In 1960, the French writer Raymond Queneau introduced what is probably the world’s longest book. It’s called *Cent mille milliards de poèmes*, and it consists of just ten pages, each containing a sonnet. The verses all share the same rhyme pattern and are printed on strips, allowing readers to combine lines from different sonnets.

This setup results in a total of 10¹⁴ possible combinations, meaning the book contains one hundred trillion unique poems. The implication is that no one will ever manage to read the entire book, even with the greatest effort, as it would take millions of years to match up all the possible poem combinations—without taking breaks for eating, sleeping, or reading anything else. And all of this comes from just ten pages!

Each mix you create will result in a coherent sonnet with proper stanzas, rhythm, and rhyme. Moreover, it’s highly likely that any randomly selected poem will be one that no one has ever read before. Queneau himself claimed that if it takes about 45 seconds to read one sonnet and another 15 seconds to prepare the next, it would take around 200 million years to read through all the possible combinations.