Longest book you've ever read?
 

How long did it take you to read it, and as a corollary, did it need to be that long in your opinion?

I'm not positive, but I think Steven Erikson's The Bonehunters is the longest book I've ever read. Weighing in at 1,201 pages of fine print in paperback, it's pretty damned long. For comparison, I just sat it next to Martin's A Storm of Swords (another monstrosity) and it's half again as thick with the same dimensions. The book has to weigh close to two pounds.

Anyway, it took me probably a week and a half to read that the first time (I've read it three times). I tend to go really slow with Erikson, because his prose is so rich and rewarding and replete with foreshadowing.

And, in my opinion, it did need to be that long. The number of plotlines Erikson was juggling in that novel is incredible, and the way he weaves them in and out of each other is nothing short of marvelous. I think you could make a case for the book being split in half, as there's a massive climax in the middle, but the way it's structured, it works better, I think, as a cohesive whole.

What's kind of crazy about it is that the book actually feels fast-paced.

Anyway, let's hear about some other monstrous tomes, for good or ill.

One of the books from the Twilight series? What do I think about it? More work to understand jokes from to laugh at. 8D

It would probably be The Stand by Stephen King, the long edition, unless the later Harry Potter books were longer. It probably doesn't need to be anywhere near that long, but whatever, the first few parts are completely awesome. I don't think the big good vs. evil parts are that interesting, but the plague/survival horror of the first sections are really awesome.

That would be War and Peace for me, and whether the length is justified is hard to say. It's a very simple and easy read. Tolstoy doesn't beat around the bush or take any longer than he needs to when describing a particular thing, but there are a hell of a lot of particular things! Each chapter is very short, on average maybe about 2 to 3 'flips' and to the point, unless one is reading some of the philosophical bits, but even then it's hardly tedious reading. There are just a lot of details. If he stuck only to the figures of the Bolkonskis and the Rostovs, and then only certain figures of those families, then yes, the novel could be much shorter. However, to do so would entirely change the nature of the book.

War and Peace for me as well. Though I found The Count of Monte Cristo to be infinitely more enjoyable.

*Googles word count* Yikes! 460,000 words. That's gargantuan. I think the book I mentioned above was only in the high 300k region.

Woops, forgot the time part. War and Peace took me a year to finish, mostly because I was reading in the 10 minutes increments in the morning before my ride showed up for work, and I took at least three breaks while reading it to read other books.

I've started my way into The Brothers Karamazov, but that's not quite as large I don't think.

Er, I dunno if it counts, it was all one book, but it was a lot of books inside. One Thanksgiving I read over half of The Complete Works of William Shakespear(mostly all the comedies, tragedies and a couple of the histories) in a 17 hour layover at DIA. I don't even want to think about how many pages this was.

I had to buy that book for my Shakespeare class in college. Needless to say, it was intense exercise just getting to class (as we had to bring it every class).

My prof did the same thing with "The Riverside Chaucer." Although, in his defence, the paperback wasn't available outside of Europe.

I never took a class for it, mores the pity, but I knew I would have a wait and needed a biiiiiiig book. I tend to read very, very quickly(standard 250 page books take me about an hour), and nothing I had would be a single book, and last me through the night. My RA was more than happy to NOT take it home with her LOL

Heh. I used to read pretty fast compared to other people I knew, but then college happened and reading quickly was no longer really an option when one needs to write a large paper on small passages.

I tend to read slowly, as in, I don't allow myself to spend much time reading each day, as I read really fast, especially light stuff that doesn't require a lot of thought. I used to run out of books to read constantly when I was younger, so I made it a habit to not spend hours locked in my room reading.

It's also why I prefer long books with rich prose, so I can savor them and have them last me a long time.

yeah, my retention quotient was bad, but then I learned to read for content...now I just enjoy rereading things to see what I may have missed the first million times. Also helped that my degree was in no way based on literature, otherwise I might have slaughtered the whole dorm.

I'm reminded of trying to study for my Aging, Dying & Death class (great class *rolls eyes*). The textbook was... something else: black and white, not a single picture or graph, and packed with what had to be size 6 font, and I had 45 pages to cover in one night.

I confess, I was reduced to shouting the words to make any sense of them. My father thought I had lost my mind. If I never here the phrase "heterogeneous cross-section" again as long as I live, I'll be very happy.

Luckily, the teacher gave up on that abomination of the textbook halfway through the semester, owning up to her mistake and apologizing for wasting our money. Honestly, at that point, I would have paid more just to get rid of the thing.

LOL my fav text book was for Invertebrates. The teacher admitted it was a snore fest, but it was the best book on the field. And told us flat out, 'If you can't sleep, start reading chapter seven, you'll be out for a solid eight.' All in all I loved that class...even though I hated the actual animals.

I think the longest single book I've read was probably The Stand. I had watched the movie first so it took close to a year to read it on and off. The 6 hour movie followed the book to a T so it was hard for me to stay interested in old content. Honesty I don't rightly remember whether it should have been that long or not simply because I don't remember a whole lot of it.

If we're counting longest from cover to cover by page number, regardless the content, I think one the longest books I've read is one of the Salvatore Drizzt collections the are like, 3-5 books in one. I think one of them is something 1,200-1,400 pages? In any case, it took me about 5 days to read any of the collection books.
Too bad they began to get let interesting after the 2nd-3rd read through ( I read all of my books about 3 time because it a rare treat for me to get to a book store.)

