Maybe the next year will allow us some time to read. In the event that it does, here are some great books to try to tackle in this next year. They all are very long, but they are good life-changing books that you savor and think about later. If you read all of these in a year, then you will have accomplished quite a bit.
1. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
This is my favorite book, hands down. It also happens to be 973 pages making it great for ambitious readers. It is the story of the building of a cathedral in the Middle Ages, which may sound incredibly boring, but is not because of the amount of people that the massive project that building a cathedral with no power tools or machinery was. The story spans decades. This is not an instruction manual, but an incredibly intricate story of politics, religion, heroism, innovation, love, and God’s will. With a resolute and incredibly moral protagonist who stands as the backbone of the story, two vivacious and very different master builders, a touching love affair, and an evil and utterly despicable villain who is humanized instead of justified, this book is absolutely captivating.
2. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
If you are in for some controversial ideas, then here are some for you with Ayn Rand’s second novelized expression of her unique and unorthodox philosophy of Objectivism that regards selfishness as a virtue. Regardless of whether or not you agree with Objectivism (most sensible people do not, myself included), exposure to it can educate you and force you to think, and it does raise some reasonable criticism of liberal culture. The story and the writing are captivating, and unlike Ayn Rand’s other massive novel, The Fountainhead, at least a few of the characters in Atlas Shrugged are likeable and semi-redeemable.
3. The Lord of the Rings (All of them) by J.R.R. Tolkien
Just The Fellowship of the Ring, or The Hobbit can be a light read, but all of them together are not. All of the books read together like one book is closer to the way that Tolkien intended for them to be read, for he submitted the entire series to his editor as one volume, and it was the editor who suggested that the books be split up into three. Furthermore, as awesome as the movies are, they do not capture the essence of the tale. Although the movies do great with the action, they lack much of the character development and love between the characters and their own individual strengths and struggles, especially Frodo’s. He is not nearly as whiny in the books. Additionally, the courage and the resolve of the hobbits and their purpose in saving the Shire is far better expressed in the books. The books are much deeper than the movies, and as a bonus, the narration can be funny.
4. Middlemarch by George Eliot (Marian Evans)
I had to read this for my Victorian literature class, and out of all the books on this list, it wins the prize for being the slowest read. That beings said, it is a truly accurate and astounding portrait of human nature. Eliot garnered a reputation for having her readers empathizes with her characters, as she does an outstanding job humanizing them. Even the unlikable characters at least win some pity from the reader at the end. The reasons behind the actions of all of the major characters are all understood, even when the characters make bad choices. All of the characters are realistically human. The development and growth that characters display is very well done, and I would definitely recommend this book just for that.
5. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
This is another book that I had to read for my Victorian literature class, and I was not entirely thrilled with the idea of having to read Dickens, for I had to read Great Expectations in 9th grade, and since my reading level then was not high enough to quite get what I was reading, the book sufficiently turned me off from Dickens. That ended though with Bleak House, where shortly into the novel I came to the realization that Charles Dickens is hilarious. As the novel oscillates between an omniscient and a first person narrator, the humor swings between sarcastic commentary from the omniscient voice and hilarious situations that the characters get into, but the novel is not entirely funny. Many other scenes are poignant and sad and suspenseful. The novel serves as a merciless critique on Victorian society that can still be applied to actions that some people may take today. It was overall a very fun read.
These books were all around a thousand pages each (LOTR counted as one volume), and some of them were slower than others, but they were all wonderful.
