This may sound frightening, but I tend to read the The Faerie Queene in the same manner as I approach Finnegan's Wake - via short, pleasurable, and always illuminating literary bursts. I can easily pick up either book and plunge in, at random, to almost any page and return with something rewarding. Like diving for pearls. And for this reason, both are two of the only books I haven't read in their entirety (outside of a giant Norton anthology) that I could imagine including on a desert island list.