The Great Bridge is a really wonderful book. I thought--how can a big fat book about the Brooklyn Bridge be anything but a snoozer? Couldn't put it down.
"Couldn't put it down" — really? Literally? Does that ever happen to you — literally — and if so, what was the book?
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The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I started reading it in Gatwick airport waiting for my delayed flight to the US years ago and finished it by the end of the flight. Completely absorbed in the world he created. To this day, it's the first book I recommend to anyone and truly my all time favorite.
Does that ever happen to you — literally — and if so, what was the book?
It was the book of love. Can't remember who, who-oo-ooh, who wrote it.
It never happens to me.
"Hillbilly Elegy" by J. D. Vance
I remember picking up The Sot Weed Factor by John Barth at about 9 or 10 pm for a little bedtime reading and putting it down finished at about 11 am the next day. I was 19 at the time.
Neal stephensons cryptonomicon was a quick read
It's happened to me many times over the years. Not lately, though. I think the first Harry Potter got me, well into my thirties, but that wasn't the first nor the last.
The Fountainhead. Was in college and it was more attractive than homework.
Literally, no, because I haven't been totally engrossed in a book since I was a teenager, and even as a teenager I tended to read on my belly with the book open on the floor or the bed. But I remember being totally engrossed in The Three Musketeers and its sequels, and reading them late at night. Captain Blood, too, and a bunch of Jules Verne -- entertaining genre trash. Later, it was the same with Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which we had in a nice, plain, hardbound edition, and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, at least the first volume, which I borrowed from the library. As a teenager, my tastes were more modern; I raced through Discworld books in a single sitting.
Since college, no books have held quite the same fascination for me. I have a huge number of half finished nonfiction books on my shelves, and in my work bag a memoir of the Changsha operation that I only read in ten or fifteen page spurts while in transit (it has been exceedingly slow progress). Nowadays, I'm more likely to get caught up in endless google and wikipedia chains, jumping from article to article until I fall asleep. Or reading even trashier genre fiction from syosetu.com.
Mistborn and The Hero of the Ages by Brandon Sanderson. There's a middle book in between those, but I can put that one down.
Many MANY books have kept me up late at night, or made me late for dinner; because i "could not put it down"
The Last one? Commodore Hornblower by C. S. Forester. When? Last Night
Do you mean physically put it down, not to pee, not to grab a sandwich? I can say no in my case and I doubt it in 99% of all cases where someone says it.
On the other hand, many is the book I've read straight through. Starting in the afternoon and finishing in the early morning hours having done nothing else of note. A couple recents:
Legacy of Spies by John LeCarre (Sequel to Spy who came in From the Cold and Tinker Tailor) I've read it at least half a dozen times before. Last week, searching for something to read, I read it again more or less in a single sitting.
I also read all 6 books of Roger Maxim's WWII Destroyer series "The Long Grey Target" in a week, more or less straight through each book. I especially liked this series because it started before 12/41 when for a couple of years we were involved in the war without being involved in the war. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and it looked at some of the problems the captain faced in shooting at U-Boats while maintaining a pretense of neutrality. I liked having a 6th volume with what happened to the characters after the war. Great series.
Not quite non-stop but I also recently re-read Neal Stephenson's Terminal Shock over a couple days. It is about comparable to Path Between the Seas in length, I think.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
I always have a book in my van so I read it when I have to wait for kids instead of using my phone. Just finished Out of the Silent Planet. Rereading Pride and Prejudice. Read a lot of Poirot earlier this year.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
I'm a slow reader. I'm not one to typically finish a book in a week, much less in a day. My eyes and mind grow fatigued and my ass sore after an hour or so of reading. I understand there are book-a-day readers, but I can't fathom how their eyes and asses, respectively, can endure the hours I assume such a feat must take. Or, they're reading at a fleet pace I will never match.
