Tolstoy's War and Peace... I just became scared out of my mind

[Katsunami]

In the last few days, I've been adding a lot of Public Domain works to my library. These are books of authors I already read some works from, which I intend to read works from, and authors I know are highly regarded but of whom I didn't yet read anything. One of the writers I added was Tolstoy, because War and Peace, and Anna Karenina are so highly regarded.

After doing a page count of "War and Peace", my brain practically exploded.

Some background...

I count my books with a setting of 2400 characters per page, which seems pretty close to the average number of characters of most of my real paperbacks.

The longest book I've read to date, according to Calibre's page count, is Stephen King's IT, counting 1.169 pages. Musashi and Taiko, which I acquired yesterday, are not far behind with 1.167 and 1.140 pages. Shogun, by the way, has 1.094 pages.

(If you count the Lord of the Rings books as one book, and include the appendices, all of which I've read, then this would be the longest book. The total of pages adds up to 1.499 in Calibre, but I have them as 3 books: Fellowship, Towers, King+Appendices. When doing a re-read, I normally don't re-read the appendices.)

The longest book in my library at this point is James Clavell's Noble House at 1.236 pages. (Not read it yet.)

Enter "War and Peace". It counts 1.548 pages in Calibre, almost 400 pages longer than the longest book I ever read.

This made me realise something.

Unless I get some serious extra time later in life, or some more very long vacations, I probably won't be able to read everything I'd like to read that I already know of, let alone read new stuff that comes out.

To be honest, that scares me a bit. Does anybody have the same feeling that there is, nowadays, just too much to read, and not enough time to read it?

[wawasteele]

It doesn't scare me. I just wish there were more reading hours in a day. I will never live long enough to read all the books I want to read, so I just enjoy the ones I do read. That's also the main reason I will not force myself to finish a book I am not enjoying. Life is too short for all the books I will like, so I won't waste precious hours on books I don't care for.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

To be honest, that scares me a bit. Does anybody have the same feeling that there is, nowadays, just too much to read, and not enough time to read it?

Yes. This is why I do very little re-reading nowadays.

[Avwriter]

This does not scare me at all. It is not as though there is some prize you will get if you finish reading everything on your list before you die. For me the pleasure of reading is the process itself. What would be scary to me would be discovering that there was nothing left out there that I wanted to read. Not likely to happen, but that would be truly and utterly devastating.

[icallaci]

As I get older, I realize just how little time I have left to do the things I want to do. At first this scared me or made me sad, but now I find it liberating. I find it easier to say "no" to people, as well as to books. If I am not enjoying something, I don't do it. I am having the best time of my life right now. I wish I had figured this out years ago.

[LovesMacs]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

To be honest, that scares me a bit. Does anybody have the same feeling that there is, nowadays, just too much to read, and not enough time to read it?

I have the same feeling but I don't worry about it. I accept that there will always be books that I might enjoy but will never get to read, and move on. I would probably feel more anxious about the "too many books not enough time" issue if I were still a student.

[xendula]

Not scared, but I now abandon books mid-way if I lose interest. There is just too much to read and too little time, for me to waste my time on a book that is not worth my while.

I can tell you that I started reading the massive Ana Karenina three times in my lie, and never got past the 50% mark. Not sure I'll ever try it again.

[caleb72]

I did become a little depressed that I won't be able to read everything I'd like to before I die, but then I thought that at least I'm on the journey and I've been rewarded with my choices so far.

I too would like to get to Tolstoy, but I'm not sure when that will actually be. If I don't, I don't, but at least I got to The Brothers Karamazov (for example) and I really enjoyed that.

You do what you can - and then you die. Luckily, we have so little importance to the world and to the universe that our failure to accomplish everything is guaranteed to go unnoticed by existence.

[drofgnal]

I don't measure my life or time by the number of books I read. I strive to read quality books. If a book doesn't have at least 4 of 5 stars on amazon reviews, I leave it be. It's not the number, but what you get out of the ones you do read.

For the OP, War and Peace, it is worth the time spent.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

To be honest, that scares me a bit. Does anybody have the same feeling that there is, nowadays, just too much to read, and not enough time to read it?

There has been too much to read for any human lifetime for several centuries. Nothing's changed there. No, it doesn't concern me. There's nothing that I can do about it, so what would be the point of being scared by it?

[Ravensknight]

I found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable book. It took me 6months to read it, as I read it in dribs and drabs, but that worked out ok. I honestly couldn't imagine starting it to the exclusion of other books though...

[Istvan diVega]

I went through Lord of the Rings in one sitting (but with a few tea-making and toilet breaks) the first time I read it and I believe I spent two and a half days on War and Peace. Good books tend to almost read themselves, I just need to hold it up and turn the pages. That said there has always been too much to read and too little time in which to read it, but worrying about things you can neither change, nor control makes no sense at all.

[JDK1962]

I find I don't think about page counts all that much. Story, character, and the writer's skill seem to dictate the appropriate page count.

Some books seem endless to me at 200-300 pages (Houellebecq's Whatever springs to mind). On the other hand, Shogun could have gone on for another 1000 pages and I would have been delighted.

[DrNefario]

I was delighted by the length of War and Peace when I read it. At the time, I was a poor student, and struggled to keep myself in reading matter, so a nice cheap paperback of that size seemed like a great deal. I used to look for longer books, then, because they seemed better value for money.

The problem now is that I can get so much so easily and so cheaply that if I discarded everything wasn't on my A-list I'd still have a huge pile of books to read. (Although at least it's mainly a virtual pile, these days.) I forget I own books by my favourite authors. And I do wonder where the surprises are going to come from. I used to read random oddball things because I had to. I don't think that's ever going to be the case again. And yes, I guess I do tend to be happier with shorter books, now.

[Grace Elliot]

The trouble is the different culture where one character can have multiple names - which gets very confusing. Stick with it, once you get past the confusion it is a totally engrossing book.