I’m not a fan of long books. Anything that feels like a door stop is too cumbersome to hold much less to carry with me. My attention span isn’t that disciplined. And they are usually slow moving classics filled with detailed description. They’re just so long!

But I’m excited to tell you I’ve found a way. I actually like long audiobooks in the spring and summer while I am out weeding or harvesting strawberries, beans or raspberries. I have a little orange chair to put my book on, set the book at max volume, and go to work. If my attention wanders, or my picking takes me a bit out of hearing range, I haven’t missed much – these long books move slowly and include much detail. And I still get the gist of it. Here are some long books I have read in my garden:

In the summer of 2025 I have been listening to Don Quixote, written in 1605 by Migues de Cervantes Saavedra and translated into English by John Ormsby in 1885. This book is considered the original novel and all stories since have been influenced by it. I started with an audio in Librivox and then realized it was only part one. I found a complete version on Libby and am waiting for it to become available, after finishing part one. I’m in no hurry; some days I listen to a chapter, some days three chapters. I have been pleasantly surprised at the interest I have in it and that it makes me laugh. There are long passages of speeches or characters telling stories, but I don’t mind because someone else is reading it to me. They say there are 669 characters in this book, but somehow, that doesn’t get confusing. In any chapter, you are usually dealing with Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza, and a handful of other people, so it works. There are around 26 different English translations of Don Quixote and it is second to the Bible in variety of translations.

In this story, Don Quixote, a middle-aged gentleman who reads too many books on chivalry, goes out in search of adventures, taking Sancho Panza, his neighbor, as a squire. Sancho Panza wants the island to govern that Don Quixote promises him, but mid-story he really just wants to go home to his wife and children. Adventures and noble deeds have disastrous and humorous results. 39 hours.

When I originally published this article, I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. Edmond Dante is falsely accused of treason at the occasion of his wedding and imprisoned at Chateau d’If. There are 51 hours remaining. The raspberries are ripening and I should have a couple hours reading and picking most mornings in the near future. I’m looking forward to it.

Update months later in April, 2025: I abandoned The Count 37 chapters in. I think he was going to Italy and there was a new cast of characters. It was hard to keep straight. I was also listening to a version where there was a new reader for every chapter, and some were almost impossible for me to understand.

The Count of Monte Cristo has many Biblical and Shakespearean allusions. Early critics called it children’s literature, thinking to denigrate it. This book was an adventurous romance in it’s day— not love but moral and divine retribution, honor, justice, and service to one greater than ourselves. It’s romantic today too because of the drama, emotional peaks and valleys, exotic locales, byronic heroes, fortunes, and isles veiled in secrecy.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. -Romans 12:19

This spring I had an offer to join a chat for a classic read and the book we chose was The Count of Monte Cristo. I was back at the beginning, listening on Librivox to about three chapters a day. This time I chose a version that was read by one person, David Clark and it was so much better. Here’s a mind map of the characters at the end of the book to help me remember it.

Last year I listened to The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Battle and bloodshed dogged my steps in the garden. 35 hours

The year before that I read The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkein. Bilbo and Frodo, how I missed them when the book ended and fall arrived. 20 hours

During the gardening season of 2021 I read Jane Eyre. 19 hours

And in 2020 it was A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. 18 hours

Each one has gotten longer! Maybe the first two don’t even count as long books in your mind, and that is totally up to you what you deem a long book. Anything over ten hours seems long to me. And I needed to work up my endurance for the really long ones.

Other long books I have dipped into are Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchel (49 hours) and Moby Dick by Herman Melville (24.5 hours). I abandoned Bleak House by Charles Dickens (43.5 hours). It seemed really bleak. And I have Middlemarch by George Eliot( 32hours) and East of Eden by John Steinbeck( 25 hours) on my to be read list.

Do you read long books? Which would you recommend?

–Liz

Long books and I don’t really get along anymore. (This is Eva.) We used to have a great relationship, though. I’m not sure why my attention span is shorter than it used to be. Being a wife and mom takes a lot more time, but I think it’s more than that. I have a sneaking suspicion that technology is partly to blame, which makes me mad. I wasn’t going to be ‘one of those people’, ya know?! I have read my share of long books, though.

Margart Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (49 hours) was a favorite of mine. I have read it at least twice and followed it with the unofficial sequel Scarlet (37 hours) by Alexandra Ripley. Once I had those two finished, I had to read Rhett Butler’s People ( (18 hours) by Donald McCaig to round out the story. That’s 104 hours of spoiled southern belle. I felt quite acquainted by the end of that and I was to the point where I agreed with Rhett and didn’t much care by the end!

I went through a spell of really enjoying James Michener books and I worked my way through several of them the first year we were married. Centennial (50 hours), Hawaii (51.5 hours), and Caribbean (32.25 hours) are three that I remember reading. These books certainly aren’t scriptural since they go back millions of years. If you read them, be prepared to change some dates in your head.

I’ve read most of the classics that Liz mentioned along with a few others that stand out. The Grapes of Wrath (21 hours) by John Steinbech and Anna Karenina (35.5 hours) by Leo Tolstoy being the most impressive of the classics I’ve read.

These days, I’m lucky to get through anything over 10 hours long. If I’m reading a physical book, I like paperback and under 400 pages. I’m a wimp with reading, I guess. But I’m no quitter! Books will always have a special place on my shelf!

I’m curious which long books you have read. Do you read them quickly or do you steadily plod through them? Do you need a break when reading long books or can you just keep right on cruising through? Leave us some books suggestions or tips for reading (or listening) to long books.

-Eva

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