In praise of doorstop novels.

I'm feeling that my world is being slowly condensed to quick 150 word bursts of information. Twitter, Facebook, texts, quick glances at the news and my out of control magazine habit has fed my summer reading. I've also been working on 'the pig' - my 15,000 word MA dissertation which has seen me flicker between quotes and snatches of ideas, and thumbing pages for a quick fix to make some obscure point.

I haven't had the time to do my usual summer thing of being greedy with novels: gathering my wordy treasures and sitting around them covetously like Smoug on a pile of gold. Its been a sad summer; I've only managed Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (brilliant, throughly recommended etc. etc.) which is, getting back to my point, a doorstop novel at 597 pages.

Last week, the Penguin blog suggested to us all to 'Take the Anna Karenina Challenge': at 829 pages its the K2 of novels. I'm ashamed to say I haven't read it, but its in my BIG BOOK LINE-UP, along with A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (872), and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest - an ungodly 1088 pages long. I can't bloody wait.

Taking on a doorstop novel is a terrifying thing: and it's horrendous to be seen reading one when you're on page 20. You just know that people around you are thinking, 'it's never going to end. S/he'll never finish that.' But around page 400, you are the balls. You are on a home-stretch that will end with a feeling of accomplishment and unbearable smugness that will override any qualms you may have over the novel's quality, or if it's to your taste. Finishing a doorstop novel is worth the sweat and blood, and produces a euphoria that could never be replicated by wading through thousands of statuses and blog posts. Even mine. (Kidding.)

As always, tell me what you're reading! Make me jealous with your reading endeavours and tales of the shoulder ache borne from lugging Finnegan's Wake around. Or join me in misery at your lack of time to read a BIG BOOK.