Books that could have been shorter

Anyone ever read something, force yourself through it, and realize that it was bad, but--taken as a whole the story itself was good? I kind of felt that way with Moby Dick. I felt like only the last twenty pages or so were pertinent. A more recent work was Cryptonomicon. I made it through that one, but the four page commentary on how the protagonist enjoyed his Captain Crunch was bit much. As it is, now I can't even pick up another Neal Stephenson book.

I would never, ever advise anyone to read Nicolas Nickleby all the way through. And though I enjoyed War and Peace and would never refer to it as "awful lit", the long, heavy-handed meditation on history at the end gave me a (mental) hernia.

Sacred Games could have been 450 pages shorter and been a better book for it.

The Italian by Ann Radcliffe. I liked the book just fine, except for the extended scenic passages. Though I may have been spoiled by reading The Monk first, as that one was a bit more, erm, exciting, shall we say?

Yeah Cryptonomicon was great and all, but four pages on breakfast ... why? I also have to admit that The Lord of the Rings could have been a bit shorter, especially the first book, even though I am a fan and kind of like the verbose style.

I fully agree about War and Peace. At least, lop off those epilogues!

Also, I found Catch-22 extremely repetitive and in need of a ruthless trimming.

I've always thought of the first part of Lord of the Rings as a sort of endurance test. It's also a nice, leisurely stroll through Everything That Will Be Lost If Evil Wins, or something.
The two that come to my mind are It, by Stephen King (would've been twice as good if it was half as long), and The Man Who Laughs, by Victor Hugo. 8 pages describing a body hanging from a gibbet?

The first one that comes to mind is Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I would have liked the book fine had it been several hundred pages shorter.

Not literature, per se, but Mortimer Adler's book titled How to Read a Book could have been one third it's thickness and still be a great book.

The easy one here is The Stand, particularly the uncut version Stephen King foisted on us after he became the shiznit.

Also, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was way too long.

Re 10: I actually thought Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell should have been longer.

Many years ago The Stand was my favourite book, and I read it several times. Couldn't get enough, so I thought. Then the unedited full version was published, and I saw that yes, actually I could get enough. The editors were right the first time.

>9 WholeHouseLibrary:

Right on Wholehouse. How to Read a Book is a must-read. Boring as all hell, but a must-read. I keep telling myself to go back and check it out again, soon.

And ironically, it is particularly valuable to students, who usually have the attention span of a short-tailed shrew.

The last three Harry Potters. Badly in need of an edit. consider phlebas and it's sequels. Ditto.

Cut out the unnecessary half-arsed plot lines, and replace with a smaller volume of necessary detail filling in the main plot properly.

I generally like long books, they give the author time to explore the characters and their interaction with the world better. But sometimes the author just gets carried away and needs reigning in.

At this moment the first thing that pops into my mind is Wally Lambs: The Hour I First Believed.

Much of the middle of this book could have been done away with. In fact, it seems like two books in one.

For me LotR is just the opposite, I like the first part the best but once they get past Moria...

And Victor Hugo seems to be partial to really long descriptions, a friend of mine mentioned a 20+ page desc about what Paris looks like from up high in Notre Dame, I think?

I am partial to shorter books and tight writing, so almost all the long books are either just plain bad or would have been better if...
One of the oft-quoted exceptions is Anna Karenina, I do like the story of Levin as it provides a counterpoint to Anna...

>12 Nickelini:

Actually, I read the unedited version of The Stand first and rather enjoyed it. However, that might come of never having read the edited book first.

The Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time should'a been approximately three books in total.

Les Miserables for sure. Far too many chapters devoted to the bishop in the beginning. I still couldn't bring myself to get the abridged version.

The last two Harry Potter novels could have been shortened by about 200 pages a piece.

Any Honor Harrington after about book 8 can be shortened by at least 100 pages.

And I'll agree with all those asking to shrink the Wheel of Time series by numerous books from that series.

Oh the Wheel of Time...ouch...lot's of cutting could have been done there...

>11 Rodo: Me too. Loved that book and all it's wonderful bulkiness.

I think the second part of The Lord of the Rings could have been shorter. Loved the first and third books though. Second one just seemed to drrraaaggg.

Moby Dick although I'll be ready the next time I have to cut up a whale

I have just finished reading 1Q84 Books 1 & 2 and it was a real struggle; there was so much which didn't seem particularly relevant, almost as though Murakami and his translator were testing their command of language.

I have Book 3 and will read it eventually but there are a large number of books which I will probably read while I am gathering strength to tackle it.

The Historian.
It would be about 200 pages (versus 600) if you got rid of the long-winded setting descriptions that are irrelevant to the plot.

