This one gets me. I still don't know why it's even considered a single novel. It's like saying Harry Potter series is a single novel. It's seven books, each released individually at vastly different periods of time, with noticeable shift in writing between them. It was called a single novel simply for marketing purposes of the time. And for some reason, this still sticks today. For the negative of it. It's a positive deterrent to people, that hold it in awe and never dare to touch it, thinking it's some vast complex tale, when it just involves a memorable fairy cuck with mummy syndrome, and easily skipable blog posts about music, painting and whatnot that shorten the work considerably. Not to mention that it's language is easy and flowing, requiring no effort on the readers part.
11 months ago
Anonymous
There is thematic coherence through the whole work, and all the volumes are basically interrogating a single question which is finally answered in 50 pages of the last one
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Not to mention that it's language is easy and flowing, requiring no effort on the readers part.
There are many sections of incredibly dense prose, though you are right about Proust's general difficulty being greatly exaggerated by people who haven't read him.
God damn, I have a set of two books for it and the paper is barely thicker than Bible paper and they're both close to 1200 pages each. What are the dimensions on that bad boy?
The Count of Monte Cristo unabridged(1187pgs) was a snooze fest, and it made me hate the french. >get through some hundred pages of filler >the story is finally progressing >just kidding, here's a full page dedicated to describing this carpet down to its stitches >here's another page relating the trickling cold sweat on some random bystander's forehead
I hate the french and their overly pretentious purple prose.
I read a ~650 page Barnes and Nobles abridged version accidentally. I thought it was really good, but then I looked up a pdf halfway through and realized it was much longer. I bought it on a whim at B&N and nowhere on the cover or back did it say it was abridged. In fact, it said nowhere - not on the cover, back, inside pages, etc. - that it was abridged. Fricking Black folk.
I'm roughly 55% of the way through, and having to schlep through the section about Mitya has so far been a bore. I understand it's meant to detail the continued downward spiral that ultimately led to killing Grigory (at least I think he's dead at this point), but he's been so absent from the story thus far that I find it hard to care. It's a shame too, because the two chapters of "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor" that Ivan and Alyosha had were really engaging, but frankly I'm losing steam now and might just take a break with a smaller book so I can come back and not end up burnt out.
That whole section of the book is one of my favorites, I was also getting a headache when he has to go run stupid errands to get money but eventually it pays off at the end of that book (not the Brothers Karamazov as a whole, but that specific “book”).
In retrospect the whole book is necessary, even the slower parts, but I found the hardest part to get through was the murder mystery courtroom type stuff near the end that just drags and drags even if it is very engaging at points. Brothers Karamazov is one of those books that can seem boring at points but looking back the struggle was 100% worth it and you come to appreciate every sentence. If you take a break that is usually OK but don’t let it sit on your shelf for years, maybe two weeks at most.
Either Gibbon's Decline and Fall (in 7 vs) or Proust's RoTP (in 3). They're both single works, but not single books
Longest single book probably War and Peace
Probably the 130 chapters translation of the Shui hu zhuan, it was around 2500 pages. Currently reading Casanova's memoirs, it amounts to 3500 pages or so
Learned anything from Casanova? Skimmed over his wiki page, he was a suave bastard, but with money and a title which he couldn't have done without I'm sure.
Hmm
I'd say IJ or GR (my fav novel ever)
I'm about to pick up Los Sorias but I'm overwhelmed by its size
I was lucky to buy one of the limited 3rd and last edition with corrections and an additional chapter by Laiseca.
Shall I start it?
(Shall I translate the first chapters for IQfy?)
Reply and I'll answer
I'm reading it in spanish. The edition is "Siruela" which is the most complete edition, it comes with annotations about everything that a normal person wouldnt get about taoism and buddism.
If your version has 500 pages, then it's either the abridged version or the volume 1 out of 4
Nice, Im a spanish speaker as well. I have seen that edition before, didnt know that one was that large. In the book store I work at was a smaller version of the book, but your rec is alot better, thanks anon.
