I'll go along with you on that. I hate those big books. Too often they are padded out with descriptions that add little to the story. I like to finish a book before I go to bed. Can't do it with the big ones. Holding one of those suckers with arthritic hands isn't much fun either. I have to prop them up in my lap on a pillow.

I have often wondered if authors, after they reach a certain level of popularity, are paid by the page rather than by the book. It sure seems like it. Just look at the Harry Potter series.

I've thought the same thing about A Suitable Boy too. The size is ackward, but mostly for me they are so big they are just downright intimidating to begin! Once I start one that size I know it's going to be awhile before I get to read anything in my "stack". I have had Memoirs of Cleopatra sitting on my shelf on loan from a friend for one solid year. Guess I should give it back.

It is a problem, I admit. I was pleased to find out that Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is available as a boxed three-volume set now. Unfortunately, I found that out AFTER I'd read it....

Stephen King is someone I'm sure is paid by the page. His books could be so good, but nowadays he needs an editor with a hacksaw...!

My wrists and elbows just can't do it anymore-I love long books, but do need the pillow on the knees or to sit at a table. So I save long books for the winter when the pillow serves as insulation as well!
My other pet peeve is paperback books that will not open completely without rupturing their spine-the ends of the lines disappear into the middle and you either have to take the book apart and read it page by page out of a box, or guess what the hidden words are. I'm reading one right now-and it wasn't cheap, either....frustrating.

I agree, ccrdmrbks, (can't figure out the cc) , I just force them flat and if the pages fall out so be it! Very frustrating.

I can handle a door stopper, I just have to be willing to read it at a table. I do think however that many books, even ones I love, could be better edited.

But I like the idea of puting those into volumes. I found Jonathan Strange rather daunting. I could handle it smaller bites.

In the books that you typically read, how many pages do they have?

Most of the books I read probably are around 4-500 pages, but if a book is keeping my attention I read 6-700. I rarely read much bigger books because often they are so poorly edited that I give up midway through.

I've tried reading on my stomach, like I did when I was a kid, and had to have help getting out of that position when my back seized up! Getting old stinks!
I will tackle any length, but prefer the 4-500 page size for the longevity-I like to be in the middle of a book.
karalk-I'm cece- the whole thing is "cece read more books" without the vowels. Once upon a time about 18 months ago we all had to reregister for some reason, and it wouldn't accept our old names-and as I'd been cece here for years I just added to it.

There are books that have to be fat. JONATHAN STRANGE is a good example -- it is Dickens-like, and so should be long.

Dickens was paid by the word, so he had no incentive to be terse. J.K. Rowling is famous for her fat fantasy, so she cannot now write a slim volume. Maybe after she finishes off Harry, she can write shorter. Fantasy in general has a expectation of trilogies and fatness -- look at Tolkien, Eddings, and so on.

Brenda

I too find the fat books off-putting, partly because they make reading so uncomfortable but also because I quite simply don't want to spend so long on one story unless it is excellent.

Rowling's earlier, thinner books are much better than the later fatter ones. She lost me 200 pages into the 5th instalment, and I have no desire to go back to the saga now.

A Suitable Boy has been on my bedside table for over a year and is collecting dust in company with The Quincunx by Charles Palliser. I used to be able to read heavy books in bed by turning from one side to the other depending on whether the heavy part was down by the chin or up because I always lay on the side. I can't do that any more since I have developed one-sided vertigo (don't know if that makes sense in English?) and have to stay on my left side all the time. I ought to move these books and read them sitting up but I'm tired of the sight of them.

