What's the longest book you've read?

[EricG1793]

After glancing through my book shelf, the longest story I've read appears to be Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

My sister gave me the Chronicles of Narnia contained in one book, but I don't count that since it's technically several stories in one binding. It has smaller lettering then the Harry Potter book and appears to have slightly smaller margins but about 100 less pages, so I'd call it a fairly close tie.

This doesn't include books I've borrowed from my school libraries, but I doubt I read anything longer than the Harry Potter book.

[Emi]

The longest book I have ever read is Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. It is the fourth and final installment to the Twilight Saga. It was 754 pages long... I think I read that in like two days.

I could have sworn I read a longer book... but I guess not. That's the longest I can remember.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

I think that technically, Ash: A Secret History was the longest book, even if I read it in the US edition which split it into four volumes in the interest of not abusing the printers and booksellers too much. :-) (As I've said previously, it's not particularly appropriate for the YW audience - Mary Gentle doesn't seem to believe in pulling any punches to make things easier for the readers.)

The Lord of the Rings has to be up there in page count as well. The first time I saw that leatherbound hardcover edition in the 80s, I immediately recognized it as "The Red Book of Westmarch" :-) (I'd be very disappointed if I found out that _wasn't_ intended...)

(I can no longer scan my bookshelves to answer questions like this: I sold far too many of my books before moving back East, including the complete Shakespeare volume that my parents had gotten me before... um, high school? Definitely before college. (I had put together a will while still employed at Microsoft -- in it, I state that my books go to the girls directly, rather than having them put in an estate sale. Selling them off anyway was not exactly what I had planned. (Hey, how many levels of parentheses can I get going here? (And does anyone actually care?))))

[Kathy Li]

A single story all in one volume? maybe the Signet classic paperback of Les Miserables (1488 pages). All those serially-published Victorian novels are usually in the 1000 page range.

I'm currently waiting for two books that have burst the limits of what can be bound into a single volume: George R.R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons and Connie Willis's All Clear. Their editor despairs.

[Zirsta]

Wooooooooooow. People have read a lot of really long books...

I'm with Emi one this. Breaking Dawn. I think... I'll have to check all of the long books I've read, but I'm pretty sure it's Breaking Dawn. Except that I read it in one day...

[Septimus]

The english translation of the Sha Na Hame a persian book of great legends. a few thousand pages. i really don't feal like geting up and checking i'm still sore from basketball.

[Tuttle]

Working from memory I would say, it probably Don Quixote. I don't know the number of pages it is in the copy I have, but the one on Amazon is 992 pages.

Of course if you counted things which were supposed to be one book then there is always Lord of the Rings, but I'd not count that as the publisher wouldn't publish them as one, and instead they were published in 3 volumes of 2 books each.

Some of the other classics I have read may be longer, but I was going through and things like The Three Muskateers is only 780ish pages. I think most of the classics I've read are actually only in the 400 page range thinking through them.

Kathy, you remind me I need to read Les Mis sometime. When my sending school (the highschool I had been at for 9th and 10th grade but was no longer at) was reading Les Miserables my best friend was the only one to read the full text rather than an abridged version.

And of course if you don't need to have read the entire thing there's always textbooks I'd not be surprised if some I have are over 1000 pages (Though generally the smaller the textbook the better it is. Not always though)

[Kathy Li]

Well, I'm still not sure what I did necessarily counts as "reading Les Miserables" since I read a translation. But Hugo's great. And if you're into the monster-movie thing, then The Man Who Laughed and Notre Dame are also lots of fun. Tons of emo.

And The Three Musketeers is actually one of those cases you can make, like LotR, for counting multiple volumes as a single title. Depending on where you break the volumes , you've got The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years After (aka, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask, depending on how you split it up), for the complete d'Artagnan Cycle.

[kk]

I think the longest book I've tried reading, is The Complete Sherlock Holmes or something with a similar title. It was all of the Sherlock Holmes-related works of Arthur Conan Doyle, with sidenotes, forewards, and a few hundred pages of "About the Author" stuff.

It was 1180 pages, and when I put it in my library book bag, the bag broke. Haha, I only got to chapter two, but it was good. The pages were huge, the type was small, and the stories were amazing. I need to try reading that again...

In books that I've actually read? I'm not sure... hmm....

[Glede]

I think the longest book I've read is Dragon Rider, and it's 524 pages. Though I think other books I've read/reading are longer. *cough*Eldest*cough* But then again, I love reading books and I've read so many that I tend to forget half of them. *shrugs* (My sister is worse!)

[Daylily]

The longest individual book I have read is probably The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, at 1165 pages, but the longest story is Breaking Dawn, at about ten pages longer then Harry Potter 7 (754 vs 748). Come to think of it, if complete works count, the 1420 pages of Sherlock Holmes beat anything else... But then again, I wonder how long Brisinger was?

[EricG1793]

^ Brisinger, which I just got for Christmas, is noticeably shorter than Eldest. It's about equal to, or slightly smaller than, Eragon.

[Nella]

I'm not sure what the longest book I've read is... Maybe one of the Harry Potters? Most of my books tend to be in 300-500 page range... But I'm currently reading "The Madwoman in the Attic" by Sandra M. Gilber and Susan Gubar. Which I recommend to everyone who likes literary analysis kind of stuff... And that is I think 650... I don't know if the HP Goblet of Fire is longer than that... Or the OOTP... (I haven't read the 7th book so...)
*shrug*

[Septimus]

^ Brisinger, which I just got for Christmas, is noticeably shorter than Eldest. It's about equal to, or slightly smaller than, Eragon.

you know i heard that he was going to triple the length of brisingr but decided it would be too long so he cut it. and will probably use the left over material to right the next books. he did say that it was no longer the inheritance trilogy but the inheritance cycle...

[Cress]

Hmmm...I'm not 100% sure of mine. I read Paradise Lost which is about 10000 something verses. I'm reading the Quran, which is somewhere around 1300 pages. If we count all of LOTR as one, then that may be it. And after I finish The Quran I'm going to read The Once and Future King, which is huge. I'm not sure though.