Why do people still write gigantic novels? Can't anyone tell a good story in less than 200 pages? Don't you people get tired of reading 600+ tomes when you could be doing something else like learning a new language? Do giant novels get so much acclaim because they're legitimately good or because their readers have to justify spending so much time reading them?
>>8263847
Some people enjoy a story and want to last it as long as possible.
>>8263847
I once had a girlfriend who wouldnt watch movies longer than an hour and a half. She was a pleb too.
>>8263847
if you like the first 200 pages of a book, then you will likely enjoy the next 400+ pages. If you don't like the first 200 pages, you put the book down and find something else to do with your time.
Not every book needs to be 300+ pages and to no one's surprise, many books are no more than 300 pages in length. I fail to see the issue you are claiming exists.
>>8263862
Of course, it's not always the case, but most often now a novel surpasses 300 pages, and in an age in where there's so much happening, so much to do and learn, it's even more costly to spend time with any single book. I simply don't have time to read a 1000+ page book about some kids at college, a 600+ page book about a disease epidemic, a 400+ page book about cowboys.
>>8263894
read smaller books? You can skip the longer ones unless you already know the time investment is going to be worth it and imho technology has made longer books more practical than ever before.
The books I care the most about I read on hard copies and I read the trash tier thrillers, et cetera on my phone while commuting. That's already wasted time for me so enjoying a cheap genre work is a nice plus. I will admit that I have read too many novels that could have been some 100 pages shorter, but that's an issue of the quality of writing rather than length.
I think most people who knew multiple languages throughout history also read significantly, they were helped by a better education then we have today but you're a turbo pleb op. What a stupid comment, good luck with your new "language"
>>8263909
Thank you for addressing the topic questions with your insightful reply. Could you explain why I'm a turbo pleb?
p.s. your grammar and spelling need work, pal
You can measure up some people in an hour, others in a week, still others you can't figure out after spending a lifetime with them.
Some might find this analogy to be plebeian, but there are movies like Akira that need two hours to tell their story, you have animes like Eva where the story is dense and needs 26 episodes and a movie, then there are some like Hunter x Hunter that need 150 episodes and yet more there's One Piece with 700 and still more to come. A lot of the fun in investing your attention for so great a length of time is that your perseverance is rewarded. Not everything can be explained in a sentence and sometimes you need acquaint yourself loads of minutiae before you can even begin to grasp something.
So yes, there are things like Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner that consist a few pages, surreal little parables like Kafka's that can be finished in one sitting, novels like Blood Meridian that take a day or two, or doorstoppers like Gravity's Rainbow or Moby Dick that surround the reader with biological, industrial, and historical knowledge for their storytelling.
Point being, some stories are different than others. Why have an arbitrary length requirement?
>>8263918
You literally made a thread complaining about long books, your library probably consists of your college curriculum, you're literally complaining about the length of something not even forced on you, while i imagine you can sit on 4chan and stare at your thread for a few hours today rubbing your hands in preparation for responses which hopefully agree with you and reaffirm your position, if not respond smugly.
No one makes you read, if an author feels he needs 1000 pages to describe a story then by all means he should do so, i think you should go and watch game of thrones and lay off the hard books.
The need for longer books is obvious when you look at stuff like short stories. 3-5k words is just not enough words to deal with more than just one or two themes, even if the story is well-written and economical with the space. In the same way, sometimes an author wants to tackle so many themes that 200 pages is simply not enough space.
Personally, I'm a big fan of 100-200 page books because they are just the right length to really develop an idea without much risk of filler, but it's obvious that they just can't do the same sort of stuff that longer works can do.
>>8263943
Is a question the same as a complaint? Your argument is too personal. You don't know anything about me; best not to make hasty assumptions.
If an author were to feel like writing a 1000 page book, they should expect most people who read it not to finish it, and a lot of people to avoid it all together. When I write, it's with the hope that people would want to read the whole thing.
Borges already proposed to discard (write) unnecesary long shit novels.
He also said it on some tv talk progran with others writers. Kek
>>8263847
gigantic novels are only going to get more and more common in the internet age.
as this guy said >>8263862, if I liked the first "200" pages of a book (>implying I wouldn drop it after 50 already), it's a much less risky investment for me to finish the other 400+ pages of that book, than to read two more 200-page books from scratch, which I don't know whether I'd even like/find relevant/are good
plus short books are usually high school tier even as it is now
How many long books have you read OP? Sometimes an author needs a lot of pages to do what they want to do thematically, story-wise, or any other way. Pretty much every long book I've read has justified its length. Could some have been trimmed down a bit? Yeah, but the author made the book that long for a reason and your suggestion that most books could be 200 pages or fewer is silly. It's the same as saying why can't all songs be less than 3 minutes, or all movies under 90 minutes.
>>8264018
Not Op. But for example, on Grapes of warth, do we really need to read an Entire chapter about a fucking tourtle travel?
Maybe you're just a pleb with an awful attention span and you don't want to make the full commitment of reading something that's more than 300 pages. Maybe you should realize that literature is not only about plot.
>>8264018
i'm like op desu, in that i haven't read very many long books but i'm getting into some. Ulysses was worth.
Demons is worth it so far, but admittedly slow–about 300 pages in.
IJ is...kinda ok, i might just not like the style, i'm 150 pages in.
So i agree that when reading a long book bc you have to or want to, just try to get into it. Kinda like a road trip. If you spend the whole time thinking about how long the road is and how long you've been driving and are-we-there-yet, its gonna suck. But if you put on some good music/talk and just enjoy the drive, you'll probably have some fun.
I'm fine with longer books so long as the writer doesn't waste my time. As so many are wont to do.
>>8264030
You shut the fuck up, those turtle scenes were cute.
>>8263847
It's a function of idiot plebs thinking that more pages = more value and pay per page schemes.
Most books do not actually have ideas behind them that necessitate going beyond 50 pages. Nietzsche was right to say that authors should be considered guilty until proven innocent. So many hacks try to get you involved in the story in the first 50-100 pages only to drag you along for a few hundred more pages of absolute drivel that you are only going through the motions on because you have set an expectation for yourself that you're going to see the whole book through, or because you have some pathetic hope that perhaps eventually something more than banal plot production line minutiae might slip itself in between the pages.
>>8263847
>Why do people still write gigantic novels?
an overriding phallological fixation
>>8263847
>600 pages
>"tome"
implying all the best films aren't 60-100 minutes
>Bicycle Thieves
>The Seventh Seal
>The 400 Blows
>Ivan's Childhood
>A Man Escaped
>12 Angry Men
>>8263847
because big shit is awesome, duh
>>8264881
everyone knows 80 minutes is the optimal time for a movie. everything after that is indulgent unless each scene proves itself indespensable
>>8263847
Faulkner: the novelist is a failed short story writer, the short story writer a failed poet. Something like that.
>>8263847
>tell a good story
you're spooked
>>8264953
Being spooked is a spook, you stupid spook.
>>8264721
>The point of literature is to have big ideas
No, it's not.
>>8264893
Coming from Faulkner, who was a failed writer.
>>8264738
using more intelligent sounding synonyms does not make "because penises" sound less stupid
>>8264030
>Not understanding the Tourtle
