Your Largest Size Fiction Books.

[GOLLUM]

OK, I thought it may be a bit of fun if you wanted to tell us about the largest book(s) you own or have seen or handled. I'm talking more about fiction books than those typical coffee-size table books ala National Geographic chock full of pictures etc.

Large can be in terms of the thickness of the book or just its sheer dimensions or both.

What brought this idea on was today's purchase by moi of the Wordsworth edn. of the entire serialised version of Varney the Vampire. It's probably the thickest book I own ( in more ways than one I can hear some say given its 'Penny Dreadful' status). Anyway, it measures 6.5 cm or just over 2.5 inches thick and is a MMPB edn. NOT a trade paperback even. Not sure how the binding is going to hold?...this could get interesting...

 

[Fried Egg]

Damn, there was me sticking my camera down my trousers...then I read the detail.

 

[GOLLUM]

ER...whilst I can see the humuor in that comment could we try and stick to the topic at hand please....

OK, Mr. Fried Egg. Can you tell us what the largest fiction book you own is? Or maybe seen or handled at .e.g museum, library etc.. ?

I'll be interested to know if anyone has a book thicker than say 7cm in MMPB edn.

EDIT: Thread heading edited to avoid any further "confusion".

Night all.

 

[HoopyFrood]

I have the Lovecraft Necronomicon, which is almost 7cm thick, but seeing as it's hardback (and fancy hardback at that) it might be cheating a little.

I have had to buy some pretty hefty books over the past three years for my course. I have The Faerie Queene by Spenser which is about 6.5cm thick. I also have the Norton Complete Works of Shakespeare, with sonnets, accompanying essays and all which is almost 9cm thick. I had to carry that to campus a lot which was no doubt good exercise, if nothing else. Again, a little bit of a cheat...It's Shakespeare.

While on the subject of Shakespeare, some of the biggest books I've handled are giant editions of his plays. The old English section of the Old Library on campus is brilliant so I go for a wander through it sometimes just to pick up books and look through them. There are three of them, I think (Histories, Comedies and Tragedies, of course) and they are about a foot and a half big (as in length size, not thickness...that would be crazy). With thick pages every now and then with beautiful illustrations...

There are also some ma-hoosively thick books in that section of the library.

 

[GOLLUM]

Whoa 9cm plus in width of book...that's pretty big Hoopy.

I have a penguin edn. of Faerie Queen too, It's still about .5cm less than this Wordsworth though.

I guess what struck me was a MMPB at a thickness of almost 7cm. That's pretty dense yeh? and the print is small too. Hence the concern with regards the binding....

 

[biodroid]

The Stand by SK - The 1400 page paper back.

 

[Connavar]

The Complete Chronicles of Conan (Conan) by Robert E Howard

The Complete Chronicles of Conan:Centenary Edition its a bad buy of me since this book uses edited texts for political reasons and not original REH or weird tales texts for the stories.

Still it has a great look,leatherbound,great cover so i keep only for sentimental reasons that is the fact i cant dump a book by one of my literary heroes in Robert.E Howard.

Its by far the thickest,largest book i have. When i read it first, it was like working out your arms in the gym.....

 

[Chel]

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke at 6½ cm is the thickest MMPB on my shelf - I haven't read it though.

Largest over all would be The Sword of Shannara trilogy by Terry Brooks - the whole thing in one huge volume. 6cm thick, 15½cm wide and 23½cm tall. It's nearly impossible to read in bed, which is one reason I have only started on it. (The other reason being that I didn't think it was very good, but it's so long ago now that I can't remember why I didn't like it.)

 

[ktabic]

I've got quite a few books which are about 6cm wide. Seems to be the default thickness of a Peter F Hamilton paperback. Slightly wider than that is my copy of Necronomican. This is a taller (24cm) and deeper (16cm) book than the PFH papberbacks (17.5cm x 11cm). But my Complete Chronicles of Conan just beats the Necronomicon, same width and height (and styling) but a couple of mm thicker.
In fact the Conan looks to be the same version of the book Connavar linked to.

 

[soulsinging]

The Stand by SK - The 1400 page paper back.

That's probably the biggest I've got. Haven't read it yet, it's on the list for summer. Martin's books are close.

I always kinda wondered why they didn't do a one-volume mass market version of LOTR. It can't be more pages than the Stand and it would be kind of cool to have it in one manageably sized volume as Tolkien intended.

I hate big books. Not length-wise but size-wise. I won't buy Abercrombie's First Law series because the US copies are HUGE and unwieldy.

 

[HoopyFrood]

I have a full Lord of the Rings in paper back. It's a fat green one with the painting of Gandalf sweeping down a track.

Although now I can't find it on amazon or on google images, so maybe it wasn't that popular...

 

[HareBrain]

There was a one-volume LOTR released in the seventies (I think) with a famous Pauline Baynes cover. I'm sure that was pretty popular.

