Once I read that very few people read books from the beginning to the end (I don’t remember the percentage but it was extremely low). So most people read even their favorite books just partially. At the same time we might see in the bookstores and libraries a huge number of big books. I don’t understand why people write and publishers publish large books. Perhaps they see big books as big houses. Which means that big books as big houses are the items of prestige. My all-time favorite book ‘Tao Te Ching’ has something like 5.000 words while majority of modern books have about 60.000-80.000 words (some – even more). Puzzle.
A big book puzzle
Alisher Faizullaev 
Сперва я хотел написать – вот я, прочел до конца все книги которые когда-нибудь начинал читать. Потом вспомнил, что Войну и Мир я все-таки не закончил, осталось где-то 20-30 страниц (суждения автора о роли истории и т.д.) Если конечно тут речь о художественной литературе. А что касается non-fiction, то не думаю их обязатально читать до конца.
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Ну Вы герой, если всего 20-30 стр. “Войны и Мира” недочитали.
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Ну, теоретически по-разному можно рассуждать, но давай взглянем на практику. Ты один из самых больших чтецов, вернее читателей в мире, кого я знаю, но можешь ли вспомнить, когда в последний раз прочитал большую книгу с первой до последней страницы?
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А как же эффект Зейгарник (если не ошибаюсь), заставляющий делать дело до конца? Точно знаю, что есть и такой синдром: непременно дочитать даже плохую книгу, раз уж она начата. То же и с фильмами. Как если ты съел ложку супа и чувствуешь, что он несвеж, но дохлебываешь тарелку до дна, чтобы узнать, чем кончится.
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Reading big books requires great patience and concentration. I thing only voracious readers can read big books completely.
Concluding big books as the items of prestige isn’t always true. We can say it about a particular big book with sure only after we read it from the beginning to the end.
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Did anybody read any big book recently? Very interesting to know.
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I enjoy reading Ken Follet’s historical novels (Pillars of the Eart, World without end, Fall of giants) which represent around 1000 pages each.
Try them, very interesting reads!
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Respect!
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By the way, Alisher aka. Are you talking about literature books or academic books. I think one doesn’t have to read all the parts and pages of an academic book. Even if in big format, an academic work is structured into chapters and parts. And, especially, in the modern scientific publishing culture, even each part of one book can be considered as an independent unit. And, each reader picks the parts he is interested.
Especially, if you are obliged to follow the ever-growing scientific literature, you usually have to content yourself with going through introduction and conclusion of a book.
What do you think?
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Well, there are different types of academic books: a monograph, a collection of papers (for example, conference proceedings or journal articles), a published dissertation, an anthology, a “reader” (compilation of materials), a textbook and so on. And there might be some differences in composition, structure of books in different fields (let’s say, history vs. mathematics). So it is hard to generalize. Nevertheless, my point was about a big book – any kind of.
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