5 ms·
Good riddance to long books
- pacaro 4y agoSomeone should inform Brandon Sanderson of this trend
- neogodless 4y agoI haven't read any of his, but I know he co-wrote the final 3 books of Wheel of Time, so presumably his mentor was Robert Jordan. As I begin book 6 of Wheel of Time, I wonder if I'll have the perseverance to finish.
- greenthrow 4y agoYou know what they say happens when you assume? It's true of presuming too.
- neogodless 4y ago> In December 2007 Brandon was chosen by Harriet McDougal Rigney to complete Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series after his untimely passing. Ah, it didn't happen the way I thought it might have. So perhaps he was selected for having a similar style of long-winded writing?
- code_biologist 4y agoUh... why would they do that? He was selected because of his love and appreciation for the source material, as well as being a brilliant and capable fantasy writer himself.
- jrimbault 4y agoHe was selected (reported by him) for the eulogy he wrote for Robert Jordan on his blog. At the time he hadn't published "thousand pages" books. Though he later did, concurrently with writing the final Wheel of Time books (themselves thousand pages tomes). And having read both of those authors, I really couldn't accuse Sanderson of being as long winded as Jordan. Sanderson's chapters (even in his long books) are bite sized and very comfortable for me, since that means I only remember the chapter number and don't use a bookmark. (often upward of 70 chapters for his Stormlight Archives series, which means less than 15 pages per chapters) It should also be noted that Sanderson writes taking into account that readers can probably use a wiki to remember things, while Jordan keeps repeating things. Those books (while only a few months apart) weren't written for the same iternet era.
- havblue 4y agoYou could just skip the bulk of books 7-10 and put yourself on track to finishing. I just skimmed the eventful parts of them and I didn't miss much after starting Knife of Dreams. While I don't avoid long books I would take the "life's too short" mentality when it comes to the entire Wheel of Time series.
- eggsmediumrare 4y agoI've heard 7-10 referred to as "the slog." It definitely slows down a bit, but I still enjoyed them. There's a lot of character development that you don't really recognize is even happening until later.
- eggsmediumrare 4y agoFinish it. You'll be sad when it's over.
- hobs 4y agoAfter the weird and constant describing of women in flowery dresses admiring themselves in dreamscapes and book of weird lady attempting to drug and rape one of the main characters "as a joke!" I realized that this guy was way too horny and not nearly as interested in writing a good book series as everyone had told me.
- eggsmediumrare 4y agoRobert Jordan was notoriously bad at writing women and the... physical descriptions are pretty bad, but to his credit, women in his books are not second class citizens. Some of the most interesting, influential and powerful characters are women.
- losvedir 4y agoOof, Wheel of Time really drags in the middle there! I almost threw in the towel several times. Fortunately, though, when Brandon takes over the pacing really picks up and it does have a satisfying conclusion! That was my introduction to Brandon Sanderson as well, and since then I've now read the original Mistborn trilogy and what's published so far of Stormlight Archive. If you've made it through 5 books of Wheel of Time - whether or not you finish it - I think you might appreciate those.
- cocacola1 4y agoA book should be as long as the content merits. A lot of self-help books in the 200-300 page range (including index, notes, etc.) could be summed up in a decently long blog post. A lot of history books & biographies feel as though they skimp out on some important stuff even after 500-600+ pages. Lord of the Rings could keep going and and I would keep going on along with it.
- spoonjim 4y agoMalcom Gladwell books are like this. He started out as a magazine writer and was excellent at it, his New Yorker articles are delightful. When he started writing books they just ended up being the ideas of a magazine article in book length.
- driscoll42 4y agoThis is why I find Outliers incredibly overrated. The core idea is fine, quite good even. But the fact that the book is 336 pages when it could probably be 20-50 at the most just kills the joy of reading it.
- ghaff 4y agoI admit that extremely detailed histories and biographies are mostly not my thing either, but there's definitely a class of books including self-help but also a lot of business books that are built around a few (or even just one) core idea. Even if fleshing out the idea beyond an article or a blog post adds color, it often really doesn't need the 250-300 pages that the publishing industry essentially requires.
- bluGill 4y agoI heard one author of a business book say his book was a page of content, and 200 pages of stories just to get people to read it.
