ed's thick-ass book list

Return of the Reluctant initiates a new book list in which I predict a spectacularly mediocre showing for my own self. Here goes.

1. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
2. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
3. The Royal Family by William T. Vollman
4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
5. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
6. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
7. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
8. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
9. Ulysses by James Joyce
10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
11. The Tunnel by William Gass
12. The Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller
13. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
14. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
15. The Diary of Anais Nin
16. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (it was h.s.; everybody was doing it)
17. The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny
18. The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
19. The Stand by Stephen King (extended version)
20. A Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
21. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
22. Rememberance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
23. Noble House by James Clavell
24. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Doestoevsky
25. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson

A whopping 11. And almost all of these I read, I read in high school. I'm going to redeem myself though -- I'm getting ready to read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I've also revealed my usual avoidance of big fat fantasy novels.

worm "All of Them," The Mountain Goats

namecheck Gilberto "Payback's a Bitch" Simeoni