Count how many pages…
I’m not really one for long books. I wish I was – there are so many I want to read! It’s the size that puts me off even picking most of them up: what if it takes too long to read when there are so many other books out there waiting to be read? I am easily distracted by things that drop through my letter box and books that have been on my shelf for a long time can be overlooked.
I would love to read more though including Charles Dickens (David Copperfield, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend to name just a few), Gone With the Wind, The Passage, The Crimson Petal and the White, Quincunx, Shantaram, Shogun and A Suitable Boy are all on my shelves, staring sadly at me every time I pass them.
Despite saying that, I have read some long books and I almost always love them when I do (although part of me wonders if I love them so much becasue I am so rapturous of having got through them!). The longest book I have read so far is The Count of Monte Cristo which I loved. Swashbuckling, dramatic and thrilling!
Which is the longest book you have read and was it worth it?
The Book Whisperer 
Oh, Proust, one day I will finish you. 🙂
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I’m exactly the same as you regarding big books. It didn’t used to be like that. I used to enjoy a book that lasted forever. But now, with so many other books waiting to be read, it’s a bit different. A big book that reads relatively fast, like Skippy Dies (Paul Murray) is fine, but Charles Dickens… well, let’s say I’m glad I already read several of his before I started blogging!
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I’m in the middle of The Count of Monte Christo and loving it, but I do get distracted by shorter books. The Quincunx, The Passage and most of Dickens still live in my TBR, but I did make it through A Suitable Boy. I think you’ll like it. Yes, it’s long, but it is terribly readable.
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Gone With the Wind is huge but you won’t even notice it! Have Our Mutual Friend (loved BBC’s adaptation) and The Count on the TBR.
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If all six volumes of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time counts as one book then that’s mine. It took me nine months.
I also read War & Peace earlier this year which I really enjoyed, actually.
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Probably the biggest book I have read is Bleak House. I believe that it is a little bigger than Gone With The Wind. Also, I would consider the LOTR one book, since that is how it was originally written. I am currently reading The Way of Kings which is a monster all by itself.
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I love long books and tend to pick them over slimmer ones. Not sure what’s the longest book I’ve read, but I’ve read most of them including The Quincunx (excellent), A Suitable Boy (lovely), Bleak House (surprisingly exciting) and lots of fantasy including the Malazan Books (each volume is about 1000 pages). I’ve got Bolano’s 2666 on my shelf and I’m hoping to read War & Peace before the end of this year!
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Thw longest book I’ve ever read was Anna Karenina.
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I think my longest would be the same. I kept wanting to read The Count of Monte Cristo, but the size scared me. I’m glad I finally read it this year, since it’s now one of my favorites. Your book challenge is fun.
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I think mine would be The Count of Monte Cristo too – I’m pretty sure it’s longer than Anna Karenina, and while I’ve read lots of fantasy books that go over a thousand pages, none of them are so dense or use such a small typeface as The Count. 🙂
It’s funny, but I used to avoid short books and go for fat ones when I was younger, ’cause I didn’t have much money and books are expensive in Australia – and I was a student so had time to read – so I felt like only fat books would give me “my money’s worth”! Now I veer towards slim books because of lack of time, a shorter attention span and also they’re too heavy to carry around!
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don quixote ,musil’s man without qualities both great and long ,all the best stu
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I would have picked this one too had I been asked the question, I loved it and enjoyed it tremendously from the beginning to the end.
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Well, Gone with the Wind is long, but it’s a really fast read. I’ve read some long works by Dickens, but I’ve nearly always had other books going at the same time to break them up (and I sometimes have an audiobook copy in the car, to get a few pages ahead here and there, which helps. Can’t get all the long books I want on audio, sadly!).
Probably the very longest book I’ve read is War and Peace, and it was for a class in college. It was essentially the entire reading list for the whole quarter! It had been a tossup between Tolstoy and Dickens, and the Dickens syllabus included three or four novels at around 800 pages each. I did the math and Tolstoy won, but in retrospect I wish I’d taken Dickens, I might have enjoyed it more. Can’t remember hardly anything about W&P but I’m a big Dickens fan now.
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Which Dickens do you recommend Karen? (have read GE and Crhistmas carol so far).
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I get freaked out by long books too! I haven’t read The Count of Monte Cristo but I definitely plan to at some point.
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Despite my also being freaked by long books, this one is really worth it Lola:)
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I loved Shantaram so much, and even though it was 1000+ pages I read it in a week because I couldn’t bear to not be reading it – I carried it round with me and picked it up at every opportunity! It was just a terrific story and I love India so that helped too. I absolutely recommend it.
A long book that I really want to read is A Suitable Boy, but the length is putting me off. I also want to re-read Anna Karenina (which I loved as a teenager) and give War and Peace a go…but when there are so many books on my shelf I tend to opt for the shorter ones that I know I can knock off quickly.
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I see that you have The passage on your list of books you walk past… please stop walking past it and read it. I got it for Christmas last year and managed to get a whole heap of it under my belt as Lego was built around me, batteries found and replaced in increasingly noisier toys, wrapping discarded at my feet, crackers pulled over my head and yet I was able to ignore it all as this book is so gripping and such a great story. Read it!
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