By Length & Width, What Are The Largest/Smallest Books You've Read? (12/22/24)

[Marc]

Excluding page count, what are the physically largest and smallest books you've read? What kind of dimensions are we talking about for these outliers?

[Robert]

My largest book is my copy of John Cale’s autobiography, What’s Welsh for Zen. From the ground it reaches my knee (I’m 173 cm in height)

[Lesley]

I wouldn’t say read but during my time at The British Library, I was involved in the project to make the digitised version of the Klencke Atlas available to the public.

[Hester]

Again , not read , but my mother had a tiny leather bound copy of Cymbeline by Shakespeare which was about the length of my thumb and the width and depth of half that. . It fascinated me as a child .

[Lesley]

Hester wrote: "Again , not read , but my mother had a tiny leather bound copy of Cymbeline by Shakespeare which was about the length of my thumb and the width and depth of half that. . It fascinated me as a child ."

I can picture that on the Borrowers’s bookshelf.

[Luke]

Biggest by dimension? I'm going to assume this is for a single volume, else I could throw 'In Search of Lost Time' or the four volume versions of the Great Chinese Classics. I did have a huge one volume version of one of the latter at some point (probably The Romance of the Three Kingdoms), but I don't tend to own what I've already read and trying to search up dimensions online is beyond me.

Let's start with width x height. Dodd Mead & Co's 1930 edition of Lorna Doone ran 7.5" x 9.5", which didn't help the pisspoor reading experience at all. I was also pretty cranky by the end of I Am the Most Interesting Book of All: The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff, Volume 1 which runs 7.25" x 9.5". I had better fortunes with The Longman Anthology of World Literature by Women: 1875-1975, which runs 7.5" x 9.25", but at least that had variety.

In terms of thickness? My edition of War and Peace is was 2.39" thick, which is especially impressive for a paperback.

This got me running around measuring my unread doorstoppers, which is a good feeling to have going into the new year. Not sure what I'll end up choosing, but I have some pretty nice options.

[Alwynne]

Smallest possibly Edward Gorey's unconventional novel The Helpless Doorknob: A Shuffled Story, size of a standard pack of playing cards. Largest probably a collection of Little Nemo comic strips but not sure which one it is on GR The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland, Vol. 3: 1908-1910 roughly A3 sized but possibly bigger, that's closed, so double that opened out to a double page spread.

[Lesley]

Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers was larger than I anticipated when I ordered it.
Described on Goodreads as “almost A3 planks of cardboard”.

[Greg]

I think the smallest was Woolgathering by Patti Smith.

It was tiny: 3 x 0.5 x 4.25 inches

I still have it somewhere.

[Lesley]

Greg wrote: "I think the smallest was Woolgathering by Patti Smith.

It was tiny: 3 x 0.5 x 4.25 inches

I still have it somewhere."

I used to be quite a fan of Patti Smith’s music & have read a few of her books. I’ve considered Woolgathering a few times. Irrespective of size would you recommend it?

[Greg]

@Lesley, I enjoyed some of her other books more to be honest. But everything she does has something special about it - she's a fascinating and unique individual! And I am a fan of her music as well. She's one of a kind!

[Lesley]

Greg wrote: "@Lesley, I enjoyed some of her other books more to be honest. But everything she does has something special about it - she's a fascinating and unique individual! And I am a fan of her music as well..."

Yes, she is definitely one of a kind.
Thanks for your feedback. I think I will get round to Woolgathering at some point. I’m drawn to the title and, as you say, there is something to find in all of her work.