Your Largest Size Fiction Books.

[dask]

ANATHEM is pretty darn big!

 

[j d worthington]

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.

Yes, I've got several of the Norton anthologies, with that darn-near onion-skin paper... great books, but yeesh! Don't ever try to fill up an entire bookcase with the things -- it'd go through the floor.... and the floor below that... and the floor below that... and probably the concrete cellar....

Which Shakespeare edition is this Hoops?

 

[Duchessprozac]

I've just remembered another giant tome I have in my possession, George R.R Martin's Dreamsongs, which weighs in at 1200 pages and is heavy enough to kill a small child if were to fall on them.

Thinking about all these behemoths I own, it doesn't seem much of a suprise that my last bookshelf collapsed under the weight of the books on it.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Yes, I've got several of the Norton anthologies, with that darn-near onion-skin paper... great books, but yeesh! Don't ever try to fill up an entire bookcase with the things -- it'd go through the floor.... and the floor below that... and the floor below that... and probably the concrete cellar....

Which Shakespeare edition is this Hoops?

It's the International Student Edition.

I have a thing about paper (hmm, could've phrased that better). There's something about the sound of crinkled paper, or old paper, and rifling through it. Anyway, I really like leafing through the tracing-paper type pages. I used to flick through a copy of the bible that we had at home (we had a couple of them, little compact ones that our school gave out) because of the thin, thin pages it had.

 

[Talysia]

In terms of the largest fiction books in my collection, I suppose the biggest would have to be the latest installment of the Wheel of Time series (which are always big books, and even more so in hardback), a paperback copy of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana, and a hardback copy of Lian Hearn's Heaven's Net is Wide. I think the trade paperback of Robin Hobb's Fool's Fate is quite thick, too, although I haven't measured any of them yet.

No doubt I'll be able to find more, somewhere.

 

[dask]

H.G. Wells THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES (21st Edition) is 1038 pages; the CONCISE ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICIAN LITERATURE published by Macmillan is 2007 pages though not all of it is fiction.

 

[thatollie]

I have the 9cm Complete works of Shakespeare as well.

But also,
a single bound edition of D.H.Lawrence novels 7cms.
The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy, 7.5cms.

But the books here get really big when we move into nonfiction.

 

[Rodders]

Yeah, i think the largest novels i have are Stephen King's IT and the Stand, both of which i enjoyed immensly. Peter F. Hamilton's books are also generally large with the Nightsdawn trilogy pulling in at 3, 000 pages all told. dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort was a pretty large time for me too with 1,000 pages.

I must admit that i do enjoy the larger books as there can be so much extra detail that really adds to the texture of the story IMO.

 

[HareBrain]

My thickest in my collection are the complete Conan (c930pp), Jonathan Strange (c800pp) and single volume Centenary LOTR (with Alan Lee illustrations, c1200pp), but depite the 400 pages difference they're all about the same physical thickness, just over 6cm, so I'm guessing that must be close to the maximum practicable width for a hardback.

I'm sure the most unwieldy hardback I've ever tried reading was the one-volume hardback of "To Green Angel Tower", volume three of Tad Williams's MS&T series. That was about 1100 pages, but as far as I remember wasn't on particularly thin paper. It was a monster to try to hold in bed. The book had to be split in two for the paperback.

 

[Xelebes]

Fiction (Single Volume):

Bookshelf Height: Hans Christian Anderson's & Grimm Brothers' Fairy Tales: 24.4 cm
Bookshelf Width: Neal Stephenson's Anathem: 6.3 cm

Fiction (Whole Work):

Bookshelf Width: Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy: 15 cm

 

[manephelien]

The Lord of the Rings omnibus edition is pretty big.

 

[Riselka]

My hardback copy of the uncut version of Stephen King's THE STAND is the biggest single novel I own, but my university text of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF CHAUCER is definitely bigger, and a whole lot heavier.

 

[El Dirko]

Already mentioned: Hardcover edition of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell and the LOTR omnibus edition.

Bonus: The complete Bone graphic novel by Jeff Smith. Around 1300 pages.

Best wishes,
Dirk

 

[Rodders]

Do you guys prefer a larger book?

 

[j d worthington]

Do you guys prefer a larger book?

When I was younger, yes. It meant more to read, more time to spend with the story (or collection of stories). As I grew older, that changed more and more, until I simply don't care about the size any longer. For me it is very much a case of quality over quantity; if you can have both, great. If not, I'll take quality every time... and no few very brief books take a good deal more time to read because they are quality reading, where one must slow down and really pay close attention or savor the sheer writing, or ponder what the writer is saying. These are the books which, ultimately, I find a lot more fulfilling, because I come away from them feeling I've been enriched by the experience, not merely entertained....