Tell Me Something Tuesday was hosted by Rainy Day Ramblings, but she has (temporarily?) stopped blogging. So a group of us that had been doing posts (Linda from Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell, Karen from For What It’s Worth, Roberta from Offbeat YA, Jen from That’s What I’m Talking About and me) decided to get together, come up with some more topics and keep the meme going.Michelle made us a logo and we’re off and running. For more details, check out this post where I reintroduced the meme.
I can be sporadic, but when I do join in I will always share next week’s topic at the end of the post. So, today is about…
When is a book too long?
Generally speaking, I steer clear of long books. But I’ve read some incredible books that are incredibly long, so you can’t judge a book by it’s page count. In fact, I think I’m very Goldilocks and the three bears with my book lengths – some are too long, some are too short and some are just right. But there’s no magic page number, that’s for sure. How do I say it… the right length is when you give me just enough.
Just enough… descriptions to put in me in the place without drowning me in descriptions that I would have never noticed IRL anyway.
Just enough… character development that I feel like I know who I’m supposed to, am aware of supporting characters, and don’t waste my time on people that have no relevance.
Just enough… world building that I can understand the magic system/sci-fi realm, but not so much that I feel like I could actually build the place/magic system myself.
Make sense? A book is too long when I’m so bogged down in the details that I can’t see the story, the place, or the people. If it’s long because you’re just telling a damn good story (for example, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue) then keep writing and I will keep reading 🙂
Yep. All of this exactly. I’ve read long books in page count and couldn’t put them down. I’ve dragged through short books that took forever to read.
I wholeheartedly agree! Especially about “descriptions to put in me in the place without drowning me in descriptions that I would have never noticed IRL anyway”.
I only ever looked at page count when I was a poor student. A book could be 1,000 pages and not be enough if I am lost in the story.
Your Goldilocks ‘just right’ amounts is a very good rule of thumb. I don’t mind longer books or shorter books, but I don’t want them to feel too long or too short.
For me, it’s the chapters that can be too long. An 800 page book with short chapters? Great! A 200 page book where there’s four 40 minute chapters? Noooo!
I feel like a book is too long when the reading of it starts to feel like a chore and in my opinion this can be a book of barely 100 pages or 600 pages. Does that make sense?