
Books Are Getting Longer - pepys
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/10/are-books-getting-longer-survey-marlon-james-hanya-yanagihara
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mziel
And of course the real title is "The big question: are books getting longer?".

Re: article, it's disheartening that good books suffer from this as well. I've
recently read "The power of habit" and "Think fast and slow". Both are great,
but both would be much better at the half of their size.

For most non-fiction content the magazine article is too short (3-8 pages) and
only skims over the issue. It's evident when you read an article on something
you're very familiar with. However book is too long (300 pages) and introduces
filler and repetitions. I find that Special Reports from The Economist are
quite good in size and depth (15-30 pages). My ideal would be around 100
pages, but those reports are still my go-to place if I want to read something.

~~~
dang
> And of course the real title is "The big question: are books getting
> longer?".

But the body of the article contains nothing to the contrary, so it seems the
submitter's edit was in keeping with the guidelines (i.e. change the title if
it is misleading).

~~~
mziel
You misunderstood me. I was not criticising the submitter, kudos for the
change. I was criticising the clickbaity title of the article.

~~~
dang
Ah, I see. Agreed!

------
trendroid
>citing studies showing that only 60% of books bought electronically are ever
begun, and completion rates that can fall as low as 20% for some titles.

Well, how about the completion rates of physical books? I am sure most people
would rather read smaller, to the point books if they could. Moreover, there
are also social brownie points associated with buying thick books. If everyone
is talking about it, buying that popular book in physical form will increase
the aesthetic look of my "home library" and then when people come over, I can
show off how well read I am.

Also the top comment on the article page importantly notes:

"AAARRRGGGGHHH!!!

Count the words, not the pages!!!! Some simple typesetting changes can
increase or decrease a books page count significantly.

A bigger book may look more intimidating, but it may also look like better
value for money, and if production/material costs have gone down over the last
15 years, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a publisher bumps up the paragraph
spacing and brings in the page margins to make a book appear longer than it
is."

~~~
viraptor
Isn't this a bit skewed though? I've not read maybe half the books in my
library, but that's simply because either I bought something like a humble
bundle where I was only really interested in 2-3 of them anyway, or because I
bought whole series at discounted price and stopped after first two books.

Kind of similar to Steam games - 37% of games were never played. If I can get
a set of Witcher 1,2,3 for the price of one + $1, then I'm definitely getting
all of them, even if I'm really interested in the third one only right now.

------
dionidium
Aaron Swartz had some interesting things to say about the length of most non-
fiction:

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001229](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001229)

~~~
Joof
Came to say something along these lines. Often books say very little in as
many words as possible. Part of a 'more stuff for your money' philosophy.

Textbooks have this problem as well until you hit graduate subjects.

~~~
bubalus
A lot of the best graduate textbooks are pdfs of lecture notes. 40 pages, no
nonsense.

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aluhut
I'm pretty sure that I would have put Anathem away if I had it in paper.
Unfortunately it wasn't and I was trapped in a good example of an horribly
overstretched big book.

Sometimes there is a good idea hidden in those kind of books but most of the
times it's just a cheap shallow story you've read before in a different
setting. I consider it a sign that the author either was forced to write a
sequel/prequel or that he's just a bad writer. Most of the times, I don't
touch those authors works again.

~~~
jib
I enjoyed all of Anathem and would have happily read another 500 pages of it.
Not sure if Stephenson is the best example, his long book style is quite
unique. Usually it works for me (Anathem, Cryptonomicon, I've read both at
least twice) other times it doesn't (The baroque series I haven't finished).
Snow crash and Zodiac are examples of him writing shorter good books too.

~~~
aluhut
Yes, I fell for a urgent recommendation by a person like you ;)

I have no idea how you can cope with all that utter irrelevance in this. While
reading I started thinking that Stephenson tried to create a "moment" by
overstreching. A scenery. Something you see in those slow artistic movies for
example. But then there is another problem. Stephenson is unable to describe
the environment in which the scene plays. Instead he concentrates on
completely irrelevant details in the current area. A good example for this was
when the protagonist traveled a region where former cities were. It looked
like that: "...traveling along those dead cities we've learned to distinguish
the time period in which the cities have been build...". But he describes not
a single one. You end up having absolutely no picture of the environment. He
tells you that there are launch pads and anti-missile turrets but not how they
look. Instead he drags you through several sentences regarding the steel
rubble they get from the cities. Spoiler: it's rusty. Same poor writing goes
for character development (main character is supposed to be clever according
to the context but is plainly stupid and really slow...), basic aspects like
the love story or the weird way he describes women.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just too demanding but I currently read through some
of Alestair Raynolds works and it makes Stephenson look like a rich school boy
whos private teacher was afraid to mark the basic mistakes for him.

I've read Snow Crash many years ago. When Neuromancer and the art of those
times was still in my head. Fortunately because it was exactly the same thing.
Please read Snow Crash again and try to focus on the world he un-describes. I
had the feeling like Stephenson took it for granted that you've already read
Gibson or Sterling and knew how the world is supposed too look like so he can
concentrate on world details that are completely irrelevant for the story and
make no sense without describing the place they stand in.

