Longest book you've ever read. [Archive] - Literature Network Forums

clandestine

11-07-2005, 08:48 PM

The Holy Bible. This at times seemed longer than it actually was, partly because I'm not a religious fellow and heretic, unbelieveing thoughts like "Yeah right!" and "But...but...Ohhh!" and *snort* and "Okay man, this is really weird..." were running through the back of my head. The bible is really old, to put it lightly, and often times not at all modern. Some of the things done in the name of faith seem plain senseless to me. Ohh, and I also drew it out, so it took me about a year to read. :sick:

On the other hand, I did enjoy reading it for the most part, and I learned a ton! :nod:

Admin

11-07-2005, 09:17 PM

For me it has to be one of Robert Jordan's horribly slow Wheel of Time books.

Logos

11-07-2005, 11:53 PM

Most recent one would be James Thakara's Book of Kings (http://www.bookpage.com/9905bp/fiction/book_of_kings.html) and it was excellent, wished it didn't have to end :)

A honkin' big book, 770 plus pages, 6" X 9" sized.

Satirical

11-08-2005, 12:06 AM

The Golden Bough, recently a 700 plus behemoth. I take notes on everything that I read, and this one was full of those facts that you would want to remember so the emphasis on me writing made it seem sooooo long. It was good though.

PeterL

11-08-2005, 12:29 AM

The Renaissance in Italy in 7 Volumes by John Addington Symonds 500 to 600 pages per volume

bugmasta

11-08-2005, 12:46 AM

War and Peace.

byquist

11-08-2005, 01:50 AM

War and Peace (short edition!)

Pensive

11-08-2005, 02:53 AM

Roots, Mill on the Floss, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix are the longest books I have read. Actually I have forgotten their actual lengths but as I remember I found them VERY lengthy so I can't decide between them that which one was the longest.....

jakobin

11-08-2005, 03:33 AM

Lord Of The Rings

EAP

11-08-2005, 04:47 AM

Probably Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson.

simon

11-08-2005, 05:53 AM

Michner may not be as long as some of these authors above, but it sure seems like it.

Nightshade

11-08-2005, 06:48 AM

Jane austen: The complete novels does that count??
If not then The lord of the rings

jakobin

11-08-2005, 06:53 AM

Kiwi Shelf

11-08-2005, 07:40 AM

Lord of the Rings comes right to mind, but I know that I have some thick books in my past, page numbers are just not sticking with me.

LightShade

11-08-2005, 09:53 AM

Does it count if I made it only halfway through? :D that was the Lord of the Rings.
(It seems to me The Complete Works of Shakespeare wouldn't count; at least that's what I gather from previous answers).

starrwriter

11-08-2005, 02:48 PM

Probably the Bible. Yes, even some non-believers like me have read the Bible -- slowly, over the years, from cover to cover. How do you think we became non-believers?

The Old Testament was somewhat more interesting mythology than the New Testament, but the whole book pushed the boundaries of common sense. Too bad it wasn't written by the actual people involved rather than by "followers" who had an ax to grind. Paul remained Saul after all.

clarity

11-08-2005, 04:28 PM

Does it count if I made it only halfway through?

Well, I made it a sixth of the way through "The Border Trilogy" by Cormac McCarthy, before I lost interest. :)

Longest I read was "Sophie's Choice" by William Styron (684 pages), followed by John Fowles' "The Magus" (656 pages).

ArcherSnake

11-08-2005, 05:15 PM

The longest I have read was also my favorite, Stephen King's The Stand. It was the uncut edition, which is around 1100 pages.

Themis

11-08-2005, 05:49 PM

War and Peace.

That was mine too.

Sandrine

11-08-2005, 06:15 PM

I read a book about Sobibor (a concentration camp) that I thought ended up being about 600 or so pages long, but when I looked the book up at Amazon it said it's only about 391. I don't remember it that way, but it's been a long time since I read it.

I too would say Sophie's Choice (since clarity mentioned it) and, I don't know if this counts as "long" (it felt long) but I read The Canterbury Tales for a class in school.

I like long novels but my mind starts to wander and I never seem to get through them. I put them down and don't pick them up again until years later.

Psycheinaboat

11-08-2005, 09:00 PM

Anna Karenina would probably be my longest.

http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/anna_karenina/

Miss Darcy

11-08-2005, 09:11 PM

I've read a few really long books, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo probably being my favourites. I don't know how many pages each has, but I'm sure the number is pretty high....the books are really thick and (the unabridged edition I chose) with very tiny letters! :D

Shea

11-08-2005, 11:55 PM

I also read Les Miserables (loved it! It's the book that makes me want to learn French) I remember my first copy had about 1500 pages but it was ruined in a car wreck. So my new copy has only 987 pages. I also read The Count of Monte Cristo 1077, Gone With the Wind 733, Little Women 686, Lord of the Rings, and unfortunately I've misplaced my copy of Don Quixote but that was rather long as well.

War and Peace is on my shelf for the future.

strategos

11-09-2005, 01:24 AM

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, and Texas by James A. Michener, are about the longest books I can recall ever reading.

starrwriter

11-09-2005, 04:19 PM

I started to read "Remembrance of Things Past" by Proust, but then I discovered he had written the endless volumes while in bed. He wasn't sick or anything, he just lost interest in the outside world. Stayed in bed for years, writing his memoirs.

Must be an occupational hazard. Larry McMurtry stayed in bed for two years, watching videotaped movies and eating until his weight ballooned out of sight. Ah, the rewards of being a successful author!

Kluna

11-09-2005, 04:48 PM

Anna Karenina

scw1217

11-09-2005, 05:10 PM

I am currently reading one that is over 1,000 pages. We'll see how far I make it. I dk why, but I tend to always pick long novels and long series. I am a bit disappointed with a story without even having read it when it is short, which is probably not fair to the author.

subterranean

11-09-2005, 07:26 PM

When I read a book with a story that I don't really like, but cause of some reasons (e.g. highly recommended by a friend and he insisted me to read it) I have to finish it.

sir_alex

11-12-2005, 01:52 PM

I think the longest I've ever read was Douglas Adam's incredibly interesting, incredibly funny "The Hitchhikler's Guide to the Galaxy" (the whole collection in one book) I think it was about 800-odd pages...

crisaor

11-12-2005, 02:41 PM

I'm not sure, maybe the Arabian Nights, or the Lord of the Rings, counting all the books (the LotR trilogy, plus the Hobbit and the Silmarillion). Don Quixote could be a contender also.

mono

11-24-2005, 11:58 AM

I do not think the length of the book depends on its complexity or impressiveness, as short books (Critique Of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant, The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway) can seem equally, if not more, complex than longer books.
A few books I have read at great length, anyway: War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1136 pages), The Complete Short Stories Of O. Henry (1692 pages), The Poetry Of Geoffrey Chaucer (1552 pages), and The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (1246 pages).

Wendigo_49

11-24-2005, 12:54 PM

My record right now is Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy in a hardcover book which is 1420 pages. After I read Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann I am going to read his epic Joseph and Brothers which is 1536 pages. However both of these are novels put into a larger collection. My largest single novel page wise is probably be The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Diceman

11-24-2005, 10:58 PM

Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" was about 1100 pages, from memory.

cruciverbalist

11-25-2005, 08:56 AM

The longest book I've read is Atlas Shrugged too. It wasn't really worth it though.

