The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages [View all]

Thought this might be of interest with a lot of time on our hands.



Literary Hub


The 50 Best Contemporary Novels Over 500 Pages
Long Books, Worth Your Time
By Emily Temple
April 9, 2020


Personally, I find solace in long novels. The good ones always seem to create space for the reader: space to sink and settle, and time to really learn what you’re dealing with, both in terms of character and in terms of author. You have to build something, reading a really long book. It’s almost a collaborative experience. So if you’re looking for a long-term relationship with a book right now, you couldn’t do much better than the books below.

For my sanity, I limited this list to contemporary novels, which here I am defining as being published in the last 50 years—I figure, you’ve already made your own decisions about whether to read Middlemarch and Ulysses and The Lord of the Rings, you know? You know.

Here are the rules: I only counted single volumes (it’s fine for them to be part of a series, but they have to meet the size requirements on their own), published in English since 1970. Writers only get one spot on the list. Page counts may vary over editions. And as ever, no list is definitive, “best” is an imaginary term, and I had to leave a lot of good books off, so feel free to add your own favorites in the comments section.