Beside my laptop right now is a stack of 4,209 pages I’ve been meaning to read for years (4,307 if you count Infinite Jests’s “Notes and Errata” at the end). Barring some unforeseen accident or, more likely, an irretrievable loss of motivation, I’m going to read them all this summer, from June 15 to August 28, in the order of their publication:

1. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville, 1851 (June 15 - 26);
2. War & Peace, Leo Tolstoy, 1869 (June 26 - July 19);
3. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann, 1924 (July 19 - August 1);
4. The Adventures of Augie March,* Saul Bellow, 1953 (August 1 - 11);
5. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace, 1996 (August 11 - 28).

Which comes to a (somewhat manageable if you’re not working full-time) 55 pages a day.

I considered naming this blog some combination of the books’ titles, but “The Magic Adventures of Infinite Dick War” didn’t seem appropriate. I decided to go with “FIVE BIG NOVELS” instead.

What will the blog be? Most likely a locus of scattered thoughts as I react to and reflect on these novels. I’d be content to write the blog simply for my own benefit and enjoyment, but it would be more fun if others (read: you) chimed in as well. Do you want to be on your deathbed someday mumbling, “I wish I’d read Moby-Dick”? Of course not, and I don’t either.

So if you’d like to join me for all or part of this literary adventure, please drop me a line at bryce.a.taylor@gmail.com, and I’ll send you the Official Reading Calendar.

Cheers!

*Originally the list included Joyce’s Ulysses instead of Augie March, but then I decided I’d rather not totally ruin my summer.