Melville (The Whale), Tolstoy (War&Peace), Proust (In Search of Lost Time -note new trans used), Musil (Man Without Qualities, wh I know little of).
Oprah magazine feature How to read a hard book.
'hard book' -eh - so of course lots of what I dislike ~ 'ineffable', profound, huge ideas ~ genius! (are you --and in yr assumptn, us -- really so relatively uninteresting, unintelligent?). esp re Proust, eh. 'sinuous paragraphs, unbelievable sentences, infinitesimally detailed descriptions'-- this is what gave me the idea that I wouldn't like Proust. and that's wrong wrong wrong. for one thing, his sentences are great because so believable, so worthy of trust: always the syntax is whole. anyway the advice re Proust also echhhh --must finish, lucky are they who enjoy it -- bah. sheesh. read what you want, for whatever reason you want, however much you want.
re Melville and Musil, less bothersome.
int: Geoffrey Sanborn says MobyDick is about the effort to think in the company of another mind, to feel at least temporarily unalone. the voice asks to be called Ishmael but doesn't limit itself to the consciousness of that character; what it wants above all else is to be in a meaningful relationship with you -- and to make that happen will tell jokes, coin words, switch genres ...
and Man without Qualities sounds appealling enough: ...Clarissa a free spirit in a contentious marriage with a failed artist, goes mad.. ..all takes place over one year - 1913. August 1914 -and guns of WWI- never arrives, only ghostly presence over whole work. "All lines lead to the war," Musil wrote about the novel.
finally advice re War&Peace is actually helpful: it's ok to skip (you bet), commit to 50 pages (good idea), and tips re three part Russian names --masculine or feminine endings, therefore different for siblings. --shortcut: read just firstnames (good). --nicknames: Petya=Piotr, Natalia=Natasha. --rule of thumb: if you are wondering Is this the same person? the answer is Yes. (right on.)