Back in the late 90s i came across a book in barnes and noble in the humor section. Word count is a direct way to measure the length of a novel in a manner. Many books and websites list faulty statistics on the king james bible. Proust is no match for these two fanfics the daily dot. Sep 23, 2012 the longest way home is about how mccarthy learned to truly show up. The longest novel is artamene ou le grand cyrus, originally published. At that point, i think we can safely say that we have produced the worlds longest book. The longest way home, by andrew mccarthy the new york times.
Longest fingernails on a single hand ever meet the. May 16, 2008 it is supposedly the world s longest published novel in english at 2. The best longest books 70 books goodreads share book. However when it comes to verses, words and letters, there are a wide variety of numbers floating around. English word count the number of english words used. It contains 3,958 pages in four volumes and took 10 years to complete. By scrolling the replaced lines, the 333 real lines in this section will be loaded and displayed. Ever wondered which are the longest fantasy book series of all time. A book with a million authors and a million chapters now thats a project worth getting excited about. Dec 11, 2008 let me summarize some facts about worlds longest booknovel the blah story. List of longest novels wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I will just put two books on this list, although i have read many long books.
Ten of the worlds longest books for reading addicts. If the calculation is based on the number of verses or the number of chapters or the number of pages, it is correct. When i say series i mean books written about and staring the same characters. Henry darger is often thought to have written the worlds longest book darger began to write his epic, the story of the vivian girls, in what is. Top 10 longest books in the world 2018 update by katerina s october 17, 2014 the length of a book is usually at least among the readers considered to be the number of pages from cover to cover. Over the years, there has been some controversy over what constitutes the worlds longest novel. This is what you can do when you have no radio or television. A suitable boy by vikram seth which is an amazing piece of literary work and personally i consider his lifes masterpiece is simply magnanimous. While more of a scifihorror mix than straight scifi, kings apocalyptic vision of mankind on the brink of selfdestruction is clearly one of the longest science fiction books of all time. May 02, 2019 different editions of a book series can also change in page number based on whether its a special edition or had edits between printings rare, but it can happen.
A million authors will give us a book that will run somewhere between 3 and 5 million pages in length. Seeking an entry in the guinness book of world records, a college principal on monday released a book with the longest title of 1022 words with 4805 characters and no space. For novels specifically in the young adult genre, the typical range is between 55,000 79,999 words. While d ponders the complexities of evite wedding invitations and takes care of their preschoolage daughter back in new. What is the longest word which can be written using the musical notes ag. All book publishers and book designers have a standard they go by to estimate page length. But savoring a book of, say, 800 pages or longer is a project. The longest book of the new testament, and the twelfth longest book of the entire bible, is the gospel of luke with 19,482 greek words. Other commentators cite henry darger s in the realms of the unreal, a 15,000 page, handwritten tome that has yet to see print.
This is a list of manga series by volume count of manga series that span at least 40 tankobon volumes. What is the longest book in the world in terms of page count. Top 10 longest novels in the english language listverse. No word count, but based on its 5200 page count, gordana. Ron hubbard, this longest novel book in fact has little to do with scientologist beliefs, though, like the scientologist mythology, mission earths plot is based on an alien race coming to earth and the chaos that ensues. Oh, i thought it said thickest books ever, not longest books ever. I see a lot of people talking about longest fantasy series and using page count as a indicator, which can vary a lot and so isnt a good indication of actual length. Shareranks is about ranking things that are top, most, greatest, or even worst in all categories. The edition which i perused had well over 1,000 pages in tiny font the book is 1,488 pages in full. Venmurasu is a tamil book still being written that should be 25,000 pages.
Length of a book is typically associated with its sizespecifically page countleading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length. I used the lexham hebrew bible and the nestlealand novum testamentum graece for these word counts. Men of good will by jules romains has 2,070,000 words. The biggest i have is the big damn sin city book, which dwarfs everything other than the original 75 years of dc book from taschen. Its theme of involuntary memory is repeated through the course of following the narrators life, from childhood. Due to formatting, page count is subject to change from font, style, formatting or paper. Top 10 longest novel books in the world world most. If you go on the length of the unabridged audiobooks, then raising steam and unseen academicals are the longest novels, both close to 12hrs 20mins. How many pages are there in a song of ice and fire. The profoundly influential volume work contains 9,609,000 characters, with each letter and space counting as one character. I used logos bible software to find out which books are the longest, by original word count.