You see...I fell twice for Stephenson which was a mistake on my side so I'm
pretty angry on myself and try do divert the fault to him...

~~~
jib
I agree for what it's worth.

If you read Stephenson for character or environment description, or even a
coherent story, you will have a bad time. If you want to read about strange
ideas from a guy who spent way too much time thinking about submarine cables,
you may have a good time, if that's your thing and you like the topic he is
currently interested in. I am (usually) in the latter category.

Reynolds is a different guy. Better story teller, more conventional ideas to
me. (I like and have read about all his books too).

If you like Reynolds, try Peter Hamiltons series, especially the Nights Dawn
trilogy.

~~~
aluhut
Aaah thanks for bringing Hamilton up. I've read "The Reality Dysfunction" a
long time ago. Found it in a Hotel on the Maldives and forgot about it. I
didn't know there was more.

------
jseliger
I wonder if this is true of self-published, ebook-first writers. In
conversations with agents about my novels, I was told that they needed to be
"longer" and that ~70K words wasn't enough or wasn't sufficiently
"commercial." But in my view the novels were the appropriate length to the
material (see [http://jakeseliger.com/my-novels/](http://jakeseliger.com/my-
novels/) if you're curious). With ebooks, I don't think readers are
subconsciously swayed by length as they are by physical books in bookstores.

Indie authors also often point out that they're better off splitting one
massive tome into multiple parts. A novel like Neal Stephenson's _Seveneves_
might've been split into three to five parts, with the first one given away
and each additional part $.99 – $2.99 in its ebook edition.

EDIT: Also, I'm not opposed to being commercial, and indeed if I could think
of more / better ways to be more "commercial" I'd do it!

~~~
dalyons
Counter; installments (if you're a well known author) might mean you make less
money, b/c people drop off after the first part & never buy the rest. Whereas
before, even if they got bored & didn't finish it, they'd already paid in
full.

(Installments aside, Seveneves needed heavy editing. Great plot, but probably
about 1/3 cruft. I get it; you studied orbital mechanics & it's cool, but the
100th detailed explanation of orbital transfer is too much)

~~~
jessaustin
More orbital mechanics? There was a fair amount of that in _Anathem_ as well.
Sure the author is supposed to show-us-not-tell-us that characters are smart,
but this handwaved now-they-work-a-physics-problem trope only gets about
halfway there.

~~~
dnr
Hah. I actually just had this conversation earlier today with a friend (who I
know is interested in this stuff): Me: Have you read Anathem? A decent chunk
of the book and the plot is all about orbital mechanics. Him: No, but have you
read Seveneves? There's a ton of orbital mechanics in that book. Me: Huh. Well
I guess we found his pet subject.

(Btw, I didn't really mind the orbital stuff in Anathem, but I found the
repetitive explanations of the many-worlds idea, adding just one tiny new
tidbit each time, a little annoying by the end.)

~~~
jessaustin
Many-worlds usually annoys me on the grounds of parsimony, but the Socratic
dialog on the mountain worked well enough for me to tie the whole book
together. (I can remember the broad strokes seven years after reading it, for
one thing.) The role of many-worlds was a surprise, but a reasonable one. I
didn't feel there was any authorial cheating.

~~~
dnr
[If anyone else is reading this: warning, spoilers!]

It would have been more satisfying to me if the dialog on the mountain was
actually important in the context of the story at all. It was enlightening to
the reader, but when Erasmus got to the convox and started talking with
people, it turned out that many of them already had basically the same ideas,
so he didn't really contribute anything.

Actually, it's hard to think of a point where any idea or action of Erasmus
actually changed the outcome of something. He was at the center of everything,
but only as a witness. Although I guess the book kind of hints that perhaps
nothing that any character except Jad did had any effect on anything, since
Jad rewrote it all...

------
habosa
This is strange to me since our attention spans are getting so much shorter.

I read only fiction, slightly less than a book a week. This year I've read
books between 75 and 1200 pages and I dont think there is any correlation
between length and my enjoyment.

I do notice that for many authors their self-proclaimed 'masterpiece' tends to
be their longest book. And in many cases, not their best.

~~~
cafard
I think a lot of people read books with only partial attention; this helps to
explain the five-star reviews of books stuffed full of absurdities.

------
paozac
True. I've been wondering why mainstream films are getting longer, too. 2-2.5
hours has become the norm.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Depending on the exact film/genre I don't have a problem with that.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I do. Mainstream movies became a caleidoscope of boring repeating scenes. They
often lack any sort of plot.

