What looong books did you love?

15 years ago

After reading Kelly's reference about War and Peace I reflected on how much I love lengthy books that you can wallow in for a long stretch of time. My last one was The Pillars of the Earth. Just curious if others have a similar longing and what books have fit the bill for you? wig

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carolyn_ky
15 years ago
Hawaii and Centennial by James Michener
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
...and Ladies of the Club
In This House of Brede
Make Way for Lucia which is all 6 Mapp and Lucia novels bound in one-about 1200 glorious pages.
The Autobiography of Henry VIII
Little Women
The Potter books-I read the first 5 all in one lump, and the 6th and 7th qualify as looonnnggg.
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Greater Perfections - looong 'frou-frou' post...
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Yeah, I know about the Word problem - but I noticed that Word has several Web page save options. So I saved the file under various options and checked what they looked like in Preview mode. I took the one with the least nonsense and fixed the nonsense in the GW text box. But all that other nonsense appear when it got posted! So clearly the Word Web options are not a solution!! To make it easier to read, I'll copy it here and edit it in the box - hopefully that will work... ------- I have finished reading - and re-reading (!)- Greater Perfections The Practice of Garden Theory: by John Dixon Hunt. I was rather baffled by it after the first reading - it’s one of those books where the sense of it is heavily obscured by the dense academic prose! But you get the feeling that there is something there you should better understand... So I read it again, making notes of the statements that felt particularly significant. To a large extent, that still leaves me scratching my head because I get conflicting messages about what he says is trying to do vs. what was understandable to me as to the points he is making. So, I'll review here what I gathered from reading the book, and Ink, you can tell me how far off-base I am and what it really all means! I like the quote that generated the title of the book: When Ages grow to Civility and Elegancie, Men come to Build Stately, sooner than to Garden Finely: As if Gardening were the Greater Perfection. (Francis Bacon 'Of Gardens, 1625) The same quote was the source of the title for Frank Cabot's book about his Les Quatre Vents garden, which I read just before the book by Hunt. The term 'garden theory' in the title is the first mystery - clearly he's not talking about design principles in the sense most commonly referred to in this forum and other usual garden/landscape design sources. 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(He needed a MUCH tougher editor I think!) He defines architecture as exterior place-making and that landscape comes into being as 'the creative coupling of a perceiving subject and an object perceived'. He repeatedly through the book stresses the importance of mediation of the physical environment as a reflection of how an individual or society conceives of its environment - 'Not simply a place made but a place that we register as having been made'. In that context, a garden then is a landscape's most sophisticated, concentrated version. But concentrated does not mean just multiplying or adding things to a site; subtracting things can result in concentration by leaving the site carefully focused by removing extraneous and distracting elements. 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From his review of historical gardens, he concludes the presence of the three natures that is more importance than the sequence of them - i.e. that it’s not necessary that they be arranged as 1,2,3 or 3,2,1 (depending on your view point) relative to the house. He feels 'Modern writings... have generally neglected this view of gardens as part of a larger landscape'. He sees the three natures concept as important in moving away from seeing nature as an ideal, standard or model, giving greater importance to topography of the site, and by recognizing the gradations in the mediation in the landscape urges a more subtle adjudication of landscape architecture than the habitual 'formal' vs. 'informal'. Closely related to all this is the comment 'A ubiquitous feature of garden-making in all cultures has been the inclusion of references within the site to other places, events, and themes. I shall call this re-presentation.' 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Ah, summer reading-my favorite topic. Well, except for autumn reading. Or winter reading. Or spring reading... This summer, alas, I got lost in Westeros. Although I haven't seen the tv version, I decided to give A Game of Thrones a try, since the reviews of both the show and book were so strong. Fantasy is not a genre I ever read but I figured what the heck, if I didn't like the first chapter I could just move on. Oh my. I started GOT on my summer beach vacation, then snapped up the next 3 books on Amazon and just finished A Dance with Dragons last night. What an incredible saga! The author created such an vivid evocation of a medieval world, which he based on the York and Lancaster era of British history. The characters, the plot, the intricacy of weaving together storylines, totally addictive. For a non-fantasy fan, the magic is woven into the plotlines in such a way that it is integral to the story. 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twobigdogs
15 years ago
Oooo, long books that can trap me for days are my favorites!
Gone with the Windsors
Edward Rutherfurd books
James Michener books (Except for The Novel...couldn't get into it.)
The Historian
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
The Studs Lonigan trilogy - James T. Farrell
The Agony and the Ecstasy - Irving Stone
Forever Amber - Kathleen Winsor
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Anthony Adverse - Hervey Allen
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
All of the Harry Potters
The Count of Monte Cristo
Les Miserables

Keep 'em coming! I'd love a LONG list of LONG books!
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rosefolly
15 years ago
I wouldn't say I like long books any better than short books or books of any particular length. I like books that are the right length, that is, full of as much detail and incident as the plot and theme and their development require, and no more. The best long books fit this description, as do the best short books.

