I finished Tristram Shandy a couple weeks ago. I laughed at parts, I get that nothing is supposed to happen, but overall it seemed like a joke that was stretched a little long and had probably already been stretched to its limits en espanol. Like Ulysses, I appreciate that someone was messing with narrative form so long ago but in this case the tone didn't change enough to keep me interested for 700+ pages. It's also likely that I'm suffering from long book fatigue and that Tristram Shandy was the first casualty.
This may also be a rare case in which I liked the movie more than the book. I thought Michael Winterbottom's 2006 flick was able to point out the humor in the book and add a little of its own related to the book's unfilmability (word?). It had all that and Steve Coogan too.
I'm reading the Sot-Weed Factor now and supplemented it with the shorter, unrelated, non-project book Winesburg, Ohio. I loved it and not only because of its length. Sherwood Anderson managed to articulate, in simple and evocative language, a variety of human feelings. Good stuff.
Addition: I've added Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain to the project and have instituted a "one-in, one-out" policy on book buying. Friends, neighbors, family and the local libraries will all benefit from my book overflow.
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