Compare "Back to the Future" (any one) with whatever new movie in this genre
you can remember.

~~~
icebraining
It's not exactly the same genre since it's not futuristic, but last year's The
Grand Budapest Hotel is also a light-hearted & fanciful adventures film, and
it certainly has a plot - besides being a much better film all around than any
of the BttF trilogy, in my opinion.

On the other hand, it's also only 100 min. long, so it doesn't exactly fit
with trend of longer movies.

------
sdenton4
Probably about half of the novels I read could work just as well as short
stories... (especially in science fiction.) It's like Strunk and White said:
Omit Needless Words.

------
TheAceOfHearts
Sorta related to this topic, I'd suggest giving audiobooks a chance! They're
definitely not for everyone, but I've become a huge fan. Every time I need to
drive somewhere or I have to clean around the house, I play an audiobook.

They're also great if you lead a sedentary lifestyle (e.g. in front of
computer all day). Reading books will probably necessitate more sitting
around, but with audiobooks you can be a little bit more active and go out for
a jog or walk.

~~~
tedmiston
+1 audio books

For me, I can digest one much quicker than reading.

I got a few from Audible this year. The content is great, but their one size
fits all credit system is archaic. I would love to see a Spotify-like audio
book subscription service.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
I'm subscribed to Audible as well; I generally like it.

The 2 credit per month plan covers my needs pretty well. In some occasions
I've had to buy extra credits, but it still ends up being much cheaper than
buying individual audiobooks.

It definitely pushes you to strike a balance between longer and shorter books,
though. It's kinda crazy that a 4-hour story like The Magic Goes Away and a a
50-hour novel like A Dance with Dragons both end up consuming 1 credit.

------
datavision
Unfortunately I can't even read a book cover to cover, only skim through
interesting parts.

~~~
askafriend
I think this applies to a vast majority of people outside the academic
environment (or once they leave that environment). I really wonder why that
is.

I've definitely noticed my mind wander once I start reading a book. It seems
like we can all benefit from training our attention span.

~~~
chubot
I don't actually view it as a problem -- as long as you can finish GOOD books.
(I was reading "breadth first" since before 2000, before my and everyone
else's Internet addiction...)

My usual habit is to check out 5 books at a time from the library, and I end
up finishing one. The other 4 I skim through. There's simply not that many
books that are worth reading in their entirety. Many books have useful nuggets
of knowledge, but there is generally a lot of filler.

I have read at least 1000 academic papers in CS and other fields in the last 5
years. And by read I mean mostly skimmed. A good paper will get 3 or 4 re-
readings; most papers remain skimmed until something else reminds me of them
(a paper or a problem in real life). I think that is the norm.

I do find that paper is better for comprehension. I get my books from the
library and I print out PDFs of publications.

tl;dr The goal is comprehension, not "finishing books"

~~~
jessriedel
Mostly agree with this, but I don't think one should expect there to be a
perfect correlation between enjoyment/engagement and worthwhile-ness. Most
book and most articles are garbage, but there really are a few that are both
painful and worthwhile.

Now if only we could convince the rest of the world to make abstracts the norm
for books, internet articles, and the like...

~~~
datavision
Abstracts of everything, to just get the facts. Yes please!

------
MichaelMoser123
With some books on history i noticed that the author has reworked his PhD
thesis into a book - now that's a long bummer by definition, If that is the
case then that makes the book quite long to start with - (i think that's the
right thing to do BTW).

One example:

The PhD thesis: "Political Protest and Dissent in the Khrushchev Era" by
Robert Hornsby" (342 pages)

the book would be "Protest, Reform and Repression in Khrushchev's Soviet
Union" by Robert Hornsby (324 pages)

------
WalterBright
> completion rates that can fall as low as 20% for some titles.

I have so many books to read, that I don't bother finishing a book unless it's
really good. The "some titles" are probably simply poor books.

Also, the number of pages isn't necessarily a good indicator of size. The
typography can greatly influence the number of words on a page, and the
typography can and does vary widely.

------
Joof
Is there anywhere that extremely well thought out and detailed short stories
could thrive? I want to find those.

I've read plenty of long books in my lifetime.

------
dudul
Kind of off topic but it always bugs me when I see people using 'average' as a
metric. Average is awful, it is a lossy metric that doesn't capture
distribution. What if there are only very big books (600+ pages) and very
small books (100 pages), we can end up with an average of 325 pages which is
actually not any book.

------
beambot
Difficult to assess objectively, but I wonder if the quality has degraded
accordingly (eg. due amateur self-publishing)? In my experience, being more
concise so as to produce better writing is difficult and time intensive -- a
la the famous Blaise Pascal quote:

> I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

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minimaxir
From the title I was expecting a line chart of average book length over time.

Is there an API to get book metadata for all books?

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pandres
For short bs we now have the internet.

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ilzmastr
nah, fonts are getting larger and whitespace is ballooning :)

just kidding, I wouldn't know for sure, but this article should have graphs of
wordcounts or something.

------
kiba
I like really long non-fiction series. A 100,000 words is just a starting
point. But to get there, it has to keep my interest for that long.

~~~
sosuke
Worm Web Serial is pretty good. A couple of 'down' spots but I devoured it in
a couple weeks.

"It totals roughly 1,680,000 words"

[https://parahumans.wordpress.com/](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/)

