Top 5 Long Novels That Earn Every Single Page
Doorstops that never feel padded. You'll be sad to finish them, not relieved.
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Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry
Nearly 900 pages of cattle drive, and somehow Gus and Call become the friends you grieve for years afterward.
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The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas
The original revenge thriller, and the unabridged version justifies every chapter of its patient, delicious payback.
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Shōgun — James Clavell
A thousand-plus pages of politics and culture clash that read faster than most airport thrillers half its length.
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The Stand — Stephen King
King's apocalyptic road epic is sprawling, messy and impossible to put down once the superflu hits.
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Middlemarch — George Eliot
It's slow at first, then quietly becomes the wisest novel about marriage, ambition and small-town life ever written.