Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with longbooks

Nothin' to do but read

pH Indicating Socks — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 17:44:28 -0800

What are your favorite looong books? 1200-1500 pages or so? My daughter has time on her hands and limited space, and is looking for excellent, LONG books to read. Her favorite book of all time is The Master and Margarita, to give you an idea of what she likes. She's currently enjoying the excellent A Suitable Boy, and she's already read War and Peace. What else is long, and excellent, that she will like?

Recommendations for Long, Engrossing Books

forkisbetter — Mon, 19 Mar 2018 09:32:23 -0800

I like to read before bed and I've been hankering for book recommendations for books that are either fairly long or part of a series. I like getting engrossed in a good story, and I also just like not having to pick out what I'm going to read next for a while. Things that I have already read that fit the bill:

Wolf Hall series
Game of Thrones
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Possession - A. S. Byatt
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Cloud Atlas
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst
The Luminaries

I particularly enjoy historical fiction, although I'm open to all genres - including non-fiction. Since I'm reading before bed I prefer books that aren't going to be super upsetting/depressing or involve a focus on current events (I guess that explains the historical fiction?). I'm really fascinated by the Edwardian era, history of science/medicine, queer historical fiction, and books that are really well researched.

I guess there's also something soothing to me about British writers, hadn't even noticed that trend until I started this question.

Looking for a book to last me a month

aleatorictelevision — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 20:47:14 -0800

I'm going to be spending the next few months backpacking in the wilderness. I'm looking for 1-2 long books that would both be a great read and would last most of the trip if possible. I'm an extremely fast reader, so the longer the book the better.

I thought about bringing my kindle, but don't really want to deal with the electronic issue in the field.

Long books that I've already read(to give you an idea of the style that I like):

George R. R. Martin's ASOIAF series

Stephen King's the Stand

David Mithell's Cloud Atlas

Help me choose a book to travel with.

mosessis — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:38:48 -0800

I need a longish, interesting, well-written book (fiction) to read on an upcoming trip. Any suggestions? I'm going on a trip where I'll have plenty of time to read and not much space to pack books. I need to find a good novel-type book that could last me at least a couple of weeks. My trip is for a couple of months in non-English speaking countries, and I want something captivating to fall into as a respite from journeying.

I have read both Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder in this same situation, and those worked perfectly for my purposes. I wish I could just bring one of these again, because they were so perfect - dense, interesting, thought-provoking, lend themselves to rereading passages - but I'd really like to find something new.

My general tastes run towards late 18th Century (Burney Lennox, Austen, etc) and turn of the twentieth century (James, Wharton, Wilde, etc). I generally steer away from serializations that have been turned into novels (Dickens, Forster, etc) and overly romanticized, gothic, heroic, dramatic love type stories (Les Miserables, Goethe, etc). But of course I am completely open to trying new genres and authors that I might not yet know I love.

What book was in your backpack that kept you going through the lonely times? What's the best longish novel you've read that you wish you had had the time to just sit and read? To slightly complicate this, I'm leaving in 36 hours and will have to find this on the shelf at one of my (luckily many) local book stores.