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
