Last night was the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. This means (thankfully) the nights will start to get shorter from here, but we have a long way to go before winter is over. To keep you company through the many hours of darkness to come, I have a few recommendations for long books (more than 500 pages) that you won’t want to put down!
First up is a favorite of mine, The Secret History by Donna Tartt. At a scant 559 pages, it is the shortest on the list, but I’d caution against speeding through it. This is a slow, meditative read, one that requires the reader to sit with it and really absorb the atmosphere. It follows Richard, a young man studying the classics at a Vermont college in the early 1990s. He falls in with an elite set of fellow students and– this is not a spoiler, I promise, you’re told in the opening pages it will happen– they end up killing one of their friends to keep a terrible secret. The book is less about the murder itself and more about the psychology of the group– how they have grown so tightly together, what would lead them to commit such a crime, and the burden of getting away with it. It is a gorgeous, ruminative book with incredible staying power. The book is available at the library and the audiobook online through Hoopla– read by the author herself for 22 hours of runtime.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova weighs in at 642 pages and it packs a punch. Written (mostly) as a series of letters from a father to his daughter, it unravels the fantastical and horrifying secrets of Vlad the Impaler. A young woman must decide: does she take up the quest that nearly destroyed her father? What does any of this have to do with the modern world? And to what lengths must she go to get her answers? Following her journey from Ivy League libraries to Eastern European monasteries, this blend of archival research, historical fiction, and vampire lore will command your attention as you, too, seek to find out what exactly happened so long ago and whether it matters to this day. Since vampires dwell in darkness, it’s a perfect fit for a winter evening. The book is available at the library, as well as ebook on OverDrive/Libby and an abridged digital audiobook on Hoopla, read by Joanne Whaley and Dennis Boutsikaris. Since that audiobook has been trimmed and condensed, it runs only 11.5 hours, containing the central story beats but considerably shortened.
The only nonfiction title I’ve chosen for this list, Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon reads with the enthusiasm of a novel. 649 pages (plus an introduction which tacks 18 pages before page 1), this is a joint biography of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and her daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Although the two women did not know one another– the first Mary died when the second Mary was only a week old– their lives had some incredible parallels. Both were unwed mothers and shunned by society; both experienced great tragedy and struggled with depression. Despite being arguably more famous to a modern audience, Mary Shelley dwelled in the large shadow cast by the mother she never knew, and this book, told in alternating chapters that places the lives of mother and daughter in dynamic dialogue. Book and OverDrive/Libby ebook are available to read; an unabridged audiobook is available on Hoopla, read by Susan Lyons over 22.5 hours.
Susanna Clarke has a second, much smaller, book out now, but Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, standing at 782 pages, is a powerhouse worthy of this list. It’s an alternate history of 19th century England, where magic is real but has faded from use. Enter Mr. Norrell, an eccentric recluse with a library of magical texts, who demonstrates that magic can still be done by raising a young socialite from the dead. When young, charming Jonathan Strange also shows a proclivity for the practice of magic, Mr. Norrell takes him on as a student. However, their friendship and working partnership breaks down as it becomes clear that they disagree completely on what English magic should be. Add in curses, fairy bargains, and a legendary figure known as the Raven King, and this book is perfect for if you like the books of Charles Dickens but wish he’d written a book about wizards. The book is available at the library, and although Hoopla doesn’t have an audiobook, it does have all seven episodes of the miniseries available for free viewing.
Edward Rutherfurd is a novelist unlike any other I know. His sagas operate around the central theme of a geographic location– Dublin, London, Paris, or in this case New York City– following that space through time. Over 862 pages he details the life of New York City from its foundation in 1664 through the American Revolution, the Gilded Age, World War II, the disco era, and eventually the 9/11 attack and beyond. Rutherfurd’s eye for historical detail is stunning, and his unusual approach to character is nonetheless intriguing as one reads of the births, lives, and deaths of generation after generation of the Masters family, intersecting with real-life historical figures like George Washington and Babe Ruth. Although you won’t get to know any individual too well, you’ll get to observe how customs and attitudes changed over time. The library has the book, along with several of Rutherfurd’s other epics.
If you’re in the mood for realistic historical fiction– the kind located in a specific time, unlike Rutherfurd’s novels, and without any magic or monsters, like Clarke’s and Kostova’s– look no further than Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, which was an Oprah’s Book Club pick back in 2007. At 973 pages, it may feel like a massive undertaking, but it’s a good one. Set in the twelfth century, it follows the construction of a Gothic cathedral and the lives of the people connected to the project. There’s political scheming, religious mania, passionate romance, action scenes, curses, violence, and death… as well as three sequels, should you like it enough to want more. The library has a book and audiobook CD read by Richard E Grant, which is abridged to run only 10 hours. There’s also ebook on OverDrive/Libby, and although Hoopla doesn’t have an audiobook, it does have the music from the television adaptation to set the mood, as well as a study guide for the book to help you keep track of everything.
Stephen King’s The Stand might be heavy reading for 2020, but maybe you’d like something that twists our experience of a pandemic in America and shows us how it could be worse. The opening chapters of The Stand follow the outbreak of a lab-designed flu virus (as opposed to our current real-life virus, which is all-natural) that rapidly kills off 99% of the population, leaving only a select few survivors who are seemingly immune. On their own after the global collapse, they have recurrent shared dreams of a welcoming woman known as Mother Abagail and a frightening “dark man,” both of whom urge them to choose sides. A supernatural struggle of epic proportions ensues. This story has been made into two miniseries, first in 1994 and again this year. The library has the book, which in its re-release edition is 1,153 pages in length, and the soundtrack to the 1994 miniseries is available on Hoopla. Although no English-language audiobook is available, if you’re feeling very ambitious you could check out the German-language audiobook on Hoopla, read by David Nathan and running a whopping 54 hours.
A Suitable Boy, our final item for today– and at 1,349 pages, the longest– was also made into a miniseries this year. In the 1950s, India is newly independent and so is Lata, a nineteen-year-old university student who wants to choose her own fate. After the marriage of Lata’s sister, her mother decides it is time to arrange a marriage for Lata. The titular “suitable boy” is what Lata and her mother are searching for. Although maternal approval is traditional, Lata wants to find love– and she does, only to discover that the object of her affection is Muslim, and therefore an unacceptable choice to her Hindu family. A brother-in-law and a distant acquaintance also angle for her hand. Over the next eighteen months, the decisions Lata, her suitors, and her family make form the central plot, which entangles four families and crosses multiple cities. The book is available at the library to occupy several of the winter nights ahead.
