6 BIG books that are EASY to read

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]So, I just started reading this book.

[00:00:02]It's called Marshland by a Japanese author named Odohiko Kaga. And this was originally published in 1985. And this English translation of it came out recently from a publisher called Dulky Archive Press. And if you aren't familiar with Dulky, they originally started as a publishing company that was really focused on art first. and they published a lot of avantguard experimental and obscure types of literature stuff that is not usually very easy to read. So I kind of put off reading this book for a while because it's over 800 pages and knowing the publisher it came from, I thought that's going to take a lot of my attention. But I started it just two days ago and I'm already like 250 pages into this because it's incredibly easy to read. And that's not just because the language isn't overly complicated, but the story itself is just very engaging, which makes the pages fly by. And I know that there are a lot of people that are maybe interested in some longer books, but they feel intimidated by them because it can be a big commitment, but being long does not make a book challenging. So today, I wanted to go over six books that are over 500 pages that are pretty easy to read. And so if you want to dig into some longer books, which has a lot of benefits to it, which we'll save for another video, this is a list to hopefully get you started. So I'm going to go in order of length. So these will start with the shortest book and get longer as we go through the list. And the first book that I want to talk about is The Anarchist Who Shared My Name by Pablo Martine Sanchez. Now this is published by Deep Vellum, which is actually the parent company of Dulky Archive Press. So these used to be two separate publishers. Donkey went out of business and then Deep Vellum acquired the catalog and started reissuing a lot of the books that they had originally put out. But this is another work in translation, this time from a Spanish author. And this is a very interesting book because it started with the author googling his own name. And he found that about a hundred years ago, there was an anarchist that had the same exact name, Pablo Martine Sanchez, and he did a deep dive on this guy's life and found out as much as he could about this person who was a political radical and shared his name. And then he ended up writing a fictionalized version of that guy's life story. What makes this book structurally unique is it tells the story of the previous Pablo Martine Sanchez in two different timelines. There's the adult and there is the child. And these two narratives switch back and forth and eventually converge later in the book.

[00:02:52]This also has one of the most mindblowing endings of any book I've ever read. I can't say too much more about it because I don't want to spoil it, but you probably will not see it coming because of kind of how it happened. Okay, we're already off to a bad start because this book is actually a few pages shorter than the anarchist who shared my name. This is Americana by Chimamanda and Goi Adichier. She's a Nigerian author and this is a book about a woman from Nigeria who moves to the United States. And it really is a deep reflection on the life of an immigrant and a person who has certain ideas about culture, particularly surrounding race and ethnicity. I would probably describe this book as a slow burn. It's not like a page turning. You're on the edge of your seat. It is a deep meditation type of book, which I really enjoy. Certainly not for everyone, but it is beautifully written and unbelievably easy to read.

[00:03:52]All right, coming in at 758 pages is Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks. This is a historical fiction about the famous abolitionist John Brown who some people consider America's first terrorist. He was a devout Christian who was vehemently against the institution of slavery to the point where he started to take violent action against slavery. So a very controversial figure in American history. The book is about John Brown and John Brown's family. It's told from the perspective of his son, Owen Brown.

[00:04:25]And in the book, Owen is at the end stages of his life, and he's kind of recounting all of the memories from his childhood up through adulthood and then becoming a violent radical.

[00:04:35]Cloudsplitter ended up being a lot different than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be a lot more action-packed than it was, and there is a lot of action in this book, but it comes in waves. So there's a lot of building up the world and the storytelling element and then there's some action then that kind of recedes back into that more meditative type of exposition. There were also a couple little things about it that irked me from a historical standpoint. But with all that said, it is a solid book. If you like this period of history or you're interested in learning more about this period of history, this isn't the worst place to start. Even though there were a couple historical fabrications, I guess we'll say, you will still get a good context, I think, of what the general sentiments of people living through that time really were. This next book is one of my all-time favorites. It probably put it in my top three favorite novels. And this is The 40 Days of Musa Dog by Fran Worful. This comes in almost at 900 pages. And this is a book that is all about the Armenian genocide. So, another historical fiction, this time from the period of 1915, and it's about an Armenian guy who has lived abroad for quite some time. His father passes away, and he moves back to Armenia to be with his family during this time of mourning and to kind of iron out the details of his father's estate. And right at this time is when the Turks start to exile the Armenians from the country and lead them on a death march. a very very bleak moment in human history that does get overshadowed by other events. Of course, we had World War I and then not long after that, World War II and the Holocaust. And what's kind of crazy is Warfl is writing this book about Armenia leading up to the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. And so there's a lot of parallels between those two situations. So, not only was he writing the story about these other people who had suffered this tragic event, but he was also kind of seeing the wheels turning for the next one upcoming. This particular English translation is updated. It was originally done many years ago and for whatever reason was a bridged. Now, the current translator took the abridged version and added to it and restored the full text, I think for the first time ever in English. I would call this book kind of Toltoyesque. It's a very grand story with a lot of storylines about families and a lot of different narrative threads that you can follow, but again, the language is very straightforward. The only challenging thing about this is kind of staying on top of some of those different plot lines. But overall, I think it's pretty easy to do. This next one finally cracks the thousandpage mark. And this is one of the best historical fictions about World War II that I have ever read. And this is Stalenrad by Vasili Gman who was a Soviet writer that wrote a lot about the city of Stalingrad around the period of the Second World War. Like every book on this list, the language in Stalingrad's very straightforward, very easy to read.