That said, I did read one book from about the halfway point to the very end in one night about 45 or so years ago, as I could not pull myself away from it. The book was Franz Kafka's THE TRIAL.
I reread THE TRIAL a few years ago, and enjoyed it again, though it was a very different experience, and I didn't read it as swiftly. I have since bought the celebrated new translation (some years old now), so I see myself giving it another go in the livable future.
Used to happen to me a lot. Life distractions and loss of attention span from the internet killed it.
Back in high school I got mediocre grades but was constantly reading on my own. My grades were low because I'd couldn't put down what I wanted to read. Including most of the Michener books, Jack London, Twain. I couldn't put down Dave Barry's book on American history and when I realized my teacher didn't read our weekly book question responses I submitted long responses that after the first paragraph were entirely made up a la Barry. Stephen Lawhead books (which prompted a love for Celtic Christianity and now I am teaching a graduate level course on the subject)
Harry Potter books I tended to finish in a day or two when I got into the series after the 1st movie came out. Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi was a can't put down book for me in my 20s.
I could add more but those stood out.
The exorcist. Took it out of the college library graduation weekend. Finished it by the time I left town.
The only non-fiction book I remember feeling this way about was: Quiet, the Power of the Introvert. I'm an introvert, and the author was explaining introversion showing the positive contributions made by my type.
McCullough was a great writer and while I could put his books down it was partly to savor the experience. Nonfiction books get my brain going and I tend to need some reflection time, while fiction books, especially long ones, take me to a different world and there have been times in my life, not now, that I really needed to be pulled into a different reality and away from my thoughts and troubles.
Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
Another vote for "Pillars of the Earth" it was a story that I stayed up all night reading.
Something about the world created by the author was so consuming that I couldn't put it down.
5th Business. Robertson Davies
Have to go back to "The Godfather" and "The Exorcist".
Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I was reading it in bed before going to sleep. I kept reading into the night. Then, I heard birds singing outside. It was dawn!
Most recently, "Cloud Cuckoo Land" by Anthony Doerr and "Lincoln Highway" by Amor Towles.
I’m reading “Why Read?” by Mark Edmundson. The last CSPAN book notes to air. I did put it down, and assured myself I haven’t abandoned it. The first chapter is about the authors preoccupation with his students reasoning. I hope it begins to tell me why read soon.
The Book of Glue.
Its happened I guess but mainly just passages or chapters. Guns, Germs and Steel comes to mind by Jared Diamond. Some Michener here and there. I dont read much fiction these days. I watch the news for that. Not really. I used to think those people knew what theyre talking about.
""Couldn't put it down" — really? Literally? Does that ever happen to you"
No, because I put books down before I start reading. Much more comfortable.
Franny and Zooey. (But the only the first of the 50 or so times I've read it.)
Literally? None. That would mean, I read it straight through. But I raced through the following in a couple days:
1) Run Silent, Run Deep
2) The Patton Papers VOl 2
3) Sun also Rises
4) Farewell, My lovely
5) Darkness at noon
No wait, now i remember two books I read "straight through". Death on the Nile. And Rex Stout's "Too many cooks". Both audiobooks. Good narrators.
"The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors," by the late James Hornfischer, detailing the Battle off Samar in WW II.
Even though I knew how it ended. Maybe especially for that. It was somewhat akin to watching or re-reading Shakespeare's Hamlet: you know the characters; you know the plot; you know how it ends.
However, the unrelenting & inevitable tragedy of it all still grips.
I was looking through the stacks in my university library, for some books related to a paper I needed to write and have now completely forgotten about. I came across Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, which I'd heard of, but didn't know anything about. I picked it up to look through a few pages and read the whole thing while standing there with my backpack by my feet.
Narciso, First Tenor
Agree about Cryptonomicon. I've read it at least 20 times, most recently earlier this year. I always find something in it that I had missed before or a new way of looking at something.
When I do read it, it usually takes me 3 maybe 4 days. Not quite can't put it down at all like the first time I read it but close.
