Anna Karenina ;)
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Anna Karenina ;)
I think the longest book I've ever read was 'Les Miserables' by Victor Hugo
A Dream of Red Mansions
（I just read short and simple English works)
Shogun by James Clavell. 1152 pages in paperback.
Les Misérables (1493 pages pb)
To be fair, I'm only 900 pages into it but plan on finishing it by the end of the week. I suppose the longest I've finished is War & Peace. I'm not counting the bible, though.
It by Stephen King. Although it has a lot of pages, it was a quick read.
It has to be the Bible! Aside from that, "The Dream of the Red Mansons" by Tsao Xuejin and Gao E.
War and Peace at 992 pages.
Les Miserable ~ Victor Hugo; 4 or 5 books at about 500 pages each...well worth reading the complete text!
and Josef K, good for you reading the full-length version. It is a tremendos book!
The Stand by Stephen King. 1141 pages. A great book overall with an infuriating conclusion.
lord of the rings 1, 2 & 3. it took me almost a whole year.
then gravity's rainbow. HUGE. and chaotic. anna karenina, yeah.
I would say "In Search of Lost Time" by Proust, if you combine all six volumes it is close to 3000 pages.. and then "Les Miserables" and "War and Peace" and "Gargantua and Pantagruel"
Atlas Shrugged
1168
And again, if you combined all three LOTR books into one massive book (as was J.R.R's original intent, if I'm not mistaken?)
I think I posted here before and I believe I wrote either The Bible (which I suppose isn't one but many books) or Tolstoi's War and Peace.
But I recently finished Milton's Paradise Lost, which at least felt like the longest thing I'd ever read. Honestly I think I'll wait a decade or two before I start on Paradise Found. Wondefully crafted but long neverthless.
Seven volumes for the Search of Lost Time (but maybe you're leaving out the most boring one - La prisonnière :D ).Quote:
Originally Posted by islandclimber
And you can add Le Tiers Livre, Le Quart Livre and Le Cinquième Livre to Pantagruel's adventures (I haven't read them, personally - stopped a the first two).
I think my longest must have been the three volumes of the Lord of the Rings or maybe War and peace. But I'm very intrigued now about the works of Adolf Wolfli, so I'll have to go to Berne to read all his pages :p (thank you wikipedia).
Yes of course, seven volumes haha... I forgot about that.. I read it a few years and I always think it is 6 volumes for some reason :p
I have read the first 3 volumes of G&P. the last two I never found a copy of (well to be honest I may have not put that much effort in :p) so I gave up.. I think I have seen all 5 online recently though.. so maybe I can go back to it again..
I cannot recall what the longest book I have completed was. But right now I am reading Stone of Tears by Terry Goodkind and The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan, and I cannot decide between the two of them which one is fatter but they are both tremendously thick. And both these books are the longest within each of their series, so of course I would end up reading them at the same time.
Bible : 1500 pages
Shogun (Clavell) : 1200 pages
Noble House (Clavell) : 1390 pages
Les Miserables (Hugo) : 1490 pages
I'm not sure really, but I guess the last book which really take me aback was Tolstoy's W&P.
In no particular order,
The Bible
Lord of the Rings
Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina
The Brothers Karamazov
Don Quixote
The Complete Illustrated Strand Sherlock Holmes
and currently, Les Miserables.
The Stand, also the biggest waste of my life, ever.
A long book for me would be something badly written, dull, flat lifeless characters and a pain to read however long or short it may be. I can think of plenty of books like that, e.g the da vinci code.
I remember reading a biography on Queen Elisabeth I by someone named Cornelia Wussowski (or something like that, can't be bothered to look it up). I think that was about 1000 pages.
The Complete Illustrated Strand Sherlock Holmes
1400 pages! How could I have forgotten!!
For interest and for sharpening my grasp upon the world around me, I read an Oxford history book from cover to cover, which dealt primarily with Classical Greece and Rome, and the book stood at just over a 1000 pages.
For fiction, i've read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1168 pages), War and Peace by Tolstoy (1388 pages), The Stand by Stephen King, uncut version (1233 pages), and The Bible (1152 pages in my version)
For non-fiction, the prize winner is "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" by Stephen Jay Gould, at 1343 pages, or the extended special edition of "The Descent of Man" at 1135 pages.
The Lord of the Rings
War and Peace.
Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy. And I've read it three times!
The longest book I have read was a 3 volume compendium of novels by Alphonse Daudet, the novels being: 1) Jack. 2) Le Nabab. 3) Les Rois en Exil.
The last two were brilliant but the first was contrived and padded to such an extent that when Daudet asked Flaubert his opinion of the story, Flaubert replied 'Trop de paperasse!' (Too much waste-paper).
The whole book including notes and appendices came to1512 pp.
Lord of the Rings, tried War and Peace didn't quite make it!
Probably Don Quixote
Other books have felt longer though.
lord of the rings
joseph and his brothers by thomas mann (if I remeber well. but, also, may be other titles as well)
Either Atlas Shrugged or Shogun
EDIT:
I think I win for single volumes. I just finished the (rather interesting) Urantia Book. 2128 Pages, unbelievably thick. It's an extension of Christianity for extraterrestrial beings!
The Bible varies alot. It tends to be around 1000-1100 pages but i've seen as many as 1336 pages (Old and New Testament) and as little as 801 pages (Old and New Testament)
If anybody wants a real challenge, read the "Yongle Dadian" Chinese encyclopedia with 11095 volumes compiled by 3,000 chinese scholars in the early 15th century (about 1100 pages per volume)
Both Don Quixote, by Cervantes, and Middlemarch, George Eliot, seemed to go on forever. My version of Don Quixote is only about an inch and a half thick, but the print is tiny. Middlemarch is heavy, in places, which may be why is took so long to finish.
The longest books I've ever read, in no particular order :
- A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, almost 1500 pages, paperback.
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Pevear/Volokhonsky around 1200 pages, hardcover.
- Don Quixote by Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman, around 900 pages, paperback.
The longest series I've ever read is the Master and Commander (Aubrey/Maturin) series by Patrick O'Brian (almost 7000 pages in total).
I love them all. I guess I'm just a sucker for big fat books.
I've read the Bible cover to cover, but I won't count that since I skipped several tedious parts (the genealogies, laws etc.).
The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes... Hardcover, 1132 pages
There are a few hefty ones that are on my "to read" shelf, including In Search of Lost Time, which is considered the world's longest novel by Guinness (It's broken down into volumes, but I believe it's roughly 4,500 pages).
Hmm, maybe we can have an argument for Eliot's The Waste Land.