There is no specific word or page count where a book suddenly becomes a novel, so it would be. The longest book ever written yongle dadian during the ming dynasty at least 3,000 scholars spent 4 years, beginning in 1403, to work on the yongle dadian, an. Behind the scenes of the big war in another entirely different universe, the real world was safe from getting into a big fight of epic proportions. For average word counts based on genre, see this handy reference. What is the longest literary work ever written in terms of. Oct 02, 2014 plus, there is so much more to write about in this world that i doubt we have seen the end of this long running series.
Sep 06, 2016 most resources claim that the book of psalms is the longest book in the old testament, and therefore the bible. Of course the number of books 66 and chapters 1,189 are fairly easy to count. Say an author announces that his or her next book will be the longest book in the world. Armen shekoyan, an armenian writer committed to producing the worlds longest novel, says. As i did more research, i realized that there were many issues i had to take into consideration when deciding what to include on this list. Word count for famous novels organized by hawthorn mineart, under books, writing. Word count for famous novels, in ascending order by number of words. Pynchons longest and loosest novel floats and careens along with the chums of chance. Yep, that is my summer reading, he replied, glancing down at the 1,088 page behemoth of a novel. Ive put together word counts for every book of the bible. In terms of pure word count, this 17th century novel obliterates the opposition, with a whopping 2. These numbers are pulled from the original languages using logos bible softwareyou can see how i did it below. Rated the longest novel ever by the guinness book of world records, theres no doubt that prousts masterpiece could quite easily double up as a mightily effective doorstop, with volumes clocking up nearly 1. Length of a book is typically associated with its sizespecifically page count leading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length.
Obviously not quite the same as page length or word count, but it gives a good idea. Stephen king word count 112263 274,672 bag of bones 203,3 black house 252,270 blockade billy 15,917 carrie 60,718 cell 121,931 christine 193,602 cujo 121,150 cycle of the werewolf 15,955 desperation. This is a list of the novels over 500,000 words published through a mainstream publisher. Word count is a more important criteria for longest than page count, as the size of the page and. Proust produced the first volume of his volume masterpiece in 1912 it was first published in 19. If you are talking about word count, the answer is zero. The novel and the satire were born at the same time in this series of. There are 165 manga series from which 92 series are completed and 73 series are in ongoing serialization. And i thought the stand was long its only 1168 pages. At 840,000 words, this novel was declared the longest novel by an american when it was released on new years. The guinness book of world records gives the honor to marcel proust s elephantine remembrance of things past, weighing in at 9,609,000 characters including spaces.
Jan 28, 2016 going by word count, the longest conventionally published book in the world is generally said to be artamene,ou le grand cyrus atarmene or cyrus the great a 17 thcentury romantic novel by. At 840,000 words, this novel was declared the longest novel by an american when it was released on new years day 1952. What is the longest book in the world in terms of page count trivia question questions answer answers. In word count, not just pages, what is the longest known fictional book. It was published in two volumes to accommodate the 1,700 pages and told the story of a small town in texas called sironia at the turn of the century. Yep, that is my summer reading, he replied, glancing down at the 1,088page behemoth of a novel. A game of thrones consists of 780 pages of story including prologue and 21 pages of appendix. Polgara the sorceress is the longest book i have read in english at 754 pages. King on king stephen king on his 10 longest novels.
Based on this list compiled by nicole humphrey cook. All records listed on our website are current and uptodate. The second part of his work won international awards as soon as it was published and with them, an international reputation. If youve read our related article on how many words are in a novel youll recall that the typical word count for a novel according to is 80,000 to 109,000 words. Shekoyan, however, doesnt comprehend the magnitude of the task he has.
The title of the book was something like i may have this wrong, but you get the idea everything men kn. Word count for famous novels organized commonplace book. Kings latest, under the dome, is his third longest novel ever. May 29, 2014 ive put together word counts for every book of the bible. Composing a list of longest novels yields different results depending on what criteria are used. He appears in the guinness world records 2016 book with the record title for longest fingernails on a single hand ever. What is the shortest book that can realistically be. This is a list of video games with the longest scripts, referring to the amount of textdialogue contained in a game this list uses three methods to determine the length of a games script. Even though psalms has more contributors than any other book of the bible, it turns out that two other books are much longer than psalms. What is the largest number of books a man ever wrote. Welcome to worlds longest website growing with every. Most resources claim that the book of psalms is the longest book in the old testament, and therefore the bible. Nigel tomms abstract novel the blah story was begun to publish in the october 2007.
The coppell, texas, writer has been making a run at the record books with his stillgrowing story of a christhaunted filmmaker who believes he is called on. Stephen king word count 112263 274,672 bag of bones 203,3 black house 252,270 blockade billy 15,917 carrie 60,718 cell 121,931 christine 193,602 cujo 121,150 cycle of the werewolf 15,955 desperation 195,011 doctor sleep. Dr subramonian, principal, dr r v arts and science college, karamadai, about 25 km from coimbatore, has written a book about daniel radcliffe, the young actor, who gave life to j k rowlings character harry. Here, he definitively answers the ageold question of how long the longest book in the world could be.