>16 hdcclassic: Anna Karenina was the first one that came to my mind. I'm glad I read it but I could have lived without all of the 19th Century Russian Economics.

I'm currently reading The Tin Drum and agree with other LT reviewers; it is at least 200 pages too long.

Refer to #24

I have now read 1Q84, Book 3 which finished very inconclusively. I fear that there are 1Q84 Books IV, V and VI still to come.

I'd have been a much happier woman if The Shack had been . . . let's see . . . about 256 pages shorter.

I'm struggling to finish a book in David Weber's Safehold series. Too much extraneous information, too many viewpoints! GAH! It so needs to narrow the focus more.

Don't get me wrong, I love his world building. His storylines are great. But lately, he's not had editors rein him in and he's become overly verbose. Sometimes, knowing every thought of every character in a scene is a BAD thing.

The Picture of Dorian Gray: entire chapters on the stuff Dorian is collecting (art, jewelry, clothes, etc). Really?

I know I have come in very late into the 'story/group' but ALL the Harry Potter books after #3 could have been cut by many, many pages.
Do you think editors are/can be "intimidated"?

Oh, as for literature, the Brothers Karamazov could also have done with some editing.

31
Les Miserables is the exact same way. A chapter describing the layout of the Bishop's house, a chapter describing the women he lives with, a chapter describing his daily activities, etc.
ALL so we could understand why he didn't rat on Jean Valjean. Was it really that hard to say that he was a kindhearted man who believed everyone deserves redemption?
There, I just shortened the book by 60 pages.

@32
I second that motion about Harry Potter. They were phenomenal books, but SOOOOO much of the "stuffing" could have been removed and you would have been left with the same effect. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix dragged on needlessly in such awkward parts and them BAM! Sirius dies in the space of one sentence. Very poor spacing of plot and dialogue.

There is a case for long drawn out descriptions followed by a sudden death. I am specifically thinking of a scene in a
Patrick O'Brian novel where he describes the young (12+yo.) midshipsman boys playing in the rigging. Suddenly one falls and dies. A single sentence. And O'Brian moves on.

I guess that in this case he was showing the Brutality and
suddeness of life/death in thoses times. I was shocked and, stunned, but now (after many years) realize that that scene worked. Hey, after many years I still remember it.

Hmm. Must re-read some Tolstoy. "Brothers K..." was last read some 40 years ago. Maybe my ideas about "padding"
might have changed :-)

ETA. Spelling and typos.

The scenes immediately preceding Sirius's death were not drawn out, it was actually rather fast-paced (wham, bam, thank you ma'am; almost like his death was being hidden).
I was just describing how she drew out the useless fodder at some points in the book and glossed over important plot points.
Sorry if that was confusing (after re-reading it, I can see how it got confuddled).

Tolstoy? Long-winded? Say it ain't so!

(tee-hee...)

I quit on The Naked and the Dead, so I suppose THAT could have been shorter...

>#32 I completely agree. The Brothers Karamazov is turgid beyond any reason except that it was originally serialized, and D kept it going as long as he could. Finishing it in time for a recent seminar nearly killed me.

I also thought Murakami's Kafka on the shore would have been improved by being slimmed down.

Classic critic Samuel Johnson stopped just --well --short of saying that Miltonʻs Paradise Lost should have been shorter. He called it "a book that no one has ever wished were longer".

I remember a self-appointed critic in the 1950s, saying
that Moby Dick has the best beginnning and the best ending ever -- and the WORST middle.

I got through all the early chapters on the bishop in Les Miserables but now I'm stuck in the endless disquisition on convents. Just when I thought we were about to move on, Hugo now seems about to devote a whole section to convents. Is this book worth finishing?

Yes. Once you get to the chapters on Jean Valjean and Fantine, it starts getting infinitely better.

". . .Kafka on the shore would have been improved
by being lsimmed down"

A book that I did actually "wish were longer" (pace Samuel Johnsonʻs view of Paradise Lost (see 38) was another religious poem: T. S. Eliotʻs The Wasteland --with all due espect to those seemingly unanimous critics who thought that the wisest thing T S E ever did was to takeEzra Poundʻs advice and cut out -- I donʻt know what percent -- a lot -- of it.
Iʻve always been curious
about what he took Poundʻs advice about, and perhaps should have left in.
Iʻve put onto my Wish List an edition that purports
to present it as Eliot first wrote it, but I havenʻt got hold of it yet. Who knows, I may end up thinking that Pound was right* after all, but I want to see for myself.

*And Pound could be very wrong-headed, as we know from his political biography, but thatʻs not really a lilterary topic.

Rodo #11: I think I love you.

Okay, we got through the essay on convents in Les Miserables and have resumed the story. Moving right along....