I read parts of the 5th Harry Potter aloud to my grandson and rushed through it because of all the blank space in the dialogues. "OK" Hermione said, on one line. "Do you think so?" Harry asked on another line, etc ad infinitum

oooooh a place to vent about bindings! Yea!
I too find paperbacks frustrating when they won't open without breaking the spine and then the pages start falling out.
I don't like big heavy books but will read them if need be.
I don't care for the typical sized hardback either as the print is usually large and spaced out and makes me wonder if they are just trying to make it look like more book than it is.
I don't like the trade sized paperbacks, too floppy for my favorite reading position which is lying in bed with the book propped up on two pillows. I like my comfort. Plus the trade paperbacks' pages and covers bend over and get messy quick.
It's a wonder I read at all, you're thinking, but truth is I will read any kind of binding as long as the story is good.
Now recently I have come across smaller fatter hardbounds and these,imho, are perfect. Very compact and comfortable.
Next time someone gives me a BN gift cert. I want to buy some classics I saw in small mass market-paperback-sized hardbounds.

cece -
" I've tried reading on my stomach, like I did when I was a kid, and had to have help getting out of that position when my back seized up!"

That just hit me as hysterically funny. I must have skimmed over that comment first time around. Thanks for the laugh!

My mother has fibromyalgia and she complains she can't hold big books. Even relatively thin books in larger bindings are beyond her. I don't have that problem, but I do sometimes feel wrist strain when reading one of these "bricks". It has occurred to me that it might be sensible to buy paperbacks and cut them into suitable parts to make them easier to hold. So far, my respect for books has prevented me from doing so, but with books like "A Suitable Boy" and "Jonathan Strange" I just might have to. I am determined to buy the three or seven volume version when I get round to renewing my copy of "The Lord of the Rings".

I chopped the book in half! (A suitable boy).
OMG, I felt like I was murdering a person! But I'm glad I did it. I first removed the loose cover. (When I return it to the shelf it will look normal).
Then I slit the outer binding, the loose column, don't know what its called, straight down the middle. Then I sawed with a large knife through the binding at the juncture of parts 11 and 12. Its staying perfectly together in two parts.
Wow, can't believe I did that. I hope its not the start of a career in book slashing! You'll be seeing me on Oprah.
I'd better love the book after all this trauma!

Brilliant solution! I admire your courage in making that first slash. I feel your pain.

I did the same with our telephone book. I seldom look at the business section which makes the whole thing hard to keep close to the phone. I cut off the white pages and the cover. That part stays near the phone. The yellow pages go in a seldom used drawer.

Good Reading!

publishers really are missing the boat-because I'd pay a tad more for a book I want in two manageable hardback pieces that I would for one "brick"-for instance the Lucia books, which I have all in one volume-over 1000 pages, and in a set of paperbacks that have fallen apart. I'd love 2 smaller volumes-or even a lovely edition of all six, hardback, boxed. Also ...and Ladies of the Club would benefit with a volume-izing-even the paperback is almost too fat to be read comfortably.
karalk-it WAS hysterically funny-even though I was in PAIN, my DH and DS were laughing even as they tried to help-and I kept saying "don't make me laugh-it hurts!" I've learned to time it now-I can feel the muscle tightening and shift before I am incapacitated.

LOL Karalk: the start of a career in book slashing!

I don't mind a big book, I just read it at the kitchen table in a special slanted book holder, or else in my lazyboy chair, propped up on a fat pillow, but it never gets to go to bed with me. Only manageable paperbacks and thin hardcovers have that privilege. However, big and unwieldy or small and handy, almost nothing gets finished these days if I don't really enjoy it, and the feeling that a book has been padded goes a long way toward spoiling it for me. I still haven't gotten back to the last volume of Harry Potter, and maybe that is the reason. I could have done without the political parts of A Suitable Boy, but didn't feel they were thrown in as padding. (I think that those of you who gave up on it are missing a great book--but of course, tastes differ.)

I agree about books that won't let you open them enough to read comfortably, and let me add to that: books with huge margins (coffee table books excepted). The publisher may think that the margins give an aesthetic edge to the book, but to me it is pretentious and a waste of trees and my money.

