On the Road
by Jack Kerouac
It took me an incredibly long time to make my way through this book, and I think the stopping and starting probably helped it seem less repetitive than reading it straight through. You really have to be in a certain mood for it, but when you are--- I read the last 100 pages (i.e., 1/3) in a few days.
I'm sure there's a lot of significant stuff you could come up with to say about On the Road, but you can read about it better somewhere else. I think what I liked the most were the descriptions of Denver in the 1940s; it's that combination of been-there and something completely new. You have your own images of a place, and like a transparency over (or under) them, you have Dean sitting down "in the dust of Alameda" and pestering an Okie woman to buy a car at a dealership. The bars and everyone in jeans-- a completely (and yet not-so) different atmosphere than today. I want to go back through and note down all the places he describes and give myself a tour of my own hometown.