Have you been using the pandemic to catch up on long classic novels?

Sales of War and Peace, Don Quixote and Middlemarch are booming. The appeal of a seriously long read has never been more alluring

• Tell us: what literary classics have you read during lockdown?

What have people been doing to pass all these extra hours at home? Burying ourselves in ultra-long novels such as War and Peace and Don Quixote, apparently. At the start of lockdown No 1, all the way back in March, we reported that readers were starting to stock up on longer novels and classic fiction. More than seven months on, Penguin Random House says that sales of its edition of War and Peace – which runs to 1,440 pages – have boomed by 69% in the UK so far this year: according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan, they’ve gone from 3,700 copies sold in 2019 to 6,300 in 2020 so far.

The publisher has also seen an uplift in sales of Don Quixote (1,056 pages, up 53%) Anna Karenina (865 pages, up 52%), Middlemarch (880 pages, up 40%) and Crime and Punishment (720 pages, up 35%).

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/31Lt5Gj