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Post by cauldronbrewer on Mar 18, 2013 12:12:06 GMT
My bias is toward novels of 200 pages or fewer. I'm a particularly big fan of novellas. I'll occasionally read novels with page counts in the 300s and 400s. As far as I can recall, the only 500+ page horror novel I've read since high school (when I slogged through Stephen King's The Stand) is T.E.D. Klein's The Ceremonies--which is a fine novel, but in my mind no improvement over the novella from which it originated ("The Events at Poroth Farm").
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Mar 18, 2013 12:19:06 GMT
I will read the (very) occasional 1,000+ pages novel, such as Gary Jennings's AZTEC (highly recommended). And some Victorian favorites of mine, notably Wilkie Collins, were somewhat prone to prolixity (do not miss out on the fantastic ARMADALE just because it is absurdly long!).
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Post by erebus on Mar 18, 2013 12:42:44 GMT
I don't really bother about page counts. 1000 page books are a long read so if I am on one of those I tend to concentrate on that rather than have a few on the go. THE STAND and IT by Stephen King spring to mind. I'm due to read the seventh DARK TOWER book shortly so I will probably have aanthology nearby on the go to and maybe/perhaps a mere whippersnapper of a book a couple hundred pages long ( Crabs on the Rampage is beckoning again )
Of course a large page book has to be captivating. If it is those pages breeze by. But a poor book with a big page count really seems to grind to a halt and take an age to get though.
On a strange note I tend to do more big hardback reading in the Autumn Winter months. Whereas Spring Summer is time for paperbacks etc.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Mar 18, 2013 13:34:57 GMT
And some Victorian favorites of mine, notably Wilkie Collins, were somewhat prone to prolixity. I'll confess that I've never read a Wilkie Collins novel, though I did enjoy Le Fanu's 400+ page Uncle Silas. |
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Post by dem bones on Mar 18, 2013 14:06:49 GMT
My bias is toward novels of 200 pages or fewer. I'm a particularly big fan of novellas. Novellas! We really should devote a thread to them, maybe try compile some kind of DIY alternative to Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book Of Short Horror Novels? There are exceptions - countless, which makes a complete nonsense of the rest of this post - but i prefer the author gets his or her work done inside 300 pages, preferably less. Think the only epics (700 page plus) I've completed in my entire life are Theodore Roszac's Flicker (last year!), Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy (in reverse order) and, incredibly, Varney, the Vampyre, though that was in the three volume Dover edition and over a period of a year - had forgotten most of it by time I staggered over the finishing line. Les Daniels' wonderful 'Don Sebastian' series doesn't qualify as they're five stand-alone 200-300 pagers, and the 'chronicles' tag was only appended as an afterthought. The Stand and the Dark Tower saga may well be Stephen King's greatest works, but it's unlikely I'll ever find out. Made it through 3-400 pages of the former, liked it well enough, just didn't have the stamina to see it out. Many Richard Laymon novels top 400 pages, but 400 pages of Funland is like 100 pages of anybody else (maybe it's the same with Dean R. Koontz? never knew where to start with his prodigious output, so haven't). Should think there's a very good reason why the Gothic & Victorian novels often ran to inordinate lengths - no television. |
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Post by Dr Strange on Mar 18, 2013 14:08:11 GMT
The last really long novel I attempted was Justin Cronin's The Passage - I read over 200 pages and then gave up with about 700 still to go. The main problem I had was that I was getting fed up with learning all this detailed background about a character, only for them to then be killed off with no more part to play in the story. Life's too short (unlike that book).
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Mar 18, 2013 14:23:05 GMT
And some Victorian favorites of mine, notably Wilkie Collins, were somewhat prone to prolixity. I'll confess that I've never read a Wilkie Collins novel, though I did enjoy Le Fanu's 400+ page Uncle Silas. Well, UNCLE SILAS is the number one Victorian "sensation novel," in my estimation, and an astonishing achievement that would be difficult to top, but having already read that you should try Collins next. Read THE WOMAN IN WHITE as warm-up, then move on to the utterly insane ARMADALE. |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Mar 18, 2013 15:46:51 GMT
I'm a huge fan of the long book or the 130 page pot boiler. The basic criterion is that's got to be good. War and Peace is a great example. All the chapters are about two pages long - its a work of genius partly becasue its so clean and easy. I personally don't feel that many horror novels can keep their impact over the marathon but then I am short horror story fan mostly.