Pendragon

11-25-2005, 09:43 AM

Don Quixote, unabridged. Now I ask myself why....http://www.smileyville.net/invision/question.gif

geetanjali

11-25-2005, 12:03 PM

Tom Jones - by Henry Fielding. Truthfully speaking I skipped many pages to reach the end. The story is great & the authors ideas & language, expressions are good.The book is worth ones time. Anyone there who has read this one ?

Pantelej

11-27-2005, 09:25 AM

I think it's the silent don

Jekaterina

11-28-2005, 09:03 AM

Proust's In Search of Lost Time

Other very long novels were tolstoy's anna karenina and war and peace,
the brothers karamazov and some more, but I don't remember 'em all.
Just remembered those, because someone at the russian literature topic discussion said that Russians somehow always seem to write veeery long books (but every page is worth it!)

emily655321

11-28-2005, 09:38 AM

If you count the Lord of the Rings trilogy as one book, that's the longest for me. Crime and Punishment and The Bros. K are up there, too.

The one that seemed the longest, though, in that every moment of my life that went into reading it was utterly wasted, is Moby Dick. I'm sorry, that's just bad writing. Who held the contest for Most Consecutive Sentences Over a Half-Page Long?? There were so many ridiculously off-topic tangents that I felt like I was reading straight-through one of those "choose your own adventure" children's books, where you're supposed to skip ahead depending on what you want to happen, except that Melville forgot to mark the pages. And then the entire chapter dedicated to Why Whales are Fish. . . *ugh* It was like an entire book of "Birdseye View of Paris."

AimusSage

11-28-2005, 12:46 PM

For me it's the Lord of The Rings or the Bible.

Taliesin

11-28-2005, 01:34 PM

Encyclopedia Britannica

What? Why don't you believe us?
We once read an article from there ... almost.

Ok, but we think that it is "Otherland". We haven't got our hands on the first book in it, but still, it is the longest, we think.

emily655321

11-28-2005, 06:46 PM

For me it's the Lord of The Rings or the Bible.
Oh, the Bible, of course! I forgot about that thing. :p I've read that, I'm sure that's my longest. There's a whoooole lot of begetting in that one.

Aurora Ariel

11-29-2005, 04:06 PM

The longest fictional book I have read is definitely Tolstoy's War and Peace.My edition is the Penguin Classics one, but I have his Anna Karenina in another edition.For poetry, I would probably say my Seven Centuries of Poetry in English, by Oxford press.Though I have read alot of Shakespeare, but in separate books.Possibly, Shelley's full collected works is also one of the longest in poetry that I have read so far.For one single non-fiction work, I would have to say Encyclopaedia Britannica which is so long, and the text of my CD Encarta, which covers nearly every topic possible.How about your dictionary?I have to add my 1492 page Heinemann dictionary as well.I actually quite enjoy reading the dictionary, but I realize it's not to everyone's taste.;)

Diceman

11-29-2005, 07:43 PM

This is turning into a serious contest of one-upmanship.

If I read the Adelaide Yellow Pages, does that count? :lol:

Mortis Anarchy

11-29-2005, 10:34 PM

uhhh, Lord of the Rings, The Dictionary Unabridged(dead serious, I was desperatly depressed and bored over the summer) or The Iliad. I enjoyed them all, immensly.

Ryan_H

12-02-2005, 12:05 AM

Harry Potter! just kidding.....

The dictionary for sure

emily-the-brit

12-02-2005, 12:37 AM

I have absolutely no idea. I think about 400 pages tho lol. Because to be honest, if a book is too long I just get bored.

Taliesin

12-02-2005, 02:52 AM

Phonebooks are nice too.

Scheherazade

12-02-2005, 03:07 PM

Phonebooks are nice too.Gawd! I was trying to control the urge since the thread started but now that Tal has brought it up:

London Telephone Directory - It is mostly OK and rather informative but gets a little repetitive when you get to Browns and Smiths, I tell ya!

Vampire Kari

12-02-2005, 05:08 PM

Harry Potter and the OftP. It was 870 pages.

Anna Seis

12-10-2005, 10:07 PM

Hmm, I believe it was a Huxley one, whose title I can't remind. The main characters were a man named Walter and a certain Lucy. It destroyed my strenght of spirit; was really boring. War and Peace I have readed and enjoyed it so much, and also Quixote, many times since I was a child.

IrishCanadian

12-13-2005, 01:44 PM

I can never remember the page count. You guys read phone books and dictionaries??? Your crazy! For me it would be Lord of the Rings, The Fountainhead, or the Oddyssey. I like LOTR and the Oddyssey annyway.

RyuKid

12-15-2005, 12:32 AM

haha dont think Jane Austen, the complete novels counts, sorry.

The last 2 harry potter books were pretty long, so im gonna have to say those ones too. (HP and the Order of the Phoenix and HP and the Half Blood Prince.)

If you read The Goblet of Fire I think it was larger than the Half Blood Prince ;)

Anyways the largest book I read was HP and the Order of the Phoenix.

SleepyWitch

01-03-2006, 11:31 AM

LotR
A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth).. it's around 1500 pages.. haven't finished that one yet, though

Wirhe

01-03-2006, 03:35 PM

LOTR here too, a single-book edition with some silly 1100+ pages...

Alex E Art

01-03-2006, 04:58 PM

War and peace

Countess

01-03-2006, 06:25 PM

The longest book I've read - about 5 inches.

Sorry, I couldn't resist - I've got the Wilde in me.

Xamonas Chegwe

01-03-2006, 07:17 PM

I'm not sure what the longest book I ever read was (and I'm assuming that the Encyclopaedia Brittannica dooesn't count) - but "À la recherche du temps perdu" by Proust is definitely the longest I haven't read but would like to have the time to.

Vedrana

01-03-2006, 07:58 PM

Probably Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and I was so determined to finish it that I read it in about two days. lol

I also read A short History of the World by Geoffrey Blainey, which comes in pretty close as far as length goes.

I suppose that if I had the patience, I would try and read Richardson's Clarissa, which is considered the longest book ever written in the English language, but I just get this feeling I would get bored and give it up. I also don't have the book itself anyway. lol.

I've read snippets of the Bible here and there, but not the whole thing, since it's a collection of books anyway, and not intended to be read as an entire volume.

And I've heard that the novels of Fanny Burney are quite long as well, although I have never tried reading one myself.

Bluebiird

01-09-2006, 07:18 PM

Lord of the rings, I'm still trying to read it, or the banned and the banished series, I'm still reading that too.

Scheherazade

01-09-2006, 09:49 PM

I wonder... Is the longest book you have ever read is also the heaviest(physical weight-wise) one you have ever read???

