Longest book you've ever read.

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.

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

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

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)

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Originally Posted by metal134

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

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Congrats! That is a milestone.

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Originally Posted by Babbalanja134

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

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I like that!

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

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

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.

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Originally Posted by grace86

Congrats! That is a milestone.

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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". :)

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

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Originally Posted by Babbalanja

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Babbalanja

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.

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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:

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Originally Posted by Aunty-lion

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.

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

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Originally Posted by kenikki

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

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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!

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...

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.

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