Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

The 1001 Year-Long Book Study, 2025 starts January 1, 2025. Group members have voted to read Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.

The reading schedule is for the entire year of 2025:

• January - February -- Chapters 1 - 15
    (pp. 3 - 181, 179 pages + Notes 1-59)

• March - April -- Chapters 16 - 21
    (pp. 181-321, 141 pages + Notes 60-119)

• May - June -- Chapters 22 - 24
    (pp. 321-489, 169 pages + Notes 120-207)

• July - August -- Chapters 25 - 26
    (pp. 489-619, 131 pages + Notes 208-256)

• September - October -- Chapter 27
    (pp. 620-808, 189 pages + Notes 257-336)

• November - December -- Chapter 28
    (pp. 809-981, 173 pages + Notes 337-388)

(Note -- Page numbers may vary with editions. Chapters are not numbered but indicated by a circle. Reading schedule adapted from Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest), by Greg Carlisle.)


Helpful Resources:

Books

• Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, by Greg Carlisle

• A Reader's Companion to Infinite Jest, by Robert H. Bell

• David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide, by Stephen J. Burn

Use this topic for general discussion, questions, and suggestions for other helpful resources.

Enjoy! I read this book a few years ago and enjoyed it.

Suggestion: Read/Re-read Hamlet first

There is a page-by-page spoiler-free wiki for terms and references.
https://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com

While I cannot personally vouch for the following, there are additional resources;
1) Robert Bell William Dowling. A Reader's Companion to Infinite Jest
2) Stephen J. Burn. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Reader's Guide


There is a spoiler-free video by Benjamin McEvoy on YT that is really good. Almost anything that I can say about "tips" is in that video.

The first tip is to know that the first chapter (Year of Glad) is, timewise, the last thing to occur. When you are done, re-read that first chapter; it has so much more punch the second time around.

Perhaps the easiest way to get through the first 200 pages or so is to think of this as a loosely connected arc of interconnected short stories. You may be a little lost at first, but it'll start to click after a while. Almost everything in here is for a reason, although you may not see it on first glance, or (like that first chapter) until 1000 pages later; or maybe not until the second read-through. This is not willy-nilly writing or a ramble; it is meticulously constructed.

Thanks Kurt for the suggestions. I read the intro and first few pages yesterday. I noticed the ebook for kindle is for sale for $13. This seems a good option for a book this long with library renewal constraints. That's a little over 1 cent/page.

George P. wrote: "Thanks Kurt for the suggestions. I read the intro and first few pages yesterday. I noticed the ebook for kindle is for sale for $13. This seems a good option for a book this long with library renew..."

Definitely a good buy if you want to highlight and make notes and easily flip between the text and the Notes.

Kurt wrote: "Suggestion: Read/Re-read Hamlet first

There is a page-by-page spoiler-free wiki for terms and references.
https://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com

While I cannot personally vouch for the following, t..."

Great suggestions, Kurt! I've added the books with links to the top comment and will add the video as soon as I watch it and get the link.

I've finished the 1st chapter and am enjoying the book. I've read enough Boxall books to know that sometimes you just go with the flow of the book and don't really worry about understanding every little detail.

Loved the reference to the "Whataburger Bowl!" Down here in Texas, Whataburger is a big thing and the Whataburger chain is celebrating its 75th year throughout 2025; it was founded in 1950.

I haven't read this one yet. I don't know if I could manage a year. I usually go straight through. I'll grab a copy.

I think you're allowed to read ahead if you feel so inclined :)

I cannot access the walacewiki website. Do any of you encounter the same problem?

I've just tried and it worked fine for me.

It seems to be a EU problem, because I am able to access the website when i set my VPN to the US (in the Netherlands many US newspapers and AI interfaces like Grok are inaccessible due to stringent EU laws).

I now see that it was the VPN from my work that blocked the website. All good, happy reading!

Has anyone mentioned this character chart yet? I saw that the link on the wiki didn’t work, but I found the chart elsewhere:

https://a.fastcompany.net/upload/IJ_D...

Lisa wrote: "Has anyone mentioned this character chart yet? I saw that the link on the wiki didn’t work, but I found the chart elsewhere:

https://a.fastcompany.net/upload/IJ_D..."

Wow! That is awesome -- I will add it to our resources at the top of the page. Thanks for sharing.

I'm at pg 260 so looks like I'm a month ahead of schedule. When I began I figured I would read it in 6 months but looking more like 8 or maybe 9 now.
It does seem as though the story jumps around and has a lot of extraneous stuff but I will try to have faith that almost all of it is there for a reason.
BTW we don't have a Whataburger in Utah, but I plan to move to Tucson for most of the year soon and I see they have a bunch of them.

With a good part of the story set around an AA/ rehab house I wondered if Wallace had been in rehab himself. Apparently he was in rehab for about a month. I don't know if he continued to go to AA meetings afterwards.
I'm at 41% now, so running ahead of our schedule but still in first half; at this rate I may finish sometime in August. I started with a paper book but I'm currently listening to an audiobook. I like the audiobook reader. I'll go back to paper or ebook when my 3 weeks on the library audio runs out.
The tennis academy parts are my favorite so far, and they seem to be half the book or more.

