Do you shy away from long books?

[grotto]

As a counter to the thread, (what is the longest book you have read), I thought I would ask, how many of you shy away from long tomes?

I know I do. I know I have had some experiences with so called classic literature that just seems to drone on and on with endless description of trivial scenes and events that I start getting really annoyed in their reading. For instance, Moby Dick, the endless rambling descriptions for me takes away from the enjoyment of reading. A recent book I was reading in which I literally threw the book, ran on and on with a description of walking in the rain in the dark! I get it! It’s raining! Move along please! 52 pages of this was torture! Some of what seems to be defined as classic, for me seems to be of these vain, endless ramblings, over done detail that doesn’t allow my imagination to take over.

I’m also someone who reads every where, so it gets annoying carrying some of these books around with me. I did recently buy “The Idiot” however; I’m looking forward to it as I like Dostoyevsky, but have shied away because as I have said, most of his books are well, how should I say, long. We’ll see.

Any other opinions?

[Mark F.]

It depends. I don't like getting bogged down in a book for too long, so if I know I won't have a lot of time to read I pick shorter novels, plays, poetry. When I have time to read I pick up longer books.

[ClaesGefvenberg]

As a counter to the thread, (what is the longest book you have read), I thought I would ask, how many of you shy away from long tomes?

Not me... How thick the book is does not interest me in the least, and I never even think about it.

/Claes

[Scheherazade]

Sometimes, if time is an issue, I do worry about the length of a book but not usually.

Also, I wonder if the book is worth the effort.

[semi-fly]

Not really. Though I find some longer books to run on at times which could contribute to me dropping the book for an unspecified period of time. For others I would imagine they have started reading longer book, completed them out of spite but eventually give them up in lieu of a shorter read for a similar reason.

[MissScarlett]

I'm not a fast reader, so I would expect myself to shy away from long books, but in truth, I love "big, fat books." I'll sometimes shy away from shorter books, feeling that I'm not getting enough for my money, which is silly, really. If the book is well written, then length doesn't really matter.

[kelby_lake]

I love short books. If a book is too long, generally I think it's a mark of either a convoluted or self-indulgent writer.

[Emil Miller]

An interesting question grotto that has several facets. Some of the classics that you mention having read may have been written in the days when some publishers paid their authors so much a line; which caused them to overinflate the book in order to maximise their profit. Many people, like myself, will read a book, whatever its length, if the author is one of their favourites. A good example in WS Maugham's Of Human Bondage which weighs in at over 1000 pp whilst the majority of his work, discounting the many short stories, are between 250 - 300 pp . A short book can say just as much, or even more, than a long book depending on the author; JBI said a very prescient thing recently in connection with The Geat Gatsby when he commented that it is a 150 page novel that carries the weight of a 500 page book. Then there are those readers who would normally shy away from reading long books but feel duty bound to do so because of their classic status and plough on regardless of the length of the work. War and Peace and A la Recherche du Temps Perdu fall into this category. I very quickly gave up on Proust and have no inclination to read War and Peace but if there were another long book by, say, Emile Zola, other than those that I have already read, I would certainly read it. Your dislike of Moby Dick has been echoed by others on this forum and for much the same reason, but although I haven't read it I am pretty sure that I will not be reading The Idiot either, which your original post says you are looking forward to reading. For having read Crime and Punishment, The Gambler, and The House of the Dead, Dostoyevsky's much longer books hold no appeal for me.

[grotto]

Thanks Brian Bean for a good response. As far as “The Idiot” goes, oh well, we will have to see, the jury is out until I start reading it.

I have noticed that some of the shorter novels I have read, (under 250 pages) have really stuck with me. The story move along and allow me to ponder and imagine as I read. There are short works that I remember years later as if I recently read them and a few I reread because I really look forward to them the second time. Not so much with longer works, I have never reread a longer book. I think too, reading a short work gives me the incentive to keep reading it, I have longer books and find myself looking at it like work at times. Then again, my experience with long works is excessive verbiage, so that may be why I get bored.

[LitNetIsGreat]

How longs a piece of string?

