I read Atlas Shrugged in university, and don't mind admitting I did fall under the spell for a few weeks. Even though I thought the book itself was awful, yeah .... I must admit there was a short time when I walked around thinking 'yeah, this capitalism thing's alright'. Though, Rand was self-consciously writing in the Russian philosophical style. The world she's writing about is supposed to be a heightened, intentionally unrealistic version of our own to make her points more explicit. That's why she wrote dialogue like 'Oh, Mr Rearden, I hear you are so utterly selfish and wear only the best clothes! Tell me - how do you do it?' ... yeah, I know, bad writing is still bad writing, but that's why it's that bad. I think the longest book I've ever read is probably the collected works of Aristotle, 1,500 pages. Was it worth it? Some of it was. I couldn't make heads or tails of his thoughts on the soul 'De Animo', and his writing on logic was a chore to get through. Poetics was ace cakes though!
Yeah it is. That aim to play on and expunge the emotions of the audience was the key I needed to understand drama.
Middlemarch closely followed by The Stand and The Brothers Karamazov. LOVED Middlemarch at the time, though I remember very little of it now. The Stand is amazing. Love the bros k as well! Last two Game of Thrones books are up there as well. I hated Feast for Crows. Dance with Dragons was bad, but the 'Reek' arc was one of the best.
Uh, do multi-volume books count as one? If so, it's the Gulag Archipelago. If not, it's the complete works of O'Henry. Man...it is really something else to read hundreds of short stories, all based on the idea of setup and twist. Most of the stories were good, but it was like running in circles with the constant stories of similar structure.
Thunderhead by Neal Schusterman, I think it was close to 650 pages but I'm going to read A little life soon and that's also a big book, maybe 800 pages or so
Gone With the Wind when I was 12. Yes, it was good, but it haunted me for years. I was afraid I would end up like Scarlet.
Probably James Michener books ...bestsellers, despite their length. The longest one I read was Hawaii, clocking in at 451,820 words. Centennial is probably more the median length of his books, at 315,000 words (more or less.) I think Chesapeake was my favourite, but I really liked them all. I really did like his books a lot, and learned from them rather painlessly. He was quite the guy, with, reputedly, a photographic memory for details. Literally. He could look at research material once, and that was it. He remembered even the data, never mind the overview. Probably why he was able to write about so many different subjects. To put it in perspective, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind clocks in at around 245,000 words. Michener was actually a rather amazing human being. I really respect him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Michener
Yeah. Not sure if that or War and Peace is longer, but I have three translations of the latter. I once read War and Peace on my phone exclusively in the bathroom. Took over a year.
The Chinese classic, Romance of The Three Kingdoms. The problem with that edition is that they (possibly) translated it straight from Chinese into English so there were hilarious lines that were lost in translation. Here's one line I remember: "... and the king called him 'daddy'." (or something along those lines.) I'm sure its beautiful in the original Chinese but I had to put the book down and laugh for 3 minutes straight when I read that line. That book was an absolute monster to read. Around 1.8 cm thick and had so many pages it was distorting the thickness of the book because the book's dimensions were pretty small. And that was only Volume 1. I struggled through a considerable amount of it before I gave up. Also, anything and everything by Dan Brown. I love the plots of The Lost Symbol and Angels and Demons although I hated Robert Langdon as the main character because he is as bland as water.
Oooh let's see. I think Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings was the longest book I've ever read! The book as a standalone was very good, I enjoyed it, and as the first book in a series it certainly left me wanting more. After continuing the series, hmmmmmm, I'm hoping it's just a very very slow burn that will be worth it in the end... Second longest I believe was The Count of Monte Cristo, the unabridged version. I almost want to read the abridged version just to see if it packs the same punch, but you know what, off the top of my head I'll say... Yes! Worth the read.
The longest book I read was Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace. I remember when I was in college and decided to read this famous Russian novel by the great writer. Edubirdie recommended this novel to me. I read this novel in its entirety, but it took me a very long time. Constant comments, French insertions in the text distracted me from reading.
The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius. Dear lord, I thought that book would never end. It must've had 10,000 pages written in Calibri size 8; amazing how all those pages fit into a relatively narrow cover. Required reading for a world history class my sophomore year in college or I'd have thrown it across the room long before I was done. Okay. I did throw it across the room before I was done, but had to pick it back up and finish reading it. Nah, must've been at least 20,000 pages. Endless.
I read Orwell's Essays And Journalism and found handling a thick book to be awkward to hold....reading so much by one author is a bore and left me sarcastic in it's merits...that man enjoyed poverty.
I don't read these kinds of books, but my friend finished reading the first four instalments of the Stormlight Archive. He's even aware of how bad the writing can be at times and thinks that the books are just too long for what they cover. He still finished them. These books seem to be atrociously lengthy. The first four amount to 1,694,361 words. That's 4,546 hardcover pages. I couldn't imagine reading anything that long, ever. Why spend so much time on a mediocre fantasy series when you could read so many more important and varied works? There's apparently supposed to be ten books in this series... Insane.