@43 I highly recommend doing Les Miserables through audio book (Librivox has the complete volumes for free).
The way in which Hugo writes lends itself perfectly to doing tiny jaunts of it during car rides. I get through 2-3 chapters on my way to work, then again on my way home from work. Each chapter is usually around 10-25 minutes with a few shorter and a few longer.
I've never cared for audio books, but it really seems to work wonderfully with Les Miserables.
http://librivox.org/les-miserables-vol-1-by-victor-hugo/
http://librivox.org/les-miserables-volume-02-by-victor-hugo/
http://librivox.org/les-miserables-vol-3-by-victor-hugo/
http://librivox.org/les-miserables-vol-4-by-victor-hugo/
http://librivox.org/les-miserables-vol-5-by-victor-hugo/

I can see where Les Miserables would work well as an audio book, with its (usually) short chapters. Hugo was ahead of his time that way.

I forget where I heard this idea first (might have been at a talk given by Jane Smiley), but I heard that Hugo, Tolstoy, Melville, Dickens et al. were so long-winded because they were obligated to describe scenes their readers might not have been familiar with. Those of us who grew up watching television and movies have had a much larger exposure to images outside of our usual lives and don't need so much description.

@46 - Which would be understandable if what Hugo was spending so much time on was mostly scenes. One chapter was a six page list of the priest's shopping list! A lot of stuff Hugo talks about would in no way detract from the book if it were completely dropped.

I remember trying to wade through Hugo's The Man Who Laughs and giving up after a 13 page description of bodies hanging from gibbets.

>47 benuathanasia: Maybe I'm just nosy or love tedium, but I didn't mind the part with the priest's shopping list. I always skip the chapter on the battle of Waterloo now, however, after reading it once.

". . .the priestʻs shopping list"
.. . .Skip the chapter on. . .Waterloo"

I did admire Hugoʻs "Waterloo" chapter. I donʻt remember the priestʻs shopping list (which section was that in?)
Maybe I was already skipping before I came to it. I do remember there is a once-famous "List" section --the contents of a bathroom cabinet--in one of Salingerʻs shorter works (not "Catcher") As I remember it, critics of the time seemed to admire the passage.
The French edition of a part of Stendhalʻs La Chartreuse de Parme that I read in college, has a note that contrasts Stendhalʻs account of Waterloo with
Hugoʻs, not especially praising or disparaging either one, just impressed with how different they were. In Stendhal,ʻs v ersion (not notably shorter) the
hero is (marginally) "in" the Battle of Waterloo without knowing he is in it!" Cut off from his Unit, he meets some other stragglers, French officers, and asks them if
a battle is going on. The answer: "Sort of."

I do remember there is a once-famous "List" section --the contents of a bathroom cabinet--in one of Salingerʻs shorter works (not "Catcher") As I remember it, critics of the time seemed to admire the passage.

Hey, it worked for Steve Goodman in the lyrics to "This Motel Room." Come to think of it, maybe Goodman had been reading Salinger . . . :-)

I just finished Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which, could have been shorter, particularly the 3rd book.

I listened to audio, during commutes, fo--ever. 'Reminded of me of this, without the hilarious fake eroticism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1kb4a6FCI0

The Witching Hour. It could have been a small fraction of what it was. Worst. Book. Ever.

53: You obviously didn't read Blackwood Farm ;)

Or Queen of the Damned.
Anne Rice may hold the record for most insane books written.

#55

re: Queen of the Damned.

Indeed.

Now, see, I loved QotD and the preceding two books. I loved them for their meandering, over-the-top-ness. The later books and the others not in the series - meh. Just couldn't have the same crush on those.

Agreed. The early books were obviously written as much to create an atmosphere as to tell a story, and they did that fabulously. That's why I'll always have a soft spot for them. Towards the end they seemed like writing for the sake of killing a lot of time.

@54 I did! I liked it, but I definitely see your point lol

#38

Come to think of it, Boswell's work on Johnson could have used some rigorous editing.

I'm currently reading and reading and reading, Paradise Lost. I'd suggest a good "A-muhr-a kin" translation, might be much appreciated.

How about it, Cormac McCarthy?

Paradise Lost, as revised by William Carlos Williams:

so much depends
upon

a big red
apple

#61

Perfect!

An "A-muhr-a-kin" translation of Paradise Lost?
"Once't there's this guy named Billy Bob Saytin, worked nights managin' this Country n' Western nightclub called the "Pair-O'-Dice," for this Jewish guy folks called G. Hoffa..."

#63 - I would read that lol.

Maybe it would have been a bit longer, e.g.