Bluebiird

01-10-2006, 05:32 AM

I wonder... Is the longest book you have ever read is also the heaviest(physical weight-wise) one you have ever read???
Well, I think the heaviest books I've ever read are a hardback, illustrated, children's bible; that my aunt got for me when I was christened. I'm not sure if that counts, I haven't actually read all of it, I just looked at the pictures really. And the Tolkein Bestiary, which is also a hardback, but I haven't read all of that either, because it's mainly pictures too.
But they're the heaviest books in my house.
The weight depends on whether the book is a hardback of a paperback. The longest books I've read are paperbacks, so they're not as heavy as other books I've read.

imaditzyreader

01-10-2006, 05:35 PM

hehehehehe if you mean the actual longest in length, it would prolly be one of the Harry Potter books(sad), but if it is the hardest, or the one that took the longest/seemed the longest, it would be "The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man"

Erna

01-11-2006, 06:18 AM

The longest book I read? I think that's "The discovery of heaven" by Harry Mulisch. I did read it in Dutch (De ontdekking van de hemel), don't know if it's translated to English. Probably yes, because a couple of years ago also a movie came out, in English, so supposingly no only for the Netherlands but also abroad (whoever did see the movie, it's a bad one).
The book is very good and gives a lot of things to think about. Almost everything has en double meaning. So in that way, maybe also the heaviest.

beer good

01-11-2006, 06:54 AM

Erna, I've been curious about Harry Mulisch for some time - could you recommend a good book of his to start with?

I guess the longest one-volume book I've read is Stephen King's "The Stand", which is about 1400 pages. And if you count his 7-volume "The Dark Tower", which is one long narrative, that's 3818 pages...

Ich bin

01-12-2006, 04:40 PM

It was... No, it were Lord of the rings+The Hobbit+Silmarillion and War and Pease, of course. They were very hard to replase but normal to read. The hardest to read was Chemistry book for first-year students in our RadioEngineering University. :sick:

mtpspur

04-20-2006, 04:07 AM

Matthew Henry's Commentary to the Holy Bible--took about 4 and half years to do over 6000 pages--double column thin print (and yes--The Bible text was included.) This by the by was the unabridged 6 voume version. Highly recommended for insights in practical Chritianity and a worshiping spirit to God.

Ellipsis

04-22-2006, 02:12 PM

I wonder... Is the longest book you have ever read is also the heaviest(physical weight-wise) one you have ever read???

For me, that's a yes
longest would be Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy, nearly 1400 pages :D :D

Lady19thC

04-22-2006, 05:07 PM

The Bible (which of course is not a book, but rather a collection of books)
LOTR (which is several books separated)
Anna Karenina
Daniel Deronda
Middlemarch
Our Mutual Friend
Bleak House

etc.

The heaviest would have to be my leatherbound Easton Press KJV Bible, which would also be the longest, in a sort of way.

Idril

04-22-2006, 09:27 PM

I suppose the longest book would be War and Peace by Tolstoy, followed by Lord of the Rings and Infinite Jest and I guess The Stand, I didn't realize that one had that many pages until Beer Good mentioned it. I knew it was a big one but I didn't realize it was that big. The heaviest would be my hard cover of Lord of the Rings with paintings by Alan Lee, although I don't actually read that one, if I want to reread the book, I have cheap soft cover copies of each separate book, the hard cover is strictly for show. ;)

Boris239

04-22-2006, 10:19 PM

probably "War and Peace", altough I'm not sure- maybe "Quiet Don" is longer

Petrarch's Love

04-23-2006, 02:25 AM

I think the Faerie Queene, though maybe the Bible or LOTR is a little longer.

Geoffrey

04-23-2006, 04:03 AM

The anatomy of melancholy by Robert Burton!

Please, who else had indulged in this book? I'd really like to know!

Schokokeks

04-23-2006, 05:16 AM

The anatomy of melancholy by Robert Burton!

Please, who else had indulged in this book? I'd really like to know!

aye, me! :nod:
but I admit that I did not read it completely. I once worked on a project relating elements of the history of medicine, especially focussing on different forms of madness. My epoch was the Ancient World, and as in traditions of texts from this age, melancholy was defined as a form of madness, I read some excerpts from Burton's book that seemed helpful. I'd love to read the whole book one day, as I'm very curious about an historical approach to medicine..My admiration that you made it through! :nod: Did you like it so far?

The longest book I ever read was The Bible, but I stretched that over years...probably LotR, although Middlemarch was the most tedious one.

WaxDoll

04-23-2006, 02:09 PM

I suppose if Jane Austen, The Complete Works don't count, then Charlotte and Emily Bronte, The Complete Works doesn't count either? Those are probably the longest books that I've read in book form. LOL... I lugged both of them in to reread my favorite parts after state testing and my teacher gave me the weirdest look. Besides those, it's probably Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheniox, sad, I know. But, if you count books that I read online through etexts (which is most of the books I read), I think Camilla by Frances Burney tops the list for me.

Bookworm Cris

04-23-2006, 02:54 PM

Among the longest books I´ve read are:
Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Foundation trilogy, Isaac Asimov (actually they are 3 books, but one story... if you count all books of the Foundation series, it´s a huge reading... and I´ve read them :nod: )
QB VII, Leon Uris
Complete Works of Machado de Assis (2 volumes of very thin paper and small letters, very good stories)
The Thorn Birds, Colleen Mc Cullough
Operação Cavalo de Tróia, J J Benitez (all 6 books, haven´t read the 7th yet, I think it´s "Trojan Horse Operation" in english, again, it´s one story in several books, very good books)

If I remember some more I´ll post later

Cris

Geoffrey

04-23-2006, 08:06 PM

aye, me! :nod:
but I admit that I did not read it completely. I once worked on a project relating elements of the history of medicine, especially focussing on different forms of madness. My epoch was the Ancient World, and as in traditions of texts from this age, melancholy was defined as a form of madness, I read some excerpts from Burton's book that seemed helpful. I'd love to read the whole book one day, as I'm very curious about an historical approach to medicine..My admiration that you made it through! :nod: Did you like it so far?

Yes I did like it very much. It is truly a man's entire life work - an obsession. I thought it to be a true masterpiece though, and well worth my many many many hours spend reading it.

All together, meaning Burton's strange introduction to the book and all the partitions, it accumulates to be 1224 pages long. Though thats only my copy of the text, which features very tiny text

davoarid

05-11-2006, 04:09 AM

Either "The Brothers Karamazov" or "Martin Chuzzlewit"--they were both 700-800. Longest non-fiction was Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States."

Truth Untold

05-11-2006, 02:08 PM

Victor Huog Les Miserables I think...but don't quote me on it.

Nightmare9870

05-11-2006, 03:18 PM

Dumas has always been one of my favorite writers so I decided to read The Count of Monte Cristo for a class a few years ago. I had never read it before so, naturally, I put it off until a week or two before the test. When I found out that it was around 1100 pages I was less than thrilled but I finished it in about six days.

Gawaine

05-19-2006, 01:03 PM

Peter the Great - some author I cannot remember.

Perhaps that or the Bible. There may have been another I cannot think of, but those seem to me to be the longest that I remember.

superunknown

05-20-2006, 09:44 AM

Lord of the Rings.

Never again. :p

I'm taking a class in Russian next year. I haven't really touched any Russian literature so far because I'd love to one day be able to speak Russian fluently and read what many call some of the greatest books ever written in their original language. Maybe when I'm just out of university and have nothing to lose I'll go live in Russia for a few months. If I ever feel confident enough in Russian, I'm making a bee-line for Dostoevsky, promptly followed by Tolstoy.

Since I can already speak French and Spanish, The Count of Monte Cristo, Les Miserables, and Don Quixote are definitely on my list. When I have time I'll read them for sure.

Harry Potter books have a lot of pages, sure, but the print is fairly big and the language is very easy to read. Now, when you get LotR or The Bible, which contain the kind of language that makes you zone out and re-read a paragraph 5 times over and has more than 1,000 pages in extremely small print, that's a different story.

