Hard Work but Rewarding Reading

Monday was Labor Day so I was thinking about work. Since I was at a bookstore, I was thinking about work and books and reading, so I asked people on Twitter to name some books that were hard work, but worth the effort. These books are hard work because they’re long, because their content is emotionally difficult, because they have a million characters to keep track of (who then get killed right after you finally remember who they are) and/or they are written in a style that takes some getting used to, but all of them are worth the effort. (Not a bad book club suggestion list either.)

Ulysses by James Joyce 

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (link to volume 1) 

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk 

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien 

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus 

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood 

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann 

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein 

Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris 

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas 

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo 

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Night by Elie Wiesel 

Dune by Frank Herbert 

Dhalgren by Samuel Delany 

Darkmans by Nicola Barker