I am astonished - well all right then, surprised, that there are some hardy souls who are prepared to start with episode one of bike. I read it through just under a year ago, which means there's about three hundred more episodes than there was then. It took me a couple of days or more. To read 463 episodes, is a major undertaking. I wish them luck, when I was last informed it was about 600,000 words and longer than Tolkien or Tolstoy.
I'm sure it's worth it - but then I would say that wouldn't I - as a synopsis, it contains everything except magical transformations, so sex violence, birth, death, disease, education and dormice - oh and cycling, hence the title. Oh and some weirdo in it has a sex change, apart from that, think Anne Bronte with bicycles, sort of Wuthering Dormice.
Angharad.
Comments
Uhhh
How many chapters? Can I get dizzy and get it over with or should I wait till I'm about halfway through? :)
How much?
I just did some quick figures....using Word 2007, it shows 1803 pages......652,144 words, and 3134kb plus 2.11Mb however that works out. And that is just parts 1-460, so the last few episodes are not included in that count.
How about some romance then
... we need a love interest for Spike ( and no NOT a Heathcliff. )
Kim
Sorry but it ....
.... has already been written. Some time ago. They have even made a film about it after its record breaking run on the London and countless other stages.
'The Taming of the Shrew' it was called if I remember correctly. One of those light ephemeral comedy pieces.
Hugs,
Wrong Order!
Sorry to be anal about this, but: Shrews are members of the Insectivora, dormice are Rodentia, and Shakespeare - Bardus overratedus.
Angharad
Angharad
Quoth thou: "Bardus overratedus"
Methinks, Angharad that thou hast overrated thyself!
Held within the scope of the Bard are the works and ways of the cosmos and the subtile and secret ways of the heart.
He has been long considered, not without cause, nor without the agonising of sagacious souls across the ages, as one immortalised among the literary constellations in companie with Goethe, Dante, Vergil, Homer et al.
It comes to me once more dear friend to speak harsh words to you:
Go stand in the corner Angharad!
XX
AD
I am not convinced
that William Shakespeare actually wrote his plays, hence my comment. However, i will agree that they are the work of genius, hence my skepticism.
Angharad
Angharad
Chasing a bike
I did start from part one, just following the first post. And as I found myself unable to stop until my eyes were totally unfocused, I have to say this has been one amazing tale. In fact I fear my addiction could have contributed to the past weekends server problems, as my anxious efforts to get all 460+ parts downloaded in a short span of time ~~ with a somewhat over-eager script calling wget ~~ definitely wasn’t particularly helpful. (I’m reading 60+ parts a day ~~ isn’t retirement grand ~~ and wanted to be sure I had got ahead of my reading.) All I can say is thanks. This is really fun.
Bob
Bob
Read the First 415...
...over a few nights last week (actually, in PS's 50-episode collections, without the comments). Certainly no complaints here about quality: it's entertaining with solid characters and well-written. It did seem to me that things were starting to repeat themselves, and I haven't decided whether to tough out the rest of it.
(Heck with Tolkien and Tolstoy: is Bike longer than Ellen Hayes's Tuck Saga? There were reports a few years ago that Tuck had become the longest internet-posted story/serial with a single protagonist, as opposed to stories encompassing several generations or centering around a world or universe rather than one individual. Tuck was described as more than a million words in 2006; Ellen claimed four million words in a February 2007 TuckerSpawn post. You've undoubtedly broken a million by now if you had 600,000 after 450 chapters or so. (In terms of story-time duration, Tuck's gone through 13 months of 1996-97 as of its current 142 chapters. Not sure how Dormice compares there.)
In any case, it seems to me that you and the story are probably entitled to a Wikipedia reference if you want one. (Ellen didn't.) Any volunteers?
Eric
Bike
Hi Eric
A couple of points:
1. The 50-episode collections were the brainchild of Holly H. Hart who can often be found lurking here. While I currently maintain things there, she certainly deserves the credit for establishing the off-site archive.
2. The archive does have a statistics page if you want to look for it.
Position Shared
Bike Archive
Bike Resources
Bike: Thanks, PS...
...for the clarification, and for directing me to the stat page. (And thanks, Holly, for starting the Archive.)
For the record: Bike's first thousand chapters total 1,379,396 words, according to the stat page.
Tuck's 142 segments (19,429 time checks or asterisk breaks) total 1,174,669, according to PageMaker's word count software applied to my file copy.
Eric