Tags
bleak house, books, dickens, meme, Monday's, reading, Stephen king, the stand
Hosted by Should Be Reading
This week’s musing asks:
What is the longest book you have ever read? How long did it take you to read it?
It’s funny that my mind immediately jumped to Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. It’s not the longest book I’ve read, but at the time I read it, that novel felt like it was two thousand pages long. It was a huge project for my British lit class my last year of high school, one of those in depth semester long mothers where we had to know all eighty some characters inside and out, complete with weekly quizzes to ensure we were, in fact, reading that sucker instead of using Sparknotes. My friend paid respects to the project by christening her dissected cat from our Anatomy and Physiology class Hortense.
The longest book I’ve actually read was The Stand, by Stephen King. It took me a little over a month, if I recall. My entire sophomore year, I was on a huge Stephen King kick, and that was the grand finale in the late spring. I think I’m due for a reread on that monster, since I know I’ll get more out of it now then I did when I was 15. I remember being absolutely grossed out by the superflu virus’ ravages on the world. Randall Flagg disturbed me on so many levels. I adored Nick, and I was devastated at what happened to him.
Nowadays, I haven’t found very many thousand plus page novels I’m willing to invest that kind of energy in. I have Under the Dome, by Stephen King, and I’ll eventually read that one – it’ll be the first novel of that length I’ve read in over ten years. Goodness.
Happy reading, everyone!
Miskadoodle Writes 
I am reading the Game of Thrones series, by George R.R Martin. Just began the second book and its pretty big. Over 900 pages, has to be one of the longest books for me. I also have Under the Dome by Stephen King to embark on.
Oh nice – you know, I really want to read that series, I’ve heard so many good things, but the page lengths are so daunting to me. I think part of my problem is the vast cast of characters that get put into massive books like that. I have to work extra hard to keep them all straight without backtracking.
I know what you mean about the characters but these books aren’t as bad as another fantasty series I have read by Katherine Kerr. They are good, very addictive though!
Stephen King is my go-to author for the big books. I immediately thought of The Stand but forgot about all the classic Russian literature I’ve read.
I think Bleak House sufficiently scared me away from lengthy classics for a while, but I kind of want to tackle Les Miserables. I downloaded it on my kindle, and now I just need like a solid two week block where I don’t have a lot going on so I can really dive into it.