Here are the lengths of the Malazan books (original series; I'm on Toll the Hounds): 1 Gardens of the Moon 768 pages 2 Deadhouse Gates 960 pages 3 Memories of Ice 1187 pages 4 House of Chains 1040 pages 5 Midnight Tides 960 pages 6 The Bonehunters 1232 pages 7 Reaper's Gale 1280 pages 8 Toll the Hounds 1296 pages 9 Dust of Dreams 1280 pages 10 The Crippled God 1200 pages
I thought Anna Karenina was pretty great (at least, the translation I have) and I think it would be worth finishing.
I don't know are these the longest ones, but... NRSV Bibble 916 + 251 pages Finnish Bibble 1938 version 928 + 306 pages Finnish Bibble 1992 version 804 + 260 pages David Pawson Unlocking the Bibble 1343 pages Definitely.
The Bible? Not sure if it's the longest I've ever read. Read it several times but not front to back lately. Usually I just read the New Testament or do studies. Love it. The Stand unabridged - probably my fave Stephen King even though I felt a little bummed at another sloppy ending. Gone With the Wind - One of my first grown-up reads I was twelve and someone said, you're not seriously going to read that? I took it as a challenge. Quite different from the movie. Liked it. Goddess a Marilyn Monroe bio when I was also twelve - 688 pages. I loved Marilyn Conspiracy theory books. Right now I've got Marguerite Young's Miss MacIntosh, My Darling - 1,198 pages. It's so dense I've been reading it out of sequence.
The Emerald Encyclopedia by James Norcliffe. I was like nine at the time, so I don't remember how many pages, but the paperback copy was half a foot thick on 8x11ish paper. It's either that or Journey to the West. I recommend both.
I liked Goddess, too. It's probably one of the most well-researched of the Marilyn Monroe books and was highly influential in my wanting to write non-fiction.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It's 645,000 words, according to the Longest Novels list in Wikipedia. Was it worth it? As a teenager, sure. As a mature, thinking adult, no way. Still, it's kind of giddy and swashbuckling, even though it's utterly preposterous. Rand just charges ahead into absurdity looking neither right nor left, knocking down straw men with ease, while never once taking on a serious, intelligent question. All the heroes are mighty paragons of virtue and all the villains are sniveling, despicable cowards, who, fortunately for the heroes, are utterly and comically incompetent. You'd think this book would be a barrel of laughs, but Rand is so tediously humorless that even that isn't possible.
OMG. My husband owns that book, and by the look of it, HE has read it from cover to cover as well. He was last seen reading a section on boning a chicken, if memory serves me right. He's that kind of a cook, my Jack. Larousse's Gastronomique is a real doorstopper ...but not so much as our Oxford Unabridged Dictionary (in two huge volumes, in a box set format, complete with magnifying glass) that he won for doing something wonderful back in his youth ...I forget what. That IS a doorstop in our house. Okay, sometimes I do use the magnifying glass....
I own what I think is the "concise" Oxford Dictionary, which is a measly 1730 densely packed pages. I can only shudder to imagine the sheer girth of the unabridged edition.
It's a doorstop that could literally kill you, if it fell on you from a great height ...say about half a metre.
I checked into it, and what I have is actually just called the Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd revised edition) at more than 2100 pages. That's three kilos of book. Still, must come across as a pocket when compared with yours.
Not sure what the longest book I have ever read is (some feel much longer than their actual wordcount) but the longest which kept me eagerly turning the pages was James Clavell's Shogun. I think it's around 430k words, but just keeps you going and it's disappointing to get to the end!
TBH, I find a tome like the unabridged Oxford to be basically unusable. It's too full of stuff you don't really need in an ordinary lifetime. Look up the meaning of a word? Good luck. You'll be at it all day, WITH a magnifying glass, and still won't figure it out. My husband was sniffy about my Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (a good-sized single tome, but in print that doesn't require a magnifying glass) until he went to use it. He came away saying, 'Well, that's very well organised! And it's got pictures.' The trouble is, of course, it's an American dictionary, so it's a little less usable when it comes to British meanings and spellings (although they often do reference these things.) My go-to British dictionary is the Oxford Pocket. But I also have been meaning to get a Collins. In fact, maybe I'll go order one now!
Damn. That's the sort of tome you ought to read only with the aid of a lectern. What do lecterns go for these days?
Actually, this is the edition that normally does require a lectern. The 'selling point' of this particular edition is that it was split into two volumes, so it could be used without a lectern. Aye, right....
Yes. We have it propped against the dining room/living room door because we like to keep that door open most of the time.
Haha now that is original. A book as a doorstoper. It must be one hefty book. I must look it up to see what it looks like.
I have a one-volume version of that OED. It's in a slipcase with a magnifying glass, too. I like it - it doesn't just give meanings of words, but lots of usage examples and whole histories of words. Besides, having it in the room with me makes me feel like a Writer with a capital W. It emits Write-a-Rays, wonderful radiation that triples a writer's vocabulary instantly!
Is that the one where they've managed to fit something like 9 pages of the OED onto a single page of the condensed version?
I read it in my second year of college. At the time, her "message" sort of resonated with me as a different way of thinking, but even at 19, I realized that it was crap as a novel. A year earlier, I had read The Source, James Michener's longest novel (about 1,200 pages in paperback). I was riveted the entire time. I've also enjoyed Tolstoy's War and Peace.