I guess Anna Karenina accounts for one, though I've skimmed over it tbdesu
Second place will go to Ulysses, I ordered the book on Monday and I expect it next week
"The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion" by Henry Darger. 15,145.
Right now I am 3/4 of the way through The Five Books of (Robert) Moses by Arthur Nersesian, which clocks in at 1505 pages.
I've read the unabridged Gibbon's Roman Empire, but in a 6-volume set.
Count of Monte Cristo and Infinite Jest are the longest.
Other fat boys I've read: 2666, 1Q84, Brief History of Seven Killings, Shadow Country, The Garden of Seven Twilights, The Sleepwalkers.
Fat boys I plan on reading before the year is out: The Salt Line (Youval Shimoni), Septology (Jon Fosse), The Man Without Qualities.
And one day I will finish ISOLT. Probably.
You mean a single volume? Probably Count of Monte Cristo. For single book divided in several volumes it's the Cambridge History of Latin America and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
He had to burn his diaries during the cultural revolution so everything was done from memory. there also appears to have been a whole ordeal when translating the text. Still, if even half of it is true then we can say that Mao zedong is easily the worst of 20th century tyrants, purely for who he was as a person.
depends.
if digital counts then the mahabharata (unabridged). its a bit over 10 thousand pages long.
but if only physical counts then i guess the bible.
Alan Moore's Jerusalem I think. Over 600,000 words. There are moments of brilliance but overall it's not worth it. He's a pretty good writer, but his reach exceeds his grasp
Oxford History of the French Revolution
By William Doyle
I see it's 500 pages on Amazon but I must have gotten a different version since mine was around 1300 pages.
Books start to become unwieldy around 900-1,000 pages. I understand that doing a single volume is (probably?) cheaper but I would prefer books of 1,000 pages to be split into two volumes. I have the two volume edition of War and Peace and it's much better to read that way.
Against the Day by Pynchon is over 1,200 pages, Infinite Jest by DFW is over 1,000, 2666 by Bolano is "only" 900 but it's excellent, Underworld by DeLilo is also 900, and came out in 1997 so not quite 21st century, but is very very good.
My Struggle - 1.37m words
A La Recherche du Temps Perdu - 1.27m words
War & Peace - 587k words
Infinite Jest - 578k words
Les Miserables - 546k words
The Count of Monte Cristo - 464k words
Don Quixote - 430k words
Brothers Karamazov - 354k words
Though I imagine very view people read recherche or my struggle as a single entity
I regret reading Solzhenitsyn's 1914-1917 series. >1914 is good as it has action and decent characters. Vorotyntsev, a colonel, sees the battle of Tannenberg from start to the finish from top (Meeting Alexander Samsanov and seeing the mess high command was in that led to Russia's defeat in Tannenberg, and Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich) to bottom (the peasant soldiers he fights alongside with like blagodaryev and some Cossack soldiers). Overall 7/10. There are flaws like introducing characters in the beginning who wouldn't be seen until later books, but it's alright >1916-1917 (book 3)
Ruining everyone and everything there ever was in the first book. Petrograd and Moscow become the focus and Vorotyntsev just cucks his wife, only to cuck that woman with another woman. All the potential that Vorotyntsev had is swept away as the story forgets about him and focuses on the naïve politicians who thought a revolution in a time of war would save Russia. It was awful reading these four books (the second one was 1000 pages and the third volume is split into three books) and boring.
I've read a few fantasy books over 1,000 pages, War and Peace, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov. However, I'm pretty sure the Bible, especially with notes, is significantly longer than any of these. Just the my lightly annotated RSV is like 1200 for the Masoretic texts and another few hundred pages for the Septuagint books. But I have a version without the Deuterocanonical books that alone is 2,600 pages.
If we count nonfiction then definitely The Story of Civilization, even though I'm only in The Age of Reason Begins. It's about 10,000 pages over all, more if you count The History of Philosophy (which I've read) and The Lessons on History (which I haven't)
While stylistically quite different, pic related is a quality expensive survey that picks up from the end of Napoleon and carries things to WWI.