JCCCC

05-22-2006, 03:33 PM

the mars trilogy by kim stanley robinson weighs in at around 2100 densely packed pages, although technically these are three different books.

biggest single book is either war and peace or stephen king - the stand, both 1400 pages.

the mahabharata edition i read was around 1300 pages i believe

Theshizznigg

05-24-2006, 02:26 PM

The longest book I have read recently were both Sir Winston Churchills biography by Randolph Churchill, about four hundred pages, and simultanously Secret of the Samurai, a whopping six hundred pages. I read them over a five month span and managed about six novels in the meantime.
The longest book I've read so far was the fifth edition of Harry Potter. Though I have been thinking of reading War and Peace, Tom Jones, and Middlemarch.

anatomie

05-25-2006, 11:14 AM

Ulysses (Joyce) springs to mind (possibly because i am writing on it at the moment). Apart from its mammoth size, it is so loaded with intertextual references, that there are separate books for footnotes! Joyce once said that he intended to include so many 'hidden' gems in Ulysses that it woud keep literature professors arguing about it and speculating over it for a long time after he was dead. Interesting writer.

fati

05-26-2006, 11:16 AM

Thomas Mann -Joseph and his brothers; it is amazing what Mann could do on several pages of the Bible.

amanda_isabel

05-26-2006, 11:28 AM

longest book....

i'm not sure. but longest book psychologically was a textbook regarding quadratic equations... (although it was only 200+ pages)

Shakira

06-05-2006, 06:29 AM

Vanity Fair - Thackerey.

Toooooooooooo longgggg.

Thorn

06-05-2006, 07:03 AM

Michel Faber's "The scarlet petal and the white". It's about 1050 pages long but you just can't get bored!

Hyacinth Girl

06-05-2006, 12:24 PM

The longest books I have read, in no particular order:
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Les Miserables
The Faerie Queene
The Stand - unabridged
Tom Jones
Don Quixote - in Spanish :thumbs_up

booksgalore

11-06-2006, 05:07 PM

hmm, lord of the rings being three books and the bible being(unless you count the Apocrypha) 66, so can you strictly include them by the reasoning some have stated on here?

Eulalia

11-07-2006, 09:11 AM

Lord of the rings
'The Pillars of the Earth' (Ken Follet)

stlukesguild

11-07-2006, 06:21 PM

The longest books I have perused include Boswell's "Life of Johnson", which is over 1200 pages, Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" which at 4 volumes tops some 2500 pages, Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholia" which tops some 1400 pages, and my current read... one of the mothers of all monster novels, Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" which stands at 4 volumes and some 2500 pages.

Among the longest books I have completed I might count Tolstoy's "War and Peace" (1400 pgs+), Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" (1200 pgs+), Cervantes "Don Quixote" (900 pgs+), Ariosto's "Ormando Furioso" (2 vols. 1200 pgs+). Of course there are even longer books... the complete Arabian Knights and various works of Indian literature which go on for volumes (John Barth discusses any number of these in his essays).

cuppajoe_9

11-07-2006, 06:22 PM

hmm, lord of the rings being three books and the bible being(unless you count the Apocrypha) 66, so can you strictly include them by the reasoning some have stated on here?

The Lord of the Rings is one book in three volumes.

Me, I once read the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

Misscaroline

11-07-2006, 06:30 PM

Either the whole LOTR, or np- definitely- the entirety of Bulfinch's Mythology. Charlemgane, Arthur, and Zeus all in on book? Be still my heart...

Miss Caroline

grace86

11-07-2006, 07:02 PM

Anna Karenina and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

F.Emerald

11-07-2006, 07:05 PM

This is probably the shortest book I've ever read, but one that felt like the longest book I've ever read: The Heart of Darkness!

bluevictim

11-07-2006, 09:14 PM

Me, I once read the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.I've read passages here and there, but I thought it was too pedantic.

icecappuccino

11-07-2006, 09:30 PM

The longest book I have read recently is Gone with the Wind. I disliked Scarlett O'Hara so much that I could hardly stand finishing the book. I believe it should have ended about half way but the torturous thing kept on going on.

Other long books I can remember having read are the Lord of the Rings books, and Les Misérables.

malwethien

11-07-2006, 09:56 PM

I don't know..which is longer, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell?

WaxenWings89

11-07-2006, 10:02 PM

Don Quixote. Still not finished, in fact. Striving to finish book 2.

Bookworm89

11-07-2006, 10:15 PM

The Harry Potter books (I forget which are the long ones) and The Three Musketeers

Neovia

11-08-2006, 01:58 PM

Robin Hobb's The Farseer Trilogy's final volume Assassin's Quest, 975 pages, paperback. I think it's thicker as a hardcover book.

Shannanigan

11-08-2006, 02:53 PM

I don't remember how long it was, and I'm not even sure, but when I was a kid I read a book called "Amy's Eyes" and I was so proud of myself for finishing it because it was so huge...

Eufrosyne

11-08-2006, 04:30 PM

I guess it would be vanity fair by thackeray, lotr or les miserables... I dont know which is the longest.

grace86

11-08-2006, 05:16 PM

I don't know..which is longer, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell?

Definitely Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Evi

11-08-2006, 07:59 PM

One of teh longest books i ever read is the one i am reading right now: War and peace. I am in 1345 page and i still have! But i really enjoy it.

Evi

Behemoth

11-12-2006, 10:55 AM

Just finished James Joyce's Ulysses (931 pages) but it felt a lot longer!!!! :eek:

underground

11-12-2006, 03:41 PM

the count of monte cristo by alexandre dumas.

it was a 1000+-page book, but it didn't feel like it though. :D

Hayes

11-12-2006, 05:50 PM

The length of Ulysses never bothered me, but it didn't become the longest book I had ever read until 2004 when I completed it. I never finished it because I got so lost years ago. Then on the 100th birthday of its publication I decided to finish it and am planning to read it again next year. I fell in love with it. Each year I do walk around a town where I happen to be for most of the day in a tribute to Leonard Bloom.

THX-1138

11-13-2006, 05:20 AM

lord of the rings

Madhuri

11-13-2006, 05:26 AM

Suitable Boy -- Vikram Seth...It was over 1000 pages.

TreasureSeeker

11-13-2006, 03:16 PM

Probably Lord of the Rings or Les Miserables.

Mary Sue

11-13-2006, 05:17 PM

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. The unabridged version. An eighteenth-century epistolary novel. It was originally published in serial form, and Richardson deliberately padded each installment because the longer he could drag it out, the more money he'd make out of his endless saga!

As I recall, the saintly heroine had NO LUCK. She trusted the wrong guy, so was kidnapped and taken into a brothel where he raped her! Later, returned to her family, she pined away and more or less died of a broken heart. What I remember most is how neurotic Clarissa became towards the end, having a coffin constructed in her bedroom. The book was great fun, all melodrama and purple prose, but so-o-o-o-o long!

Omniglot

04-03-2007, 09:42 AM

AChristieFan

04-03-2007, 11:33 AM

I have to say the longest book I've read is Harry Potter and The Order Of The Phoenix, sorry I know that it doesn't belong on the forum. 870 Pages

Asa Adams

04-03-2007, 11:58 AM

The longest book Ive ever read was Animal Farm. :lol: No, W&P probably is the longest.

chosenone76

04-03-2007, 12:21 PM

I'm not sure, but I guess it would have to be Stephen King's The Stand, which was over 1,000 pages long.

