The Deep Story Experience

The rewards of sticking it out with a long book

Saturday Morning Serial

Saturday Morning Serial is the weekend section of Library Binding. It’s a personal corner where I publish short stories, book reviews, and literary musings. I’m Michelle Watson, and I’m so glad you stopped by.

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Do you prefer long or short books?

I’d venture a guess that many of us lean toward short. There’s only so much time for reading, after all. The shorter the book, the more of them we can read. Ah, efficiency.

I like a short book as much as anyone, and I read plenty of them, but there’s something beautiful that happens when you invest your time in a long book.

(By “long,” I’m talking at least 500 pages.)

What’s the beautiful thing that happens?

The “deep story experience.”

I touched on this in an article for Tea & Ink Society about why reading long classic books is worth the effort. Here’s what I said about the “deep story experience.”

These tomes offer a depth of storytelling that shorter works can’t. The author has the space to develop complex characters, intricate plots, and immersive settings. Allowing yourself to steep in this world for weeks on end—it changes you, just like hot water changes to tea. […]

The more time you spend with these characters, the more profound your connection to them. You finish the book, but the story stays with you long after. Why? Because, well, you’ve earned it.

I just finished Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. I opted for the audiobook, which clocked in at 40:22 hours. A quick perusal of Goodreads suggests that most print versions are between 850 and 1,000 pages.

This long classic delivered the deep-story experience, and it delivered big.

It was as if Dickens said, “Look here, and I will show you a wild smorgasbord of people, and they are all in prison—every one of them. You didn’t think so many prisons existed, did you? The most interesting prisons have invisible walls and keys in the lock. Keep watching these prisoners I’ve created for you, and if you stay very still, you will see some of them break free.”

Because I spent so much time with these characters, and because I am a nerd who is constantly asking “What does it all mean?” I found in Little Dorrit a group of friends and enemies who showed me, by playing the parts Dickens assigned to them, what it looks like to be free (or in bondage) and what it means to be happy (or one of the many opposites of happy).

I was also rewarded with one of the loveliest romances I’ve read in a long time.

Long books require a lot, but they give a lot in return.

Reading Little Dorrit reminded me of how true this is.

Was I riveted by every last verbose description? Oh no. Did my mind wander off? You bet. But the book is plenty long enough to swallow up lapses in attention.

Long books are also fantastic to reread because there’s so much you miss on the first go-’round that you catch on the second or third pass.

None of us can read exclusively long books because we’ll burn out like a Victorian candle sitting on the windowsill of an ancient woman who is hiding terrible secrets in her rickety old house, but I love to throw one or two very long classics into my mix every year.

Here are a few long books that I haven’t read yet but am intrigued by:

• Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace

• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

• The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

• Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Which one of these (or another) do you think is worth its weight?

I’d love to know what deep-story books you recommend because, well, there’s a lot of winter left.

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Before you go—a song, a scripture, and a survey.

Turn my eyes away from worthless things. –Psalm 119:37

I’ll leave you with one irresistible indulgence—I may have already DIYed myself one of these.

Your devoted,

Michelle