The Book Length Debate

[Vimster]

Just recently I've found myself choosing to read shorter books (less than 300 pages), partly because I am, in all seriousness, feeling my mortality and want to get as many books read as I can, but also because I'm reluctant to get stuck into a 700-odd page opus and find it's tedious, long for the sake of it, or find I'm forcing myself though it as a sort of duty to myself and not enjoying it at all. 

 

Obviously length of a book is only one factor, and there's no link between book length and quality. Some genres, especially fantasy, tend to have hefty tomes, and often many of them in a series. Detailed historical fiction, biographies or weighty political thrillers can also be hefty. 

 

When a long book works you're able to immerse yourself in that world, take in all the detail. The author can go off on tangents, or tell other stories. But long books are also prone to bloat, some authors getting carried away and using 100 words where 10 would do, going overboard with characters and meandering story lines. 

 

Some of the short books I've been reading have been punchy, getting to the point and delivering intimate stories that whilst not vast in scale generally still have that emotional pull, or a tight plot. And if they're not that great it's no real loss. 

 

In the 90s I did love long books, like Greg Bear's Eon or Imajica by Clive Barker, and that's over a thousand pages. I just feel I cannot commit to something like that now, not unless it was going to be solid, whatever that means. 

 

How much does a book's length matter to you, does it put you off or do you feel like you're sat in front of a huge meal?

[ZOK]

I’m not fussed, the length is the length. I do remember though with my favourite ‘long book’ Harlot’s Ghost by Norman Mailer, the first 200 pages or so I found to be a bit of a slog, then when I got to the end I wanted it to carry on for another 1300 pages. Some books need time to cook.

[Monkeyboy]

I do prefer shorter books. If you look back at science-fiction classics, a lot of them are short by todays standards. For me, that's great. I get to catch up on a lot of good stuff in a shorter amount of time. I also like thrillers, but they tend to be written towards a large word count for no other reason than providing some illusion of value because they have over 500 pages. I've read many a thriller that could easily lose about 200 pages. Again, some classic thrillers are quite short (The 39 Steps for example). Page bloat is one of the worst trends of books these days.

[Ste Pickford]

Big long book fan here.  If anything I'm slightly attracted to longer books, although I mostly go off things I've heard, reputation of book, etc.  (There are so many great books I've not read, I don't read that much new fiction as I feel like I'm in permanent catch-up mode with old fiction.)

 

If I hear about a book I like the sound of, it being 700+ pages is certainly not a negative in my eyes. 

[Vimster]

20 minutes ago, Ste Pickford said:

Big long book fan here.  If anything I'm slightly attracted to longer books, although I mostly go off things I've heard, reputation of book, etc.  (There are so many great books I've not read, I don't read that much new fiction as I feel like I'm in permanent catch-up mode with old fiction.)

 

If I hear about a book I like the sound of, it being 700+ pages is certainly not a negative in my eyes. 

I guess that's a good thing about the internet today you can do your research before committing to a long book rather than having to just go off the back cover whilst stood in WH Smiths.

[Monkeyspill]

It's not really the page or word length for me. It's how heavy-going it is. You could have a heavy-going book that's relatively short but still takes ages and effort to get through. Conversely, you could have a really long book that's a comparative breeze to read. With work and life being more stressful, I find myself preferring easier reads.

 

With films though, I can't deal with the trend for them getting longer and longer. I started watching Dr Sleep the other day, noticed it was three hours long and switched it off. I'd have to break it down into installments so it might as well be a series.

[revlob]

My copy of Anathem has been sitting unread on my shelf since I bought it, a decade ago. It looms above me, poised like the boulder from Raiders, ready to crush me if I so much as look at it funny.

 

I've found myself reading less and less, preferring to listen to podcasts as my primary source of entertainment. I managed a very short crime novel over the Summer holiday. I don't know how I'll ever manage to get through an epic ever again.

[Stopharage]

All comes down to the quality of the writing for me. I fully expect and demand that Donna Tartt's next novel is 700 pages+. Others might find her overwrought but I think she's great and sustains my interest regardless of the length of her books. Whereas an awful lot of thrillers and crime novels suffer from a great deal of bloat. A colleague at work recommended Nomad by James Swallow a few years back and I found it just suffered from needless (poorly written and racially suspect) prose. 

 

In addition, some writers would benefit from a decent editor. I expect a certain amount of world building and flowery description in sci-fi and fantasy novels, but in a lot of other genres it can all be a bit self-indulgent. Orwell showed how to do it in Down and Out in Paris and London. I don't have the patience or time to wallow in pages of overly descriptive prose about nothing, philistine that I am. 

[Miner Willy]

My issue with long books is down to a personal failing: given that I seem to be unable to give up on a book once I've started, I find the commitment of a long book somewhat daunting, as if I don't enjoy it I'll be stuck with it for a long time. That's not to say I don't ever read long books (The Stand is a recent highlight, and The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my all time favourites), but I need to be really convinced of the quality to give it a go.

[MrPogo]

My only real consideration is try to avoid reading two long books in a row, but I don’t pay too much attention to the length most of the time.