 

[j d worthington]

As for Varney... yep, I probably would have made such a comment, had you not preempted it.... (I saw that one the other day, when I picked up the two I listed in the Book Hauls thread... yep, it's a definite door-stop... heck, it'd darn near stop a bank vault door!!!!)

As for my own books of such a size... I have several, from the Complete Chronicles of Conan and the Necronomicon mentioned above, to an original edition of Again, Dangerous Visions (900+ pages) to The Essential Ellison (both original and revised editions, each 1000+ pp.) to Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (about 1100 pp.) to a collection of Hawthorne holding all his novels and a good size selection of his shorter tales, as well as a volume of all his American and English notebooks (save the last of the former, I believe). There's also Michael Moorcock's Von Bek, which is about the size of a moderately large dictionary.... I have some others as well, but I'd have to go through my collection to sort them all out, as I don't tend to think of these things that way....

Oh, and of course there's the single-volume edition of The Dark Descent, by David G. Hartwell, which is a rather hefty tome itself, and the Barnes & Noble H. P. Lovecraft: The Fiction....

 

[GOLLUM]

As for Varney... yep, I probably would have made such a comment, had you not preempted it.... (I saw that one the other day, when I picked up the two I listed in the Book Hauls thread... yep, it's a definite door-stop... heck, it'd darn near stop a bank vault door!!!!).

Indeed..... it's certainly a large tome.

I think you've read the entire thing yes? When I do read it it's going to take me quite a bit of time to get through. I'll probably mix it up with other reading as I don't think I could cope with a 1,200 page penny dreadful in the one go.....

 

[j d worthington]

Indeed..... it's certainly a large tome.

I think you've read the entire thing yes? When I do read it it's going to take me quite a bit of time to get through. I'll probably mix it up with other reading as I don't think I could cope with a 1,200 page penny dreadful in the one go.....

If you do, I think perhaps somebody better check your meds....

Yep, I read the whole thing through. The main difference (and something I wish someone would do again) was that mine was a facsimile edition with all the original illustrations 'n' everythin'... which sometimes relieved the tedium when the text began to really go south....

Incidentally, just in case you'd like to see what some of these are like:

Varney Images

Though I think this one has all of them (I've not gone through to be certain, however):

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Varney, The Vampyre by Thomas Preskett Prest.

If you take it at a pace where you drop it when it begins to pall, you'll likely get more out of it... though even then I would imagine you'll be wincing your way through a fair amount.....

Incidentally, speaking of penny dreadfuls... I would have listed my copy of The Wandering Jew here, as it is the complete, 1500+ pp. text, but it is split into two volumes, so doesn't technically apply.... (It is also, for my money, a much better read than either Wagner or Varney!)

 

[GOLLUM]

It (Wandering Jew) is also, for my money, a much better read than either Wagner or Varney!)

Hey don't rub it in OK?....

Needless to say the Wordsworth edn. 'aint got any preeety pictures mister...

 

[j d worthington]

Hey don't rub it in OK?....

Needless to say the Wordsworth edn. 'aint got any preeety pictures mister...

So I noticed, when flipping through it. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure I'd call the illustrations to Varney particularly pretty......

Let's see... other tomes I have which might fit the bill... Well, there's Alexander Laing's The Haunted Omnibus, which certainly ought to fit the bill; and a volume of Hawthorne's letters (the Centennial edition of Hawthorne, Vol. XVI, 1843-1853) which is quite a goodly-sized volume; the first volume of the Collected Stories of Henry James, which comes in a little over 1200 pp.; and a collection of Joseph Conrad's work (several novels plus a collection of short stories) which comes in just under 1400; Storm Constantine's Wraethu, which clocks in at 800; a volume of Oscar Wilde (containing stories, poems, essays, plays, and The Picture of Dorian Gray) which comes in at a mere 850; The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James (hardbound), which is a piddlin' 650 (or thereabouts), but seems much larger due to the thickness of the paper... and, speaking of Wordsworth, The Wordsworth Collection of Irish Ghost Stories, which comes in at 1102 pp.....

Oh, and the two volumes of The Unabridged Mark Twain, each coming in at a right around 1200-1300.....

 

[Duchessprozac]

I have the Necronomicon and Conan books as well as the hardback edition of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which are the largest fiction hardbacks I own. I also have the Sword of Shanara omnibus which is so thick I don't I'll ever actually be able to read as it's uncomfortable to hold.

 

[nixie]

I'm not going round measuring them but I do have a few hefty hardback tomes. Paperbacks that spring to mind are The Great Book of Amber... Omnibus edition of The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Belgarid, Chronicles of the Black Company, LOTR there will be others but can't think at moment.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Well! If we're going by page numbers as well, I have Literary Theory: An Anthology (say that in a dramatic voice, it makes it sound much more interesting) which is 1314 pages long.

I have a Norton collection of English Renaissance Drama which is a couple of pages shy of 2,000.

And the aforementioned Collected Shakespeare beast is 3420 pages.

Norton books have those thin, tracing paper-esque pages.

I think university books are purposely made to be bricks because they have to be carried around all the time.