Booking Through Thursday: Biggest book read lately
September 3, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Community activity
It’s been a while since I’ve participated in Deb’s excellent Booking Through Thursday meme, so I thought I’d put in the effort to get back on board with it. Today Deb’s asks the question:
What’s the biggest book you’ve read recently? (Feel free to think “big” as size, or as popularity, or in any other way you care to interpret.)
I’m going to interpret ‘big’ in this instance as size and say The Collected Stories of William Trevor (Penguin), which I’m working my way through right now as it happens (as part of a new personal reading challenge). 1261 pages, 85 short stories and officially measured at just short of two inches in thickness, Trevor’s tome is a real wrist-breaker! I made the mistake of taking it into the bath to read one evening – a big mistake. I didn’t drop it (thankfully) but my wrists were sore for days.
I’m also officially reading through the 2 volume ‘door stops’ of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (see shot in this post), in support of Frances Evangelista’s (Nonsuch Book) Proustian reading challenge. But having only read the first two sections, and not having picked them up at all over the summer (sorry Frances 
), I can’t really have claimed to have read them.
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Rob, a self-confessed bibliophile, is without any hope of rehabilitation. He gets unnaturally excited over anything book-shaped, and if book sniffing were a crime then he would have been locked up years ago (which wouldn't bother him in the slightest provided his cell were lined with books)
Yes, size definitely daunts me. I totally avoid books over 500 pages. Good luck with 1261
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Oh!!! I really need to read Proust! It’s really sort of terrible that I haven’t I’ll be watching your blog, now, to see what you think of it.
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Violet – It’s not so bad when it’s a short story collection like this one is. At least one can stop an start without fear of losing the plot (in every sense of the term
)
Warmest
Rob
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Pam – Now your given me the added pressure of having to read Proust. Thanks for that
Warmest
Rom
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Wow some long reads you’ve got there! I haven’t read any of them. I don’t mind if a book is long, it’s whats written on the pages that counts
Here’s my recent biggest read.
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I choose to define big as big response and big themes, rather than big in size. I have a few 2inch thick books waiting for my attention, but they are so uncomfortable to hold for any length of time so I keep shifting them to the bottom of the TBR pile (which also helps to keep my towering TBR pile from tumbling down as well).
Such utterly unliterary reasons for avoiding some classic literary works. I obviously need to reassess my levels of literary commitment.
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I never mind the size but the book has to capture me to go on. I don’t think I’ll read Proust any time soon.
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Intweresting post. Something I haven’t read as of yet. Happy BTT!
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I read a book recently (chicklit) where the heroine called War and Peace WAP – not as an acronym, but for the sound it made when dropped on her desk
Here’s my BTT.
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Yup that’s a doorstopper alright!
http://busyisreading.blogspot.com/2009/09/booking-through-thursday.html
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Wow! Those are impressive choices. I never made it past the first volume of Proust. Will love to read what you think of the second!
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Wow – that is a lot of pages. Good luck with getting through it!
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I can read tomes with glee! And I do agree about that wrist thing!
And I am thinking of getting this book. Sounds good to me.
Booking through Big
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Holy smokes! Now that is a hefty book. Good luck! I would be so intimidated to tackle this one!
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Thank you for visiting my blog
…and I love your blog, it looks so professional (unlike mine 
)
Wow 1261? It ill take months for me to finish it…but if the story is amazing it will become shorter in time
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I do love a big, meaty anthology. For the RIP IV challenge, I just requested several horror tales anthologies of similar size. I can’t wait!
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