Bolaño 2666 Read-A-Long

Bolaño’s 2666 is a big book! Will you join in a read-a-long and read this book with me and Gnoe at Graasland, Joanna at Ephemeral Digest, and Tanabata at In Spring It Is The Dawn?

You know you want to! It’s a great challenge, as the book is about 900 pages long. This is your chance to share the experience. That’s better than reading it on your own later, isn’t it?

Here is some information on the book (taken from the back of my copy):

Revolving around the border town of Santa Teresa, a vortex for lost souls and the scene of some of the most horrifying crimes in twentieth-century fiction, it defines one of Latin America’s greatest writers and his visionary commitment to narrating the world as he saw it, in terrifying, awe-inspiring, irreducible beauty and despair.

We’ll be reading this book over 12 weeks starting on the 1st of March 2011.

I know that depending on your copy, your page numbers may be different from mine (I’ve got a Picador paperback from 2009). However, each section is divided in a number of weeks (see schedule below). If you divide the number of pages for a section by the number of weeks it’s planned for, you can work out roughly which pages to read each week.

The date behind each entry in the schedule below is the date that we should have finished that part and can start to discuss it.

This is my proposed schedule:

Behind the page numbers is the date that we’ll discuss that particular part. Each week, I will update this list with a link to the discussion post of that week.

Section I The Part About the Critics (2 weeks)

1. Pages 3-79 (77 pages) March 5th

2. Pages 80-159 (79 pages) March 12th

Section II The Part About Amalfitano (1 week)

3. Pages 163-228 (65 pages) March 19th

Section III The Part About Fate (2 weeks)

4.  Pages 231-291 (60 pages) March 26th

5. Pages 292-349 (57 pages) April 2nd

Section IV The Part About the Crimes (4 weeks)

6. Pages 353-424 (71 pages) April 9th

7. Pages 425-496 (71 pages) April 16th

8. Pages 497-568 (71 pages) April 23rd

9. Pages 567-633 (66 pages) April 30st

Section V The Part About Archimboldi (3 weeks)

10. Pages 637-723 (86 pages) May 7th

11. Pages 724-810 (86 pages) May 14th

12. Pages 811-895 (84 pages) May 21st

That’s 12 weeks of fun. At least, let’s hope so. I think the book should give us a lot to discuss.

At the end of each week, I’ll post a summary of what we’ve read, and a few questions. You can discuss the book on my blog in the comments, and/or make your own post about what you’ve been reading (and leave a link on my post for that week).

Don’t feel obliged to post or comment every week! Join in at any time and read the relevant discussion posts when you get to that part of the book.

Joining in?

If you want to join in, just leave your name and blog address in the comments (I may set up a Mr Linky for this, but can enter you myself, if I do).

And for those really keen to read more by Bolano, bolanoreads is doing a more general Bolano challenge that you could combine with the read-a-long.