epic novels

[Carl the Llama]

The awesome thing about A song of Ice and Fire is the fact old George frequently goes out and does book signings all over the world (he did a book signing in woking (where I live) 3 days after AFFC was released... was awesome to meet the guy who wrote the series) so now I have all his books (which the exception of A Game of Thrones) in hardback with a personal inscription in each of them =D

[Moon Rabbits]

Are you talking epics, or epics?

An epic (i.e. Odyssey) is a long poem telling about a hero's deeds.

Or are you just talking about really long stories spanning books like the Lord of the Rings?

I just mean a book that is really really long. 1000+ pages?

I'd definitely go with Dante's Divine Comedy. I went into it thinking it would be dry, but man, I loved it. I can only speak for the John Ciardi translation though, no idea how the others read.

This was one of my "thinking about its"

[I Took the Red Pill]

I'd definitely go with Dante's Divine Comedy. I went into it thinking it would be dry, but man, I loved it. I can only speak for the John Ciardi translation though, no idea how the others read.

This was one of my "thinking about its"

I definitely say go for it. The Inferno is easily the best part of the three 'parts' of it, but the others are spectacular as well. One of the neat things about it is that each Canto (basically a Chapter) is very short, so if you just feel like picking the book up and reading a Canto or two to kill 10 minutes, you can do it. This is the version I have, and I'd definitely recommend it, but the version you pick is up to you. I did a lot of research on the seemingly endless list of different translations that exist beforehand, and I ended up going with the Ciardi one. I'm glad I did, too.

[The Unknown Guru]

War and Peace. Seriously, read it. I went into it just trying to kill some time, but I got completely sucked into it very fast. Tolstoy pretty much defined what a novel is with that book; it seems like it could've been written just yesterday, and there are virtually no dull moments.

[sir helix]

i recommend the time quartet

both sides of time
out of time
prisoner of time
for all time

their good books. i used to think love nonels were horrible but after my librarien made me read the first book in this series i was hooked