Karalk, very funny, and I've never thought of doing that. Guess I was raised to view books as "sacred" objects. In reading this thread, it came to me the real reason why I have always stayed away from "And the Ladies of the Club", despite the fact that many have recommended it to me. I've actually had sprained wrists from holding on to heavy books....

karalk, I stand in awe of your courage to slash a book. It makes perfect sense although I never thought about it, until now. I will never turn you in to the FBI-BCD no matter how many books they offer me. :)

I like big books when the content and writing quality justify the length. I'm sad to say that this is only occasionally the case.

Paula

Hmm, sounds like there might be a market for the iLiad after all. I don't have any problems with fat books, but then I don't have arthritis or fibromyalgia. The only book I've had a problem reading is my copy of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili which I had to read at a table. As far as Harry Potter goes, the fatter, the better.

Vote on how big the next Harry Potter should be here. I chose the last on the list.

me too-and we're winning!

I was rather frustrated that Neal Stephenson's 3 tome, 2700 page The Baroque Cycle is being published in paperback as 9 separate novels and the covers don't admit to being part x of y. They give them all new names. Okay, maybe they used names that were the names of Part x of the original novels, but who remembers? I certainly didn't when I picked up one thinking it was a reissue of an old novel I'd missed by Stephenson.

I got thumb cramps from those and from the Clarke novel. That was when I went back to reading on my stomach., Fortunately instead of cramps in my back I get cats on my back.

I tried to train my cats to do back massages, but they wanted to be enticed by tuna and the oil kept sliding down my neck.

I didn't see a psychiatrist chiming in when I asked what people do for a living, but i think we need one here! LOL

Well, as long as the cats have been declawed, I don't see a problem...... ;-)

my cats don't need a psychiatrist- they are purrrfectly adjusted.

and front declawed, too.

I seldom buy paperbacks, as people have mentioned - hard to hold open when I'm reading - I like to lie on my side with the book propped up, and my cat (this has gotten to be a real routine with her - I time her - takes an average of 3 minutes to realize we are upstairs in bed reading, and she comes up from wherever she's been sleeping and crawls OVER my propped-up book to lie there beside me and knead the pillow and purr. Of course, I could never push her off - just hold the book up in the air to read. Jeesh! (she usually gets enough of this after about 10 minutes and jumps down but I'd be hard-put to keep reading if the book was too big or heavy!)

they do have "open book radar" don't they?

LOL, Scraphappy: One of my cats is always there on the bed before I get to it, and since I lie propped up on pillows, on my back, he is aggressive about purrupping and walking right up to kiss my face. Then he lies down right on my chest between me and my book (I having made room for him to come kiss me, of course) and I do what you do--hold the book up to read it. Fortunately, DH usually comes in pretty soon for the nightly 5-minute roughhousing with both cats, after which they are ready to lie down in a more convenient place.

Happy hour:
{{gwi:2117404}}

From a review of New York 2000:
At 1,520 pages, printed entirely in color (all previous volumes were black-and-white), the book is so big and so heavy that the editors at The New Criterion had to assign the review to one of the contributors who lived in New York so he could pick the book up at the office. Mailing the book could have bankrupted the magazine.

Also: That the book retails for a mere $100 (and is, at this writing, available for $63 from Amazon.com) is an example of an astonishing phenomenon of our time, namely the high-quality, finely printed, all-color, profusely illustrated book that is half the price of a book only half as nicely produced fifteen or twenty years ago. The key is in the fine print of the title page: "Printed and bound in China." The combination of new printing technology and overseas outsourcing has made books like this accessible to most readers. By contrast, New York 1960, which is shorter (1,374 pages) than New York 2000, and entirely in black and white, retailed for $125 in 1995 (which equals more than $155 in todayÂs dollars). New York 1960, published, like the present volume, by Monacelli Press, was printed and bound in Italy. Adding together the price difference, the size difference, and the change to color printing, and itÂs very nearly the case that oversize, copiously illustrated books on art and architecture have, in fact, decreased in price by half in the last ten years. Add in a typically steep Amazon discount, and quality books have never been more affordable in the history of mankind. Am I the only one who finds this to be one of the remarkable phenomena of our time?

It's even cheaper at Overstock.com: $58.95 and $1.40 shipping.