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Long Books | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| sbelskie Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4787 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Serbian, French | Message 1 of 5 01 December 2011 at 5:18am | IP Logged | ||
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As the title suggest I wanted to start this thread to discuss books of unusually long length. This is for the main reason that often buying books in foreign languages (especially) isn't cheap it normally is the more frugal decision to buy a 1000 page book compared with a 200 page book. For example I just bought The Last Stand by Steven King in German and for $13 that's about $1 per 100 pages. I think that's a pretty good idea.
If anyone can think of any please post them below. They don;t need to be any particular language, but more popular books might be good cause they are obviously more likley to be translated. I also think popular fiction might make more sense for a long read than high literature, but feel free too post that too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6429 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 5 01 December 2011 at 5:38am | IP Logged | ||
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There are a tremendous number of very long books, in quite a number of languages.
If you want cheap pages:price ratios, have you considered reading classics online, or shopping at used bookstores? If you live in an area with a lot of people who speak one or more languages other than English, or are near a big city, this may well be the cheapest way to acquire books - and you can then assess length just by looking around. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5556 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 3 of 5 02 December 2011 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||
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As for large books which are great reads and which have been translated into many languages, I can recommend:
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts - Great addictively good reading. (1300 pages roughly) The Secret History by Donna Tartt - Again, the kind of book which wards of sleep with its quality and beautifully vivid use of language. (600-800 pages? Somewhere around there) That's all I can think of at present which are both extremelly enjoyable to read and both big in size. However on the other hand, if you manage to find a book which you really enjoy and that compels you to read over and over again, then perhaps a book of fewer pages can be just as worthy (more so I would say) of the money as a larger book in which you find nothing stimulating nor interesting. Quality rather than quantity is more often than not always the right way to go. Also if you're really enjoying reading the book despite its short length, guaranteed that you're more likely to take stuff in and learn from it, given as you'll be more engaged with the work than with a long monotonous poorly written piece of printed tedium. Anyway, you get the idea. But if you can combine both quality and number of pages, fantastic. And lastly you can normally buy now the entire Lord of the Rings series in one book, which is monstrous in size and not a bad read. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 5 03 December 2011 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, LOTR is definitely the one to look for :) For those who liked it, you might also like Narnia (should be easier to read in an L2) and perhaps the series by Eddings (5 books but the writing is consistent so there's no struggle climbing the first 50-100 pages and it feels like one big book - same applies to Harry Potter btw).
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| conroy Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5064 days ago 36 posts - 51 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 5 03 December 2011 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
'The Host' by Stephenie Meyer. The French translation(Les Âmes Vagabondes) is in very straightforward language (IMO) and is over 800 pages in paperback. Edited by conroy on 03 December 2011 at 6:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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