Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers create their own lists based on the chosen topics and post links to our lists. It’s a way of all sharing our thoughts and our love of books. And who doesn’t love lists??
So this week’s challenge was to list the books that I find most intimidating. This was a little difficult for me – I’m not typically intimidated by books – just interested or not interested. I’ve read and loved Anna Karenina, Les Miserables, and Atlas Shrugged. Length does not intimidate me most times, I am mostly afraid that I will not like a book and some of the lengthy classics listed below require a lot of effort for little gain if I don’t enjoy them and there are so many books out there that I really, really want to read!
- In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust – 7 volumes and about 4300 pages, need I say more???
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – I loved Anna Karenina, but I have never been inspired to tackle this tome.
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville – The idea of an epic struggle with a whale just doesn’t make me want to dive into this one…
- Ulysses by James Joyce – I know that it is a 20th century classic and that it is supposed to be beautiful, but I have heard far more about how long and difficult it is…
- Complete Works of William Shakespeare – I have read Shakespeare – Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo & Juliet, ... but I just don’t see myself having the focused concentration required to get through it all while appreciating it.
- The Bible – I’ve read it, parts of it, just have never attacked reading it from cover to cover – maybe someday.
- Paradise Lost by John Milton – Over 10,000 lines of poetry? Probably not…
- Song of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin – With the HBO series so popular, a lot of people are devouring this series – but the books are so long and there are so many of them, it seems like a commitment I don’t want to make right now!
- Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon – Another series with a lot of long books in it… I hear good things, but I’m not reading to dive in yet…
- Boring Non-Fiction – I’ve written plenty of research papers and didn’t like to read my own. I certainly have no desire to read books that are basically research papers that are hundreds of pages long…
Watching the Words 