We're talking about one volume book only, not sagas, right? Well, I've read the Bible a few times, but I don't think it matters in this thread. I really have no idea about length because I didn't use to think about it. From your examples, The count of Monte Cristo is the longest book I've read. Didn't feel like it, though. But if we're talking about sagas and series...
I've been a practicing Christian since I was 19 and I'm 31 and I haven't read it all yet. Decided to and have read through genesis up to 1 samual. Ive read the new testament several times over and Job and a lot of the minor prophets and Ecclesiastes. Just a lot of the old Testament ive never read but I'm glad im doing so. Pretty captivated with the stories of king david when he served under Saul.
The Game of Thrones books, with A Dance With Dragons being the longest at 1056 pages. Enjoyable for the most part, but a bit of a slog in places.
I'm curious as to how many words that amounts. It also depends on typography (text/space on the page, etc). Still, 400.000 words? 500.000? Anyone read it in ebook format and can say for sure?
Thank you. Still not longer than The Count of Monte Cristo: 460.000 and change (English translation).
Just a baby by compassion with Tolstoy's War and Peace at 587,287 words... but that may not count because although I've studied I've not actually read it all the way through
I tend to lean on it not counting. I've studied The Mysteries of London, which rounds off over a million words, but I certainly haven't read that monstrosity end-to-end.
An English translation of War and Peace by Leon Tolstoy. I started reading copies of it checked out from public libraries dozens of times and lost interest each time. After downloading a free copy from Amazon three years ago, I decided to get my money's worth and slogged through the entire 1000+ pages. I got my money's worth and one of the largest dividends in recorded history of reading.
I read a different version than the KJB, but it was the same length. I wish to God that I'd had Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible when I read it, because it would have made things a whole lot clearer.
I thought it was "Infinite Jest," but wiki informs me that both "Atlas Shrugged" and "Les Miserables" are longer. Of the three, though, IJ was definitely my favorite. Not an easy read, but immensely rewarding. I don't pretend to have understood everything in it (Wallace's weird, convoluted structure is a challenge), but what I did really stuck with me. There aren't many books that can make you laugh out loud on one page and then chill you to the bone on another.
I read and immensely enjoyed War and Peace, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Les Miserables. I read Atlas Shrugged a few times but did not consider it enjoyable. But by far my favorite books to read or exercise with would be Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I think he averages well over 700 pages per book.
War and Peace and The Lord of the Rings. Moby Dick would be in the list, except I skipped the "technical" parts (the same way my mother says she skipped the "war" part of War and Peace.
Melville is a great author, but he certainly has a problem with arbitrary information. I promise you, we don't need to understand all the aspects of his research in the whaling industry to understand his novel. I've been fighting with getting through that one for years, but it always beats me.
For some reason I enjoyed the part about collecting ambergris, but couldn’t stand learning about the different types of fish in the sea... That being said, Victor Hugo has a large chuck of a chapter devoted to the economic value of shit!
I guess I'm the only one who enjoyed all the details about whaling in Moby Dick. They really brought the story to life for me, but then I love a good maritime tale in general. I felt the same way about the Horatio Hornblower novels. That chapter was the undisputed heavyweight champion of info dumps. And way more interesting than I would have expected.
Which story was that in? I read The Hunchback, and don't remember it being in there (doesn't mean it isn't), though there was a nice section right at the beginning about architecture and what it reveals about the civilization that created it. I definitely enjoyed that. Not at all. I remained deeply absorbed all through the book, several times. Occasionally some of the whaling arcana did drag a bit, but even then I still found it fascinating, as weird as that sounds. Some sections did slow the story way down, but I enjoyed them all the same. It felt like all the piling on of detail was important to get across the flavor of those days when whaling was the world's chief industry. And it really wasn't a plot driven story. What drew me in so deeply was something under or behind the story, a certain dark mysterious force that comes through those strange inventory chapters as much as through the plot itself.
Les Miserables. There's an entire chapter that's basically just a description of the sewers beneath Paris. Yeah, there's a real ominous feel that pervades the whole thing. It's such a grand, epic tragedy. The guy who wrote the screenplay adaptation summed it up best. "Shakespeare wrote Moby Dick, using Melville as a Ouija board." – Ray Bradbury
War and Peace, long time ago. I had good memories of both reading it and the book itself being worth a read. One of these days I'll get a decent copy of Moby Dick (or reading glasses...) and finish it. I can't understand why I always pick it up, enjoy it, then for one reason or another I'm driven somewhere else.