Terminal Shock is almost as good.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Most recently - the various books by JK Rowling on Cormoran Strike, the detective and his beautiful blonde sidekick, Robin. Starts with Cuckoo Calling. It's almost like an alt-world but it's current England. Us Eng-Lit types have a definite imaginative picture of England, y'know, and this is not that.
And one book by Churchill I'd never read, The Eastern Front. Read that when the Ukraine War began. Us Eng Lit types have no definite imaginative picture of Central and Eastern European politics and history and this was that - atrocities all the way down as they try to shuffle off Empire.
Last one for me was Dies the Fire. It's about a dystopian future.
Prof Althouse re: the internet
Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
With books, maybe not "can't put it down," but certainly "postponing or giving up activities because I'm close to the finish." Recently Cozzens, By Love Possesses, probably any time I re-read Austen. I know what you mean about the internet.
Thinking hard about this question, and the only one that absorbed me so much that I kept reading was "The Shining." Sitting in the living room late one night, a teenager, being utterly absorbed by the thing in the bathtub tormenting Danny.
Can't remember if I read it all the way through, but it was a moment when I didn't want to stop reading no matter how late it was.
I stayed up until 230 or 3am many a night when I was a young teen, with a James Bond book to finish.
Rarely happens to me but one case was The Lives They Saved about first responders on 9/11
In 1963 or so I read Cry the Beloved Country in on sitting, staying up all night. I had never read anything on the history or culture of
South African, so the subject fascinated me. Moreover, it was well written and quite moving. I also read most of Robertson Davies
novels in not one, but two sittings.
In 1970 the summer before my 8th Grade year I visited the old Sequoia Library on Midvale Blvd. in Madison Wisconsin. I picked up all three volumes of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and laid in bed to read it. I didn't get out of bed except for necessary bodily functions for the next three days. Finished them all in one marathon. I had never been exposed to anything like it before, mostly reading Sports, Adventure , or History books. Still love them to this day.
In 1970 the summer before my 8th Grade year I visited the old Sequoia Library on Midvale Blvd. in Madison Wisconsin. I picked up all three volumes of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and laid in bed to read it. I didn't get out of bed except for necessary bodily functions for the next three days. Finished them all in one marathon. I had never been exposed to anything like it before, mostly reading Sports, Adventure , or History books. Still love them to this day.
Pillars of the Earth, as mentioned above.
The Poldark series of books by Winston Graham. Such beautiful language!!!!
I have always been an obsessive reader. I used to feel that way about the classics, Dumas, Fenimore Cooper, Dickens and others. Later the Hornblower series and Master and Commander.
Most recently, I read several books a week, but I enjoyed The Irish Cowboy more than most.
I can think of a couple: "Silence of the Lambs" and 'Andromeda Strain"
Picked a book up, sampled a couple pages then. . . had to keep going till the end. "Girl with a Dragon Tattoo"
I found McCullough's "The Greater Journey" to be a compelling read that was hard to put down. It is about 19th century Americans who went to Paris, received education not available in the US at the time and came back home to make a difference here.
Read The Hobbit and then the entire trilogy all within in a week or so.
The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
"Yes, I may be smacked into oblivion by the side mirrors of an F1-50 that’s passing too closely...."
I drive an F-150 and am also an avid urban cyclist. I do both with complete focus. Especially the truck. Used to ride motorcycles. Years later, even in my truck, I still watch the front wheel of cars waiting at the intersections to pull out into my lane. Both truck drivers and cyclists are for the most part terribly inattentive drivers.
Almost anything by David Halberstam and Cormac McCarthy.
Cry, the Beloved Country is my favorite novel Richard Dillman.
Has happened for me many times, starting when I was five or six years old, and continues to this day; though as the books I choose (or choose me) got longer, that has meant breaking off for family meals, chores, whatever, then right back into the book.