Having said this, I have enjoyed many long books. LotR of course, and M.M. Kaye's Far Pavilions, and Le Guin's The Dispossessed are three that come to mind. There have been many others over the years.

Rosefolly
J C
15 years ago
I was hoping I could get at least one of my favorites in before it was mentioned, but I am late to the party! No surprise as I found out about most of them right here at RP. The Far Pavilions is my most recent favorite. LotR and Harry Potter, of course.

Wait, I can get in one - Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles by Margaret George qualifies as massive at 880 pages, but this book flew by like a bedtime story. Hmmm, may have to re-read soon!
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
Siobhan, George also wrote The Autobiography of Henry VIII. I have Mary on my tbr shelf-I'll have to move it up!

Three lloonngg biographies I loved are:

Matriarch about Queen Mary
Winston and Clementine A collection of their letters edited by their daughter.
Six Wives-the Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey. Yes, he is obnoxious on television, but he writes a good readable biography.
bookmom41
15 years ago
I happily wallowed in a number of aforementioned books, but will add Lonesome Dove and Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy to the list.
kren250
15 years ago
I love long books! Especially during the winter when I can curl up for hours and read while stuck in the house with the kids.

A few of my long favorites that I don't think have been mentioned yet:

Sacajawea by Anna Lee Waldo

Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber

George RR Martin's Fire and Ice series (4 books so far)

Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham

Anna Karenina

I also have several more on my TBR list I hope to get to someday!

Kelly
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
I second Penman-all of them. Sunne in Splendor is fat! The Welsh trilogy will cause you to neglect kin and hearth, and you'll cheer Maude's cleverness in When Christ and His Saints Slept.
Now if she'd just be healthy enough to be able to finish the Henry and Eleanor trilogy.
vickitg
15 years ago
From many, many years ago ... don't know how they'd stand up today:

The Prize - Irving Wallace
Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
Exodus - Leon Uris
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
deborah47
15 years ago
Kren- This is a book on my shelf that I bought and for whatever reason, never read, thanks for the reminder (and recommendation) I'll go dust it off. "The Crimson Petal and the White" by Michael Faber

Sarah- The Fountainhead is a book that has really stayed with me, I find that I think about it from time to time, worth reading more than once.
veer
15 years ago
I'm with Paula (rosefolly) on this one.
I like an author to produce a well-written story of just the right length so I get a beginning, a middle and an end.
When young I read and enjoyed Gone With the Wind and similar tomes, but don't think I could face stuff of that length these days.

Don't any of you feel that modern writers seem to equate long with good quality? Perhaps a prize 'The Blue Pencil' could be offered to the writer who produces the most bumf thus enlarging his carbon-footprint and hastening the end of our planet.
Personally I think they must be paid per word . . . or maybe it is just that the price of paper/printing has come down.

BTW I don't consider many of the above-mentioned books to be long. :-)
Amy Camus
15 years ago
I have that book, Make Way for Lucia, and every summer, I bring it out and read at least one or two of the books. I never grow tired of Lucia! If I remember correctly, Watership Down was a long book, but I loved every moment of it.
bookmom41
15 years ago
Vee, what do you consider long? Long, for me, is roughly 800+ pages.

I loved Penman's books, especially the Joanna trilogy and The Sunne in Splendour. Thank you, Rosefolly, for mentioning Far Pavilions; I somehow confused it with A Passage to India which I'm reading right now and not particularly enjoying. Back to the library I (and Passage) will go.
lemonhead101
15 years ago
I tend to stay away from long books as I find them too intimidating. I wish some of them would be available in several volumens (such as the Historian and And Ladies of the Club...) as I would like to read them but get scared off by the actual length and heft of the book.

I did read "Lonesome Dove" though and am curious that people think it's a long book. I guess it is when you think about it though.

