New subscriber, thank you for the great recommendations.