Does listening to audiobooks count as reading? Here it does. Let’s discuss your favorite reads — or listens.
All tagged epic reads
A powerful, slow-burning portrait of Dust Bowl-era migration, “The Grapes of Wrath” explores poverty, resilience and injustice through the Joad family’s harrowing journey from Oklahoma to California. John Steinbeck’s writing is dense but rewarding, culminating in one of literature’s most haunting final scenes. A brutal yet brilliant American classic.
Abraham Verghese’s lauded novel effectively blends drama with cultural and historical perspectives but it also sometimes struggles under the weight of its own expansiveness.
For all its flaws, “The Brothers K” offers a reminder of the bonds that hold families together despite their differences. The Chance family, though flawed and frequently at odds, is united by love and loyalty – a timely message about finding the good in one another.
“All the Colors of the Dark” is a sprawling novel that tries to do too much and ends up delivering very little. At best, it's aggressively mediocre, and at worst, it's a contrived and overly familiar story built on tropes.
Despite its length, “IT” stands as one of Stephen King’s most unsettling and complex works, effectively weaving psychological and supernatural horror with real-world brutality. Although King has made a career out of exploring dark and unhinged themes, “IT” pushes those boundaries.
Expectation: A unique journey into the mind of a Midwest housewife and baker.
Reality: A 1,000+ page run on sentence with no plot, or seemingly, purpose outside of threading random topics together.
Expectation: A sprawling saga about one of India’s crime families.
Reality: Less literary than anticipated, I was mostly entertained while also being annoyed by the repetitive action and predictable tropes.
Expectation: A powerful story about the human/nature connection and how an ever-accelerating eco-calamity will destroy us all.
Reality: Bloated and boring, there was far too much happening and very little of it was interesting. I’m struggling to see how this won the Pulitzer Prize.
Expectation: A decades-spanning exploration of lust, love and monogamous monotony.
Reality: Smart, funny and heartfelt, Hill brings his characters to life in vivid detail while translating macro ideas about society into intimate, meaningful moments.
Expectation: An immersive and exceptional story about a dark period of American history.
Reality: Needlessly long and a little boring, I was completely turned off by Scarlett and Rhett and struggled to see why the characters are so popular.
Expectation: An epic journey through the horrors of Appalachia.
Reality: Funny, poignant and utterly engrossing, it’s a blockbuster book that delivers - even if the last third feels a tad trite.
Expectation: An engrossing, underappreciated modern epic.
Reality: Bloated, meandering and populated with people doing terrible things, I wanted to like this more than I did.
Expectation: A richly drawn character study that brings the tears.
Reality: The epitome of a character-driven story that lacks the emotional heft of Yanagihara’s “A Little Life” but is still an exceptional work of fiction.
Expectation: A modern “Great American Novel.”
Reality: A captivating and gorgeously written novel that, at times, asks too much of the reader.
Expectation: An historical fiction epic focusing on the early days of aviation.
Reality: Heavy on scope and scale, light on focus. It’s mostly enjoyable but also didn’t need to be 600+ pages.
Expectation: “The Stand” meets “The Walking Dead.”
Reality: A mostly solid end-of-the world story that is a tad too long to provide maximum impact.
I don’t shy away from epic reads, but in reviewing my 10 longest reads, only about half ended up being the time spent reading or listening. Is this your experience too?