Fango

04-03-2007, 12:36 PM

Lord of the Rings, and Don Quixote which I never got to finish admittedly...

Bysshe

04-03-2007, 12:37 PM

I'm not sure, but I guess it would have to be Stephen King's The Stand, which was over 1,000 pages long.

I think it's probably The Stand for me too. I was going to say Lord of the Rings, when I remembered that I never finished it...I think I lost interest halfway through the second book. So yes, The Stand.

manolia

04-03-2007, 12:39 PM

Lord of the Rings, and Don Quixote which I never got to finish admittedly...

Lord of the rings and Don Quixote for me too (but i finished both and enjoyed greatly. Also, LOTR i have read 3 times since childhood). Recently i read The Count of Monte Cristo which was slightly bigger than Don Quixote.

*EDIT* Fango i loooove your avatar. It's Guybrush Threepwood, eh?

JBI

04-03-2007, 04:53 PM

The Count of Monte Cristo unabridged in English. You're looking at 1600ish there.
Though the book that really hit me the hardest with Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggiiiiiiii iiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggg on was Lord of The Rings.

MarcMcGrath

04-03-2007, 07:34 PM

Right in the middle of reading the longest book I've ever read (if that counts). Infinite Jest is a tome of a book, it clocks in at 1079 pages with about 500 words per page, the name definitely does the novel justice.

bazarov

04-04-2007, 03:57 AM

War and Peace probably, because I don't remember how many pages The Count of Monte Cristo has.

aeroport

04-04-2007, 04:50 AM

Atlas Shrugged, but, due to smaller print and so forth, The Portrait of a Lady might be longer. Maybe.

Omniglot

04-04-2007, 05:05 AM

Atlas Shrugged, but, due to smaller print and so forth, The Portrait of a Lady might be longer. Maybe.

Oh! I'd forgotten I'd read Atlas Shrugged! :blush:

Fango

04-04-2007, 07:23 AM

*EDIT* Fango i loooove your avatar. It's Guybrush Threepwood, eh?

A mighty pirate! Yes, I stole it from another forumer when I just started using forums. My favorite game series, naturally, too. Insult swordfighting ftw! :)

Dante Wodehouse

04-04-2007, 09:29 AM

Of the books I've read, Crime and Punishment seemed longest, but I think had less pages than one of the Wheel of Times. It depends on the publisher and everything though. Has anyone here read Remembrance of Things Past (I haven't, but just wanted to know if anyone else had)? From what I know it is the longest book ever written (not sure on this, but it is about 3000 pages) and I doubt that Proust's efforts in making this colossus were rewarded with an exceptionally large audience.

aeroport

04-04-2007, 12:04 PM

Of the books I've read, Crime and Punishment seemed longest, but I think had less pages than one of the Wheel of Times.

That's right! I'd quite forgotten how enormous those are. The Shadow Rising is probably the longest I've read. (I never made it out of book six).

carina_gino20

04-04-2007, 12:13 PM

i'm not sure if it was the longest, but A Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez surely felt like a hundred years for me.

manolia

04-04-2007, 01:13 PM

A mighty pirate! Yes, I stole it from another forumer when I just started using forums. My favorite game series, naturally, too. Insult swordfighting ftw! :)

:lol: :lol:
Definately one of my favourite games series (but the top of my list is the Gabriel Night series). This i remember and laugh heartily:
-Every enemy i've anihilated
-With your breath i'm sure they all suffocated :lol:

Stieg

04-04-2007, 09:03 PM

Don Quixote (don't have a copy on hand but read the Penguin Classics TPB translated by Rutherford)

Lord of the Rings (don't have a copy on hand)

King James Bible? (don't have a copy on hand)

and yes, once again, my two horror anthology bibles:

The Dark Descent (1011)

Great Tales of Terror and The Supernatural (1029)

I believe some Clive Barker's books broke a thousand and some of the fantasy epics I used to enjoy too.

bazarov

04-05-2007, 12:56 PM

i'm not sure if it was the longest, but A Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez surely felt like a hundred years for me.
:lol: :lol: :lol: Well, there is something in that...

Stieg

04-05-2007, 01:41 PM

More additional titles,

Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa (small print)

The Stand by Stephen King

From Here To Eternity by James Jones

Ceinwyn

04-05-2007, 05:12 PM

The longest book I've ever read was Lord of the Rings (by J.R.R. Tolkien) and I loved it. Exciting, moving: it's one of the books I've ever come across

mcilroga

04-05-2007, 05:45 PM

- The Bible.
- It.
- War And Peace.

It's my goal in life to read The Story Of The Vivian Girls. Only 15,000 pages. :D

Ceinwyn

04-05-2007, 10:24 PM

It's my goal in life to read The Story Of The Vivian Girls. Only 15,000 pages. :D

Wow! 15,000 pages! Are you sure it's just ONE book?! I wonder how long it took the author to write it.

mcilroga

04-05-2007, 10:45 PM

Wow! 15,000 pages! Are you sure it's just ONE book?! I wonder how long it took the author to write it.

It's a 15,145 page manuscript in 10 volumes. It's the longest novel ever written at over 10 million words. Want to read it with me?

aeroport

04-06-2007, 12:58 AM

It's a 15,145 page manuscript in 10 volumes. It's the longest novel ever written at over 10 million words. Want to read it with me?

*Returns from Wikipedia*
It sounds very interesting. I would probably be jumping all over it, were it not for school. The story of that photo is pretty haunting, I have to say.

(For those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Elsie_-_lg.jpg)

jon1jt

04-06-2007, 02:35 AM

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand clocking in at over 1100 pages, after which i stuck to short stories for a while. :)

aeroport

04-06-2007, 03:25 AM

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand clocking in at over 1100 pages, after which i stuck to short stories for a while. :)

I sympathize...

whatsername

04-06-2007, 07:51 AM

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix :D

Dante Wodehouse

04-06-2007, 08:39 AM

It's a 15,145 page manuscript in 10 volumes. It's the longest novel ever written at over 10 million words. Want to read it with me?

I salute you, but I am afraid that I do not wish to become a literary monk.

Princess Fergie

04-06-2007, 09:00 AM

the bible
stone of tears

but 15,000, wow thats quite a goal...good luck!;)

rafaelnadal

04-06-2007, 11:23 AM

Lord of the Rings...but it didn't feel that long, maybe cos it's such a page turner in contrast to say, Ulysses which I took months to plough through.

mcilroga

04-06-2007, 01:38 PM

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand clocking in at over 1100 pages, after which i stuck to short stories for a while. :)

I've read it as well. Horrible novel. The dense symbolism annoys me to death. But what could I really expect from Ayn Rand? Maybe it would have been bearable had I just skipped over John Galt's ridiculously long sixty page speech.

aeroport

04-06-2007, 03:08 PM

I've read it as well. Horrible novel. The dense symbolism annoys me to death. But what could I really expect from Ayn Rand? Maybe it would have been bearable had I just skipped over John Galt's ridiculously long sixty page speech.

Well, actually, it would probably be better to read only said speech, and skip the rest.

mcilroga

04-06-2007, 03:14 PM

Well, actually, it would probably be better to read only said speech, and skip the rest.