Just to name a few:
Larry, above, mentioned Fifth Business -- the Robertson Davies book that hit it for me was Leaven of Malice, the middle and best book of another of his trilogies. I was in my late forties when I read it.
True Grit, Mattie's voice, along with the author's invention and timing, carry you right along: I don't know how anyone could not keep reading. (I was mid-twenties.)
The most recent for me, a novel well acclaimed in its time (1962) but who hears of it now, Hanger Stout, Awake! by Jack Matthews. Less than 200 pages, simple of plot, beautifully detailed, quietly funny; it's a character study -- no, a character revelation, an American cousin of the best of Dubliners. I consider myself lucky to have retrieved this one from obscurity, before sinking into even deeper obscurity myself.
All those lists of books you should read "before you die." Well yes, that's probably the best time for it.
In the period not long after I retired, I read the 'Commisario Brunetti' novels by Donna Leon (had read two or three in years past) and I know that I read a couple of them each in one sitting, beginning to end. It's not a practice I let myself indulge very often-- more important tasks get put off and it's not very healthy to sit for three hours without any breaks.
(There is a television series based on the 'Brunetti' stories, by the way, which I'm sure was flattering to DL in some way or another but it is made in Germany and features a 'German Brunetti' who I didn't find at all convincing-- I only made it through about 20 minutes of the one episode, however.)
>>Neal stephensons cryptonomicon was a quick read
>>Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
>>Agree about Cryptonomicon
Never tried Cryptonomicon. I gave up on Anathem after pretty much nothing had happened in the first 150 pages or so. I did like The Diamond Age, which was much shorter, though the ending was a bit abrupt. Should I give Crypto a shot?
Keeping on the other side, I also gave up on Atlas Shrugged after a couple hundred pages. One of the most depressing and boring books I can remember. I did get through the Fountainhead when I was in my teens.
Never read a lot of straight fiction, though I've got a couple hundred science fiction books under my belt (and mostly rotting away in the corner in my house up north).
There may have been others 50 years ago, when I would often lie in bed reading until 2 or 3 in the morning and then get up about 7 or 8. Loved Asimov and Heinlein in high school and college. Also read The Hobbit and the trilogy when I was in about 7th grade. And Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle later on (did somebody say "Lucifer’s Hammer," plus Mote in God's Eye, Footfall, hell, even the Pournelle-less Ringworld books).
In the last couple of decades, I'm ashamed to admit that maybe the closest I've come to "couldn't put it down" were the first couple of Dan Brown novels. Sure, they were tripe, but real page turners for me at 1 o'clock in the morning.
--gpm
“The River Bride” by Marisela Treviño Orta is a delightful play that I read cover-to-cover this afternoon. I was inspired by seeing the play at American Players Theater last week in Spring Green, WI.
I read the first volume of Kristin Lavransdatter in one day. I was in my late twenties, an intern on call Christmas Day. Miraculously, there was not one admission or emergency call or floor call in the 24 hour period. I spent the whole day in the doctor’s lounge by myself reading this story that took place in medieval Norway while a heavy snow fell outside the window. What a wonderful day that was. And that book is still one of my favorites, along with the other two in the trilogy.
From the age of 7 to mid-20s, I would read constantly - I never put any book down, except to shower, sleep, play with friends or attend to my duties at school/work. Today we might call it binge-reading. But if a book didn't capture me in the first 20 or so pages, I would put it down and never pick it up again.
The first proper book I ever attempted, I read it straight through. It was The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting. It was around 350 pages, I borrowed it from the bookmobile on Saturday morning and I continued to read under my bedsheets with a flashlight until the end. My mother (an avid reader) was shocked and also pleased that I'd devoured it in less than a day. The memory of that marathon read, and my mother's pleasure, never left me.
Nowadays, as a senior manager at a software company, and with many obligations outside work, I have little time to read, so I listen to audio books during the commute.
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