I like big books and I cannot lie.
Now that the obligatory pun is out of the way, let’s talk about books so big you could literally knock someone out with if you hit them upside the head. It could happen…. maybe. If any of these intrigue you just click the image!
Heads up, I’m an Indigo Affiliate so you will be taken to Indigo Chapters. This does not affect your purchase in any way. I do however benefit from the purchase itself.
1. Shantaram: 944 pages
I really enjoyed this one but definitely recommend doing some wrist exercises if you plan on reading the hard copy version. It’s HEFTY.
“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.”
So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel by Gregory David Roberts, set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.
Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.
As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.The Goldfinch
2. The Luminaries: 848 pages
I’ll admit it, I have this one on my shelf at home but I haven’t worked up the motivation to begin. I’ve heard good things though!
It is 1866 and young Walter Moody has come to stake his claim in New Zealand’s booming gold rush, make his fortune, and forever leave behind a family scandal. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to investigate what links three crimes that occurred on a single day: the town’s wealthiest man has vanished, a prositute has tried to end her life, and enormous cache of gold has been discovered in the home of a luckless drunk. Moody is soon drawn into a network of fates and fortunes that is as complex and exquisitely ornate as the night sky.
3. A Little Life: 832 pages
I was sent this one by a fellow bookworm who saw I was interested in it. I’m hoping to read it this summer. I’ve been warned though – it is not an easy read. Very very emotional. But it is supposedly absolutely fantastic.
A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.
4. Anna Karenina: 880 pages
I started reading Anna about a year ago but due to a few other things getting in the way I had to put her aside. I’m really hoping to get back to this one because it’s actually quite good! It just requires a bit more focus. She’s worth it, I’m told.
In 1872 the mistress of a neighbouring landowner threw herself under a train at a station near Tolstoy’s home. This gave Tolstoy the starting point he needed for composing what many believe to be the greatest novel ever written. In writing Anna Karenina he moved away from the vast historical sweep of War and Peace to tell, with extraordinary understanding, the story of an aristocratic woman who brings ruin on herself. Anna’s tragedy is interwoven with not only the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin but also the lives of many other characters. Rich in incident, powerful in characterization, the novel also expresses Tolstoy’s own moral vision. `The correct way of putting the question is the artist’s duty’, Chekhov once insisted, and Anna Karenina was the work he chose to make his point. It solves no problem, but it is deeply satisfying because all the questions are put correctly.
5. Outlander: 896 pages
This is my favourite book. If you follow me on Instagram you’ll certainly know that by now. So I will just say : READ THIS NOW. Ok. thanks.
Claire Randall is leading a double life. She has a husband in one century, and a lover in another…
In 1945, Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon—when she innocently touches a boulder in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of our Lord…1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire’s destiny in soon inextricably intertwined with Clan MacKenzie and the forbidden Castle Leoch. She is catapulted without warning into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life …and shatter her heart. For here, James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a passion so fierce and a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire…and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
What book would you use to knock some sense into someone? Is it one of these or a different one? Share it below.
-S
She Gets Literary 
Until last year I would have used Shantaram but currently I am reading A Suitable Boy. At 1372 pages, I think it is more than enough to fill someone with double the amount of the required sense.
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Oh yes! That one takes the cake for sure.
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