Twenty-six of the best very long books

Boris Kachka is the books editor for New York magazine and the author of Hothouse and Becoming a Veterinarian. At Vulture.com he tagged twenty-six very long books worth the time they’ll take to read, including:

War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (1869, 1,296 pp.)

On top of everything else the Russian master accomplished in this historical novel about the Napoleonic era in Russia, he really nailed the title. By shifting focus from the battlefield to the home front and back, he captured the total effect of war on armies and aristocrats, husbands and wives.

Learn about another book on the list.

War and Peace appears among Kirsty Gunn's ten top books about unrequited love, Terry Waite's six best books, Adrian Edmondson's six best books, Robert Newman's six best books, John Cleese's six favorite books, Kate Kellaway's ten best Christmases in literature, the Telegraph's ten best historical novels, Simon Sebag Montefiore's five top books about Moscow, Oliver Ford Davies's six best books, Stella Tillyard's four favorite historical novels, Ann Shevchenko's top ten novels set in Moscow, Karl Marlantes' top ten war stories, Niall Ferguson's five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best battles in literature, ten of the best floggings in fiction, and ten of the best literary explosions.

--Marshal Zeringue