I see a lot of people talking about longest fantasy series and using page count as a indicator, which can vary a lot and so isnt a. Psalms is the longest book of the bible see what the longest book actually is. The next longest are monsterous regiment and snuff, at around 11hrs 30mins. Rated the longest novel ever by the guinness book of world records, theres no doubt that proust s masterpiece could quite easily double up as a mightily effective doorstop, with volumes clocking up nearly 1. Good conversationi wanted to add in that i personally dont think abridged books count. What is the longest book in the world in terms of page count trivia question questions answer answers ask funtrivia all questions. I guess the hardy boys would count, but those books tend to be one off books and not a continuing series of books. Top 10 longest novels in the english languagetop 10 longest novels in the english languagei love a long book that i can really get into, so i decided to compile a list of the longest novels ever written. The list of books and their page counts was supplied by kings office and refers to the american hardcover editions. To determine the longest series based on page numbers, the page count shown on the first amazon english language edition of the book was used for each title in the series.
Special thanks go to logos bible software for making determining the longest book of the bible by hebrew or greek word count much easier. Theres also differences of opinion over whether word count or page count should be the measuring tool. Aug 05, 2019 know what readers expect in terms of your genres word count even if the reader isnt aware of their expectations when it comes to how long a book is. In the opposite direction, it can give a more accurate estimate of how many pages you have created if you only know the word count. Firstly, it is easy to count the number of pages or words in a digital manuscript today, but for older books, this number can only be estimated. Its theme of involuntary memory is repeated through the course of following the narrators life, from childhood to adulthood.
This book in malayalam is known as the longest written in an indian language. By the way, if you want to know what i think of logos. Setting themselves a challenge to get into the guinness world records book, members of the mijl van mares werkploeg netherlands built an incredibly long. Nov 09, 2009 kings latest, under the dome, is his third longest novel ever. Despite their ongoing success, those epic sagas are the rare exception to general word count rules. This is another common question, and for most writers it should be easy to answer by using a word count feature in your writing tool. What is the longest literary work ever written in terms of word count. Doom patrol, 52, jack kirby fourth world, green lantern by geoff johns v, jsa v omnibuses dark horse colossal conan, big damn sin city. It is supposedly the worlds longest published novel in english at 2. How many pages was the shortest novel ever published.
No word count, but based on its 5200 page count, gordana makes the list at number. By using these three options to more accurately define your writing, the words per page calculator should provide a better estimate on how many words you need to write to fill a page. King talked to time about his top 10 biggest books, reflecting on the circumstances under which they were written and the critical reception that they received. My french edition of harry potter and the order of the phoenix is the longest book i. Aug 01, 2014 length of a book is typically associated with its sizespecifically page countleading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length. If you write a book according to the usual criteria, one person may like it, the other may dislike it, but when you write ten volumes, no one will say that the book is in eight. In the image above the blah story books taken from prleap.
Typically, youll want your novel to be much shorter. Oct 17, 2014 top 10 longest books in the world 2018 update by katerina s october 17, 2014 the length of a book is usually at least among the readers considered to be the number of pages from cover to cover. While i realize word count would be a more reliable measure of true length, i found it difficult to get what i considered reliable data regarding word count of all fantasy series, so i settled for number of pages in series, which. Marienbad my love, the world s longest novel, that tops 17 million words and also sets new records for the world s longest word, sentence and book title. What is the word for a book of blank pages in which a pupil asks friends and teachers to write or draw things for himher. Word counts are a direct way to measure the length of a novel by a measure that is unaffected by variations of format and page size. Once youre done reading about the worlds longest novel, check out. The stand is the classic endof world scenario and one of kings most popular books definitely his longest. Top 10 longest books in the world 2018 update articles. Compiling a list of longest novels yields different results depending on whether pages, words or characters are counted. In word count, not just pages, what is the longest known. Its a perennial question asked by writers of all genres. A clash of kings consists of 873 pages of story including prologue and 38 pages of.
Use arrows to rank one item in the longest novels ever by word count vs another. With this in mind, i did some research and came up with thirty of the longest fantasy series ever published. Tolkiens the lord of the rings trilogy has an enormous word count, with the longest clocking in at over 175,000 words. The oxford english dictionary has 10 volumes, 15,490 pages. The length of the page is 100% generated by adding one line with every visitor. Thus begins the longest work of fiction ever written. Word counts of the most popular books in the world.
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