It took me about three weeks, but I finally got through this giant book. As far as classics go, it's actually pretty good. It's a lot more readable than many classics. I didn't have to rely too heavily on Google to tell me what was happening in the plot.

Middlemarch is a complex story about marriage, politics, gender roles, and gossip in a small English town in the early 1800s.

The first few hundred pages are very slow, but the pace picks up a lot toward the end. The last few hundred pages are great. There are a lot of storylines, and it is impossible to predict the endings to all of them. My favorite storyline was Lydgate/Rosamond. I felt so sorry for Lydgate. He is a realistically flawed character, and he tries very hard to do the right thing, but life just isn't easy for him. I also liked Dorothea/Ladislaw and Fred/Mary. A few of the other storylines are boring and sometimes confusing, but this book is still worth reading for its fascinating and realistic characters.