- pessimizer 4y agoThe profit motive incentivizes us to never say anything in five pages that we can get away with stretching to 5 500-page volumes.
- stevecalifornia 4y agoI recently wrote a science fiction novel that I intentionally kept short (50,000 words - 200 pages- readable in a weekend). When reading, I don't finish most of what I start because it takes 80-100 pages to get to the hook. I understand that there is a joy in reading a long novel that builds up a character, but most of the time these novels are just tedious. I couldn't finish the 2020 Hugo Award winner because for the first 50 pages it was the protagonist moving into an apartment, unpacking stuff and walking around in a city. It kills me.
- irony123 4y ago100%. I think the same thing for many technical books.
- mkl95 4y agoMy pet peeve with technical books is unintentional filler - things you can learn within minutes by googling it and easily amount to 50%+ of most books. Show me the obscure API workarounds and tricks that will take me weeks to find out instead.
- zppln 4y agoSeems weird to get hung up over the number of words and page. Pretty sure your 200 pages could bore me to death as well.
- dvngnt_ 4y agoharder
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- aliqot 4y agoI want to mix you and Neal Stephenson in a room, unlimited ink (toner too if you sweet talk me), and a large extra cheese from Uncle Enzo's.
- 4y ago
- bufordtwain 4y agoOK, but he should definitely read "Lonesome Dove". It's a great book and not tough going at all.
- hirundo 4y agoI loved it too. But somehow I wish he'd ended it there, and I never had to know how Woodrow dies. The book didn't need to be shorter, but the rest of the series may have diminished it. I feel that way about Dune too. On the other hand I'm a fiend for the real long-form, like the Aubrey-Maturin series, a novel in twenty-one volumes. That kind of seemlessness is rare. McMurtry killed his Maturin in volume one. The rest felt like post script.
- greenthrow 4y agoThis is a seriously braindead take. There's short books that feel interminable and long books that fly by. It's amazing that a professional writer would espouse the opinion in this article publicly.
- nottorp 4y agoNah, there is an actual tendency to make books longer for no good reason.
- bombcar 4y agoLack of editors has been a common problem for decades, especially visible as authors get famous.
- yamtaddle 4y agoYou usual target a wordcount for a market, as I understand it. You can't sell (to a publisher, I mean) a YA book that's 600 pages in a mass market paperback. You can't sell a 220 page hardcover to a publisher that wants big fat doorstop fantasy novels.
- BeetleB 4y ago> There's short books that feel interminable and long books that fly by. Yeah: It was a delight to read. The Brothers Karamazov was a pain.
- WalterBright 4y agoEver notice how books seem to be the same size? But taking a closer look, the font sizes vary, the line spacing varies, the margin width varies, even the thickness of the paper varies quite a bit. This means the actual word count varies quite a bit. Page count is not a good indicator.
- WalterBright 4y agoThe Lord of the Rings trilogy was worth every word.
- bombcar 4y agoOn the bottom of page 559 in my edition, there's a "little" I could have done without. Other than that, it was pretty good. (I actually just read the bottom sentence on like 50 pages trying to find something, and damn if I couldn't actually really find a word that was not needed or useful.)
- NeoTar 4y agoRespectfully disagree. At the very least from what I recall there are sections of songs and poems which made my eyes glaze over and just skip. I think one of the best things the LotR films did was to distill the story down into its best parts. The hobbit kinda did the opposite which is why they were, as enjoyable films, comparative failures.
- deergomoo 4y agoMy problem with the songs is that, how on earth can they be songs without any indication of how they’re meant to sound? My internal monologue tries to apply rhythm and it just makes for awkward reading. That said, the only poetry I really get anything out of is John Cooper Clarke, and I’ve heard him perform and so have a very clear mental sound of how the poem should be delivered. So maybe it’s just me.
