What's the last "can't put it down" novel you've read?

[TNDemo]

I have a Borders gift card burning a hole in my hand and I want to download an e-book but don't know what I want. I read The Help recently so not that.

[Brickbat]

1. I just finished "Brooklyn" by Colm Toibin and LOVED IT, and am now in the middle of "The Children's

Story" by A.S. Byatt and cannot stop reading it. I have to pace myself so I don't race through it. She's an amazing writer.

[GCP]

2. I still love "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving

Un-put-downable

[applegrove]

15. I so related to Owen Meany 20 years ago. I can barely remember the book so I should read it again

too!

[kimi]

3. "Zeitoun" is really good

reading it now, and really had to force myself to put it down to log onto DU for awhile. This is a book I don't want to go through too quickly; frankly, the writing and story are that good, and I want it to last.

It sounded like it would be depressing, and may get there, but so far, I am loving it. The style of writing of Dave Eggers is keeping me enthralled.

And I am not easily enthralled. :)

Edit for spelling

[frogmarch]

4. Ireland by Frank Delaney

but that was quite a while ago. I haven't been crazy about any other book I've read lately.

I think I'll check Bookbrowse and see if anything there looks good. Nice thing about Bookbrowse is that you can read excerpts.

http://www.bookbrowse.com/

[cwydro]

25. Tell me about Ireland.

I'd like to read that book.

[Orrex]

5. My last was The Road

I got it the day after it hit the shelves and read it in just a few hours.

[YankeyMCC]

6. "River of Gods" by Ian McDonald

That one particularly jumps out in my mind as an answer because for me I didn't expect it to be something I would not be able to put down and get through so fast. A big long novel about a very different culture with a history I had only dim awareness of and then I quickly found that Ian Mcdonald knew exactly how to engage me immediately and hold me to the story, both challenging me and holding my hand enough at the right spots to help me through the complex and beautiful background.

"The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi is also very much like this though a bit shorter and I list it second only because I was more familiar with Paolo Bacigalup and having experienced "River of Gods" I wasn't as surprised by being gripped by "The Windup Girl"

[JTG of the PRB]

7. Honestly? "The Da Vinci Code."

The first time I picked it up, I read 250 pages without stopping. I just could not stop reading it. It's been a long time since I've had anything close to that experience in terms of reading though...

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. Same for me - I read until like 4:00 in the morning, even though I had to work,

into the morning after the night that I cracked the goddamn book open. I got about 2/3 of the way through before finally falling asleep from pure fatigue.

Shitty book, but in that "can't put it down" style.

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. I hate to say it, but the Twilight series. So poorly written, artistically speaking, but yet

the story itself - even though full of whiny asshole idiots who all talk alike and are filled with so much fucking self-focused angsty obsession that I didn't really care about any of them - there is something about the story itself and the pacing with which the author wrote it that kept me reading the goddamn thing through all four books. Even to the point that I finished the third book (which was fucking awful. seriously.) while on a plane (reading on a Kindle) and I was pissed that I had to wait until landing before I could download the fourth one.

Embarrassing, sure; but that's the way it is.

It's like Dan Brown's books - they're crap, but damn near impossible to put down. Except that I'd hate to elevate the Twilight books to the level of Dan Brown. As much as I despise Brown, Twilight really is more worsely writed.

[spinbaby]

9. The Sugar Queen

Just finished it. Highly recommend.

[gmoney]

11. "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Brother-Cory-Doctorow/dp/0765323117/

It's officially "Teen Fiction" but was a very engaging book about post 9/11 privacy and paranoia and hacking and stuff. A page turner...

[Generic Brad]

12. Well, there was that incident I had with Super Glue while at the library

The book was "1984". It stuck with me for a long time.

[Chan790]

13. 2666

"So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end."
— Roberto Bolaño (2666)

It's a big long almost-disjointed book, written in 5 barely-connected parts which from early on is clearly-winding itself up towards a vague malevolent conclusion. You can sense that something is horribly wrong in the world Bolaño has created but every time you have a sense of what, he tears the rug out from under your feet and turns everything on its' head. In it's purist form, it's a book about serial-murders in a Mexican border town which may or may-not have anything to do with a German novelist with an Italian name. It's a mystery novel but, like Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (which I also recommend highly), the ultimate mystery is not the one central to the plot. In the end, even the title 2666 is a mystery. It's not mentioned in the book even once...it's a reference to a line in another novel (Amulet) also by Roberto Bolaño. 2666 is a book about death, not death as sad or tragic or scary, but as the slow stoic march towards oblivion intrinsic to life.

[kentauros]

14. The Narnia Chronicles

all seven books :)
It wasn't a series we ever read in grade school, so I read it a couple of years ago.

Recent non-fiction that I couldn't put down was "The Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson. I highly recommend it!

[WorseBeforeBetter]

16. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini.

It helped purge "Eat, Pray, Love" from my system.

[Lucian]

17. "Dead in the Family"

Didn't get to bed until 4 this morning because of that book.

[Brother Buzz]

18. Bermuda Schwartz by Bob Morris

I read his newest novel, Baja Florida a few weeks ago and was hooked. Good writer that turns a phrase well. Our Podunk library didn't have his earlier novels so I ordered them through inner-library loan. Two arrived on Friday, both read by Sunday.

I am expecting two remaining books in the Zack Chasteen Series this week. Great page turners so far, but I regret not being able to read them in series.

If e-book is cheap, go for it. I'm a Luddite and love turning pages, but my pocket are shallow so I'm a library rat.

[PBS Poll-435]

19. Going Rogue!

:hahahahaha:

[TorchTheWitch]

20. Either "The Charm School" by Nelson DeMille

or "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett

[DeltaLitProf]

21. The last novel?

Henry James' Roderick Hudson, actually. It depicts a harsh but charmed world and sure builds momentum to the end.

[6000eliot]

22. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

[applegrove]

23. The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo was a good series.

[PassingFair]

24. Comedy = "Youth in Revolt" Drama= "The Book Thief"

I laughed:



I cried:

[Lindsey]

26. I wish I could get into fiction but I don't think I've given it a chance.

If you're into self-help books like I am try Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth". It changed my life. That was one I couldn't put down.

[IDemo]

27. "Shantaram" - Gregory David Roberts

http://www.amazon.ca/Shantaram-Novel-Gregory-David-Roberts/dp/product-description/0312330529