Hmm... yeah, I forgot about the omnibus editions. I read all those, but, given how easy Salvatore's writing is and the bigger font in those, I'm going to stick with The Bonehunters as my longest. I don't recall those Drizzt collections taking me more than a day or two to read, back when I actually enjoyed reading his books. It took me almost two weeks to finish his most recent, just for how god-awful everything about it is, though whether it's any worse than his last three before it, I'm not sure.

I bought the "Path of Darkness" collection (I think that was what it was called) that covered The Silent Blade (one of my top picks for the series), Spine of the World, Servant of the Shard, and Sea of Swords. SotW I consider a throw in because I'm not all that fond of the book but the collection was still cheaper than the three books I did like. I also got the Crystal Shard Trilogy with a new art since it's a lot better than the original a lot of the time. I think the artists took it in human terms when it was said that Drizzt was in his 60's. Ever seen the old cover for Starless Night?

I was starting to lose interest in Drizzt's adventures by the time The Thousand Orcs came around so I stopped at the end of that trilogy and don't plan to pick up anything else. My sister is a bigger fan of his Corona world books than his FR stuff, though I've only read the first two of his "Sword of Bedwyr" series from his non-Drizzt stuff.

You mean the cover with an emaciated old man with a gold-plated skullcap who couldn't possibly have been Drizzt? :p

Yeah, with the human girly read head infront of him. I think the writer accidently put Drizzt's elf age on art directions and the artists took it literally. He was 60 when he left Menzo after all.

I tossed the Hunter's Blades trilogy actually. Didn't mind The Thousand Orcs but the whole "to be an elf" bit just felt like a serious deflating of things. He basically turned elves into people that lived for long times. Meh. I like Cunningham's inteprettation of elves much better.

Speaking of which, Evermeet, Island of Elves is probably the longest book that I have read repeatedly. Three times so far, and I really could read it again. It's a titch awkward at first though since the tiem frame bounces around between current events, events in history (including how Lloth ended up as Lloth and the war between her and Corellon adn what happened to their kids) as well as what's happening in the letters going between Danilo Thann and several other people as he is supposedly trying to write out a history of the elves himself.

My longest book I've read that I can think of was The Shining by Stephen King, it was an awesome book I got from the Library and I would read it for the fun of it during my summer vacation in New York (not the city). Then I remember my Dad got me a library card so everyday I can bike to the library, then to my grandparents place to pick up pastries and bread, then to my Dad's Place (all that was about 2 mile roundtrip). I read the whole book, then watched the movie a couple months later.

The Movie disappointed me

The longest book i ever read was one of anne rice's books.. I forget which one but it was well over 500 pages.. maybe more and I read it non-stop for 2 days till it was finished.

... Hmm.. It had to beeee.... Little brother hands down. And yet I thought it wasn't long enough lol.

Oh, I seem to have forgotten Tad Williams' To Green Angel Tower which was just stupidly long, something like 1300 words in hardcover, but I hated that book, so it doesn't count. :p

i think every book in the wheel of time series, those are all pretty darn long.

And they get progressively longer. :D

Speaking of which, I need to give Sanderson's books a try one of these days, I hear he's breathed new life into that series.

What, really? I must have some kind of abridged version. I have a book of the same title that can't be more than 200 pages. I never knew there was a more complete edition.

I think mine only has Greek and Norse. It was a text for a class, so I can understand why she went with an abridged version. We didn't even make it through all of that book.

Bulfinch has a bunch of material that is often published in volumes so that may be why you have some but not all. We used his book on religion in my Ancient Greek Religion course. It was a seriously dense read but it was damn handy to have because it's one of the books that gets quoted non stop by other academics writing on similar topics and it's nice to have the original source for said quotes around for context and comparison.

The longest book I ever read was a biography on Cleopatra. I don't remember the title because I read it like 6 years ago but it took me a whole summer. It was supposed to be a summer assignment due the first day of school, but since only 3 students did it the teacher didn't even count it as an assignment. I was so mad. xP

Probably Last Sacrifice, by Richelle Mead.

It just seemed to go on forever. xD;

For me... Probably any Wheel of Time book. They all have over 300,000 words, with most having many more than that. Smallest amount of time for me to read one of them was 2 days, but that was with me reading nonstop ALL DAY for both days.

Hmm... wish I had some of those in paper back so I could compare the size to The Bonehunters. All my WoT books are hardcover. It's probably close, though. Both series are Big Fat Fantasy.

This sounds really interesting, I love myths but I think I've only read greek and a few norse ones.
The longest book I read was "To Green Angel Tower" but if I had finished reading "Otherland" (both by Tad Williams) that would have been longer. Yes, I know Otherland was four books but it was meant to be read as one from what I could figure out.
Suzerain I know you hated "To Green Angel Tower" but I loved it >> I won't argue though, I know it's not for everyone xD

I've heard a lot of people I like it, nothing wrong with that. :)

Oh, my ex roommate worshipped Tad Williams and that's why I read his books in the first place. I really did adore Otherland I just never got the final book ^^;