12 of Our Favourite Long Reads for a Cold Winter Day

Curling up with a good book is always a good idea, but it’s a particularly great idea during these cold winter months This time of year was made for settling on the couch with a book, devouring the pages, and not realising where time has gone. To help you get through this winter, we’ve come up with a list of some of the biggest and longest titles that you’ll need to dedicate some time to – clocking in at an average of 997 pages each, these twelve tomes may be long, but your reading efforts will be rewarded.

Shantaram  – one of the best known novels of our time, this doorstopper of a novel is a well deserved classic. Based on the life of the author, this compelling novel weaves its way from Australia to the slums of Bombay.

The TV show everyone is talking about is of course based on the wildly successful series by George R.R.Martin. Game of Thrones has it all – kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men. The full series ought to keep you going for a while.

Of course no book list of long reads would be complete without mentioning the Russian great, Tolstoy, and Anna Karenina is a great place to start, with its unparalleled richness and complexity, set against a backdrop of Russian high society. And once you’ve finished that, War and Peace is naturally next on the list!

An acclaimed novel of our time, I Know This Much Is True is a story of alienation and connection, devastation and renewal, at once joyous and heartbreaking, and powerfully, profoundly human. This will stay with you long after finishing.

We could have gone with a number of Stephen King novels, but The Shining is a particular favourite. Another one on the list that has been bought to the big screen, this is the story of the strange and terrible forces that gather round the Overlook Hotel.

A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, The Pillars of the Earth is classic historical masterpiece. It may take a while to finish, but it will transport you.

The bestselling Australian novel of all time, The Thorn Birds is the sweeping saga of three generations of the Cleary family. As powerful, moving and unforgettable as when it originally appeared, this is a novel to be read … and read again.

A Suitable Boy is set in post-independence India, involving the lives of four large families and those who orbit them. This is a sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux – and at its core, a love story. Definitely worth the long page count.

Brace yourself for an astonishing, challenging, upsetting and profoundly moving book. A Little Life is an epic about love and friendship in the twenty-first century that goes into some of the darkest places fiction has ever traveled and yet somehow improbably breaks through into the light.

This Is All is an anthology, written in six ‘books’ of Cordelia’s adolescent life. It is by turns funny, poignant, sad, exciting, fascinating ironic and truthful – a richly entertaining and challenging read, and a perfect example where young adult fiction is not just for teenagers.

Any of Charles Dickens’ novels could have been on this list, but David Copperfield was the one the author described as his ‘favourite child’. He draws revealingly on his own experiences to create a work that is filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure.

There’s never been a better time to discover the Outlander novels. Blending rich historical fiction with riveting adventure and a truly epic love story, this is now a successful TV series, but we all know that the books are always better than the screen versions!