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This week's question for Tell Me Something Tuesday.... When is a book too long?
When it has a million sub-plots that I don’t care about.
When it bores me.
When it’s full of words for the sake of there being words. (Aka, overly padded with useless information.)
When you think it’s finished but it just keeps on rolling...
You know what though? You can never judge a book as too long just on it’s word count. I’ve read many a chonker (600-900ish pages) that I’ve wanted to keep reading forever and many 200-250 page books that were too long for the stories they were telling.
There is no right or wrong answer to this question... It's highly subjective.
I completely agree : The lord of the rings, 1000+ pages, went like a dream but The doctor's wife was too long for its own good. A great book is never too long... well, until it is ! ;)
ReplyDeleteI have been working on a post about big books (fact - don't like them). I speak from a contemporary reader POV, and I just don't get how some of them are pushing 500 pages. OMG, yes! I have read books that went past where they should have been done. Always weird for me.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the answer has to do with pacing and characters. If the book is fast-paced or the characters have great personalities, I’ll happily keep reading forever. A 200-page book can feel long if there’s no plot.
ReplyDeleteAj @ Read All The Things!
I think you're completely right! I've read some 300 pg books that felt like they've draaaaged. But then I've read longer books and I'm completely fine! Books like Winter by Marissa Meyers which is 800+ pages and I finished it in like 2 days lol, or Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare which is 880 pages, and while this one took me longer to read, I was never bored by it!
ReplyDeleteIf the book is really good I can read really long books. I read 2 massive books which I loved and they were Acheron and Styxx by Sherrilyn Kenyon. I love that series and those books were about 800 pages long.
ReplyDeleteThis is hard because I read a lot of fantasy and those can be 500 pages or more. I'd my sweet spot is 350 (non fantasy) and for fantasy, 600 pages?
ReplyDeleteSame here! I love a nice long book as long as it doesn't feel padded. I just finished one that was almost 500 pages but it had short punchy chapters and just flew by. And others can be much shorter and drag lol.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your 100%. All those reasons are true for me too. As you said, I have read some short books that seemed to go on forever and then there have been chunksters I've knocked out in a couple days. Sometimes I have to remind myself of this though when I find myself looking at page numbers to decide what to read next. Too often the bigger books get the short end of the stick even though they might be a fast read. Long doesn't necessarily equal too long.
ReplyDeleteThere have been very few books that are worth all those pages (for me) but generally, any book where I start to drift is too long. Whether it's 200 or 700 pages lol
ReplyDeleteKaren @ For What It's Worth