Yeah, just looked and you're right. Turns out Order of the Phoenix was 766, so I think that's got the record for the longest book I've ever read.
That's because it's extremely short for a science fiction novel with as much depth and political intrigue as it contains.
@EFMingo - I suspect it's more a matter of what one uses for comparison. When I hear "long novel", I think of War and Peace, The Source, or Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian.
Longest Non-Fiction? The Bible. Longest Fiction? Hmm . . . Still reading Jurassic Park. I don't read actual books very often, mostly comics and video content. I should probably start reading other types of books more often if I want to improve my writing!
Longest single book? Stephen King's It. My copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy in one bound volume is longer, though those are three separate books.
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, unabridged. I don't remember how many pages, but well over 1,000. And the print was tiny, too. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand is also pretty up there page wise. I got a little bit into Atlas Shrugged before I stopped for lighter reading. She does go on, sometimes, that Rand.
Lord of the Rings, took forever to get through it. Thankfully, it was a class assignment or I would have just put it down and give up on reading it
Damn, I was going to say Lord of the Rings (had forgotten it's actually 3 books!) Then I was thinking Moby Dick or Camilla Paglia's Sexual Personae, @ 717 pages in paperback. Then I remembered. Yes, long ago, so long I can hardly remember it, I was visiting my dad in Dallas and there was nothing to do in his apartment, so I read his copy of Shogun by James Clavell. Amazon informs me the hardcover runs to 1312 pages. The first 3 books I mentioned above still stand among my absolute favorites, but when I read Shogun as a teenager, I found it pretty tedious. Can't say I really remember why. Let me try to list why I liked the other 3: LoTR: I love Tolkien's very poetic and mellifluous turn of phrase and the vivid landscapes that we see first tiny and off in the distance ahead, then they get nearer page by page until we're immersed in them, and they drop away behind. Other stuff too of course, but this is what really grabbed me. Moby Dick: Again largely due to the way the author turns a phrase, though very different from LoTR. It plunged me into oceanic depths of literary power that, though I often didn't understand, I found incredibly compelling. Sexual Personae: Paglia's writing is brash, opinionated, and usually brilliant, and by nearly equal turns also infuriating. But to me it seemed to rip the veil off the secrets of the universe. Some of them anyway.
I forgot to mention earlier that I, too, have read James Clavell's Shogun and his Noble House. They're approximately huge.
For me it would be my copy of Clive Barker's Imajica, clocking in at 1136 pages in total. And it's still one of my all-time favourite fantasy books, only rivalled by Alison Croggon's The Books of Pellinor (5 books, of more normal length).
Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy has some longer entries. Also A Song of Ice and Fire series. There is also Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and I've begun reading the books proper of Lord of the Rings too.
There are five?! I thought there were only four! Wait... maybe I'm an idiot... *quick google search* Google says four. Do you know something extremely important--is there a fifth? I love those books.
Oathbringer (book 3 of the Stormlight Archive) by Brandon Sanderson comes to mind. I haven't read a lot of classics. They seem to be some of the longest books out there. I remember trying to read Hugo's Les Miserables but I quit after some characters ducked into an old building during a chase scene and he then decided to regale me with the history of that building's bricks. Or at least that's how I remember it. I tried reading Moby Dick, too, but ended up feeling like I was reading a how-to guide on whaling. It's hard to recall the length of the books I've read since I read a lot of omnibuses and what-not. If you see me reading in public, it might look like I'm reading one giant novel but it's probably a trilogy or something. Also, you can't really judge the length of a book by page count since it depends on if it's paperback, large paperback, hardcover, etc. It's all about word count.
The main storyline consists of 4 books (The Gift, The Riddle, The Crow and The Singing), and then there is a prequel about Cadvan called The Bone Queen.
I read LOTR in one volume. I made it halfway through the third book before I gave up. To be fair, I was eleven. I also made it about 9 books into The Wheel of Time. They all merge into one after a while.
