How big is really big?

How many pages does a book have to be for you to consider it a REALLY big book? Over 500? over 600? What to you is a big ol' book? I know obviously the War and Peace, Middlemarch, and the Count of Monte Cristo's, but I'm curious about the slightly smaller but still much bigger than the average 300 page fiction novel. Like Fingersmith at 580 pages, really big or not?

I'm asking, because I was thinking of adding a tag to my really big books but not really sure where a really big book size starts?

I had this discussion with some friends after reading about a challenge where participants read a certain number of 'chunk' (or some similar term) books - IE, really big books. They defined theirs at I think 400 pages. Our consensus was that 400 pages is a /regular/ book.

For the most part, people started calling them 'big' books at around 500-600 books, depending on the person. For me, I don't think I start feeling that a book is 'long' until I hit 600, and it doesn't start feeling 'really long' for another hundred or so after that.

I have a few books that I call really big because they are so thick and heavy that it isn't comfortable holding them to read.

I have to agree #2.Aeerin99 - around 600 is a big book - Im reading one now that is about 550 & I was thinking wow thats bigger than the majority of books I end up reading. Good example of very big book Outlander by Dianna Gabaldon and her 2nd book in the series Dragonfly in Amber is huge. But, they are such good books you have no problem flying right through them.

>2 Aerrin99: Are you thinking of this challenge? The minimum for a 'big' book here is 450 pages.

I think that's a reasonable cut-off, because I think that 450-500 pages is where a book begins to feel 'bigger than average'. Not huge, just bigger than average. For 'really big', I'd say 800 pages.

I agree with Aerrin99. For me, books are big as soon as they reach 600-700 pages. The trilogy of books I'm working through at the moment (the Baroque Tapestry by Neal Stephenson) are HUGE books!

> 5

Yes, that's it! I still maintain that 450 is not a book big enough to count as a big book in a challenge! I didn't actually think this til I started looking at some lists, and checking the page numbers of some books I'd recently read. I was actually kind of surprised.

>7 Aerrin99:
I signed up to do the challenge, and then surprised myself when I looked through my TBR and discovered just how many books I had that met the requirements. I'm expecting to get through at least a dozen books of 450+ pages by the end of the challenge. For me, 450 pages is reasonable as a minimum cut-off, but not as a figure for a really big book.

Were you expecting books to have fewer pages and for 450 to seem long?

> 8

Yup - I was surprised to find how many books I read have 450+ pages. I think when I saw this challenge - sometime in March, maybe - I had already read enough books of that size to complete it. But if you'd asked me, I probably would have guessed only 3 or 4 of those to fit the page limit!

600+. Anything less than that is a literary appetizer.

80000 words used to be the norm for SF and F books according to an author I'm in touch with. Nowadays 120000 is more common.

I think really big has to be 150k plus.

How many pages that is depends on the format of the book you decide to get.

More than 550 pages and I think you're into big book territory. On the other hand Heart of Darkness felt extraordinarily long, and yet is only a little over 100 pages.

Grammath - There's a difference between "big" and "dense", yeah.

I think it depends on what genre your reading. Reading mostly SF and Fantasy myself, I am disappointed if a book is less than 300 pages, regard 500 pages as average and 600 plus as big. Of course, I prefer mammoth books with 800 - 1000 pages ;-).

I just finished A Suitable Boy, which comes in at 1,474 pages, so right now pretty much all other books feel small. :) Normally, though, I'd consider 500+ a chunkster.

Darn, LT ate my post!

Most of my books are in the 300-400 range so anything over 550-600 is a big book. Over 800 is a BIG book. I'm currently reading the big honkin' massive version of The Stand. It's 1,153 pages.

Heh. Lightweights. Vince Bugliosi's study of the Kennedy assassination, Reclaiming History runs more than 1600 pages. The first chapter alone is more than 300 pages.

Now that's a big book!

Heh. Lightweights. Vince Bugliosi's study of the Kennedy assassination, Reclaiming History runs more than 1600 pages. The first chapter alone is more than 300 pages.

Now that's a big book! 8^}

The print/font size must also be considered.
My PB copy of "Sarum" by Edward Rutherfurd comes in at 1033 pages plus the print/font size is smaller that most of the other PB novels I own.

John Dunning's "Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime" has 500 pages & has smaller font size, while Dunning's "The Bookman's Wake" has 432 pages and average-sized PB font...both PB books are about the same size on the bookshelf, and I consider both to be average in length...substantial but not too long.

I recently read Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady" as a 'group read'...my copy has 613 pages (& average size font)...several readers in the group thought that was long.
The "Anna Karenina" translation that I recently finished has 817 pages with small font. "...And Ladies of the Club" by Helen Hooven Santmyer (HB) is 1176 pages (with small font). "The Autobiography of Henry VIII" by Margaret George has 923 pages. "Helen and Teacher" by Joseph P. Lash (HB) has 786 pages and smaller font.

BTW, all of the titles mentioned are in my personal & LT libraries.

Just got Toll the Hounds with a wonderful 1 295 pages! :D