You could probably even use A World Undone as your broad survey of WWI, but then I think you're stuck chasing down a bunch of divergent paths. Europe becomes increasingly less relevant and other areas increasingly relevant. Plus, the closer you get to the present the harder it is to course grain history.
Just got comparison, the Bible is 720,000 - 800,000+ words in English, plus another 130,000-180,00 words for the books not included by some Protestants. A Dance with Dragons, the longest Game of Thrones book is 414,788 words or 1,056 pages (Bible font tends to be tiny which reduces page count). War and Peace is 585,000 or so words in English. Infinite Jest is slightly less at 577,608 words. There are not many works longer than the Bible outside of multi-volume non-fiction. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a single work that is longer though, at 1.5 million words, although it's shorter than some study Bibles.
If you're using a study bible though this could easily be increased by 100,000+ words or more (e.g., the ESV Study Bible, which I don't particularly like, is 2,600 pages.)
If you count a commentary on the Bible as a single work those are among the longest in existence because they can often stretch 20 or even 30+ books.
Outside of loosely linked selections of the 1978 edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica, it's a toss-up between Montaigne's essays and Goethe's so-called autobiography.
The Memoirs of Saint-Simon, 8500 to 10 000 pages depending on the edition. Amongst the greatest, read too little outside of France given the influence he had on our literature.
Oh wait does unabridged Gulag count? Probably that.
If we count nonfiction then definitely The Story of Civilization, even though I'm only in The Age of Reason Begins. It's about 10,000 pages over all, more if you count The History of Philosophy (which I've read) and The Lessons on History (which I haven't)
Based how much was that set? Should have bought it when it was only $150
Probably the Bible. Other than that Don Quixote,The Illiad and the Odyssey or the complete Sherlock Holmes works by Doyle. Currently reading The count of Monte Cristo, and enjeying it very much.
Shike by Robert Shea was a fairly long read as I remember.
the Recherche in a single undivided volume
That exists? Photo?
jesus
This is mine. Santiago Rueda edition 1947.
What laptop and iPhone do you use?
Samsung, bro.
This one gets me. I still don't know why it's even considered a single novel. It's like saying Harry Potter series is a single novel. It's seven books, each released individually at vastly different periods of time, with noticeable shift in writing between them. It was called a single novel simply for marketing purposes of the time. And for some reason, this still sticks today. For the negative of it. It's a positive deterrent to people, that hold it in awe and never dare to touch it, thinking it's some vast complex tale, when it just involves a memorable fairy cuck with mummy syndrome, and easily skipable blog posts about music, painting and whatnot that shorten the work considerably. Not to mention that it's language is easy and flowing, requiring no effort on the readers part.
There is thematic coherence through the whole work, and all the volumes are basically interrogating a single question which is finally answered in 50 pages of the last one
>Not to mention that it's language is easy and flowing, requiring no effort on the readers part.
There are many sections of incredibly dense prose, though you are right about Proust's general difficulty being greatly exaggerated by people who haven't read him.
God damn, I have a set of two books for it and the paper is barely thicker than Bible paper and they're both close to 1200 pages each. What are the dimensions on that bad boy?
1q84
Infinite Jest
The Count of Monte Cristo unabridged(1187pgs) was a snooze fest, and it made me hate the french.
>get through some hundred pages of filler
>the story is finally progressing
>just kidding, here's a full page dedicated to describing this carpet down to its stitches
>here's another page relating the trickling cold sweat on some random bystander's forehead
I hate the french and their overly pretentious purple prose.
I read a ~650 page Barnes and Nobles abridged version accidentally. I thought it was really good, but then I looked up a pdf halfway through and realized it was much longer. I bought it on a whim at B&N and nowhere on the cover or back did it say it was abridged. In fact, it said nowhere - not on the cover, back, inside pages, etc. - that it was abridged. Fricking Black folk.
That's why you never buy a B&N classic, they're fricking terrible. All public domain with little to no serious editing or proofing.
