This week on Jeff & Will’s Big Gay Fiction Podcast, we asked listeners what their preferred size/length of books is.
I don’t give much consideration to the length of a book. I can be just as happy reading a 12,000 word short story as a novel that goes over 100,000 words.
Since I’ve always got a book in progress, it doesn’t matter to me whether I’m reading the book for two days or ten. The major criteria for me is that the story is paced right for it’s size.
We’ve all read the stories that feel like they took forever to get through as well as ones that left you feeling like the author was rushing you to the end. The ideal scenario is where you can’t believe you’re finished, but that you’re ultimately satisfied with the story–not too fast, not too slow and no filler.
Two of my all-time favorite books–Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Stephen King’s complete and uncut version of The Stand—can be considered real doorstops. But I can also be complete delighted by a story that’s a fraction of either of those–recent holiday reads from Brandon Witt and Atom Yang come to mind.
In my view, it’s not about length at all. As long as the author tells the story with the word count best suited to the task, I’m a happy reader.
What about you? What’s the preferred size of the books you read?
