How do you feel about really long books?

Depends on the book.

I've never read a 1,000 page work a fiction where you couldn't have cut 200 pages of fat from it and lost nothing.

Lots of negatives, I know. Think it through, Junior, you'll make it to fifth grade yet.

>>7620066
The novella is my ideal form. You can sit down and read it in one or two sittings, like watching a film.

File: junotemplepic.jpg (247KB, 3000x2000px) Image search: [Google]

247KB, 3000x2000px

>>7620080

Good to see some people on /lit/ are still condescending and think they're pretty clever. You make it sound like only idiots like long books, and that Gone With The Wind and War and Peace are boring books. Seriously?

>>7620084
>one or two sittings
>like watching a film

You should just stick to flicks if you're going to have more than one sitting t͏͏b͏͏h f͏͏a͏͏m.

>>7620080

Well, Ulysses isn't quite 1000 pages, but I don't see how you could trim off more than 20 pages without losing a bit of masterpiece.

is david copperfield the original pomo doorstopper?

>>7620086
>Gone With The Wind
>good
are you a fucking baby boomer or something?

File: warehousetruckpic.jpg (2MB, 3264x2448px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 3264x2448px

>>7620121

I'm Generation Y. It's a superb book, one of the best ever written. What did you dislike about the first 50 pages, exactly?

>>7620066
Reading Mason & Dixon now. Loving it desu. I'm afraid of it ending and not being able to experience it for the first time ever again, short of irreparable memory loss.

>>7620190

Mason & Dixon is only 700 pages. I mean, it's definitely medium length, but not long.

This pic makes my spaghetti grow soft and squishy.

>>7620086
Only an idiot would prefer an imperfect 1,000 page book over a perfect 800 page book. Good on the rare author >>7620097 who can make a 1,000 page masterpiece, but 95% of "long" books suffer, not benefit, from excessive length. More text gives greater room for error.

If Tolstoy would have just slashed those chapters where Levin channels Thoreau while mulling privately over 1850s Russian post-serfdom, or those chapters where Levin screws around meaninglessly at a local council election, Anna Karenina would be a much better novel for it.

>>7620239
Les Miserables needed a lot more editing.

If it's a good book then far better it last forever and never end.

If it's a bad book then brevity is a virtue.

>>7620204
To be fair it's almost 800.

File: littell.jpg (20KB, 375x499px) Image search: [Google]

20KB, 375x499px

Pic related is 950 pages; big fictional memoir of an SS Officer, covering his career from the late thirties to the end of the war.

It's gruesome, overwrought and a little indulgent: with gay and incestual sub-plots, twenty page accounts of massacres, and all the genocide is gruellingly fleshed out and researched. Basically the title eludes to an act in the Greek play of the Furies I think...the book is split into "acts" and it's an account of one man trying to escape the wrath of fate.

Took me about three weeks to finish and there were definately parts where it sagged...but it more than adds up to the sum of it's parts by the end I think. It's an exercise in subjecting yourself to the book I think...but well worth it if you want some strenuously-researched historical fiction or a dark odyssey in the same vein as Blood Meridian.

Critics seemed to hate it...it's definitely repulsive but not to miss if your the self-flagellating type like me.

>>7620066
a really dumb question, because i think there is a serious distinction to be made between books like Les Miserables, War and Piece and so on AND the postmodernist texts like Gravity's Rainbow and Underworld

that said I enjoy all of these books. i think i am partial to longer books because i like being submerged in one world for a long time

>>7620101
No

>>7620204
>only 700 pages
Considering that's more than twice as long as the standard, yes it is long.

>>7620519
Its type is pretty spaced out though.. and it's a fairly quick read. Quicker than, say, Moby Dick for example

>>7620500
>critics seemed to hate it

i loved it. i wouldn't say critics hated it, however, as it won both the grand prix du roman de l' académie francaise and the prix goncourt.

>>7620500
thanks anon, got me to read up on this a little and i've decided to order it

>>7620239
>Only an idiot would prefer an imperfect 1,000 page book over a perfect 800 page book.
I dunno mate, I kinda like the sloppy ramshackle nature of those 'L O N G' books.

I don't think length matters as long as you enjoy the book. Consider whether or not you can commit yourself to a long book. Currently, I'm reading War and Peace. School work is approaching, and I hope I will be able to budget time for reading.

File: 2239461.jpg (39KB, 331x421px) Image search: [Google]

39KB, 331x421px

>>7620551
Me too anon, the main point of criticism seemed to be that the french critics loved it; or that it was too overwrought and pretentious; the incessant naming of ranks, places and doctrines.

But I would expect the hypothetical memoirs of an SS man to be; cold, overtly bearaucratic, verbose yet soulless. It's a tantalising account of one crazy nazi's delusions of grandeur.

>>7620553
Nicely done! I really enjoyed it and it looks great on the shelf aye; I think each act is around 200-300 pages...I blitzkrieged through each one, taking a week or so for each, and took a couple days convalescence in-between. I love it when a book is so good you have to structure your life around the pilgrimage of reading it haha

File: 1447680235297.png (440KB, 645x1260px) Image search: [Google]

440KB, 645x1260px

>>7620606
>I love it when a book is so good you have to structure your life around the pilgrimage of reading it haha
>tfw its been months since I've been this engaged in anything

>>7620500
This book is great overall but Aria is simply fucking masterpiece, Bataille combined with Genet.

>>7620066
i don't make it a preference, but i tend to gravitate towards longe rbooiks, because more classics are longer book s(count of monte cristo, war and peace, moby dick, brothers karamazov, infinite jest)