How Book Size Influences My Reading
As many of my blogger/booktuber friends probably know, I love fantasy novels. They are absolutely brilliant (when done well) and make me love reading even more each time I pick one up. One thing that is popular in the fantasy genre is to have gigantic books. And I love this!
When I was a teenager I wouldn't pick up a book that wasn't "big" enough. Basically this amounted to me browsing shelves and determining which books had the biggest spines, then seeing what the books were about and picking the ones I thought I would like. Small books were ignored. So yes, when a book is at least 500 pages I'm happy. However, I do not think it's necessary for every book to be this long. I've done some growing up in the past ten years.
I try not to let the size of a book either encourage or discourage my reading. If I'm interested, I'm interested. Sure I've picked up short books because they were short and I wanted a fast read, but in general that's not something I do. If I'm interested in the story I will pick it up and read it no matter how long it is. My favorite novel (The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson) is around four hundred thousand words, which is roughly a thousand pages in a hardback format. I've also read some excellent short stories and novellas this year, some of them coming in at only around ten thousand words, far under a hundred pages.
If a writer has a story to tell that I'm interested in reading, then I will read it no matter the length. I do love long novels, but there are some excellent short ones as well. So for me length isn't really a factor in most cases.
How do you think the lengths of novels plays into your reading?
I judge books by their size and I cannot lie. If I think a book is too big, I will either avoid it or be a drama queen and make it seem like the biggest achievement ever!
ReplyDeleteTheDonkeyInvasion - A Bookish Blog!
Haha, I think a lot of people are like that. But there are some huge books that are just sooooo good!
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