- rcktmrtn 4y ago> At the very least from what I recall there are sections of songs and poems which made my eyes glaze over and just skip. I felt the same way the first time I read the books. But the more I re-read and understand about Tolkien's worldbuilding the more I particularly appreciate them. The culture of Middle Earth is passed down by song and poetry, and when songs show up in the books they aren't just random interjections of the author but strands of culture connecting the characters. If Tolkien had sprinkled more of the content of the Simirilion throughout LotR a lot of the meanings and symbolism would have been made more clear, but I don't think it would have been as immersive. The enjoyable thing about Tolkien is that he balances giving you enough explicit detail to follow and enjoy the main narrative, while also giving you a breadcrumbs that reveal the complex cosmology that contextualizes everything and is in the back of every characters mind.
- FpUser 4y agoI love long books just fine. Like "Mission Earth" by Ron Habbard or "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George Martin or Asimov etc. etc
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI understand that Dumas was paid by the word, which explains the flowery dialogue in books like The Three Musketeers. ”I have a question.” “Please, unburden yourself, so that I may satisfy your ardent curiosity.” “It is, but a simple question; a humble question. One that I am ashamed to admit I have no satisfactory answer.” “Do not feel shame. Please, allow me to provide you with some surcease.” “Very well, then. This is my simple, humble question.” “Please, I am afire with anticipation, that I may bring enlightenment to you.” “Very well then. My question, humble as it is, is…Do you know when dinner is served?”
- splitstud 4y ago
- Apocryphon 4y agoThat exchange in all its aristocratic floridness brings to mind a scene with my favorite phrase from another work that was paid-per-word: "The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur." - A Tale of Two Cities
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoJust to be clear: That exchange was not a direct quote, but many exchanges like that, can be found. I tried reading some of Steven Brust's Khaavren Romances[0], where he adopts a similar writing style, but couldn't make it through them. I did like his Vlad Taltos[1] books, which are written in a much more "vernacular" style. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaavren_Romances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaavren_Romances [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brust#The_Dragaeran_books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brust#The_Dragaeran_boo...
- stnmtn 4y agoThis reminds me of the classic TCP vs UDP joke
- karaterobot 4y agoI agree in principle, but there are exceptions to that rule. Lonesome Dove, the example he uses in that article, is one of those exceptions. He clearly hadn't read the book before writing the piece, and now I'm waiting for a retraction along the lines of "I was so wrong, I wish there was twice as much of this amazing book." But yeah, in general, I think most books could be shorter and still be as effective, often moreso.
- cjaro 4y agoOne thousand percent agree. I can't even bring myself to finish Streets of Laredo because I cannot say goodbye to the world McMurtry created. I haven't teared up at a book since I was a kid, but Lonesome Dove made it happen. I feel like all I've wanted to do since finishing Lonesome Dove in July... is talk about Lonesome Dove. It catapulted itself into my top 3 books list. I have to re-read Anna Karenina to decide which is better at this point. I wish Lonesome Dove was 1500+ pages.
- karaterobot 4y agoYeah, I think his dismissal of the book in the article is pretty typical of people's approach before they read it: > I’m simply not sure I have the will to face 839 pages of cowboys by an author I don’t know. I don't blame him, I was the same way, but that book subverts expectations in the best possible way. The reason it won a Pulitzer despite having the baggage of being a "cowboy book" in the world of literary novels was because it's an undeniable artistic achievement, full stop. Part of that achievement is sustaining its effect throughout an epic length. In other words, the page count is a feature rather than a bug.
- greenhearth 4y agoWhat a ridiculous opinion. shrug Love long books, sometimes wish a book would not end and re-read some of my favorites constantly. Last book took me 3 months to read. Enjoyed every word.
- deergomoo 4y agoI feel largely the same about video games and TV (less so movies because it’s rare to even reach the 3 hour mark). I love games I can finish and fully digest in a session or two, and I’d prefer a TV show end on a high with more still in the barrel, than fizzle out into drawn-out mediocrity. Part of it is limited free time around work and general life stuff, but the volume and accessibility of media these days is definitely a factor. I’d be far more inclined to play a 150 hour RPG if I didn’t have dozens of other games I’d like to play.
- tablespoon 4y ago> ...I’d prefer a TV show end on a high with more still in the barrel, than fizzle out into drawn-out mediocrity. Except the TV show traditionally exists to get you to watch ads. A network that did what you ask would be a failure, because it would have fewer ad slots to sell.
- NeoTar 4y agoHave you perhaps heard of the BBC?