I like middle-size books myself. For example, I went to the library to check out "The Great Deluge" - holy cow. That's long so back on the shelf it went.
gabriell_gw
15 years ago
I read Pillars of the Earth when it was first published and remembered really enjoying it. Friends gave me a copy for Christmas, they bought it because it was an Oprah book.I have re-read it and loved it all over again. It is very long.
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
I consider anything over 700 pages to be lloonngg. However, a book like The Turn of the Screw by James, at about 300 pages, took me a long time to read because of its denseness-so number of pages is only one measure. How much close attention is required to understand and appreciate the nuances is another- A Woman of Substance is 755 pages, and while it is a rollicking good beach book, it wasn't a long read. One eye on the book, one eye on the kids at the edge of the water worked just fine.
I also am inclined to start a long book but if it doesn't come up to snuff within the first 100, I will stop reading it-investing the time to finish a bad long book is not something I will do.
I agree with Vee, too: as I look at my list, most of my favorites are not new books, but were written at least 15 years ago-some a lot longer! There are fewer extraneous words and less obvious 'cleverness'.
I'm at the point of my life that I can face a book of 1000 pages with the knowledge that I have the luxurious choice to use my time to read it. I freely admit that I will choose to read over just about anything else, including household chores. I've grown my children, whereas some of you are still in the middle of that intense responsibility-I did not pick big books then. I picked short cozy reads that were restful and escapist. Yesterday at the library, the mother of twin toddlers and a rising 1st grader was checking out books-about 20 for the kids, and one light romance for herself. When the 1st grader asked why mommy was only getting one book, mommy replied that she USED to read a lot more. I promised her that before she knew it, she would have that time again-and a long book came in handy while waiting for a newly licensed driver to come home just under the curfew wire. She winched! "Not ready for that!"
woodnymph2_gw
15 years ago
Two more I liked:

"Mists of Avalon" by Marion Zimmer Bradley and
"Kristin Lavransdatter" by Sigrid Undset.

If I really get into a book, I cannot think of it as long. I recall I liked "Green Darkness" but have no idea whether it was long or just medium in length. For me, writing style, characterization and setting is all.

Be it long or short, if it does not grab me by the 2nd chapter, I've not the patience to persist.
veer
15 years ago
cece for me anything by Henry James would be considered long.
bookmom asks what I consider to be 'long' and it is difficult to put a figure on it page/word wise.
I am a regular visitor to our Mobile Library (almost never visit the branch in town) and notice the thickness and weight of those 'chick-lit' tomes by Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel and Penny Vincenzi and, at my advanced aged I couldn't even be bothered to pick one off the shelves, the size alone puts me off.
On the other hand I have a couple of history books on the go equally heavy in weight and much more so in content yet, maybe because I can delve into them now and again I don't find them off-putting or intimidating.
Surprisingly although I should have more time for reading, with the two older 'children' off our hands, I don't find it to be the case.
For the last few days I have only had time to read a few pages when in bed, time seem to be taken up with doing jobs in the garden between the rain showers . .. unlike you in the US we are having a coldish/damp summer . . . and I'm still consumed with vague feelings of guilt if I am reading rather than 'doing'. :-)
dynomutt
15 years ago
Here are some blasts from the past in terms of long books that I liked:

Shogun -- James Clavell
Tai-Pan -- James Clavell (not THAT long, really)
Noble House -- James Clavell (a LONG book by any stretch of the imagination!)
blossomgirl
15 years ago
The Winds of War-Herman Wouk
The Name of the Rose-Umberto Eco
The Stand-Stephen King
Gone with the Wind
lemonhead101
15 years ago
Long books I would like to read but only if they are put into a multi-volume set:

The Historian
The Great Deluge
And the Ladies of the Club...
Far Pavilions
The Crimson Petal and the White

There were two LONG books I read and enjoyed but will have to go home (I'm at work right now) and check their titles and authors. They were good, but wow they were long.
cindydavid4
15 years ago
> like books that are the right length, that is, full of as much detail and incident as the plot and theme and their development require, and no more. The best long books fit this description, as do the best short books.

Yep. One of my biggest complaints about an otherwise good book was that it should have ended about 50-100 pages ago...

