prospero's chunky ones

[prospero]

I've decided to pick 20 doorstoppers out of my TBR pile to finish by the end of the year. I read quite fast but saying "Two a month" makes me panic a little, even with a fortnight to read each one. Anyway, I love sinking into a good big novel, so here are my picks from Mount TBR: (Page counts don't include author's notes. Books marked with an asterisk mean I've read them at least once before).
***
Possession - A. S. Byatt - 511 pages
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes - 944 pages
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke - 1006 pages
Wicked! - Jilly Cooper - 997 pages
Vintage - Olivia Darling - 547 pages
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - 875 pages
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco - 641 pages
Child of the Phoenix* - Barbara Erskine - 1078 pages
The Russian Concubine - Kate Furnivall - 577 pages
The Autobiography of Henry VIII - Margaret George - 932 pages
The Memoirs of Cleopatra - Margaret George - 957 pages
Caesar - A. C. Gordon - 632 pages
The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova - 704 pages
Gone With the Wind* - Margaret Mitchell - 1011 pages
The Other Boleyn Girl* - Philippa Gregory - 529 pages
The Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa Gregory - 514 pages
The Little Friend* - Donna Tartt - 555 pages
An Outrageous Affair* - Penny Vincenzi - 817 pages
A Dance in Blood Velvet* - Freda Warrington - 584 pages
The Dark Blood of Poppies* - Freda Warrington - 595 pages
***
Bolded and purpled titles can be ticked off my chunky TBR list.

[Kylie]

Good luck Prospero! I loved The Count of Monte Cristo and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I have several others on my TBR pile so I'll look forward to reading your comments.

[prospero]

Started with an apparently 'easy' one - Olivia Darling's Vintage. The prologue involved a death, possibly murder, and chapter one was about a sex act occurring in a hotel room. So off to a good start there. :blush: The short chapters will probably make for a quick read. I'm leaning towards either Foucault's Pendulum or JS&MN next...I remember telling a friend what it felt like to be a bookaholic and how books even have a 'new' smell to them so she flicked through my copy of JS&MN to get a 'new paper' whiff and splodged her red lippy down the sides of the pages. Bah!:motz:

[prospero]

That's one read - Vintage by Olivia Darling. I'll keep my reviews for my normal book blog thread and just come back here to tick off each doorstop as I read them.

Next up...The Autobiography of Henry VIII, I think. It's been a few weeks since I've read anything set in that period and I'm itching to get back to the 16th century.