My first 'classic' book I ever read. Got through it all but really, only the start and end are great. The long middle is boring zzzzzzzz
>Dumas
>Purple prose
Anon, I…
Order of The Pheonix
1300 pages of Friedrich Gottfried Klopstock probably
1200-1400 pages but I can't find it to check
Picrel.
What a bore.
What a waste of my time.
I'm roughly 55% of the way through, and having to schlep through the section about Mitya has so far been a bore. I understand it's meant to detail the continued downward spiral that ultimately led to killing Grigory (at least I think he's dead at this point), but he's been so absent from the story thus far that I find it hard to care. It's a shame too, because the two chapters of "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor" that Ivan and Alyosha had were really engaging, but frankly I'm losing steam now and might just take a break with a smaller book so I can come back and not end up burnt out.
That whole section of the book is one of my favorites, I was also getting a headache when he has to go run stupid errands to get money but eventually it pays off at the end of that book (not the Brothers Karamazov as a whole, but that specific “book”).
In retrospect the whole book is necessary, even the slower parts, but I found the hardest part to get through was the murder mystery courtroom type stuff near the end that just drags and drags even if it is very engaging at points. Brothers Karamazov is one of those books that can seem boring at points but looking back the struggle was 100% worth it and you come to appreciate every sentence. If you take a break that is usually OK but don’t let it sit on your shelf for years, maybe two weeks at most.
Either Gibbon's Decline and Fall (in 7 vs) or Proust's RoTP (in 3). They're both single works, but not single books
Longest single book probably War and Peace
either Anna Karenina or The Idiot, not sure which one is the longest
Probably the 130 chapters translation of the Shui hu zhuan, it was around 2500 pages. Currently reading Casanova's memoirs, it amounts to 3500 pages or so
Learned anything from Casanova? Skimmed over his wiki page, he was a suave bastard, but with money and a title which he couldn't have done without I'm sure.
The genji monogatari
same
Journey to the west
The author hated taoism so much that he decided to make a 2000+ pages story about a buddist monkey god brutally killing taoists
Hmm
I'd say IJ or GR (my fav novel ever)
I'm about to pick up Los Sorias but I'm overwhelmed by its size
I was lucky to buy one of the limited 3rd and last edition with corrections and an additional chapter by Laiseca.
Shall I start it?
(Shall I translate the first chapters for IQfy?)
Reply and I'll answer
No. Los Sorias is fricking shit and I haven't even read it yet.
the state of IQfy
A bunch of rando snobs that don't read believe their shit opinions matters.
Hate to break it to ya, kid but no one actually reads here.
?
Laiseca is shit. Stop being hipster, Santi.
This good boy. 500 pages aprox, it was a nice experience.
Which edition did you read? Im planning on resding, but the edition that I found arent that long (500 or 600 pages max).
I'm reading it in spanish. The edition is "Siruela" which is the most complete edition, it comes with annotations about everything that a normal person wouldnt get about taoism and buddism.
If your version has 500 pages, then it's either the abridged version or the volume 1 out of 4
Nice, Im a spanish speaker as well. I have seen that edition before, didnt know that one was that large. In the book store I work at was a smaller version of the book, but your rec is alot better, thanks anon.
I guess Anna Karenina accounts for one, though I've skimmed over it tbdesu
Second place will go to Ulysses, I ordered the book on Monday and I expect it next week
>Second place will go to Ulysses, I ordered the book on Monday and I expect it next week
The hubris...
I'll make it through though. I've read Dubliners already
Lol. Ulysses is a bit tougher man
Fair enough. Still, I'm curious, and I'm aware I'd have to consult sth like LitCharts or whatever
Yeah, you'll be fine. Read slow and accept the fact that you won't get everything on your own. No one does.
"The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion" by Henry Darger. 15,145.
You haven't read that.
The woman literally in charge of preserving his collection said she tried to read that and got bored.TS4MD
Filtered.
If My Struggle counts, then that, if not, then Women and Men, The Recognitions, or IJ (not sure which is the longest)
Kys Chris via butthole
Anyone here actually read Clarissa?