[00:07:47]What does make this book slightly challenging, aside from its length obviously, is the fact that there are so many Russian names and there are patronomics and nicknames of all different kinds. And there's a huge cast of characters in this book. But the good news is is the publisher NYRB and the translators Robert and Elizabeth Chandler probably knew that people were going to struggle with that. So there is a character list in the back of the book which you can reverence which is a huge help when you're reading this brick. Now I know there's a lot of people who are just sick to death of World War II books, but this one does stand apart in my mind for a few different reasons.

[00:08:25]First and foremost, it's the Soviet perspective, which as somebody that only reads in English, that's not something that's really that available to us here in the States, at least. And a lot of people here tend to forget that we were even allies with the Soviets during the Second World War. The other thing about this is it's not really so much about the war. There are battle scenes, there is some action, but it's really about the human beings that lived in the city during this absolutely brutal siege by the Nazis when the infrastructure was collapsing, the winter was brutal, people were dying, there weren't enough weapons and supplies. There are so many interesting narratives. This is the type of book where there probably really is something for everyone in this. And it's such a grand scope that you can really get stuck into this one and just completely get wrapped up and lost in this book. Before I go over the final book, I did want to mention our May book club pick, which is Tom's Crossing by Mark Z. Danielski. Another absolute brick of a book. So, we are going to be reading this as a group over five weeks.

[00:09:32]I have heard that despite its length, it is a very approachable book. So, if you want to have some friends to take on a big tome like this with, check the link down below. Uh, that'll all the information about the book club and we'd love to have you. It's a great time, a great community, and even if you are not interested in reading this, but you want to connect with other readers, there's so much more going on in our book club just aside from the book of the month.

[00:09:57]So, check it out and if you have any questions, drop them below. I'll be happy to answer them for you. And now on to the last book on today's list. Okay, coming in at 1,152 pages is Shogun by James Clell. Another historical fiction, this time about feudal Japan. And this is uh a great book despite its many flaws. There are some critiques of its historical accuracy, particularly I think in the style of dialogue used by some of the Japanese characters in the book. But it's still an incredibly fun novel, an easy novel to get wrapped up in. It's about a ship captain from England who is trying to find his way to Japan uh to open up some trade routes. The Portuguese are already there and he wants to get there to kind of assert his kingdom's dominance and he gets stranded there. He gets stuck in Japan and it's all about him trying to navigate the language barrier and the culture and trying to get off the island and get back home. I always like to say this is kind of like Game of Thrones but in feudal Japan. There's a lot of different storylines and interesting narratives and side quests and stuff that's peripheral to the main story that make the book very fun and very engaging.

[00:11:11]Unfortunately, this edition can be very hard to find. This is a mass market paperback, which if you haven't heard, that whole thing is just going away in general. But since this was made into a television show, which I thought was actually pretty good. Uh, they now publish this in two volumes, which is really annoying because they're really dinging you for two, the cost of two books instead of one. I think last I looked, each volume was like 20 or $25.

[00:11:36]So, to read the whole thing, you're into it for, you know, 40 bucks or so. You might be able to find old editions, either this one or something like it on thrift books or eBay. Uh, so if you can, I would probably jump on that rather than having to deal with two different books. So, there are some of my recommendations for big books that are easy to read. One thing that I was realizing when I was going through my library is that it doesn't seem like there are as many big books written by women as there are men. And I certainly don't have many in my own collection.

[00:12:08]There were a few, but I didn't think they were appropriate to put on a list of easy books to read because some of them are quite challenging. So, if you have any recommendations for big books written by women, I would love to hear them. And of course, any book you think would fit on this list, drop it in the comments below for others so they can get some more great recommendations. And uh if I feel up to it, I think maybe next week I'll make a video about why you should read big books because I do think they have a little bit of an advantage over their shorter counterparts. So see you next