TOP TEN TUESDAY: Longest Books

This week's topic for Top Ten Tuesday, hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl, is Longest Books I've Read. I'm not a huge fan of immensely long books, but when you find a good one that you can just fly through, that absorbs you so completely, long books don't even feel long. The number of pages can vary depending on editions so I'll list the pages, but I realize that the number can change.

Come with me down this little ole memory lane...

Hey, remember when there used to be the Chunkster Challenge hosted by Bookfool ? The first challenge that drew me in was Booklogged's Classic Challenge, and then the Chunkster Challenge with Bookfool came along. It's hard to believe all this book blogging started over ten years ago. I was browsing around the Chunkster Challenge posts and bookfool mentioned that three participants would get her homemade booksmarks. I used that beautiful bird photograph bookmark for years!

Stephen King's It  

1120 pages

I'm trying not to just pick all the Stephen King's I've read, and even with 3 on the list, I'm sure there were other books by King that were long that I didn't list. Even with the length, nobody does a big epic novel like King. 

Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth

992 pages

Building a cathedral in the 12th century. Was worth the 900+ pages.

Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance

728 pages

I enjoyed it as I read A Fine Balance, but it was in the months afterward when I couldn't stop thinking about the characters and events that I realized the greatness in this novel. 

Stephen King's The Stand

1472 pages

The edition I read wasn't the uncut/author's version, but it was still very, very long and one of my favourite books.

Joe Hill's The Fireman

768 pages

Stephen King Jr writes just as engrossing novels as his dad. Post-apocalyptic tale of bad viruses, sounds a lot like The Stand.

Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch

784 pages

The Goldfinch read quickly, but ultimately I was more frustrated with this one than any other on this list and I wouldn't recommend it.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillippa Gregory

672 pages

Epic Tudor historical history during Henry the VIII's days there was plenty of intrigue to keep me interested. I loved it at the time, but never did read another Phillippa Gregory book for some reason.

Neil Gaiman's American Gods

624 pages

Shortest book on my list, but is also one I could do a re-read of. I loved the premise and epic good v evil nature of the book.

Stephen King's Lisey's Story

688 pages

Really, this was just a baby Stephen King book.

Jean Auel's The Mammoth Hunters 

(all the books in the series are chunksters)

768 pages

Considering I've read six books in this series, and all the books were mammoth, it ends up being I've read a lot of Jean Auel. I always think of these prehistoric books along with The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldron at the same time (prehistoric sex books vs Scottish sex books were the descriptions as we passed them around the staff room) and I'm pretty sure the Outlander books were also Chiunksters.

Elizabeth George's A Place of Hiding 

(12th in the series, they were all quite long)

800 pages

The Inspector Lynley /Barbara Havers mystery books were tremendously long books but really good police procedurals. They used to take me forever to read, as along with the length, I found the prose dense and the vocabulary just beyond my usual words. I'm impressed looking back that I read twelve of them, but I see now the series is at 20 books and I know I wouldn't have the patience to read them now.