Against The Day
Right now I am 3/4 of the way through The Five Books of (Robert) Moses by Arthur Nersesian, which clocks in at 1505 pages.
I've read the unabridged Gibbon's Roman Empire, but in a 6-volume set.
finished one of them quite literally 10 minutes ago, 2666.
along with it Gaddis' the recognitions, GR, IJ, ulysses, if the bible doesn't count.
Maybe Monte Cristo at around 1350 pages.
This book of poetry
What phone do you use?
Why do you ask?
General curiosity.
Moby Dick or Belgarath the Sorcerer. I've lost my copies of each so I don't know how many pages.
The latter is longer.
Count of Monte Cristo and Infinite Jest are the longest.
Other fat boys I've read: 2666, 1Q84, Brief History of Seven Killings, Shadow Country, The Garden of Seven Twilights, The Sleepwalkers.
Fat boys I plan on reading before the year is out: The Salt Line (Youval Shimoni), Septology (Jon Fosse), The Man Without Qualities.
And one day I will finish ISOLT. Probably.
You mean a single volume? Probably Count of Monte Cristo. For single book divided in several volumes it's the Cambridge History of Latin America and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
that Mao biography by his former physcian
Is this good? Accurate I mean.
He had to burn his diaries during the cultural revolution so everything was done from memory. there also appears to have been a whole ordeal when translating the text. Still, if even half of it is true then we can say that Mao zedong is easily the worst of 20th century tyrants, purely for who he was as a person.
The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard
Meds and nordics
Go frick yourself.
=)
🙂
Probably The Stand Complete Version, I regret it
Notes from Underground and I only got half way
The chronicles of amber I guess, though it’s 10 books just in one volume
War and peace at 1200 pages or such.
I read the Third Reich trilogy by Evans which comes to about 2500 pages.
Had a paperback copy of Don Quixote that was so dense if it fell off the shelf it would break your toe.
Pic related is not the one I had, it was shorter a bit thicker, well over 1,000 pages.
depends.
if digital counts then the mahabharata (unabridged). its a bit over 10 thousand pages long.
but if only physical counts then i guess the bible.
Heart of Darkness
Alan Moore's Jerusalem I think. Over 600,000 words. There are moments of brilliance but overall it's not worth it. He's a pretty good writer, but his reach exceeds his grasp
Oxford History of the French Revolution
By William Doyle
I see it's 500 pages on Amazon but I must have gotten a different version since mine was around 1300 pages.
In-progress, but Anna Karenina is > 800 pages. 50% through and it is decent.
What are some great 1,000+page novels from the 21st century?
Books start to become unwieldy around 900-1,000 pages. I understand that doing a single volume is (probably?) cheaper but I would prefer books of 1,000 pages to be split into two volumes. I have the two volume edition of War and Peace and it's much better to read that way.
Against the Day by Pynchon is over 1,200 pages, Infinite Jest by DFW is over 1,000, 2666 by Bolano is "only" 900 but it's excellent, Underworld by DeLilo is also 900, and came out in 1997 so not quite 21st century, but is very very good.
The Instructions by Adam Levin
I'm not a israelite and I enjoyed it.
The Reality Dysfunction
I am afraid it might actually be harry potter 5, that one is 766 pages
don't bully pls
the bible. If that doesn't count as one book, probably War and Peace.
I'm gearing up for the Ramayana.
I have a nice quality edition of the decline and fall of rome, but it's abridged. Will I regret not reading the full version?
Probably, abridged always sucks.
The power broker - 700k words
for reference
My Struggle - 1.37m words
A La Recherche du Temps Perdu - 1.27m words
War & Peace - 587k words
Infinite Jest - 578k words
Les Miserables - 546k words
The Count of Monte Cristo - 464k words
Don Quixote - 430k words
Brothers Karamazov - 354k words
Though I imagine very view people read recherche or my struggle as a single entity
The Stand. It didn't need to be that long
I regret reading Solzhenitsyn's 1914-1917 series.