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Post by severance on Mar 18, 2013 16:09:31 GMT
I've always thought of myself as liking both, the only requirement being that it was good - and even that wasn't a steadfast rule. I've completed 120 page pieces of rubbish, like 'Fleshbait,' because they were only 120 pages - whereas I gave up on the 800 page pieces of rubbish that Kevin J. Anderson and Bobo Herbert had the nerve to call 'Dune' sequels because the pain was too much. Like Craig and Jojo, I've read and enjoyed 'War & Peace' and a work of Gary Jennings ('Journeyer' in my case), as well as huge fantasy tomes like Mary Gentle's 'Ash: A Secret History' - but they're definitely becoming less frequent. I've just bought a 70's NEL by Terry Harknett called 'Promotion Tour, weighing in at a modest 253 pages - and my first reaction was 'Bloody hell, that's big!'  |
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Post by ripper on Mar 18, 2013 19:54:21 GMT
I can't say that I have an overwhelming preference for either short or long novels. Most of the ones I tackle are probably of 400 pages or less, though I wouldn't be averse to giving longer works a go if the title grabbed my interest. Most of the books I like to read tend to be sub-400 pagers as that is the page count that my favourite authors and types of novel generally adhere to. What tends to put me off is when the author goes into excessive detail about background and motivation at the expense of moving the plot forward. If I read a very long novel then I am sure that I would still have a short one on the go at the same time.
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Post by jamesdoig on Mar 18, 2013 20:42:03 GMT
I'm a huge fan of the long book or the 130 page pot boiler. The basic criterion is that's got to be good. Me too - I got through Cronin's The Passage okay and Simmons' The Terror. Those big Victorian pastiches (too harsh a word!) are good too, if well done - Cox's The Meaning of Night and the sequel, D.J. Taylor's Kept, and similar things, like Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale - all these are fine books. Readable door-stop Victorian novels are the exception rather than the rule - after all most were only meant to hold the reader's attention for a single chapter in a magazine or penny part, but over the duration of 1000 pages can be a hard slog. Long penny dreadfuls are long because the weekly parts were popular and they were ground out week after week until people stopped buying them - that's why Varney is so bloody long. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Mar 18, 2013 21:02:24 GMT
That's an excellent idea. |
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Post by dem bones on Mar 18, 2013 22:12:39 GMT
That's an excellent idea. It's your idea, so if you want to get us started, I'm on the case! In fact, i've two volumes in mind .... |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Mar 19, 2013 15:08:05 GMT
Well, UNCLE SILAS is the number one Victorian "sensation novel," in my estimation, and an astonishing achievement that would be difficult to top, but having already read that you should try Collins next. Read THE WOMAN IN WHITE as warm-up, then move on to the utterly insane ARMADALE. Thanks for the suggestion. I had been wondering what to do with a voucher for books from Oxford University Press, and I see that they have both The Woman in White and Armadale in their catalog. |
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Post by cw67q on Mar 19, 2013 15:25:54 GMT
Jojo said : "Well, UNCLE SILAS is the number one Victorian "sensation novel," in my estimation, and an astonishing achievement that would be difficult to top"
I'm a huge fan of Le Fanu's ghost stories, but have found the longer novels to be a mixed bag.
I really didn't enjoy Uncle Silas at all, despite its reputation. I thought it had aged rather badly and strained credulity beyond maintenance (sorry jojo). OTOH I found the rambling grab bag of a book "the House by the Graveyard" to be terrific fun, the early stages revealing an unexpectedly humourous side to JSlF. It is definately not a horror novel though and it does the book no favour to market it as one. Checkmate was an intersting book although some of the sections dragged a little and I didn't care for the stock character of the evil Jewish money lender (a personage entirely missing from the large canon of ghost stories). The twist at the end entirely blind-sided me in a novel of this vintage, I imagine it must have shocked many of le Fanu's contemporaries. I failed to finish the terrible padded Wyvern Mystery, but perhaps it picks up after the first third. The short novel/long novella the Haunted Baronet is a cracking ghost story.
Thanks for the Wilkie Collins recommendations Jojo. I have just finished reading Simmon's Drood (which I liked much more than most of my GoodRead friends) and I might just add one of WC's novels to the tbr pile.
- Chris
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