I want something big and sweeping that I won’t be able to put down. Something that will keep me up too late at night because I just can’t wait to find out what happens next.
For me, the ultimate of these is Lonesome Dove. Sigh. I really loved that book. I also got into Shogun.
Both of these transport you to another place and time, and are fascinating.
But there are many books that win critica praise that I find boring. I got through Cold Mountain but found myself skipping whole paragraphs of wordy overblown description.
I want something that may not be art, but is a real page-turner!
Middlemarch is a big book that I really loved, and I highly recommend it.
I’ve never read Shogun, but a friend of mine says C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner books remind her of it, and she puts them in similar categories in her mind. Me, I love Foreigner but I’m not certain it’s quite what you’re looking for.
Shogun is great (and the only book mentioned on this thread I’ve read). Musashi is a great book. It’s based on a more or less true story about a swordsman in 16th century Japan and is very “epic”.
I’d recommend A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. It’s not exactly epic in the truest sense of the word, but it’s pretty long and it’s a great story. The description at Amazon says it covers the period of 1975-76, but there’s a lot of backstory involved, and an epilogue.
Fascinating story about India.