Why do some people not like long books?

[Kensai]

Why do some people not like long books? Is it because they can't follow a single plot over a lenghty span? I know some people who just won't read at all, but some of my friends that do read won't read long books, thats why they have never read Dune if I recomend it. I read a LOT, I read for an hour nearly every night and if I have a leisurely bath. A lot of my friend read just as much, but won't read long books. I don't get it, they still read the same volume of material. I know everyone is diffrent, but does anyone else know people like this?

[Nekhrun]

Because they're too long.

[Freakzilla]

A.D.D.

[SadisticCynic]

Why do some people not like long books? Is it because they can't follow a single plot over a lenghty span? I know some people who just won't read at all, but some of my friends that do read won't read long books, thats why they have never read Dune if I recomend it. I read a LOT, I read for an hour nearly every night and if I have a leisurely bath. A lot of my friend read just as much, but won't read long books. I don't get it, they still read the same volume of material. I know everyone is diffrent, but does anyone else know people like this?

The emboldened part annoys me as well. If the complaint is length then how can someone read 5 200 page books but not a 1000 page one?

I prefer longer books actually; it feels like it lasts much longer. I was slightly miffed when I found out Dune Messiah was so short. (He makes up for it with density though).

As an addendum:

...The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short.

[TheDukester]

Long books are long.

[Eyes High]

I've never thought of Dune as a long book. But I think they might fear that a 'long' book would be dry or prehaps in this "give it to me now" society that people just don't want to invest the time to read a long book. They wan't to go ahead and get to the plot line. The climax of the story.

Our instanct satisfaction mentallity has ruined a lot of the arts in my opinion. Books, movies, theatre... etc. So many wants everything crammed into a set time length that they are willing to forego substance.

Give me a long book as long as the story is well written and I wan't notice how long it takes.

To me that is the difference. A story that's well written will flow smoothly and the reader won't realize that it's "so long"

[Aquila ka-Hecate]

Our instanct satisfaction mentallity has ruined a lot of the arts in my opinion. Books, movies, theatre... etc. So many wants everything crammed into a set time length that they are willing to forego substance.

I think you've got it.

Television epitomises this mindset - fast edits, sound and vision bites. Like Facebook. Like Twitter.
People don't have time to use their imagination or -gods help us - empathy anymore. It's all so instant-gratification.

And that goes for the sciences too - funded studies to find out if dogs have a range of barks, for crying out loud. There are some things we already know, thank you.

The IT sector may have suffered most - possibly because this is where so many short attention span freaks end up.
I'm an IT freak, too - just not a short-attention-spanned one. Frankly, the quality of development has dropped drastically over the 30-odd years I've been in the field.

[DuneFishUK]

I'm quite a slow reader most of the time and I don't read as regularly or as much as I probably should, so to commit to a 1000 page book is quite an undertaking. It's not so much ADD as the fact that the beginning of the book was weeks ago. Under ~500 pages is good, because it doesn't feel like I'm stuck reading the same book for months, while Omph and people post review after review of books I'd rather be reading.

Audiobooks on the other hand, if I'm doing something dull and repetitive at work I can "read" for 5-6 hours a day every day... so the longer the better I've done a couple of 50 hour ones, which were great.

Not keen on short stories though. They're too short.

Oh and Dune isn't a long book.

[A Thing of Eternity]

I was going to add that "long" can be good or bad. Is it long because it needs to be long, or because it's drawn out? Most authors that go long (I consider Dune to be medium/medium short myself) do so because they think it makes it more epic, not because they truly needed to. Reading wasteful words is annoying.

I like LONG stories, stories that feel like they took as long to read as the story itself covers in fictional time. I like series that have over a million words, thousands and thousands of pages.

Some people do not though, and it's not just about attention span. Omph has said repeatedly that generally speaking he steers clear of long books and series (his version of long is the same as mine, though, stuff Dune sized doesn't count). I agree with him that the bulk of books that are longer than say 500 pages are long because the author isn't good enough to make it shorter.

People that can't handle a 250 page book must also need half the pages to be pictures.