This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Doorstopper: From YKTTW
Richard_W: Changed
- Pamela by Samuel Richardson. Actually, anything by Samuel Richardson.
Adam850: I've seen War and Peace used like this.
Ununnilium: Is there anything to this, other than "books that are long"? 'cause that's Not A Trope.
- Unknown Troper: It could be reworked into "long books that are put to better use as door stops than as reading material". But yes, at the moment it seems to just be "books that are longer than about 400 pages".
James: Why are the Dune books listed as examples? I don't know about the new Brian Herbert/KJA stuff, but the original Frank Herbert novels weren't even that long.
Uninverted: Who took out The C Programming Language near A large number of religious holy books, like the Bible, the Qur'an or a FORTRAN programming guide? You may have concluded by now that the best programming books are the thinnest ones doesn't really make much sense without it.
Randallw: I'd like to, if not discuss it, at least point out something. I've liked Peter F Hamilton books because as an extremely fast reader I like something that lasts longer than 3 hours. I noticed with the last one though, The Dreaming Void, that though it is the usual Door Stopper the print is actually so large that I think it would be normal size if the print were a normal size. Ok he's turned to manageable books, why then is it so big?
George TSLC: I have separated out and added the author to:
- Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, at 1.5 million, holds the Guinness Book of Records title as Longest Novel.
Shay Guy: Yeah, I probably should've put that in parentheses or something. My intent was to emphasize the sheer length of TBT; even the record-holder for longest novel isn't as long.
Mike: Can we put Marienbad My Love (abridged title) on here? Because, well, I'll just quote The Other Wiki:
- Self published as a single volume in 2008. Marketed as the world's longest published novel in English, it contains 17 million words. The author also claims "Marienbad My Love" (which is the condensed title) contains the world's longest word, 4.4 million letters; sentence, 3 million words; and book title, 6,700 words. These claims have attracted significant attention from the mass media, including stories by io9.com and filmfest.com.
StClair: The problem (IMO) is that it's not actually a novel, it's a stunt. And large portions of it are copy-pasted from whatever sources the "author" could find. I know that There's No Such Thing As Notability, but this troll really does not need the attention or the validation.
Grey Paladin: "Not actually a novel, it's a stunt" — seconded!
Teeth: Could this page be used for media other than books that last a very long time (though don't necessarily cause Ending Fatigue)? For example, 3+ hour long films, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, stuff like that.
Sillstaw: Seconded. For films, I propose a requirement that the examples must be in excess of four hours, since three-hour movies seem to be somewhat more common nowadays. Examples: Satantango, at seven hours; Andy Warhol's Empire at 8 hours; Shoah at 9 hours; The Human Condition at 9-and-a-half hours, and Berlin Alexanderplatz (although it's more of a TV miniseries) at 15 hours. (The Other Wiki has several lists along these lines.)
Zephid: Alright, I leave it to the wisdom of the wiki to use this pic or not, but if you want to go for something like what we've got But More So, I recommend this...
slb1900: The intro to this trope is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. Big kudos to whoever is responsible for this one.
slb1900: I've cut this list of "fun things you can do with a doorstopper" list from the Battlefield Earth entry. Fun to read, yes, but not well-placed into an article.
- You could put it under an uneven table leg.
- You could put it in the boot of a rear wheel drive car to improve traction on snowy days.
- You could put it on a bookshelf to prop up magazines.
- You could use it to club the Hollywood exec who decided to greenlight the movie.
- You could use it to destroy whatever planet L. Ron Hubbard's mind lives in.
- You could use it to smack some sense into a Scientologist.
- You could use it as a torture weapon. Y'know, like, "Do what I say, or... you have to read the first twenty chapters of Battlefield Earth."
- You could use it to build up a fire, but it would just create fumes so toxic that it will kill your ancestors. Yes, it kills people that are already dead. It's that bad.
- You can use it as the basis for a list of uses other than reading it.
Foamy: Noooooooooooooooooo!
Junk Box 99: Are catalogs permitted in this topic?
- Companies such as Allied, Newark, and Mouser Electronics have catalogs that surpass the 2000 page mark. All three of these companies encourage use of their websites, most likely to save on the cost of printing and mailing their huge tomes, but also partly because a search engine can find things in a massive infodump more quickly.
- This one might fall under Other reference works. The Thomas Register, a business index, often filled bookshelves to capacity. They stopped publication of the books in 2006, most likely to save on the cost of printing and shipping the monstrous set of books.
Man Called True: Was FATAL ever actually published? I've only ever seen it as a PDF file.
