What book is at the top of your reading list?
Post your answer in the LEAVE A COMMENT section below. I’m not the boss of you, though. Don’t write anything for all I care! Either way, thank you for putting this blog anywhere on your reading list.
. . .here are my thoughts.
What book is at the top of your reading list?
Finnegans Wake took James Joyce 17 years to write! His novel had long been at the top of my reading list. It’s no longer there. But not because I finished reading it. I suffered through 97 of its 628 pages, understanding maybe three sentences. Joyce’s writing is notorious for its near impossibility to understand. Somehow, though, Finnegans Wake and Ulysses maintain their places on lists of must-read English language novels. The term “English language” being used quite loosely. My favorite book is Infinite Jest; I enjoy the liberties it takes with language usage and construction. But Finnegans Wake takes liberties to an absurd extreme. I borrowed it from the library, telling myself I’d read at least until I read the sentence that influenced the name for the fundamental particles of matter that make up protons and neutrons: quarks. The line “—Three quarks for Muster Mark” was on page 383. Thank goodness I randomly flipped to that page while still reading page 97, allowing me justification to end my slog through the book. Otherwise, I may have been reading Finnegans Wake for longer than it took Joyce to write it.