For me it's the Lord of The Rings or the Bible.
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For me it's the Lord of The Rings or the Bible.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by AimusSage
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.;)
This is turning into a serious contest of one-upmanship.
If I read the Adelaide Yellow Pages, does that count? :lol:
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.
Harry Potter! just kidding.....
The dictionary for sure
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.
Phonebooks are nice too.
Gawd! I was trying to control the urge since the thread started but now that Tal has brought it up:Quote:
Originally Posted by Taliesin
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!
Harry Potter and the OftP. It was 870 pages.
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.
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.
If you read The Goblet of Fire I think it was larger than the Half Blood Prince ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by jakobin
Anyways the largest book I read was HP and the Order of the Phoenix.
LotR
A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth).. it's around 1500 pages.. haven't finished that one yet, though
LOTR here too, a single-book edition with some silly 1100+ pages...
War and peace
The longest book I've read - about 5 inches.
Sorry, I couldn't resist - I've got the Wilde in me.
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.
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.
Lord of the rings, I'm still trying to read it, or the banned and the banished series, I'm still reading that too.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
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.
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"
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.
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...
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:
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.
For me, that's a yesQuote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
longest would be Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy, nearly 1400 pages :D :D
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.
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. ;)
probably "War and Peace", altough I'm not sure- maybe "Quiet Don" is longer
I think the Faerie Queene, though maybe the Bible or LOTR is a little longer.
The anatomy of melancholy by Robert Burton!
Please, who else had indulged in this book? I'd really like to know!
aye, me! :nod:Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey
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.
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.
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
Quote:
Originally Posted by Schokokeks
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
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."
Victor Huog Les Miserables I think...but don't quote me on it.