Milton:
Hast thou not wonderd, ADAM, at my stay?
Thee I have misst, and thought it long, depriv'd
Thy presence, agonie of love till now
Not felt, nor shall be twice, for never more
Mean I to trie, what rash untri'd I sought,
The paine of absence from thy sight. But strange
Hath bin the cause, and wonderful to heare:
(and so on, for another 100 lines or so)

WCW:
i have eaten
the fruit
you told me not to

Forgive me
it was delicious

the serpent
liked it too

So I had my library get a copy of a book that I remember as being really bad but incredibly popular around 1980: Scott Spencer's Endless Love.

It's not bad, exactly, but it is awful. Literary Fiction at its worst. Beautifully written sentences and wonderful insight with characters who never act like human beings. I know the narrator is insane, but he's also privileged, selfish, foolish, stupid, and amazingly egoistical.

He starts out, a 17 year old who's been banned from his 16 year old girlfriend's house for 30 days, setting fire to some newspapers on the front porch of their home. The plan is to get them to come outside so he can talk to them (telephones hadn't been invented in 1967 Chicago, apparently).
It all goes awry, because the entire family, including the 16 year old and her 12 year old brother, are on an acid trip, courtesy of the two worst parents outside of Geek Love.

And it just gets worse. Long paragraphs of excruciating detail, stupid people, insane situations.
In a way it reminded me of House of Sand and Fog-beautiful writing with characters who resembled marionettes more than humans.

And Endless Love was a huge success. It sold a bazillion copies, Franco Zeffirelli directed Brooke Shields in the movie, Diana Ross and Lionel Richie had a huge hit with the theme, and it was even nominated for a National Book Award (it lost to Sophie's Choice).

Go figure.

What about Seven Pillars of Wisdom? I quit after about 20 pages, so I'm no authority, but it seemed like it could comprise a very long slog through sand.

67 - The secretary at my school read that; it took the entire school year for her to finish it. It was amusing to sign in in the morning and see how far her bookmark had moved.

I haven't read it, but I recently read Tolkien's Gown : And Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books and Rick Gekoski was decidedly underwhelmed.

>66 groovykinda: - the song was bad enough and now you tell me there was a book and a film.

I've read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom twice. I enjoyed it more the second time as the first reading gave me an overall picture of the book and the history of what happened.

Lawrence has a lot to answer for in the light of current middle east politics but he and his Arab cohorts did push the Turks back into Turkey.

71 - I haven't read Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but from what I learned studying WWI history and Modern Middle Eastern History, Lawrence loved the Arabian culture and promised them all sorts of marvelous things when the war ended (with England's backing), but after the war, England basically said, "LOL, just kidding!" and placed their own little puppets in charge to wreak havoc. Almost all of the wars since WWI can be traced directly back to the peace talks in Paris in 1919 and the ways in which England, US, etc. screwed over the non-white world.

Yes - that is about it. Lawrence obtained the co-operation of the Palestinians with the promise of their own land when the Turks were driven back ... and, of course it didn't happen.

To add insult to injury Israel was created from land which the Palestinians thought had been promised to them.

Reminds me of the help the Kurds gave the Turks in the Armenian genocide; they were promised a Kurdistan in return.

But I guess history is full of broken promises and backstabs. Does anyone here play the game Diplomacy?

>74 anglemark: love that game. But it's hard to find enough players interested, these days.

When I read Dorian Grey I thought: there's a novel that would make a great short story.

#75

My reaction to Dorian Grey was that the action all took place over about three years and his picture looked like an evil old man in that time.

The problem with Moby Dick is that Melville has digressions on digressions. In one chapter he reminisces about when he was in Lima, Peru. But apparently that digression is just to let him talk about his real interest: barge drivers on the Erie Canal. By the time he gets back to the Pequod, you forget what the heck he was talking about in the first place.

> 75: You can always play it online: http://www.floc.net/dpjudge/

Not quite the same thing, but it's still Diplomacy.

77

That Melville, 'just like Tolstoy!

Oh Dear,

I have just bought Jonathan strange & Mr Norrell
All LT's fault.

1006 pages. Which 600 pages should I ignore? :-)

All of them. I didn't bother to finish it.

Finally finished Les Miserables!

82
Yay!!! Congratulations!
I'm doing it as an audiobook while driving, so I'm only partway through volume 4.
How did you enjoy it?
It may be painfully long (and long-winded), but I'm truly enjoying it. It's not like The Historian which draaaggggggeeeddd on between points of interest; it's more like a subtle "huh, that's interesting" interspersed with "awesome..."

I enjoyed it, and the end was powerful and moving. I did have to persevere through some of Hugo's extended ruminations (I think a better acquaintance with French history and the revolution would have helped), but overall it's a great and epic story. I'm glad I hung in there with it.