My list unfortunately adds no new ones:
(and I consider 800+ to be long)

>Far Pavillions

>any of Penman's

>Mists of Avalon

I probably will think of a few more.
smallcoffee
15 years ago
And Ladies of the Club
Green Darkness
Mists of Avalon
The Peaceable Kingdom by Jan de Hartog-historical fiction about the Quakers in U.S.
reader_in_transit
15 years ago
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Of those mentioned above, Little Women, Exodus, and The Name of the Rose didn't seem long to me, though the last one was dense.
vickitg
15 years ago
Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible was long, and could probably have used some judicious editing. But I still enjoyed reading it.

Steinbeck's East of Eden was medium-long, but it's one of my all-time favorites.
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
lemon-I don't remember if it was somewhere at RP or if it was a patron at the library where I volunteer, but this person would buy the paperback versions of long books at used book sales or at secondhand stores and cut them apart into sections for her mother, whose eyes were still sharp enough to read regular print, but whose wrists and hands were arthritic. This mother did not like audio books.
J C
15 years ago
I used that trick with Lonesome Dove. At the time I was traveling extensively and a taking a book of that size was out of the question. I was a bit queasy about cutting up a book, but it was a cheap paperback. But I taped it back together when I was done - it is still on my bookshelf!

I planned to do the same thing to Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, but my fifty cent booksale copy is a hardcover - not sure I can destroy that!
dynomutt
15 years ago
Wait, if we're counting non-fiction books as well, then I'd have to add :

American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880Â1964 (800 odd pages)
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874Â1932 (700 odd pages)
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932Â1940 (900 odd pages)

(all of the above by William Manchester)

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century -- Barbara W. Tuchman (700 odd pages)
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
Wig said >lengthy books that you can wallow in for a long stretch of time, so nonfiction can certainly qualify.
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
Well, my copy of Little Women is over 700 pages ;-)

The first time I read it, I was about 9 or 10 years old...so it qualified as a looooonnnnnnnngggggg book and I did love it. Still do, 40+ years later.
lemonhead101
15 years ago
Finally remembered to look up the names of the two long books I read:

Testament of Youth - Vera Britten (good autobio)

The Power of One - Bruce (Brice?) Courteney

Both of these lengthy, but worth hanging in there. I enjoyed them.
dynomutt
15 years ago
Doh! How could I have forgotten ....... David Halberstam's books!

Let's see .....

The Best and the Brightest
The Fifties
The Reckoning
The Powers That Be

(Man, how could I have forgotten? I must be getting old ....)
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
Had to shelve one at the library today-I remember loving it at the time I read it about 20 years ago, but had completely forgotten it-Through a Glass Darkly. Darn near injured my wrist today when I picked it up one-handed!
Chris_in_the_Valley
15 years ago
Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle published in 3 novels of about 900 pages each. They've since been published in paperback in, I think, 9 volumes. Great romance in the classical tradition of grand adventure. The novel moves from the Great Fire of London, to Isaac Newton's lab at Cambridge, to Versailles, to the Gates of Vienna seige by the Ottomans, voyages around the world (wherein I learned just how important accurate timepieces were to navigation) to the Massachusetts of Franklin's youth.

His Cryptonomicon bounces between WWII and present day and weighs in at 900+ pages. A thriller about computers and international finance.

Amazon is taking pre-orders for A Dance with Dragons but the last time I checked, Martin hadn't made an announcement on his website.
rouan
15 years ago
Lemonhead,

You may be in luck with The Far Pavillions! It was originally published in two volumes. In fact, I have a 2 volume set on my shelf right now. :)
carolyn_ky
15 years ago
I've just started Cryptonomicon due to Chris INV's post. I don't love it yet, but it is LONG, so maybe I'll get there soon.
april_bloom
15 years ago
Pillars of the Earth, Gone With the Wind, Lonesome Dove and Mists of Avalon come to mind.
chickenpea
15 years ago
Wizards First Rule by Terry Goodkind, Chesapeake by James Michener, Intensity or Watchers by Dean Koontz his older books were long(er) but like Steven King's the more popular he got the shorter his books got. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel.All are in my permanent library....
lauramarie_gardener
15 years ago
I'm bewildered...Many of the books above aren't long at all; just medium size (e.g.: "The Fountainhead" -- about what? -- 450 pgs).

I love rosefolly's June 17 entry. You can also apply that principle to movies!

OK, my favourite long books (i.e., long enough to "wallow in for a long stretch") are:

"Les Miserables" (full, un-edited edition)

That's all I can remember -- right this minute (of ones I liked a lot).