I’m a bit behind schedule because I recently bought a house and didn’t have enough RAM left for DFW. In the meantime, I’ve read a few other great books that made slightly fewer demands on my cerebral capacity. I’m only on page 193, but I still think I’ll manage to finish the book in a rush. Luckily, I can read the Madama Psychosis chapters and its medical jargon without much difficulty since I’m a physician. So far, I find the Marathe and Steeply sections the least enjoyable, but overall I find DFW’s writing fascinating and at times downright hilarious.

Lisa wrote: "I meant in a year, not in a rush! If only Goodreads allowed us to edit messages. Tonight I made good progress, my bookmark is currently placed at page 219."

You can always edit posts in a roundabout way. Copy it, then delete it from the thread, then paste it back as a new message, add the changes then enter it. Easier than I make it sound.

I'm now at 59% through so still on pace to finish mid-August if nothing interferes. Less about Steeply and Marathe in this section, more about the tennis academy and rehab characters. We learn more about characters that had very minor parts before and there seems to be a distant connection between two of the novel's groups forming.
I feel some empathy for Hal the tennis teen and Gately the rehab house supervisor, not very much for the other characters.
Wallace's neologisms are an entertaining sidelight. I found at least one I thought was a madeup word that was listed as an urban slang word, forgot what it was though.

I'm nearing the end now. I'm trying to finish because (a) I'm reading another audiobook and have a 3rd one I want to start soon and (b) I only have a week left on the library audiobook and (c) I'm eager to see how it wraps up. I'm also reading three paper books- good thing I'm retired, just doing a little weekly volunteer work.
The book has two main characters, Don Gately the recovering drug addict and Hal Incandeza the teen tennis player- what is unusual in this is that they never meet (unless it's in the last 2% of the book). There are also many other characters of course such as Hal's family members and they are nearly all vividly developed/portrayed. Marathe and Steeply are minor characters but help tie the others together.
I wonder how Wallace acquired his medical knowledge. I was a hospital nurse for 40+ years so I know it's pretty much all accurate. At one point I was asking "why is this guy still intubated?" and then there was an explanation to justify this though I was skeptical of the explanation. I was very amused at Wallace using "RN" as an adjective: "the nurse did something RNish with the IV bag".

@George: do you read the footnotes along with listening to the audiobook? I wish the footnotes were narrated as well, I would think you’d would miss a lot of interesting backstory if you only read or listen to the main text.

I started well in January and was on track, but then some medical problems intervened plus I kept falling asleep while reading Infinite Jest -- bedtime reading it is not. I just couldn't get back to it for about 3 months, but finally decided to restart it as an audiobook and not worry about all the commentaries and such and just read it as someone would have read it when it was first published. The audiobook made it much easier to follow (while keeping track on my Kindle). I still got lost between the text and one of the footnotes!! But I am now ahead and thoroughly enjoying the book.

So, if you've given up, maybe just give it another try in a different way. I've started to view the book as an upward spiral tightening toward the top. Sometimes the story drops down to another time, but the spiral is bringing all the characters closer and closer together. We'll see what happens . . .

Before finding this discussion, I began reading this book about 45 days ago and I have about 10% left to go. I purposely did it as an audiobook due to heading the warning about the numerous footnotes. Now, everything is ramping up and going so fast. I could have used this discussion as I have been fearful to look anything up on the internet for fear of spoilers. I hope everyone hangs in there and reads it to conclusion. I don't think you'll be disappointed!

Lisa wrote: "@George: do you read the footnotes along with listening to the audiobook? I wish the footnotes were narrated as well, I would think you’d would miss a lot of interesting backstory if you only read ..."

I finished July 10th. I thought the ending somewhat weak, expected more.
I would sometimes read just the paper copy (including the footnotes) I got from the library when my audiobook checkout expired- there was always a waitlist for the audio, never for the paper. When I had the audiobook I would usually pause and read the footnote from the paper copy, but sometimes I would be walking the dog and couldn't. So I probably read 80% of the footnotes. There is a little ping noise in the audiobook where the footnote marks would be to tell you that.

I have some catching up to do! Let’s see if it’s doable in 4 months!

@Riley Same for me. Moving houses threw me off my reading schedule. I’m at 33%. Thankfully I made a lot of notes so it will be easy to pick up the pace once I’ve settled here.

For this book, I purposely chose the audio version. The one in Audible did a great job of reading the footnotes contemporaneously along with the text so that there wasn’t this back-and-forth which I knew my eyes couldn’t handle. I listened to this book throughout the entire month of July I have to say it’s one of the best bugs I ever read, which led me to read two of David Foster Wallace‘s short stories/as a collections. I highly recommend those as well.

Regarding the above comment about the ending being flat, I couldn’t agree more. I don’t know what I expected, though since we already knew the conclusion, i.e. the book starts in the present and works its way back so we know the conclusion from the very beginning. Still …