The books that have had the greatest impact on my life are not the ones that entertained me the most—rather, they’re the ones I’ve had to endure. Ulysses wasn’t a “good read”—it was a project, a mission, a brief military stint undertaken by a strong-willed, idealistic youth. It was a labor to carry, it required innumerable accoutrements to be read (not just the two other texts but also a notebook and a pen, a highlighter, slips of scrap paper to mark particular pages). Even the page design was more an opponent than a partner: There were line numbers on each page. Line numbers! This book wasn’t kidding around. Reading it, you felt you were staring down the business end of Literature.

But to arrive at the end of a book like that—to complete the project of reading it—there is for me no greater satisfaction. Wracked, enlightened, tortured, exhausted, bettered, you come out the other side of a book like Ulysses feeling as though you’ve had an experience, as though you have actually, actively read. And there are, for those of us who enjoy such literature of endurance, many authors who write books like bricks you could use to build a sound shelter for the three little pigs: William Gaddis, John Barth, Doris Lessing, Thomas Pynchon, Neal Stephenson, David Foster Wallace (to mention just a few of the most recent examples). Granted, there are some big books that make you feel, as you close them, that they haven’t quite been worth the effort. For me, that’s the risk that makes the expedition all the more thrilling.