Monday, June 4, 2018

Bookish Banter: Does Size Matter?

A little Bookish Banter to get us through.  Bookish Banter is a little bit of banter about our bookish thoughts as we have a friendly discussion over a nice cup of tea. 

Does size matter? Do you like big books or little books?

Ash-

I don't really know if size matters, per say. But I do know that sometimes larger books can be incredibly intimidating. Sometimes you see a big book and just like...
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Especially those books that are over 500 pages. It's just too much. You feel overwhelmed and like you will never read all of those.
But then sometimes little books just aren't enough. You're reading a book and 3/4 of the way through it you're like, there is no way they are going to wrap all of this up, and I don't want this book to end ever. Wah.




With big books I, like to listen to them on audio, because I can listen to them at 2 or 3 speed and get them done a lot faster. Plus there's something so satisfying about seeing how far into the book you've gotten. Also, you don't have the rest of the huge book in front of you, taunting you.

So I really don't have a preference. It depends on my mood and what I'm doing it for. The challenges I try to find smaller books, the readathon I try to find smaller books, plus I need smaller books to finish my 2018 reading challenge on Goodreads.



Jenn-

Well, I can't say I prefer one or the other. What I can say is I agree with Ash...  I know sometimes it happens! Big books are intimidating. I mean I see an average book size for YA about 350 pages... okay that takes me about 3 days on reading, about 6 hours on audio. This isn't too bad. Then I see a book that has over 500 pages and I am like...

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Big books can be scary and I for one will put those off for a while unless I hear that it is so so good and/or it's on audio. Audio just makes the big books a little less scary. 

Now on the other side of this coin... or book, short books are sometimes just over way to quick. I don't mind the short reads on light fluffy summer reads or on thrillers. I mean thrillers are supposed to fast and scary and then the ending happens and phew its over. Fluffy light reads.... well you can only have so many aww moments. If its fantasy or dystopian or anything that needs great character and world building... the book just needs to be longer... otherwise something just seems missing or off or just confusing.

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So I guess, yes size matters. Size doesn't matter for the reading desire but for the reading experience. Some books just need to be monsters and some books are good being little dwarfs. The important thing is not the size but the reason for the size and if it was done accordingly. 


So what are your thoughts... does size matter? Do you prefer the monsters or the dwarfs?


4 comments:

  1. I read pretty fast. I can read a 300 page book in 2 hours. Some of the best books I've read like Styxx and Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon are 800 pages or more and I loved them. As long as the story is enjoyable I don't mind bigger books.

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  2. I like reading big books, it feels so satisfying to finish them. But I definitely do have to think about it first before I read it, can I commit to a book this long right now, etc.

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  3. Yep, I agree that big books can be intimidating. But at the same time, sometimes the small ones just aren't *enough*. But, ever since I decided to set my GR challenge to 1 book so that I could keep track of books w/o the pressure of a certain number, I've found myself caring a lot less about how big books are (except I still avoid ones that are too short). With audiobooks though, I feel even more intimidated. I see that they're like 20 hours and my brain just goes WHAAA??? I have to stick to, like, under 10 hour audios lol.

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  4. I prefer books around 200-300 pages as I can get through them in a couple of days. Big books can often be slow and padded out which puts me off reading them.

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