That's true. Maybe it would have been best had I just not read the novel; I just felt the need to point out that damn speech. :D

aeroport

04-06-2007, 03:57 PM

That's true. Maybe it would have been best had I just not read the novel; I just felt the need to point out that damn speech. :D

Personally, I don't know why she wrote this stuff in novel form. I've read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and, while the former was comparatively pretty enjoyable, I think I still prefer her nonfiction. Atlas is indeed a tedious read, but I'm glad I did it once, and I'm still looking forward to the film trilogy. I just think the entire essence of her philosophy can pretty much be found in the "speeches" - those of Galt, Roark, Wynand, the tramp on the train (I am a big fan of his speech, actually), d'Anconia's "money speech" (that one too), and so on. The rest is just...

srpbritlit

04-10-2007, 11:11 PM

My longest is probably The Stand by Stephen King. My favorite King novel is Carrie, however I am NOT a big fan of the horror genre. I have read a lot of lengthy books! Of course, length is definitely NOT an indication of complexity! As you know I am a big lover of British literature, especially from the Victorian era. A Victorian era novel, such as Great Expectations (my edition is 571 pages) can take a long while to read, especially if it is authored by Charles Dickens! I find British/Victorian literature compelling and intriguing. P.S. Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics of Morals is only 43 pages long, so hopefully it won't take me TOO long to read.

Babbalanja

04-10-2007, 11:38 PM

I love big, bloated books. Megafiction, it's what's for dinner.

Jonathan Bayliss's Prologos was 1,089 pages, though he presents alternative methods of tackling the demanding novel. I loved this crazed philosophical trapeze act, concerning a family trip to the zoo on Palm Sunday and everything else in history.

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was over a thousand pages, but that's including endnotes. Okay, this was a little extravagant even for Wallace, but he's a comic genius.

Really big and very good:
The Recognitions - William Gaddis
Almanac of the Dead - Leslie Marmon Silko
The Women of Whitechapel - Paul West

Really big but really bad:
Dhalgren - Samuel Delany
Frog - Stephen Dixon
Tidewater Tales - John Barth

metal134

05-05-2007, 01:56 AM

As of today, "War and Peace" is officially the longest book I've ever read!

chaplin

05-05-2007, 02:00 AM

The Gulag Archipelago, 2000+ pages, though technically that is a 3-volume work.

One volume, unfortunately, would be Atlas Shrugged, which is, I think, longer than War and Peace.

Also long:

The Brothers Karamazov
August 1914 (Expanded Edition)
The Beatles (Bob Spitz)
Anton Chekhov (Donald Rayfield)

grace86

05-05-2007, 02:03 AM

As of today, "War and Peace" is officially the longest book I've ever read!

Congrats! That is a milestone.

I love big, bloated books. Megafiction, it's what's for dinner.

I like that!

Mine was probably Anna Karenina, I don't know if I've ever posted that or not.

kenikki

05-05-2007, 08:16 AM

Tom Wolfe - Bonfire of the Vanities, nearly 800 pages. Just looking at the book now scares me.

Panflute

05-05-2007, 11:09 AM

So far, it's Charles Dickens's 'Bleak House'. My copy had about 740 pages, but the lettering was small, and the pages rather big. I think there are some versions around with about 900-1000 pages.

metal134

05-05-2007, 11:15 AM

Congrats! That is a milestone.
Thanks! It was funny because my friend, who is not a reader, saw me reading the last couple of pages and jokingly said, "you better finish that by tomorrow". Ten minutes later, he sees me reading a new book and said, "Jesus dude, you need to slow down". :)

Felixstowe

05-05-2007, 01:00 PM

Der largest book I have ever read, would be a book on ancient japanese warfare.

Aunty-lion

05-05-2007, 08:58 PM

I love big, bloated books. Megafiction, it's what's for dinner.

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was over a thousand pages, but that's including endnotes. Okay, this was a little extravagant even for Wallace, but he's a comic genius.

Yeah, I loved this book. With a book as great as this one, you are glad it's so long, coz that way you get more of it. I personally love reading long books because I always get separation anxiety after a good book, so, the longer the better!

Another good, long read is Les Miserables.

Idril

05-05-2007, 09:42 PM

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest was over a thousand pages, but that's including endnotes. Okay, this was a little extravagant even for Wallace, but he's a comic genius.

And you needed every single one of those end notes to fill in the blanks. I thought I could maybe get by without reading or at least just skimming the especially long ones, the ones that were pages long by themselves but I quickly realized they all needed to be read. :blush:

Yeah, I loved this book. With a book as great as this one, you are glad it's so long, coz that way you get more of it.

It was a great book, so many great characters and so much humor amidst the depravity and despair.

Aunty-lion

05-05-2007, 11:52 PM

Tom Wolfe - Bonfire of the Vanities, nearly 800 pages. Just looking at the book now scares me.

Don't bother, it's awful. But it isn't actually very hard to read, so I don't imagine it'll be as much of an effort as you are imagining.

The man seriously annoys me though. He claims in all his essays that writers should be completely separate from their characters, and then writes about a bunch of soulless, heartless, transparent versions of himself.

And he has terrible grammar!

Adolescent09

05-06-2007, 12:31 AM

Long reads (1000+):
I've read The Count of Monte Cristo, (1200-1400 pages depending on the edition), War and Peace (1000-1400 pages depending on edition..) and Gone with the Wind (1021 pages standard)..

I am half way through Don Quixote (1000 pages standard)

Mid-length reads (600-800)
Then I've read quite a number of middle lengthed classics including Anna Karenina (700-800 pages I think), The Brother's Karamazov (around 700 pages?), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (600 pages or so), East of Eden (600+ pages?), Great Expectations (I know its more than 500 pages), Jane Eyre (also more than 500 pages), Crime and Punishment (600+ pages?), Les Miserables (I think its about 750 pages..) and The Three Musketeers (this might be under 500 pages.. I haven't read it since the sixth grade)

Shorter reads (anything from 60-500 pages) I've read too many in this category to mention :P... but these mainly consist of classics for younger children..: Jules Vernes, Mark Twain, Louise Mae Alcott (sp?) Frances Hodgson Burnett, Robert Louis Stevenson and Baroness Emmuska Orczy including several others...

Reccura

05-06-2007, 03:16 AM

Well, the longest book I've ever read is the sixth book of HP. I can't remember, but it's so long, I thought I wasn't goping to finish it. Am I a super-ficial kind of person? :p haha.

Anthony Furze

05-06-2007, 03:19 AM

The Old Wives Tale by Arnold Bennet (A level)
Ulysses by you know who (S level)
Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson (ditto)

dan020350

05-06-2007, 11:21 AM

I have finished reading the old testatment and the new testatment. And the book of mormons. That took me a while.

kratsayra

05-06-2007, 12:47 PM

I've thought about it, and I'm pretty sure that the longest book I've read in its entirety is A Storm of Swords from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. I keep feeling like there must be something else really long that I've read, but perhaps not.

quasimodo1

05-06-2007, 12:58 PM

Arnold J. Toynbee's "A Study of History" ...volume three. He's the guy who said "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Not for everybody but history buffs and phds ...for them, a must try.

Silvia

05-06-2007, 01:17 PM

Alessandro Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi"....I read it because of the school but didn't like it that much...actually, I found it quite boring even though I see why it is so important in Italian literature.

