Why did I pick these books (8 of 10)?

The Sot-Weed Factor is the most voluminous book of all the 10: 750 pages. Bulk is one issue why the book has been sitting on my book shelf since it was so warmly recommended by TIME magazine. Another is its demanding topic - a poisonous combination:
"The Sot-Weed Factor was an unprecedented leap in literature, an 800-page mock epic of the colonization of Maryland based on an actual poet, Ebenezer Cook, who wrote a poem of that name. The Sot-Weed Factor was what Northrop Frye called an anatomy — a large, loosely structured work, with digressions, distractions, stories within stories, and lists (such as a lengthy exchange of insulting terms by two prostitutes). The fictional Ebenezer Cooke (repeatedly described as "poet and virgin") is a Candide-like innocent who sets out to write a heroic epic and is disillusioned enough that the final poem is a biting satire" (Wikipedia).
Competing against this book for inclusion in this list of 10 was David Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress, another postmodern novel, more difficult to read, but shorter. No other book has been sitting on my book shelf unread longer, probably since early 2001, when I bought it inspired by Bruce Duffy's The World as I Found It, an unforgettable novel with Ludwig Wittgenstein as its hero.