Thursday, January 27, 2011

Booking Through Thursday: The Largest Book You've Read

btt button
What’s the largest, thickest, heaviest book you ever read? Was it because you had to? For pleasure? For school?
The largest, thickest, heaviest book I've read is probably Robert L. Herbert's Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society, a tome on the Impressionist art movement. I read it my junior year of college for a class I took called "Paris in the Nineteenth Century," an incredible class- probably my favorite class in my entire education- about art history, social history, literary life and more in 19th century Paris. I struggled through 14 long, dense chapters, carted this coffee table of a book everywhere I went for over a week, and then wouldn't you know it, there wasn't one question on the final exam that required us to have read anything in this book! Oh well. It's a wonderful book and I learned a lot but it's certainly not appropriate for the casual reader!

More Booking Through Thursday here.

15 comments:

jlshall said...

Sounds like a wonderful class! I've heard of the book - sounds good, but yes, not something I'd read for pleasure.

gautami tripathy said...

That sounds like a wonderful book!

Here is my BTT: Heavy Books post!

Leora said...

I loved Impressionism as a kid...luckily, Boston and New York had wealthy people with foresight that bought a lot of those paintings in the early 20th century so we get to enjoy them.

This is a neat meme. I first thought of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - I kept renewing it from the library to read it. Then I think of Anna Karenina. Or Ulysses by James Joyce, which I never really have finished reading.

Anonymous said...

At least you learned a lot, even if you were never tested on it. Sounds like a fascinating class.

Zibilee said...

I would have to say that the largest book I have ever read would have been Forever Amber, or The Autobiography of Henry VIII with notes by his fool, Will Somers. They were both over 950 pages.

I am interested in that class you took. It sounds fabulous!

Marie Cloutier said...

Zibilee, the class was amazing. The teacher was great; she was an up&coming art historian who combined history, politics, art, fashion, books, social history and more. we read novels, watched movies, talked about all kinds of things- and learned about the art. I'll never forget it!

Unknown said...

I am currently working my way through, "and Ladies of the Club" by Helen Hooven Santmyer. My friend and I challenged each other to read this 1184 page book about our hometown. I do enjoy it but read other books inbetween.

ImageNations said...

That seems like fun reading. The largest book I have read (not so large relative to what others have read) is The Journeyer by Gary Jenings, about the travels of Marco Polo. It was just over a thousand pages and in those times I read it in three days. But not now... a 100 page book can take a week. lol

I have Remembrance of Things Past (2) but have not been bold to start.

fibrowitch said...

Well it's kind of an easy question for me to answer. In college the book I called my security bludgeon would be Fire protection and engineering rang in at 789 pages.But then considering
Practical Guide to Occupational Health and Safety came in at a tiny 280 pages it's kind of understandable.

In books I read for pleasure I would have to say either the complete Narnia series in a beautiful illustrated gold page bound edition I found in a book store in London. Or the gift of the complete published works of Abraham Lincoln, which unlike C.S. Lewis I have not read cover to cover, but instead look to every once in a while when I need a door way into a person so much smarter than I.

Anonymous said...

I love impressionism, and studied it in art class years ago. The book must be fascinating.y

Anonymous said...

here's mine http://tributebooksmama.blogspot.com/2011/01/booking-through-thursday_27.html

The Social Frog said...

It sounds very interesting!


www.thesocialfrog.com

Alexia561 said...

I'm not much for giant books and think the largest one I read for pleasure was Outlander. Sad, but true.

Jeanne said...

I've read and reread The Riverside Shakespeare. It's an enormous book, with onionskin pages and small print!

Rebecca Reid said...

awesome sounding class. It would put art and literature into context wonderfully, it sounds.