Lyn

05-06-2007, 01:25 PM

Tom Jones. I know its not that long, but I did it in a day, but by that time I couldn't be bothered to read the last few pages, which I gather is the point in the book. Oh well.

Aunty-lion

05-07-2007, 12:04 AM

Oooh, I remembered another.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (I think).

I thought it was kinda stupid though by the end, and a lot of the pages only had 1 or 2 words on them. Bret Easton Ellis apparently loved it though...
Who knows.

elibennet

05-07-2007, 09:30 AM

David Copperfield and War and Peace

Slangalang18ca

05-07-2007, 10:34 PM

The Conte of Monte Cristo, The Fountainhead, and the Harry Potter Books, off of the top of my head. I've just started Atlas Shrugged, which is pretty boring so far.

Derringer

05-08-2007, 09:59 PM

The Stand by Stephen King. I would have cut about 800 pages from that book. I was actually happy when main characters were getting killed. It was like a heavy book was leaving my hands. What joy! and I kind of like his books..

Shakespeare's works are the heaviest.

the silent x

05-08-2007, 10:08 PM

Lord of the Rings, before the whole movie craze came on. the longest it ever took me to read a book was Walden by Henry David Thoreau, i hated that book with a passion, it took me 2 years to read ti because i would set it down for months at a time

Captain Pike

05-09-2007, 08:54 PM

the stand
king at his best

Omniglot

06-21-2007, 08:24 AM

Well, I have just finished reading this history. It is fantastic to say the very very least.

Often being accused of having stone like emotions, I actually shed a tear towards the end (literally) and the meeting of the two adversaries at the end kept me turning page after page to find out the fate of either.

Belford's reformation was admirably wonderful and courageous.

This may be regarded as the longest novel in English literature, and even though it may be about 250 years old, it is an absolute stonkin read.:thumbs_up

Annamariah

06-21-2007, 10:00 AM

Long reads (1000+):
I've read The Count of Monte Cristo, (1200-1400 pages depending on the edition)...

That's unfair, my copy of The Count of Monte Cristo has only 700 pages :lol: (It's unabridged Finnish translation, but the pages are quite large and the text quite small, so that explains it...)

Gorilla King

06-21-2007, 06:39 PM

The Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas. 5 volumes. Over 3,000 pages.

_JadeRain_

06-22-2007, 01:13 AM

Moby Dick

ozbey

06-23-2007, 08:04 AM

A Turkish writer's(Alev Alatlı) book.Its name was "Schrodinger'in Kedisi_Kabus".It was over 700 pages.But it was not so hard to read.

ceetee

06-23-2007, 08:21 AM

Probably War and Peace. What felt the longest? Middlemarch, but I did enjoy it in the end.

Dickens59

06-23-2007, 12:17 PM

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson.
It was very long. I read and I read and I read and finally at the end I wondered why I read it.

Mortis Anarchy

06-23-2007, 11:48 PM

hmmm, Iliad? or Grapes of Wrath...I'm not sure.

corticalaxon

06-24-2007, 10:49 PM

Hello!

Longest book physically: HP 5 (870) unfortunately. sorta read the iliad. I don't know if the Odyssey was long, but I read that too. Definitely have War and Peace, Les Miserables, Don Quixote, and others in mind though.

Longest book psychologically: Back when I seem to have had an odd case of OCD (which still hasn't completely gone away) that took my reading speed to an all-time low, I spent roughly 40ish (maybe a couple more) hours of a 53-hour period reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; almost a complete weekend including most of sat night and all of sunday night. It was for spring break and I stupidly procrastinated uber-excessively (really started on sat. before school). Nevertheless, it was a really depressing book, which made it even worse. Absurdly wierd experience.

Eeyore

06-25-2007, 12:32 AM

Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. Tiny print and over 900 pages.

Bakiryu

06-25-2007, 12:37 AM

War and Peace

MaryEliFit

07-10-2007, 05:18 PM

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. 1006 pages.

JJLuke

07-10-2007, 05:50 PM

The Bear and the Dragon by Clancy.

grace86

07-10-2007, 06:20 PM

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. 1006 pages.

I forgot about that one! It was really good at some points, but sometimes it was a little dull which made it seem longer.

Cassiel240

07-10-2007, 08:42 PM

Le Morte Darthure or The Hoole Book of Kyng Arthur and of His Noble Knyghtes of The Rounde Table, by Sir Thomas Malory. All 905 pages of the Norton Critical edition, in two weeks, for an insane grad-level medieval authors class. It was so worth it, just to be able to say I'd done it. I have run 4 marathons and never felt as tired or as much as if I'd been hit by a truck as I did when I finished that book. I cried more while reading it, too, and I don't mean when the characters died. It was an intellectual torture-test.
Ok, I'm finished whinging. I know there are people out there who love that book, and I'm awed by them. Ye shall have this boke with yow to do with hit what hit please you: that is for to sey, if that ye lyste to reade it yourselff, that is me leveste; and yf ye woll gyff hit unto the dust bin, that is in your choyse.

Bakiryu

07-10-2007, 08:51 PM

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. 1006 pages.

OOOh, I love this book!

Sorceress

06-22-2008, 11:45 PM

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough,
Order of the Phoenix, just starting Vanity Fair...

John Goodman

06-23-2008, 01:27 AM

Le comte de Monte-Cristo, unabridged (original French) edition.

EricP

06-23-2008, 03:52 AM

"Juliette" by Marquis de Sade (1216 pages)

aeroport

06-23-2008, 05:45 AM

Probably Atlas Shrugged - 1168 pages.

Oniw17

06-23-2008, 05:52 AM

I don't know how many pages the longest book I've ever read had. Critique of Pure Reason and Mein Kampf are up there though. And the bible. All very long and tiresome.

sofia82

06-23-2008, 07:10 AM

Ramayana, and I didn't finish :D

Madhuri

06-23-2008, 07:13 AM

Suitable Boy -- Vikram Seth

Erichtho

06-23-2008, 07:17 AM

Probably Hugo's Les Miserables, in German translation. I have an edition in two books: the first one has 856 pages, the second one 683, thus in total 1539 pages.

kelby_lake

06-23-2008, 07:47 AM

Vanity fair, 920 pages.

aeroport

06-23-2008, 04:59 PM

Ramayana, and I didn't finish :D

*sympathizes*

ctalerico

06-23-2008, 07:39 PM

A long, long time ago: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. More recently, Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

bounty

06-23-2008, 10:30 PM

Mine:
The Sum Of All Fears (Tom Clancy)
984 pages

my goodness i think that was mine too---and by far my least favorite of all the clancy books ive read...

i think say a prayer for owen meany was up there also...

and it seems like the stand by stephen king might have been even longer...

NickAdams

06-23-2008, 11:18 PM

Do tracts count?

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson.
It was very long. I read and I read and I read and finally at the end I wondered why I read it.

Thanks for the warning.:thumbs_up

Ramayana, and I didn't finish :D

*sympathizes*

Flaws?

Joreads

06-24-2008, 03:00 AM

Anna Karenia I didn't think I was ever going to get throught it at times I thought my head was going to :flare: . But it didn't and I did, and it was well worth it to.

coolestnerdever

06-24-2008, 01:46 PM

Gone With the Wind- over 1000 pages, and one of my favourites. So far.

slobone

06-24-2008, 02:22 PM

Well, I've completed three volumes, or about 1600 pages, of The Story of the Stone, but I still have 700 pages to go -- does that count?

