Books that intimidate me.

OK, maybe you won't want to admit this, but I will. I have always been intimidated by a handful of well-known books. The reasons vary, of course, but hey, they're just books, it's not reasonable to be intimidated, right? So now that I've made it a crusade to read more (and to read more substantive works, too), it's probably time to take up those books and confront my fears!

So, what are these books? I don't claim this is a complete list, but here are the ones that come to mind:

• War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy. Sure, I enjoyed Anna Karenina and have plenty of experience with those pesky 19th-century Russian novels, having read Dostoevsky's The Brother's Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and Notes from Underground. But the book is huge and it's been sitting on my shelf for some years now; somehow it doesn't ever look any smaller…
• USA Trilogy, John dos Passos. I'm proud to say I just finished this! I came to be interested in this book courtesy John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, which is a well-known science fiction novel that borrows from the structure of the dos Passos books. Still, a radical narrative structure, rather lengthy, I was intimidated. I can't say that I found these stories the best ever, but I'm so glad to not wonder any more!
• Ulysses, James Joyce. Hey, it's famous as a difficult read. A college friend once told me you should only read this as part of a class so you had help understanding it. I need to get over that. I'm smart enough and I have a decent liberal arts education. How hard can it be, right?
• Moby Dick, Herman Melville. I think I'm in the minority; I doubt most people are intimidated by this one. For me, I got a copy when I was twelve (from a beloved senior relative) and when you're twelve, that thing is kinda big. I'm sure you agree I need to get over it.
• Remembrance Of Things Past (aka, À la Recherche du Temps Passé), Marcel Proust. Admit it, you're intimidated, too. What is it? Six volumes? Three times as long as War and Peace? I once read an excerpt in college (in French, no less), and it wasn't so bad.

(edit: I've now finished USA and Moby Dick, too. Just the Proust and Joyce remain. Someday...)

CDs listened to today:

• Henri Dutilleux: Tout Un Monde Lointain
• Candy Flip: Strawberry Fields Forever
• Chemical Brothers: Setting Sun
• Phoenix: It's Never Been Like That
• Ludwig van Beethoven: The Diabelli Variations
• Louis Armstrong: Volume II: The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens
• Luciano Berio: Rendering per Orchestra