I just finished reading two long books, each over 800 pages in length. Both books are good but would have been better if they were shorter. The stories were great, I liked the characters, and I liked the writing. It just felt like a chore sometimes to wade through all the pages.
I have nothing against long books. Some of my favorite books ever are over 500 pages long, but they were books that managed to hold my attention throughout. The challenge with long books is that there are bound to be sections that are less engaging than others, and in some cases, those parts of the book drag me out of the story.
Curious about which books would have been 5 stars if not for their length, I looked at the 4-star books I read in the past three years to see if length was the main reason any of them didn't receive a 5-star rating. For purposes of this post, I define a long book as one greater than 500 pages in length. That's an arbitrary number since some people consider anything longer than 300 pages to be long, and others devour 500-page novels without blinking.
I've rated 128 books as 4 stars since the beginning of 2021, and here are the ones that could have been 5 stars if they were shorter:
- Gilded by Marissa Meyer - The description on the book jacket was interesting, and I wanted to read about the premise, but it took a long time for me to become invested in the protagonists.
- Seasparrow by Kristin Cashore - I found it interesting that the first two books in the Graceling Realm series were under 500 pages long, and I rated them 5 stars, while the last three books were over 500 pages, and I rated them 4 stars. Correlation? Causation? You be the judge.
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - the first 100 pages or so of this book were great, but by about page 200, it felt repetitive. If the book ended at less than 300 pages, I would have likely given it 5 stars.
- Gunmetal Gray by Mark Greaney - I started reading the Gray Man series after the first book (which was less than 500 pages long) got me hooked. Gunmetal Gray is an example of an entry in the series that was still good but felt repetitive after a while.
- The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan - I've read the first three books in the Wheel of Time series, and I feel like they're all too long, but I'm choosing The Dragon Reborn because this could have been 5 stars if it were shorter.
- The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon - This is the book that got me thinking about the topic. Whenever I sat down to read it, I would be engrossed for a while, and then it felt like a chore to continue reading. It took me longer than normal to finish this book, but I'm glad I did.
Obviously, length is not the primary concern when I rate a book, but this exercise reminds me that a book of any length needs to capture and maintain a reader's attention throughout, no matter how many pages it is. It's just a lot harder to do so when a book is long.
