I’ve done the Illiad, but because that was for school once we only had time to skip around on the chapters. I still didn’t even do that. I failed English that grading period; maybe I should have read it. Heh.
Years before I read all of Gone with the Wind, so that I could say I read the damn thing. It turned out to be a very good book.
That’s probably the same elusive biography of Peter the Great that wound its way through the Straight Dope Lost & Found Desk, back in October.
I’ve read it. It was pretty good, and thick. But alas, I hardly read anymore. The last dozen books I’ve read all the way through (not counting a textbook) were less than 500. I haven’t even read all of the fifth Harry Potter yet. Though I did read an almost three hundred page book, purely for the joy of it, this weekend. I was happy for myself.
I’ve read a number of books over 1000 pages. Le Mis is one, LotR is another, and since I read it as one book I am counting it. Atlas Shrugged, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Stand, It, and Imajica by Clive Barker. I’m sure there are others but right now I can’t think of them. Maybe some of Clancy’s novels are over 1000, or they sure do seem like it.
My record is Mastering Windows NT Server 4 (7th Edition) by Mark Minasi. It weighs in at at hefty 1650 pages. There’s even a little blurb in the beginning about material they had to cut and the extra thin paper used because that is the upper limit of what a book binding can hold in a single volume.
Other than that I’ve read The Night’s Dawn trilogy (Peter F. Hamilton), with each book coming at at about 1,000 pages. Currently reading an 800-pager by the same author called Fallen Dragon. Dragonriders of Pern (Anne McCaffrey) IIRC also came in at 800+ pages.
I also read through our home Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia set when I was in junior high. 1976 edition, maybe 300-350 pages each volume, and a guess at 20 volumes total.
In addition to many of the books listed above (LOTR, Gone With The Wind, The Mists of Avalon), I’ve read …And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmeyer.
My copy (this is my second copy; the first one split in two - the bad thing about huge paperback novels) has 1433 pages.
My dividing line with series is whether the different volumes were written as stand-alone stories or not. (LOTR is one story, but each volume of the 5-volume Hitchhiker trilogy is a distinct story.)
I’ve read LOTR and GWTW (1024 pages). But nobody’s mentioned:
Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War (1047 pages) / War and Remembrance (1382 pages) for a grand total of 2429 pages.
It’s one single, very large story. And an absolutely terrific read.
A couple of you have mentioned The Silmarillion, but Amazon says it’s only 372 pages long. That doesn’t seem very long to me (I haven’t read the book yet), at least not in comparison with the other books being mentioned in this thread. What am I missing here?
Penguin Classics’ edition is 1312 pages. However, looking at Amazon, there are other editions that are considerably longer. The differences from publisher to publisher makes these comparisions rather moot. Too bad, I would like to know what the longest book I’ve ever read really is. I would never have guessed Monte Cristo though; it’s one of my favorite reads and doesn’t feel even remotely that long. I was shocked to pull down my edition of Les Mis and find it shorter than Monte Cristo.
Well, you have to realize that Les Mis has the skillfully hidden extras, “The Travelogue of the Diocese of _____”, “A Dissertation on the Street Life of 1830s Paris” and “4000 Ways to Manufacture Jet Jewelry”.
I was trying to figure out why people were saying the Mists of Avalon, it doesn’t seem so long… then I picked it up and saw it has over 800 pages. hmm. Doesn’t seem nearly as long as the last book in the series, which has around half as many pages
I’ve read that, and It and The Stand and Imagica and Don Quixote (one of my least favorite books ever, I might add)…
As well as
Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman - 944 pages
As the Crow Flies by Jeffrey Archer - 800 pages
Homeland by John Jakes - 1200 pages
North and South " " - 816 pages
Love and War " " - 1088 pages
Heaven and Hell " " - 800 pages (actually, I’ve read nearly all his books…)
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry - 945 pages
Unfortunately, I can’t recall the title of one of the longest books(over 800 pages) I’ve ever read, though I’d like to know what it was. The title was something like illumination, but not quite. It was about a young woman lived in some place where they decided that magic was bad, and they killed everyone who wasn’t non-magical horribly, including her aunt whom they starved to death, some people were beheaded, others got the iron maiden…that’s about all I remember. It’s really sad I can’t recall more of this, since I read it in 95 or 96.
My grandfather used to read encyclopedias for fun. If I can count the whole set as one book, I win. Or at least, I’m the direct descendent of the winner, which is good enough for me.
My version (International Edition 14th edition) is 2569 pages not including pictures, appendices, and indices. I’m gonna start it in a few months when the end of my PhD is nigh.
The largest book I ever read was Robbins Pathological Basis of Disease at 1400 pages even. Read it cover to cover – large portions of our medical curriculum basically followed it from section to section.
I have embarked on Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, the first released of three planned of his Baroque Cycle. It clocks in at 927, and given his style I don’t see how the others will be any shorter. Next on my reading list is Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science (I want to do this before I graduate) at 1197 pages, then probably if I have the strength Paul Johnson’s Birth of the Modern Age at 1091.
I haven’t finished Ulysses ever, but if we are talking about books requiring most effort to get through, I think that Gravity’s Rainbow (760) + companion (345) may beat out Ulysses (707) plus The Bloomsday Book (245).
Annie Xmas
I also read The Stand in two sittings. We took a bus from Austin to Telluride, CO for a ski trip. The bus ride was 20+ hours long and I didn’t sleep. I read 2/3 of it on the way there, 1/3 of it on the way back.
