Category: Long Books

  • On “Cornelius Cardew : A Life Unfinished”

    I had a couple of friends in college who both underwent huge personality changes during the time I knew them, both after encountering some philosophical concept that fundamentally changed their understanding of the world around them; one, unfortunately encountered Ayn Rand, and immediately embraced her — I don’t want to dignify it by calling it…

  • One of Those Entries Where I Write About a Number of Things

    A Creative Endeavor In a day or two, I’m gonna publish a little story I wrote. It’s never been my intent to turn this into an outlet for my creative pursuits, but it’s been a long time since I have written a story. I’ve alluded to this before, but I used to write quite a…

  • The Death of ‘Sironia, Texas’ and notes about this year’s reading.

    So, “Sironia, Texas” didn’t happen. I got through 100 pages or so, and it wasn’t all that good. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, at least from a blogging perspective. We could deconstruct the text, see what’s working, what isn’t, and why; analyzing what’s bad can sometimes illuminate what’s good. But “Sironia, Texas” also indulges…

  • That’s a Long One/”Sironia, Texas”

    I have touched on this briefly during the nascent days of this blog, but my fascination with long form works continues unabated. A bit ago, I took a look at what are considered the longest novels in existence, and like most things, there’s a bit of a debate about it. There have been attempts to…

  • Series/”Otherland”/What I am Reading/Future Plans

    Let’s talk a little bit about series. I have a predilection for long works. I’m not sure what this says about me, but if you’ve written an 1,500 page novel, I kinda want to know it exists. If it’s some weird literary nonsense, I probably want to read it. But it doesn’t have to be…

  • “Bubblegum”

    I wrote a bit about “Bubblegum” earlier– trying to determine, before I was done, if it was worth it’s own length. It’s 780 pages, which is a fair chunk of reading to commit to, and I had mixed feelings about it while reading it. It’s a work of great imagination, and can be archly funny.…

  • Finished “Bubblegum”/What I am Reading/Notes on Process

    I finally finished “Bubblegum” and while I am glad I read it, my feelings about it are a little complex. It’s the subject of this Thursday’s entry. I ended up focusing on it exclusively to get it ‘out of the way’ which now means I am back on my normal ‘two or three books at…

  • More about Long Works/”Bubblegum”/”ducks, newburyport”

    According to Storygraph, the service I use to track my reading and occasionally provide recommendations, just over half of the books I have read this year are over 300 pages long. A quick google shows me that 300-350 pages are in the ‘safe zone’– the length that’s considered more or less ideal for a novel…