I mean it completely depends upon the book/books in question. The practicalities of my life at present do mean that I would potentially shy away from a long novel if I didn’t have to read it. Right now with the stuff I have to read and write about I only have time to read poems or really short stories, and even then I feel somewhat guilty, thinking that I should be going over more course material instead.

When I am completely free to read what I want in the summer – oh the glorious, glorious summer – then it doesn’t really concern me, I take each work for what it is, not for the amount of pages it contains. You can’t really read verse in the same way as easy prose too, at least I don’t, verse is much more dense. Take Paradise Lost, it’s about 300 pages in my edition but is that the same reading as a 300 page novel, I would say not?

[teashi]

It's more the writing than the length of a book that's off-putting. It feels like fat books are more likely to have droning, bloated writing that gets in the way of the story. Even though I didn't much like The Old Man and the Sea, I read it through because it's a short book. Things like Gone With the Wind, Moby Dick, Bleak House.. I'd rather avoid them.

[kiki1982]

Never!

I used to be careful about the size, but that was in school and I needed to fit books in between the ones I had to read for school.

Now I don't care if I read one for a really long time.

Other than the amount of pages, something really boring of only 100 pages can become really long while something of 1000 can read like nothing.

Personally I had a problem with Dickens' Little Dorrit. It was just too long. Sometimes ranting on about the Circumlocution office, 'the bosom' of Mr Merdle and the feelings of Clennam that would have been 'if he had not told himself not to fall in love'. It is funny once, funny twice, but by the third time it smells indeed like 'I want more pages, because I get paid for it'. It just doesn't engage. I think I ight try A Christmas Carol again, at Christmas time of course. The first time I read it I didn't really understand everything. It is shorter so it should technically put everything that was in Little Dorrit's 600 pages in 200 (or something?).

I have found that shorter books are much more densely written and mostly engage more thinking. But then again in long books authors have time to expand wider ideas like intrigue and battle between several feelings. It really depends on the style of the author I think.

What I really can't stand, or very rarely, is an author who writes books ofthe same size (there are a few in Belgium like that). It just tells me that the author in question does not develop each story as it comes, but rather as he wants it (if you know what I mean).

[Bandiceet]

As others have mentioned, being lost in a good book can be enjoyable.

I have never really kept clear of a book purely on its length, I recently talked myself into finally reading Oliver Twist, because it was about time I caught up on the literature. It took me longer to read that novel than it does for me to read something easily twice or three times the volume in pages.

To me, my deciding factor on reading a book is whether it "catches me in" on the story with in the first chapter or two, or roughly the first one hundred pages.

[Carrolb2]

I would love to read longer books. My biggest problem is I don't have time. The only time I really have to read is when work/school is slow and even then there isn't much time for it. I won't read a book that I can't finish in a few days just because I know if it's longer than that I'll get busy again and have to put it down for a week or two. By the time I get back to reading it I'm either not really into the story anymore or I've forgotten whats going on. Someday, if/when I finish school hopefully I'll be able to tackle some longer books.

[mono]

Sometimes, if time is an issue, I do worry about the length of a book but not usually.

Also, I wonder if the book is worth the effort.

This says it all for me. I will typically disregard a book's size, but ask if the book really seems worth the time spent . . . ? I have read Moby Dick, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, almost all the works of Dostoevsky, everything by James Joyce, Remembrance Rock, Gravity's Rainbow, Critique of Pure Reason, a 2-set anthology of American Literature from colonial times to present, the complete short stories of O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant, and Mark Twain, and the complete poetry sets of Longfellow, Percy Shelley, Byron, Pope, Lawrence, Keats, Neruda, and Ginsberg, all of which had a ridiculous length, but I regret neither.
I have read some larger books, 500+, that I regretted, like Tolkein, often times for previous schooling, but it ended up only heightening my senses, and distinguishing my tastes.
I certainly agree with a lot of what others previous to me have said, that a shorter book may have the weight of a 600-page book, and may also take an equivalent amount of time, while doing a critical study. Many Greek and Roman plays and poems have taken some time for me to read, primarily due to the immense amount of research required to understand all the footnotes and fill in the gaps.