What's the longest book you've read?

[Silverclaw]

Hmm.... probably the collection of works by Shakspeare I read once. But for single stories, I'm not sure. And Brisingr is actually significantly LONGER than Eldest: Eldest is 681 pages and Brisingr is 763 pages.

[Jacq]

My edition of the Count of Monte Cristo is 1312 pages. The Deed of Paksenarrion is 1040. Both are oversize 10pt, iirc.

This is a bit of a weird topic...

[seabiscuit1009]

Well...I am pretty sure I've read books longer than this, but now I'm reading Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend for a class, and the version I've got is 850 pages long. Right now I'm at school so it's kind of hard to check if any of my other books at home are longer than that, though I'm sure something or another is...I've kind of read a ridiculous amount of books, like most people here. Isn't one of the Harry Potter books longer than that, even? Can't remember. And like other people, LOTR, if you're counting books that were published separately but were supposed to be together...

[hazeleyedcappy]

Well, I read Les Mis. also; my copy is 1200 pages--with the appendixes it's 1232 pages. The absolute longest I have read is The Count of Monte Cristo at about 1243. Huh. Didn't know it was that long... interesting

[SpacePen]

Les Mis must be at top for me, as both "the longest" in word or page count and "the longest" in the time it took me to get through it (upwards of 7 months - but very worth it once I understood what Hugo was after. This would not one for younger readers, I should think).

LoTR second, but only in page/word count; I can go through this one slow or quick, depending on my mood.

If we're counting compilations, then the Bible is up there too.

Um. War and Peace (Ugh). (a high school "Must").

I would like to read Dicken's "Bleak House", which is also rather long-ish.

Does Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series count? He was quite long-winded.

[fernie]

longest book

i think that the longest book that i have ever read was either one of the harry potters, which i have read a milion times, the illiad, the oddysey by homer, or my dad's 1000-page-long thesis.(boring)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! most of my books are at least 3,4,or 5 hundred pages long, yeah, i really read alot.

[Birdhead]

Man, you read your dad's thesis? That's really filial devotion!

Me: probably The Count of Monte Cristo unless we start counting all of the LOTR volumes as a single book. Most Tad Williams books are probably threateningly close though (Especially To Green Angel Tower, which I see they now publish in two volumes but I read it in a 1104 page volume - I think Tad Williams is great, but I would re-read him a lot more often if he was just a little more *portable.*)

[dorotheia]

I'd guess it would either be Harry Potter 5, at 800-something, or at 836 pages, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. I don't know if the Hamilton book counts, since I remember very little about it. I read the book partly to compete with my Dad and see who could read fastest, and prove that I could read nonfic sometimes. :-) Contrast with Harry Potter, where I might be able to tell you what happens in every chapter and random facts no one else remembers besides.
Very few books exceed eight hundred pages. Most of the biggest books I've read have been around 750 pages, and just under the 800 mark. Perhaps one of the Inda books by Sherwood Smith or one of David Clement-Davies? And then there's the Twilight series, and the Inheritance Cycle. But those are all second-best, in terms of book size, though fun to read.
I wonder what it is that keeps some authors writing books in a narrower page range, while others, as they get better, increasing in size? Some of what I have noticed is probably just new leniency in the wake of the Harry Potter books, but I think I have observed a real trend. I do wonder, though, how everything is kept track of when editing such a large volume.
Ditto about LotR. I read it in 3rd grade, but since then I usually skip the Frodo/Sam parts after the Fellowship splits.

[Birdhead]

II read it in 3rd grade, but since then I usually skip the Frodo/Sam parts after the Fellowship splits.

I have a friend who insists that those bits are her favourites (because she is CRAZYCAKES): but as far as I'm concerned it's all "tromp tromp hungry tromp tromp grey doom tromp tromp Gollum is gross tromp tromp hungry tromp tromp grey doom tromp tromp hungry tromp tromp ilu frodo! tromp tromp RABBIT! tromp tromp." Tromping across Mordor is not that interesting.

re: longer books as an author gets better: I don't think it has anything to do with the author getting better; I think it has a lot to do with the author becoming more popular, and therefore better able to persuade publishers that longer books will be read; and I think that in series fiction it has a lot to do with the author falling in love with more and more characters and needing to spend more time with them (which is not always a bad thing; I think W@W pulls it off very well, for example. But there's a lot of epic fantasy where the books are just SO massive and long and there are SO many people to keep track of by the end that it's just like... what's the point?)

[meteorite]

Some of my textbooks were pretty hefty-duty, like the standard History of Art by Jansson. For the past several years DH and I have been heavily into 18th century naval history, a la Hornblower, O'Brien, Nelson, Cochrane, etc. Many of those books easily crack 750 pages, like The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea. For DH's last Christmas present, I got him an original 1793 Almanack, so that he could have original reference material, should he want it That one was probably over 1000 pages, including fold out maps, on what was practically onionskin.