Saladin

06-24-2008, 08:58 PM

The Brothers Karamasov 988 pages in norwegian.

icandoit

06-24-2008, 10:00 PM

oh, to me, a tale of 2 cites - Charles Dickens , and still reading it. I am not a person can easily stick to fiction :( i tend to read short story :D but now i am trying to love fiction . Its a good way to have good vocabulary ^ ^

Erichtho

06-25-2008, 05:59 AM

Loike

06-25-2008, 06:45 AM

Either The Brothers Karamazov - which is the best novel I've read to date - or Anna Karenina, which was actually quite disappointing. I don't know which one is longer? xx

antonia1990

06-25-2008, 07:04 PM

Gone with the wind (1024 pages)

Did I win? lol

antonia1990

06-25-2008, 08:39 PM

Haven't heard of it. Do you like it so far? Is it a good read?

stlukesguild

06-25-2008, 09:06 PM

In Search of Lost Time is considerably longer.
Haven't heard of it. Do you like it so far? Is it a good read?

Certainly far longer than Gone with the Wind (which can't even surpass War and Peace, Les Miserables, or Clarissa in terms of length... to say nothing of quality). Also far better. Arguably the best novel of the 20th century. It may be the longest I've read. Although I'm "browsing" through Gibbon's Decline and Fall of Roman Empire... which may be comparatively verbose.

antonia1990

06-26-2008, 05:50 AM

I should try and find it. Thanks! :)

kasie

06-26-2008, 02:52 PM

Are you counting A la Recherche du Temps Perdu as one book? I always think of it as a series of individual books that belong together to make a whole. Or is that because of the translations I've read?

NickAdams

06-26-2008, 05:20 PM

Gone with the wind (1024 pages)

Did I win? lol

The winner would be the one who has read Henry Darger's The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, which is 15,143 pages.

antonia1990

06-26-2008, 05:36 PM

The winner would be the one who has read Henry Darger's The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, which is 15,143 pages.

I wonder if anyone registered here has the patience to read that? I would admire them forever!

stlukesguild

06-26-2008, 05:46 PM

Nick... I don't know... that's a bit too long for a sexual fantasy... especially of the underaged variety.:eek2: It also has lot's of pictures. Even at that its not as long as Adolf Wolfli's epic autobiographical fantasy... the one in which he started out as good ol' Adolf Wolfli... became King Wolfli... then became Emperor Wolfli... and finally Saint Wolfli. That stretched some 45 volumes and covered some 25,000 pages:eek: ... including a couple thousand pages illuminated with images as ornately detailed and fantastic as the finest illuminated manuscripts.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/49_2_copy1_lg.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/62_copy1_lg.jpg

stlukesguild

06-26-2008, 05:48 PM

A few more Wolflis:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/01.gif

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/04.gif

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/wolflibook-1.jpg

kasie

06-27-2008, 04:02 AM

Pages that are all pictures don't count!

stlukesguild

06-27-2008, 09:36 AM

Pages that are all pictures don't count!

So that eliminates William Blake?

NickAdams

06-27-2008, 12:13 PM

kasie

06-27-2008, 04:48 PM

By all means read Blake - or any other books that are illustrated - but don't count the pages of illustrations as 'reading'! Only the text counts as reading.

NickAdams

06-27-2008, 07:17 PM

By all means read Blake - or any other books that are illustrated - but don't count the pages of illustrations as 'reading'! Only the text counts as reading.

What if it's not a visualization of the story, but the continuation of one and by not reading the image you lose continuity on the following page of text?

stlukesguild

06-28-2008, 12:00 AM

What if it's not a visualization of the story, but the continuation of one and by not reading the image you lose continuity on the following page of text?

Yes... doesn't Lawrence Sterne play with the very notion that the narrative can include more than text? Certainly Blake would have insisted that the image was just as essential to the "reading" experience as the text in his various "illuminated" books. What of a graphic novel like MAUS? What of Mallarme's Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/mallarmesmall.jpg

...or Apollinaire's Calligrams...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Apollinaire.jpg

...in which the graphic lay-out... the selection of fonts and scale are all essential elements of the "reading" experience? What of Finnegan's Wake or Lewis Caroll? Are we to imagine that the layout, the use of footnotes or side notations, the inclusion of musical notation, graphics, charts, chess board lay-outs are not an integral part of the experience of the book? What of Japanese poems by poet/artist/calligraphers such as these...

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/F19694.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/sotatsu.jpg

... in which the calligraphy and the visual appearance... the choice of materials, etc... all add to the experience of reading the poem?

stlukesguild

06-28-2008, 12:07 AM

Amazing! Can a facsimile be obtained?

I wish such existed. It will certainly be decades, if not longer, before the whole is properly documented and recorded and given anything approaching facsimile form. There are certainly any number of books on Wolfli's work as a whole, but I doubt that either Darger's or Wolfli's works will be really given the appropriate study for what they were as a whole for quite some time. Hell... I don't think they've even gotten through the entire trunk-cache of Pessoa's work yet. Unfortunately... just as with most of Blake's works... Wolfli's tome is no longer a whole self-contained work. It's worth far more to the greedy jacka** dealers if they split up such works and sell them off piece-meal to the highest bidders with little or no concern for the impact upon culture or the artist's intentions. Look at the recent incident involving Blake:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/16/arts/design/16blak.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

kasie

06-28-2008, 03:44 AM

I stand corrected - it was a feeble attempt at a joke.

stlukesguild

06-28-2008, 03:20 PM

I had presumed as much... but still, who knows? We already had a long and heated discussion about song lyrics and opera librettos as literature and I was very much against the notion of dissecting those works or suggesting that we look at the lyrics or librettos solely as texts (for better or worse) and offer an opinion upon their success (or failure) as poetry or theater when the artist's intention was always that the work be experienced as a unified whole.

wilbur lim

09-27-2008, 12:26 AM

The Complete Sherlock Holmes.I speculate it has over 1000 pages and it makes my head churned.

Nosajason

09-27-2008, 12:41 AM

Don Quixote. Although, it's technically two novels, since the second part came ten years after. I also prefer the second part.

kiki1982

09-27-2008, 07:26 AM

The Count of Monte Cristo
Les Misérables
and coming soon
The Vicomte de Bragelonne, sometimes split into 3 parts, apparently...

All around 2000 pages, depending in the edition.

They were all in French. Can I now double the amount of pages because of the effort?:p

Vincent Black

09-27-2008, 08:18 AM

The count of Monte Cristo 1243 pages narrowly beats Les Miserables with 1232 pages

mona amon

09-27-2008, 09:01 AM

I think Les Miserables. It certainly seemed the longest, LOL. War and Peace ran into three volumes in the edition which I read, and Don Quixote was also pretty long, and I'm not sure exactly how many pages any of these books are. Another 'Big Book' was The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. All very good books (though I was slightly disappointed by Les Mis) but I've only ever read them once.

book_jones

09-28-2008, 04:09 AM

Definately It and An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. Finnegan's Wake probably took me the longest to read.

I'm still waiting for those Henry Darger books to be published. I could probably spend years reading In The Realms of the Unreal. Of course it's got a bunch of pictures too, so there's probably like 14,000 pages of text. I can't wait!