[MarkN]

If anything my tolerance for long books has gone up as I've got older. As long as I'm enjoying it, I like to live with a book for a good long while. Much of this is down to the characters, conversation etc. If that's done well, I'm a happy bunny to stick with a book for a good long while.

 

1 hour ago, Miner Willy said:

My issue with long books is down to a personal failing: given that I seem to be unable to give up on a book once I've started, I find the commitment of a long book somewhat daunting, as if I don't enjoy it I'll be stuck with it for a long time. That's not to say I don't ever read long books (The Stand is a recent highlight, and The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my all time favourites), but I need to be really convinced of the quality to give it a go.

 

I got over that inability to give up on a book a long while ago. I hate to do it, but it does feel like a good skill to have. I've not done it often - a couple of sci-fi novels that may have been good but had no characters I cared one iota about, and a couple of classics that I just realised weren't for me, but it was better to bail and move on. Almost forgot -  The Magician by Raymond E. Feist. Jesus, I got several hundred pages into that, thinking I'd become clairvoyant it was so predictable. Maybe it got better after the first 350 pages, but fuck me! Life's too short. I think I left it while the characters were in the Mines Of Moria (whatever his version was).

 

The Count Of Monte Cristo is just so very good. Could maybe shed a few pages in the middle third, but by the time it finished I really didn't want it to. It's just the best action adventure romp ever. That's something that would make an amazing TV series done well...

[Ste Pickford]

I've probably told this story on here already once, but I'd decided a while back I needed to read some of the classics of literature, and pretty much anything out of copyright can be downloaded for free from gutenberg.org or elsewhere, so I grabbed War and Peace for my kindle and jumped in.  Fantastic book, and not at all the book you'd expect it to be from BBC adaptations, etc. Anyway, after that I decided I wanted something short to read as a nice change, and for some reason I had it in my head that The Count of Monte Cristo was a ~200 page swashbuckling romp, so I downloaded that and started reading.  It was only about a week later that I noticed that despite reading a bit every night, my kindle was only showing 5%.  I had no idea I'd picked another whopper.

[SozzlyJoe]

3 minutes ago, Ste Pickford said:

Anyway, after that I decided I wanted something short to read as a nice change, and for some reason I had it in my head that The Count of Monte Cristo was a ~200 page swashbuckling romp, so I downloaded that and started reading.  It was only about a week later that I noticed that despite reading a bit every night, my kindle was only showing 5%.  I had no idea I'd picked another whopper.

 

The audiobook for this (which is excellent by the way and is included in Audible for free) is over FIFTY HOURS.

[Vimster]

14 hours ago, MarkN said:

I got over that inability to give up on a book a long while ago. I hate to do it, but it does feel like a good skill to have. I've not done it often - a couple of sci-fi novels that may have been good but had no characters I cared one iota about, and a couple of classics that I just realised weren't for me, but it was better to bail and move on. Almost forgot -  The Magician by Raymond E. Feist. Jesus, I got several hundred pages into that, thinking I'd become clairvoyant it was so predictable. Maybe it got better after the first 350 pages, but fuck me! Life's too short. I think I left it while the characters were in the Mines Of Moria (whatever his version was).

 

I was was the same about committing to books up until relatively recently and felt obliged to read them all the way through even if it was a massive slog. It's hard to stop but necessary. I like to think that if you feel you can stop at any time long books become manageable and you're more likely to relax and enjoy them. Maybe that's just me. 

[smac]

On 22/11/2021 at 17:27, Monkeyboy said:

If you look back at science-fiction classics, a lot of them are short by todays standards.

 

This.

 

I blame a) Tolkien and b) Dune.

 

Well, not so much Tolkien as all the extended write-ups of D&D campaigns that passed for fantasy fiction back in the 80s. 'Epic trilogies'; bugger off.

[Talvalin]

Hey, at least the first couple of Dragonlance trilogies were relatively short. Their problem was that they knocked out so many of the damn things that quality inevitably suffered (and then Weis and Hickman wrote the Death Gate Cycle which was about 4 books too damn long. Interesting concept, but poorly executed. Rose of the Prophet on the other hand was amazing [to my teenaged self]).

[Wiper]

As with Zok, it entirely depends upon the book for me. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is perfect at just over 200 pages. Cyteen is perfect at just under 700 pages. I'll never tire of reading the Lord of the Rings novels, as their thousands of pages just race by. Meanwhile, any Malazan book would be dramatically improved if it were cut to one third of its length.

 

I'm happy to spend as much or as little time as is demanded of me, as long as the book justifies its length (or brevity).

[Timmo]

I've just started Sarum so ask me in about 6 months.

[smac]

On 27/11/2021 at 18:09, Wiper said:

As with Zok, it entirely depends upon the book for me. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is perfect at just over 200 pages. Cyteen is perfect at just under 700 pages. I'll never tire of reading the Lord of the Rings novels, as their thousands of pages just race by. Meanwhile, any Malazan book would be dramatically improved if it were cut to one third of its length.

 

I'm happy to spend as much or as little time as is demanded of me, as long as the book justifies its length (or brevity).

 

I used to read LotR in a weekend. OK, I skipped all of the poetry...

[ChristopherBloodAxe]

300 pages is the correct number of pages.