Bill Cunningham wrote:
That was the thing in our house when I was a kid. Once household chores were done in the morning, we used to pile in the car and go to the 2nd hand bookstore.  That's where we picked up a lot of what I like to call SATURDAY AFTERNOON READS... You knew you could finish them on a Saturday afternoon, it wouldn't interfere with your homework time or anything like that, and on monday you could take it to school to trade with your fellow monster-fanatics (or action-adventure, mystery, scifi fantics) 

And to be honest, too many of those 600 -800 page monsters don't pack half the story into them like the old pulps or paperbacks. 

Bill

What a cool thing, your family trips to the bookstore! I wish more families did that then and now.

You're right about length--it seems some people assume longer means deeper, or more prestigious. (Of course I'm talking about books!) Anyway, as the old song goes, "It ain't necessarily so.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is what? A fourth, maybe, the length of Dracula? Just as meaningful and influential.