I haven't even tried to delve into Les Mis, but have read Hugo's Hunchback, where he also tells parts of the story through the history of the architecture. I actually dug it quite a bit, as I did Melville's how-to guides and lengthy inventories that help build a detailed image of 19th century whaling. True, but how does one find the word count on a book that's not digital? I suppose you can google it.
I haven't even tried to delve into Les Mis, but have read Hugo's Hunchback, where he also tells parts of the story through the history of the architecture. I actually dug it quite a bit, as I did Melville's how-to guides and lengthy inventories that help build a detailed image of 19th century whaling. True, but how does one find the word count on a non-digital book? I suppose it can be googled.
I'm partial to long books ...you get more bang for your buck, and your adventure in that world will last longer. However, I'm not usually aware of word count, so I couldn't say which is the LONGEST book I've ever read. I know my favourite Dickens novel, David Copperfield, seemed quite long, but that might be because it follows him from early childhood to manhood, etc. It was a saga contained in a single volume. I also read (and liked) Gone With The Wind, which was also a long book. My own novel is long. And the novel written by our own @Lew, The Eagle and the Dragon, is also long ...but EXCELLENT. (I've read it twice, not counting beta time.) I've read all of Michener's books, and loved them. But, to be honest, they read more like history books to me. Not a minus at all—they were very very palatable history books—but it did make me see Michener's novels as not quite novels. They didn't seem to have an overall story arc to them, or characters who lasted throughout, but the books were more or less a recorded history of how a place evolved. The short-term characters were, for the most part, just there to illustrate the era they lived in. There are a few books (like LOTR) that have been amalgamated from trilogies, simply because of printing issues. Along with LOTR (my favourite book of all time) I've also read and re-read Nigel Tranter's Robert the Bruce, which was originally issued as a three-book trilogy. It's a big tome, when gathered into one volume, but, like LOTR, it makes story sense to do so. It's also a 'history' novel, but one that focuses on one particular character—so there is an arc, of sorts. I have to confess to not having (yet) finished reading War and Peace. I did start it a few times, but got too sidetracked by keeping track of all the same-name characters. It seems to be a feature of Russian novels in general. I have to confess to liking these stories better when they've been filmed, because the confusion about characters doesn't exist when you can actually SEE them. Moby Dick? I really do need to read that one. Heck, I'm an English major (American) with a BA to my name. It's scandalous that I've managed to avoid the Great White Whale for so long. "Call me Ishmael." How could I resist that oft-quoted perfect opener? But I have resisted it ...for many many years. Shame on me. Moby Dick is on my Kindle, though. Along with War and Peace. So maybe someday....
Atlas Shrugged (~645,000). It was fairly entertaining, though I've always thought that The Fountainhead is actually a better work of literature. The former is unnecessarily verbose, with entire chapters devoted to monologues by the characters! But the settings in these books are certainly unique. I don't think I've picked up any other books that quite fall into "Business fiction" in the same way that Rand does. She makes the struggle to "make it" as an architect with rather unconventional tastes so interesting. Honorable mentions: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (~360,000) and Oathbringer (~450,000)
If I read Rand, I read it for the storytelling, I don't read it for the injection of her philosophy. A lot of people I know kind of elevate her books into a status of life-changing literature, but to me, it's just a good story. No need to give it more than what it is. All the power to you though if you wanna be an Ellsworth Toohey.
The Brothers Karamazov. Still one of my favorites, but it should have ended sooner than it did. Dostoevsky was a sentimental man, and some of the scenes he wrote are straight out of a soap opera. The ending falls into that category. I started War and Peace, but Tolstoy decided to focus on the least interesting character for the first 200 pages (Nokolai Rostov). Got bored. Les Miserables will be the next long one I read, whether I get back to W&P or not. A long book I do not recommend is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. One of the two main characters is, if you'll forgive the phrase, a Gary Stu. Everyone loves him and he's good at everything, his only flaw being that he loves his country too much. I always have a note card handy for that reason. I write the names of the characters, brief descriptions, and map their relationships with the other major characters. It's not as great an imposition on the pleasure of reading as it sounds.
Dune. I don't care if it's multiple books. It reads as one, and I read all seven books, day and night, in a week. Obsession.
