man reading a big book

The 20 Longest Books I Own

This is not my original idea. A while back Madame Writer posted her list. She got me thinking that, given my interest in big books, I should compile my own list.

Once I got started compiling a list, grabbing all the fattest books off my shelves became a compulsion. Consequently, so as not to waste all that energy, I’ve expanded my list to 20.

I’ve excluded the following types of books:

  • reference books (e.g., Cambridge Biographical Dictionary)  
  • textbook anthologies (e.g., The Norton Anthology of English Literature)
  • collected volumes of individual works by a single author  
  • cookbooks   

A few of mine are on my Kindle rather than on a bookshelf. For these, I’ve used the number of pages of the print edition on which the Kindle edition is based.

1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand 

  • 1168 pages 
  • hardcover  
  • unread

2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami 

  • 1157 pages 
  • paperback  
  • unread

3. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 

  • 1112 pages 
  • hardcover 
  • read

4. Reamde by Neal Stephenson 

  • 1042 pages 
  • hardcover 
  • unread

5. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchel 

  • 1037 pages 
  • hardcover 
  • unread

6. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson 

  • 960 pages 
  • Kindle ed. 
  • unread

7. I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb 

  • 897 pages 
  • paperback 
  • read

8. The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough 

  • 894 pages 
  • hardcover 
  • read

9. The Winds of War by Herman Wouk 

  • 885 pages 
  • paperback 
  • unread

10. Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson 

  • 883 pages 
  • hardcover 
  • unread

11. Jung: A Biography by Deirdre Bair 

  • 881 pages 
  • hardcover 
  • unread

12. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 

  • 838 pages 
  • paperback 
  • unread

13. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton 

  • 830 pages 
  • paperback  
  • unread

14. London: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd 

  • 829 pages 
  • hardcover  
  • unread

15. Underworld by Don DeLillo 

  • 827 pages 
  • hardcover  
  • read

16. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 

  • 814 pages 
  • paperback  
  • read

17. Middlemarch by George Eliot 

  • 802 pages 
  • paperback  
  • read

18. Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years by Brian Boyd 

  • 783 pages 
  • paperback 
  • unread

19. Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy 

  • 769 pages 
  • Kindle ed.
  • read

20. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling 

  • 759 pages 
  • hardcover 
  • read

And I just did the math and discovered that I’ve only read eight—less than half—of these. It’s time to put my Big Books hat back on and get busy.

© 2019 by Mary Daniels Brown

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