>1914 is good as it has action and decent characters. Vorotyntsev, a colonel, sees the battle of Tannenberg from start to the finish from top (Meeting Alexander Samsanov and seeing the mess high command was in that led to Russia's defeat in Tannenberg, and Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevich) to bottom (the peasant soldiers he fights alongside with like blagodaryev and some Cossack soldiers). Overall 7/10. There are flaws like introducing characters in the beginning who wouldn't be seen until later books, but it's alright
>1916-1917 (book 3)
Ruining everyone and everything there ever was in the first book. Petrograd and Moscow become the focus and Vorotyntsev just cucks his wife, only to cuck that woman with another woman. All the potential that Vorotyntsev had is swept away as the story forgets about him and focuses on the naïve politicians who thought a revolution in a time of war would save Russia. It was awful reading these four books (the second one was 1000 pages and the third volume is split into three books) and boring.
roman history by titus livius
The Stand (1152 pages)
None. I don't finish them. But the longest one attempted is Moby Dick (probably).
Longest one I fully read was Anna Karenina.
War and Peace. Never got bored of it either aside from the nonfiction philosophy sections
I've read a few fantasy books over 1,000 pages, War and Peace, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov. However, I'm pretty sure the Bible, especially with notes, is significantly longer than any of these. Just the my lightly annotated RSV is like 1200 for the Masoretic texts and another few hundred pages for the Septuagint books. But I have a version without the Deuterocanonical books that alone is 2,600 pages.
Individual I don't know. Plenty of mutli-volume non fiction. For literature War and Peace or Against the Day.
If we count nonfiction then definitely The Story of Civilization, even though I'm only in The Age of Reason Begins. It's about 10,000 pages over all, more if you count The History of Philosophy (which I've read) and The Lessons on History (which I haven't)
While stylistically quite different, pic related is a quality expensive survey that picks up from the end of Napoleon and carries things to WWI.
You could probably even use A World Undone as your broad survey of WWI, but then I think you're stuck chasing down a bunch of divergent paths. Europe becomes increasingly less relevant and other areas increasingly relevant. Plus, the closer you get to the present the harder it is to course grain history.
Count of Monte Christo
The Bible
Count of minty Cristo
(6 vol) WWII - Winston Churchill
70% through Plato Complete Works
Insel Felsenburg (1741 or so) with 2700 pages
Just got comparison, the Bible is 720,000 - 800,000+ words in English, plus another 130,000-180,00 words for the books not included by some Protestants. A Dance with Dragons, the longest Game of Thrones book is 414,788 words or 1,056 pages (Bible font tends to be tiny which reduces page count). War and Peace is 585,000 or so words in English. Infinite Jest is slightly less at 577,608 words. There are not many works longer than the Bible outside of multi-volume non-fiction. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a single work that is longer though, at 1.5 million words, although it's shorter than some study Bibles.
If you're using a study bible though this could easily be increased by 100,000+ words or more (e.g., the ESV Study Bible, which I don't particularly like, is 2,600 pages.)
If you count a commentary on the Bible as a single work those are among the longest in existence because they can often stretch 20 or even 30+ books.
Outside of loosely linked selections of the 1978 edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica, it's a toss-up between Montaigne's essays and Goethe's so-called autobiography.
The Memoirs of Saint-Simon, 8500 to 10 000 pages depending on the edition. Amongst the greatest, read too little outside of France given the influence he had on our literature.
Does LOTR count as 1 book? Does the Bibble count?
IJ then
Oh wait does unabridged Gulag count? Probably that.
Based how much was that set? Should have bought it when it was only $150
Don Quixote Volumes 1 and 2
Or LOTR books all put in one volume
Probably the Bible. Other than that Don Quixote,The Illiad and the Odyssey or the complete Sherlock Holmes works by Doyle. Currently reading The count of Monte Cristo, and enjeying it very much.
Shike by Robert Shea was a fairly long read as I remember.
A leftist meme.
this might have been funny five years ago
also didn't this guy embarass himself by admitting he's ashamed of being a virgin lol
NFT guy
Pillars of the Earth, French edition. More than 1000 pages
umineko