I did read "Atlas Shrugged" -- every last page. Took over a year. Very, very heavy going. I can't see why I was so taken w/it (at that time -- for a few yrs). Seems dry as a stick now. Whereas I read "Les Mis" only 4 years later, but that just glows on in memory.
kkay_md
15 years ago
Some of the longer books I've read and enjoyed include Melville's Moby Dick, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Dickens's Bleak House. (Those are the ones that I actually noticed were looong!)
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
laura-I think long is a relative term-someone with toddlers running around may find a 400 page book lengthy-just no time to get from start to finish. I think it is more the depth of the story plus number of pages-can you wallow or not?
lauramarie_gardener
15 years ago
I've taken ages to read some classic novels that were only 400-600 pgs long. Yet, they don't count as Looooong books just because I took a looooong time to read them! :)
georgia_peach
15 years ago
The Fountainhead is over 700 pages, so I think it qualifies as long. Some might like the thought of an abridged version with abridged speeches, though.

I agree with some others. I think the density of the text, rather than the actual number of pages can make a book feel long or simply take a longer time to read.
twobigdogs
15 years ago
Also, print size could be a factor, as should the average length of books being published. If the industry average is about 300 pages, then anything longer, for example, could be deemed a long book. And the amount of white space on the pages can be a factor. I just read The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch and thought it was fantastic, but there wasn't much dialogue so the pages were margin to margin text which made that book, at about 550 pages, seem MUCH longer. Maybe we should define long books by their weight???

And as a mom, I agree with cece...kids definitely can make a big difference in how many pages get read in this house! And dogs...

Then there are books that are too long and those that only seem like they are too long. That's one of the great things about reading! A book that takes me forever and a day to painfully slog through could seem like a fun skip in the park to others. It's a thoroughly subjective hobby.
PAM
ccrdmrbks
15 years ago
laura-I think wig's original perameters ask us to tailor a list that fits each individual's situation for the purpose of general discussion and title sharing:

>lengthy books that you can wallow in for a long stretch of time>what books have fit the bill for you?
We are all looking for titles in which we can get lost.

You can't just go by title-various editions have different page length-the difference between my hardback (376) and paperback (648)versions of In This House of Brede is appreciable.

I can read fiction very quickly...a long book by page number isn't my only perameter, because I can fly through shallow fiction that is enjoyable but not gripping at about 100 pages an hour. So depth of prose defines "wallowing" time for me much more than how many pages I need to flip.
kren250
15 years ago
For me, personally, I don't consider a book "loooooong" unless it's over 800 pages. But that's just my own opinion, others of course will have different views of long. I read a lot of what I would call "medium" sized books (400-800 pages), so for me to call a book long it has to be longer than that, or almost all the books I read would be "long".

Re: The Fountainhead, I tried reading that one when I was 12 or 13, and got about half way through, IIRC. I thought I was quite hot stuff for attempting to read it;-). I had read in People magazine that it was some movie star's favorite book, so I thought, "Boy, it MUST be good!". I think I did like it at the time, but I'm sure most of it went right over my head. I haven't tried an Ayn Rand since; the thought of it no longer appeals to me.
woodnymph2_gw
15 years ago
PAM (2bigdogs), I had to laugh when I read your post re kids and dogs can make a difference how much gets read, etc. I can't speak for kids, but I can tell you I've had 2 Samoyeds who ate books, when I put them down. The first dog tried to eat almost anything in the house that was not nailed down, so he became an "outdoor" dog. I was reading out in my back yard and set down a paperback book for a moment to go indoors. When I returned, the book had been gutted! Luckily, it was one I did not care about very much. The same dog ate 2 studded harnesses, one half of a hooked rug, and lived to the ripe old age of 14....
domrepgrl
15 years ago
Definitely "The Brothers Karamazov." Also, some of the above mentioned like "The Historian" (especially since I live in Europe now - although I think she could have cut back in the letters a bit - or at least tried to give them their "own" voices), most anything Mitchener (love his research), anything by Dumas....
lemonhead101
15 years ago
I am reading "The Book Thief" by Marcus Zarsus (sp?) and it is a long book to me. I am only halfway through and it's already at nearly 300 pages. The story is great, it's not boring at all, and I love the post-modern way he has designed the plot, but it's a long book for me.

Enjoying it though.

What looong books did you love?

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