In Search of Lost Time: 4,000 pages—aaagh! War and Peace: hundreds of Russian names! Moby-Dick: guy obsessed with a whale—so unlikely. The Man Without Qualities: another looming literary Everest. But as our four impassioned guides will tell you, these books aren't just monumental, they're monumentally good. Ladies and gentlemen, start your books!

• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
  By Geoffrey Sanburn
  
• In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
  By Marcelle Clements
  
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  By Dawn Raffel
  
• The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
  By Burton Pike
  
  
  

• How to Read a Hard Book is an excerpt from Reading: A Love Story, which won the 2007 ASME award for excellence in a section devoted to leisure interests.
  
• Looking for a great read? Try O's book finder  

From the July 2006 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

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