What is the longest book you own?

[FBM]

About 16".

[Callan]

A textbook - hardy survivor of many house-moves, shelf-purges and car boot sales: The Literature of Renaissance England at 1083 pages.

Used to have to carry that bastard into college every day for an entire term, plus the whole of Paradise Lost. It's a wonder I can still walk upright.

And it's not exactly in great condition, as it's a paperback. The spine had almost snapped in several places even 25 years ago...

Ah, memories....

*shudder*

[JimC]

"The Insects of Australia" at 1029 pages. This is a 1973 edition - I'd bet its current incarnation is much longer...

[orpheus]

Finnegans Wake

It is - quite literally - endless. Also beginningless.

I've read a lot of it, and keep going back to it more than I do with most books.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

Ironically, a bible, I think.

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

Crap and confusing plot. He sort of dies in the end.

[pErvinalia]

"The Insects of Australia" at 1029 pages. This is a 1973 edition - I'd bet its current incarnation is much longer...

If we are talking technical books, I'm sure i've got some Fish or Bird books that would top the 1000 page mark.

[Ian]

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, 917 pages.

I read Stephen Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined within the past year and that might've been a comparable size, but it was a library book. I no longer have it - though it was so great I might just go buy a copy anyway.

[Audley Strange]

Finnegans Wake

It is - quite literally - endless. Also beginningless.

I've read a lot of it, and keep going back to it more than I do with most books.

I disagree. I think it has a very definite start. I'll say no more that "O"

Also there is a theory that since once measures a circle anywhere one should use Pi. (leaf 314 line 15 word 9 apparently) but that takes you to the first word on the last line "a."

Anyway do novels in several volumes count? If so The Baroque Cycle and the Illuminatus Trilogy by Neal Stephenson and Bob's Wilson and Shea.

Also by Stephenson Cryptonomicon, Anathem and Reamde all come in around the 1000s

Diarmid MacCulloch's History of Christianity is hefty too.

I dunno, I've got tonnes of doorstops.

I'm beginning to see the plus side for e-readers.

[orpheus]

Finnegans Wake

It is - quite literally - endless. Also beginningless.

I've read a lot of it, and keep going back to it more than I do with most books.

I disagree. I think it has a very definite start. I'll say no more that "O"

Also there is a theory that since once measures a circle anywhere one should use Pi. (leaf 314 line 15 word 9 apparently) but that takes you to the first word on the last line "a."

Ok, now I'm going to have to go back and do some digging...

(but my god, the whole section that follows "O". And the recording of the Master himself reading the last bit of it. Makes life worth living.)

Anyway do novels in several volumes count? If so The Baroque Cycle and the Illuminatus Trilogy by Neal Stephenson and Bob's Wilson and Shea.

Also by Stephenson Cryptonomicon, Anathem and Reamde all come in around the 1000s

Diarmid MacCulloch's History of Christianity is hefty too.

I dunno, I've got tonnes of doorstops.

I'm beginning to see the plus side for e-readers.

I don't particularly like them myself, but my tendinitis prevents me from holding the big tomes. I'm currently reading Reamde on my iPhone, of all things.

[surreptitious57]

I read It by Stephen King in eleven days and that was some going considering it clocks in at 1214 pages. It has wafer thin ones like in The Bible which I have also read and I think is 1366 pages though mine was the Gideon and not the James version. I have recently finished The Road To Reality by Roger Penrose at 1049 pages. I have also read most of Peter Hamilton who has a few books in his back catalogue of over 1000 pages. I quite like long ones because they are a challenge

[cronus]

This thread inspired me to go out and buy, secondhand and in paperback, The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose which is 1099 pages and then a couple of blank sheets at the end to write some of those notes putting the old man right.

[pErvinalia]

Like all Rog's books, it's a serious tome. Takes quite some work to get through.

[cronus]

Like all Rog's books, it's a serious tome. Takes quite some work to get through.

I'll dip and delve with this one, no point worrying about the deep end just yet.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah. That's pretty much how I read all his books. The first one I read from cover to cover and it nearly killed me.

[JimC]

This thread inspired me to go out and buy, secondhand and in paperback, The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose which is 1099 pages and then a couple of blank sheets at the end to write some of those notes putting the old man right.

I have it, but have only dipped into it.

Must get stuck in seriously...