What's the thickest book you've bought?

HourglassMemory · Aug 8, 2007

Obvisouly excluding dictionaries and encyclopedias and such, what's the thickest book you've bought?
Book, story, novel, romance...which one is the thickest you have?

I found this about myself yesterday. I absolutely drool over thick books.
You know "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"?
That sort of thing.

I have three books now on my desk, all on top of each other!

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
It's almost 600 pages long! Who wouldn't want a book with such a title?

"The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova. It's 700 pages long! I bought it because, first it was thick, and second because I thought I would give a try at other types of stories other than Harry Potter and His Dark Materials.

And all the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy stories put into one big thick book. I saw this one and just had to buy it. It's 800+ pages long!!!!

What are the thickest ones you have?

If you have a dictionary or an encyclopedia that is just absolutely mentally insane, you can type it in too.
But what I'm interested in is books with actual stories.
It can be compliations.

scarletpeaches · Aug 8, 2007

800 pages? Pah. That's nothing. Try reading Forever Amber, Gone With the Wind, A Suitable Boy, anything by Diana Gabaldon, Penny Vincenzi or Jilly Cooper, Lord of the Rings...

Ol' Fashioned Girl · Aug 8, 2007

scarletpeaches said:
800 pages? Pah. That's nothing. Try reading Forever Amber, Gone With the Wind, A Suitable Boy, anything by Diana Gabaldon, Penny Vincenzi or Jilly Cooper, Lord of the Rings...

Ditto.

And Larry McMurtry.

dolores haze · Aug 8, 2007

Yup - "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth. 1,349 wonderful pages, not including his delightful acknowledgement, in which he apologizes to raeders for the damage that will be done to their wrists.

CatSlave · Aug 8, 2007

Probably War and Peace.
Also Daughter of Fire by Irina Tweedie.

scarletpeaches · Aug 8, 2007

Oh, duh, how could I forget War & Peace?

Then there's the Bible. Anna Karenina, The first book in The Forsyte Sage sequence...

HourglassMemory · Aug 8, 2007

Have you peopel actually read those?
Do you own them?
That's what I was asking for.

IF you do own them then ...that's great!!!! Ah!! thick books!

CatSlave · Aug 8, 2007

Absolutely.
Every word, and more than once.

Claudia Gray · Aug 8, 2007

Which is longer, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows or War and Peace?

Uh, one of those.

KTC · Aug 8, 2007

lol...I just checked. On the bookshelf in front of me it's Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Of course, there are many bookshelves in my house. I think this might compete for the thickest though. I know my copy of The Brothers Karamazov is pretty thick too...but I think Rand's beats it.

A.M. Wildman · Aug 8, 2007

For me the thickest book I have at the moment is: Mists of Avalon- Marion Zimmer-Bradley. If I remember right it's around 900 pgs. and change.

Gary · Aug 8, 2007

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich...pocket book edition.

I thought I'd never finish it.

Harper K · Aug 8, 2007

The thickest one I bought is the 10th anniversary paperback edition of Infinite Jest. Got it last year, and its spine remains pretty well uncracked.

Simon Woodhouse · Aug 8, 2007

Don Quixote. Not only did I buy it, but I read it too.

Though one thing puzzled me about it. People always mention the windmills, but they were just one example of his state of mind. However, they were right at the beginning. Could it be that a lot of readers don't get past the first one hundred pages, and so don’t realise Don Quixote is delusional throughout the whole book? Or am I missing the symbolism of the windmills, and thus making myself look like a bit of a dunce?

davids · Aug 8, 2007

Doctor Doolittle does the third reich

benbradley · Aug 8, 2007

The largest book I can recall actually reading is probably "Battlefield Earth" at about 1100 pages, and this was long before the movie, and furthermore I bought it used INTENTIONALLY as even back then I didn't want to give that Hubbard guy any of my money. Basically, I wasted three weeks of my life reading it.
"Atlas Shrugged" is about that big too, but I've not read it, I don't want to be burned twice...

kristie911 · Aug 8, 2007

Harry Potter (which ever one was the longest...I'm not sure) and LOTR.

I'm not generally into books that are too thick, though I like feeling that I got more book for my money.

reenkam · Aug 8, 2007

The Mists of Avalon. almost definitely

plaidearthworm · Aug 8, 2007

Atlas Shrugged...and at the time, I was completely engrossed in it, even read it twice. Hey, I was 17. Also, I bought 'And Ladies of the Club' by Helen Hooven Santmyer last year at a used book store, but haven't read it yet. It's at the bottom of an ever-increasing reading list.

Shadow_Ferret · Aug 8, 2007

If it won't fit in my back pocket, it's too thick.

Lyra Jean · Aug 8, 2007

My thickest book is, South Carolina: A History. I haven't finished reading it yet.

My-Immortal · Aug 8, 2007

The Harry Potter books...(read all)
Terry Goodkind's Stone of Tears (paperback) just shy of 1000...(read)
Robert Jordan's The Fires of Heaven (paperback) just shy of 1000...(not read)
The Chronicles of Narnia (all books in one volume) just shy of 800 (read a long time ago-rereading)
LOTR - one volume approx 1100 (read)
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - 1250+ (read most)
Terry Brooks Sword of Shannara 700+ (read)
George R.R. Martin's series 800-900+ each...(read some, not all)

aruna · Aug 8, 2007

A Suitable Boy.
My edition was 1500 words, and yes, I read it all. I LOVE thick books.

I have Paul Scott's The Raj Quartett on my bookshelf; I bought it secondhand some time ago an dhave not read it yet.

Just checked it: it is thick but only 500 pages long. Remember to factor in paper thickness and font. I believe A Suitable Boy overtakes them all.

I have also read various volumes of the Mahabharata, which is the longest book in the world.

DancingMaenid · Aug 9, 2007

For me it's the Harry Potter books, Anna Karenina and this book I just bought with birthday money I'd gotten called "Russia and the Russians". I haven't gotten down to reading much of it yet, but it seems to cover Russian history back as far as there's been a Russia. So yeah, it's long.

Sai · Aug 9, 2007

The longest books I've read (that I can remember) would be Shogun at 1,136 pages and Atlas shrugged at 1,200 (and the type was tiny too!).

What's the thickest book you've bought?

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