Is it really so wrong to crave the satisfaction of actually finishing a novel and being able to move on, instead of being of being chained to same story for months or potentially years on end?>t. Don't read much, about to start IT (my first book over 500 pages)
>>25426304When you like the story you're reading, people actually don't care how long it is. Crazy idea, I know.
>>25426304start with something shorter than? what's the problem? most of us would agree that when we get sucked into a book we wish it was 1000 pages long
>>25426314>>25426318That sounds obvious, but there have been many TV shows or RPG epics, where i eventually became fatigued and wanted nothing more than to finally see the ending despite otherwise loving it. I'm sure a 1000 page long novel is going to make me feel the same way. Variety is pleasant.
There are enough short books to last several lifetimes. Visit a library.
>>25426304I don't know that they are, on average.Hollywood films are getting longer. Each one is a gigantic enterprise costing millions and involving hundreds. In the Golden Age they knocked them out in an afternoon.One conrtibuting factor might be that people noticed how, on average, respected films (Oscar winners and so on) were longer than average. So they thought, if we make our film longer, it will be more respected!There might be a bit of that in books too. (People thinking, their novel will be more respected if longer.) But I don't think it's much of an overall thing.That said, I don't read modern books, so I could be mistaken.
>>25426304There have always been both long and short books dumbass. There are still plenty of short books.If you want to read short books there are literally thousands that come out every single year. If you weren't such a pathetic retard you would just look wherever the fuck you get books from and find one that is of the length you desire. You didn't even try to look on your own.Fuck you OP.
>>25426304Books aren't "too long"; you just don't have the attention span for them. Simple as.
>>25426304Because ince upon a time you were Henry James and the only way to get people to read your wandering, verbose, stuffy nonsense was to write Daisy Miller and have it be 30 pages long.And then there was Crane, whose excellence with Maggie: A Girl of the Streets left us with a full belly and not a page longer.
>>25426304>Is it really so wrong to crave the satisfaction of actually finishing a novel and being able to move onThat sounds like a "I have to coomsoom as quickly as possible" issue more than anything.
>>25426304what's that black book?
I don't think OP's exactly wrong about this. I look back on a lot of the books I grew up hearing people use an examples of classic doorstoppers, and now half the genre fiction books in the store are bigger. Most of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books are longer than Ulysses.
>>25426333You either have some kind of nuclear level ADHD where even an engaging story isn't enough to keep your attention, or you're consuming media that is bad/you don't actually enjoy it.
>>25426304IT is simply King on copious amounts of cocaine. This book could easily be cut down to 500-600 pages and not suffer one bit. King could sell his feces in between book covers, whatever he writes in an automatic best-seller, so no one really fought him too hard over editing his obnoxiously long stories. He has since admitted IT is massively bloated. Now, for modern things like fantasy/romantasy, the writers are hacks and don't know how to condense their thoughts. Many are self-published, so no editor is thinning it out.
>NowadaysIT was published 40 years ago
>>25426907>books are getting worseThis problem started with Ulysses funnily enough.
>>25426304>ITlisten to the library ladder and read Summer of Night instead, which Stephen King was a big fan of. Still a long book but not as long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO-DYjZ6Vjc
>>25426304Probably because the main draw to reading is spending time with interesting characters and getting to know them intimately.
I'm OK with long books but I've never read IT because I can't see devoting a thousand pages to some people fighting an alien clown in a sewer. It's nearly as long as War & Peace of Lord of the Rings, like twice as long as Doctor Zhivago. I mean really.
>>25426911Reading to me feels like a very low stimulation and mild activity, playing video games is way more exciting but reading tends to brighten my life up weeks after I finish a novel, kinda like masturbation Vs kissing to use a retardfunny metaphor Anyway, all this is to say is that yeah, books often struggle to hold my attention, especially if I try reading for more than 60 minutes in a row, or whilst tired, but I enjoy reading them regardless, and that's why reading a 1100 page long book is particularly daunting to me It can't be compared to overwhelming boredom I feel when I force myself to study after a long day in the office.>>25427259>>25426907Exactly >>25427161I feel like 400 pages is ample for that end, but I'll see how it goes I guess...>>25427123Thank you
>>25426928True, I'm mostly comparing it to early 20th century books and older, I was astonished to hear that Austen's books were considered long at one point.>>25426919Thank you anon, this is what I suspected>>25426847The Stand I think, I just found this image on plebbit via Google
>>25427259>I can't see devoting a thousand pages to some people fighting an alien clown in a sewerthe sewer scenes don't take up a majority of the bookIT actually deserves its length, Pennywise is a shapeshifting demigod and all his scares are different
>>25428628King's stuff is piss easy to read because it's not that deep. If you enjoy it, time will fly, if not, just drop it if it becomes tedious.
>>25426304>Why are books nowadays so long?Because they are simple.800 pages of a King novel is workable. 800 pages of something like Absalom, Absalom! is not.
>>25426314yes but you're likely to fall out of love with it if it overstays its welcome and goes on too long even if it is good. Like if a good meal were 4 times the size, you'd probably want to give up after a while.
>>25426304I think I was 17 when I read both of these. They're totally fine and easy to read, especially after already having gone through Lear or Grapes of Wrath or whatever. They're popcorn flicks but on paper.
>>25426948It started with ISOLT
>>25426948*Finnegans Wake
