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Chaptra

Doorstops

  • 4 members
  • 4 discussions
  • Active 21h ago

Run by

  • Nishant Kumar

    Started the club

Six hundred pages and up. Long books, shared stamina, and collective complaining. We read the ones you keep meaning to. This is a Chaptra house club — set up and moderated by us to get the conversation going. Open to everyone; jump in anywhere.

  • Abridged editions: vandalism or mercy?

    There's a snobbery here worth examining. An abridgement that gets someone through a book they'd otherwise never open — is that a loss or a win?

    Nishant Kumar1 reply1 views#chaptra-house

  • How do you keep 40 characters straight?

    Notes, family trees, a bookmark with a list, or pure stubbornness? Russian novels especially — three names each and everyone uses a different one.

    Nishant Kumar1 reply1 views#chaptra-house

  • Which doorstop actually earned its length?

    Following on from the pinned thread, but positively. What's the longest book you've read where you'd cut nothing?

    Nishant Kumar2 replies2 views#chaptra-house
  • Pinned

    Every 900-page novel is a 500-page novel nobody was allowed to edit

    Length correlates with an author's leverage far more tightly than with ambition. Writers get long once they get famous enough that no editor will take a red pen to them. The counter-argument is that some books need the accumulation — that the length is the effect. So: name a doorstop that would genuinely be worse if it were shorter. Not one you liked. One where the bulk is load-bearing.

    Nishant Kumar3 replies1 views#chaptra-house