What’s the largest, thickest, heaviest book you ever read? Was it because you had to? For pleasure? For school?
Oh, of course it was for pleasure—I’m a fantasy fan, thank you very much! A quick glance at Amazon tells me that technically, The Way of Kings is the heaviest book I’ve ever read, weighing in at 3 pounds. However, my copy of The Way of Kings is an ARC and therefore a paperback, making it lighter. The winner, then, is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, weighing in at 2.8 pounds (sorry, Harry Potter).
The Literary Omnivore 
I think Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is the biggest I’ve read, in fiction at least. Some of my textbooks have probably been heavier.
Yeah, my Norton Anthology is heavier.
Yet to read that Susanna Clark novel!
Here is my BTT: Heavy Books post!
My books weighed in at 2.8lbs too … that is really weird …
Here is my answer to this week’s Booking Through Thursday.
here’s mine http://tributebooksmama.blogspot.com/2011/01/booking-through-thursday_27.html
Both sounds very interesting!
For the moment, The Way of Kings is the biggest I’ve read. That might change in March when Wise Man’s Fear comes out. It’s supposed to be just as big.
That reminds me; I need to read The Name of the Wind.
You haven’t? I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s the most original fantasy novel since…
Lord of the Rings.
At work, we sometimes have books that we, as a store, as supposed to hand sell, regardless of what it is. Usually, it’s something like a book about an old ladies knitting circle in Ireland. I hand sold enough copies of The Name of the Wind that my manager made that our next hand sell–and it sold very well.
And this was only about 18 months ago.
I never would’ve thought to check on Amazon to see how much my books weigh!
I just had a peek, and the poetry book I finished the other week (THE BEST POEMS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, ed. by Harold Bloom), weighed 2.8 lbs. That’s the heaviest in recent memory, though I did try–and fail–to read a hardcover copy of A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES by Diana Gabaldon a few days back. It proved to be too hefty for me, so I returned it. Amazon says it only weighed 3lbs, but I think they’re lying. It was at least as heavy as my dog, and he’s 3.5 lbs.
I think the heaviest I’ve actually read is probably ‘Noble House’ by James Clavell – I read that for complete pleasure, even carting it around school and reading it between classes – but I have no idea how much it weighed (it was a hb from the library). It felt gigantic to me, anyway (and I’d read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by this point, which was my benchmark for fat books until I read ‘Noble House’).
One of the reasons I bought ‘Anathem’ for my Kindle was that my heart sank at the thought of actually borrowing my dad’s hb copy and reading that!