What's the longest book you've ever read?
The longest book I have ever read was “The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights,” which was close to 1000 pages.
How I Read It
To complete the book, I decided I'd read 100 pages a day. As someone who loves reading, and who reads every day, I knew this would be easy for me. And I read 100 pages in one sitting. That's how I started, but as I got into the book, I wanted to learn how the story turned out, so I read over 100 pages a day and in no time I finished the book.
What It's About
The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights are stories within stories. The book is a collection of West and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age.
Persian King Shahryār, betrayed by his wife, becomes convinced all women are deceitful and begins marrying a new virgin each night, executing her by morning.
To end the slaughter, the vizier's daughter Scheherazade volunteers to become the King’s bride. She survives by telling the king a captivating story each night, always stopping at a cliffhanger so he spares her life to hear what happens next.
After 1,001 nights of this, the king falls in love with her and abandons his murderous ways entirely.
Tales in The Arabian Nights
Many of the folktales you loved growing up are a part of the collection. I recommend you read the Sir Richard Burton edition because it's a more accurate translation. Burton translated the book from Arabic to English. Most of the other versions are translations from Arabic to Latin to English, so things got lost in translation.
Some of the tales you’ll recognize are Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, The Fisherman and the Jinni, and The Lady and Her Five Suitors.
A Common Misconception
For instance, many of you have read Aladdin and the Magic Lamp and you believe that Aladdin had only three wishes. Except he had as many wishes as he wanted as long as he was in possession of the lamp.
It is important to read a version of the story that is translated from Arabic to English. This allows you to see things for yourself.
This is also an important life lesson, to try to go back to original sources as much as possible. This is not easy, but worth the effort when possible. I read Aladdin and the Magic Lamp as a standalone story, but I also read it in The Arabian Nights.
Closing Reflection
I appreciated this book because I admired Scheherazade’s resourcefulness. And it reminded me that there’s often a creative solution to every problem. Spend the time to generate the solution.
Another important lesson is that you can break large projects into smaller chunks that are manageable. Just thinking about reading 1000 pages would have been overwhelming to me. However, reading only 100 pages a day was more manageable. For you, it could be only 25 pages, and that’s okay. Do what’s manageable for you.
So back to my original question. What's the longest book you've read and what made you finish reading it?
Next Steps
Wondering what to do next, you can do all of:
If you want access to my Bookish Notes, please consider joining the wait list for my membership site, the Institute for Applied Knowledge.
This post contains affiliate links and The Invisible Mentor® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details, see here. Thank you so much for your support!
