The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages

[babylonsister]

Thought this might be of interest with a lot of time on our hands.



Literary Hub


The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages
Long Books, Worth Your Time
By Emily Temple
April 9, 2020


Personally, I find solace in long novels. The good ones always seem to create space for the reader: space to sink and settle, and time to really learn what you’re dealing with, both in terms of character and in terms of author. You have to build something, reading a really long book. It’s almost a collaborative experience. So if you’re looking for a long-term relationship with a book right now, you couldn’t do much better than the books below.

For my sanity, I limited this list to contemporary novels, which here I am defining as being published in the last 50 years—I figure, you’ve already made your own decisions about whether to read Middlemarch and Ulysses and The Lord of the Rings, you know? You know.

Here are the rules: I only counted single volumes (it’s fine for them to be part of a series, but they have to meet the size requirements on their own), published in English since 1970. Writers only get one spot on the list. Page counts may vary over editions. And as ever, no list is definitive, “best” is an imaginary term, and I had to leave a lot of good books off, so feel free to add your own favorites in the comments section.

Richard Powers, The Overstory (512 pages)

Strap in for a 512-page book about trees. But of course it’s really about humanity—all literature is—and it’s weirdly engrossing. Though it lags a bit at the end when it succumbs to polemic, for the most part, Powers manages to entertain, inform, and inspire action in the most high profile work of climate fiction yet.

more...

https://lithub.com/the-50-best-contemporary-novels-over-500-pages/

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. not on the list for various reasons but magnificent - The Raj Quartet

by Paul Scott, actually 4 books that the PBS Masterpiece Theater Jewel in the Crown was based on. The 4 came out between 1965- 1975, and total around 1500 pages.

I read the entire quartet to my wife over a few months a few years ago. One of the best things I've ever read. The PBS series is must watch.

[dweller]

2. wheee

i expect this article to be at least 500 pages ...
😳

✌🏼

[Adsos Letter]

3. An Instance of the Fingerpost

Read it during a course on the English Civil War. Good stuff.

[mikalcharles]

4. How is Jerusalem by Alan Moore not this list?

The most daring imaginative novel of this century

[hermetic]

5. This sounds amazing

"Ten years in the making, comes a literary work Like no other, from the legendary author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Fierce in its imagining and stupefying in its scope, Jerusalem, is the tale of Everything, told from a vanished gutter."