I love Top Ten Tuesday and rarely post for it–but this week’s Book Blogger Hop question didn’t appeal to me, so I thought I’d see what was happening on Tuesday, and it was a pretty good one! Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, with a new topic each Tuesday. This week, it’s the longest books I’ve ever read.
Off the top of my head, very long books that come to mind…
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (though I admit I skipped past large portions of the history)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (a little skimming, much less though)
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien (which are not actually that long, they were just built up in my head as massive)
- The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (32 hours on audiobook, I kid you not, and he kind of lost focus about halfway through)
- The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (I read this 800 page book in a week for a book club meeting that I ended up missing due to a confusion of dates. It was sad. And I never read the rest of the series because I couldn’t figure out why this one took 800 pages!)
- Winston and Clementine: Personal Letters of the Churchills (they were married for…60 years? So that adds up to a lot of letters, even for people who were together most of the time.)
- The Bridei Chronicles by Juliet Marillier (long historical fantasy books, with 100+ page climaxes…they get intense)
- The Mrs. Quent Trilogy by Galen Beckett (fantasy books inspired by Bronte and Austen, delightful but big)
Since I put some series on here, let’s call it good at eight. The only two that seemed longer than they needed to be were The Eye of the World and The Pickwick Papers. All were fairly serious undertakings, but that also makes them some of the most satisfying books I’ve read.
What are the longest books you’ve undertaken?
I had The Lord of the Rings second on my list with about 1077 pages, but The Holy Bible made top spot with 1127 pages 😀
I’ve read War and Peace, which generally gets listed at around 1400 pages. I started to skip the treatises on war by the time I was halfway through, but I enjoyed it. But I skipped the last 40 pages as the story was done and the rest was philosophising about war again.
I got through it one summer vacation, with plenty of time on the beach. 🙂
One of my longest was Ben Hur by Lew Wallace. General Wallace did a tremendous amount of research for this book, and, unfortunately, it shows in that the book is longer than it needs to be. The movie with Charlton Heston is much better, in that it focuses on the best and most essential elements.
Stormlight Archive Series by Brandon Sanderson (Way of Kings 1007 pages, Words of Radiance 1087 pages, Oathbringer 1248 pages)…”read” these on audiobook, HIGHLY recommend. Series is still going.
The Outlander series😊
Lord of the Rings😊
A few of the Harry Potter books😊
Winds of War/War and Remembrance
The Clan of the Cavebear😒
Captain From Castile 😊
Prince of Foxes
The Thorn Birds
The Eye of the World (I agree with you, though I plowed through several before I gave up)
Black House (definitely NOT for everyone, but I liked it)
There’s more, but I can’t remember them off-hand.
Gone With the Wind. Most books I read are at least 300 pages, so I’m not intimidated by length if the story or subject is engaging.