Books worth staying up for

   

     After my re-read of To Kill a Mockingbird I gave the book to Mr. C as he had never read it. Once he'd begun he was hooked, and he stayed up until one o'clock this morning to finish it. He says "it's an amazing book", and I hope he'll give us a fuller comment later, but of course I agree with him.

    Books so good they are worth staying up for, books so gripping you eschew sleep - what have you read that made you put life on hold?

Comments

[Mrs.B.]

You make me want to reread this! It's been a while and funnily enough I've completely forgotten what I thought of it. I think it read quite close to seeing the film so the film has clouded my memory of the book.

[Kirsty]

I confess I've never read it either - I really must get around to it.

I have to say it's been a while since something kept me up into the wee small hours. I think it was 'The White Woman on the Green Bicycle' by Monique Roffey, which I thought was a magnificent book.

[Ros]

This is the reason I wish I'd never had to do English at school. I'm sure this book is as brilliant as you all think and that I would enjoy it, and The Go-Between, and countless others, if only they didn't inexorably bring back memories of tedious, torturous hours spent dissecting them in the classroom.

[Cornflower]

Very interesting point, Ros, and worth exploring.

[Elaine]

When I read Little Boy Lost by Laski which I had never read before and purchased from Persephone a few years ago, I sat up until 1am to finish it and the last sentence in the book just finished me off. Sat weeping in my bedroom overwhelmed by it. Wonderful book.

[Cornflower]

I was the same, Elaine!

[Dark Puss]

Reading is part of my life, so I guess staying up late to do it did not make me put my "life on hold". To answer your question, all the five books I have read by Haruki Murakami, The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, and most recently The Ripening Seed by Colette.

[Dark Puss]

I simply didn't take part in reading the books I disliked in my final year of English (Scottish Highers in the 1970's) at School. I spent my time at the back of the class reading Colette, Gunter Grass, Saul Bellow, Turgenyev etc. We were lucky enough to have a fantastic English teacher who clearly saw I was taking literature pretty seriously and simply let me get on with it. I did get an "A" grade in the state examination so I repayed his trust in me.

[Becky]

I stayed up till 1 finishing Ernest Gaines's "A Lesson Before Dying," crying like crazy, and then really scared my husband when I came to bed--he thought I'd gotten terrible news!

By the way, Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men (I can't get italics to work; sorry) is a great companion piece to TKAM. Reading the pair together is a feature of my dream English class in the school year that never ends, as I frequently tell my students.

PS: No tortuous picking apart of books in MY classroom, Ros--I promise!!!

[India]

A Thousand Autumns of Jakob De Zoet.

Magnificent.

[Natalie @ Coffee and a Book Chick]

Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian" kept me up reading very late. I was on a project in Washington, DC for a few months, and every time I came back to the hotel, I would read the book and it would be so creepy! I kept looking over my shoulder and loving every second of being up late to finish it!

[Julie Fredericksen]

I read Stephen King's 1100 page "The Stand" in two days. During this time I did nothing else but eat and sleep a few hours. If you are not a huge fan of Stephen King, try "The Stand" anyway. It is way different from his usual horror stuff.

[Claire]

When I was reading Wolf Hall I not only felt my life was on hold, I felt I was living another life as I followed Thomas Cromwell and his machinations. I keep banging on about this book but it really is all absorbing!

[serenknitity]

Affinity by Sarah Waters and The Secret History by Donna Tartt both had me burning the midnight oil.

We read Mockingbird at school many moons ago, but I still managed to enjoy it when it was our book club choice, surely the sign of a great novel?

[Mr Cornflower]

Fortunately Cornflower bought me one of those handy LED gadgets for insomniac readers so I was able to read on without disturbing her. Although I often read for a few minutes after lights out, it is very rare for me to feel compelled to go on as I was last night. The last time was with the final section of John Updike's Rabbit at Rest; it's an incongruous coupling, but Harry Angstrom and Atticus Finch are both absolutely credible characters, whose lives turn around responsibility: one who gladly embraces it, the other whose life is a series of evasions and shabby compromises but whose imperfections are human and engaging. Each of us has Atticus and Rabbit within our hearts, in uneasy counterpoise, and that is why we are so keenly interested in their fate.

[Ed]

I read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' at school as well and loved. Having to dissect books I enjoyed did not bother me at school. It was dissecting the books I hated such as 'Sons and Lovers' which was a turn off.

[Dark Puss]

I've read neither author's works and while I'm certain I have Rabbit inside me I wish I was more certain that I have Atticus too.

[Mystica]

Inhaling the Mahatma by Christopher Kremmer was for me a book I will always love.

[LizF]

The last few books I put life on hold for were: One Fine Day by Mollie Panter Downes, Corrag by Susan Fletcher, The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin and The Outlander by Gil Adamson - all very different but equally impossible to put down.
As to the thorny subject of whether studying a book at school will put you off it for ever after: I have come to the conclusion that it is very much down to the talents (or lack of them) of the teacher.
My youngest daughter has just taken her GCSE's and despite being a very keen reader at home, she has been put off English as a subject and not just the books she studied, by having a truly dreadful English teacher for years 10 and 11!

[Ros]

I was the opposite - if I didn't enjoy the book I didn't mind pulling it apart.

[Ros]

I don't think it's wholly down to the teacher, though of course having a bad teacher won't help. But I think my English teacher was pretty good. She was also my form teacher and I liked her very much. And others in my class really liked studying literature with her. I just wanted to be allowed to read.

[LizF]

You are probably right Ros, but I am just so narked that my daughter, who is naturally good at English and a very keen reader, has been put off the subject completely, and now doubts her own ability because of this one woman.
Maybe I am being old fashioned, but I would have thought that to teach an able class at GCSE, the teacher should at least have a good vocabulary and be able to spell, neither of which applied in her case.
She left me open mouthed at parents' evening when she said 'pacific' when she meant 'specific' but I didn't want to pick her up on it as at that stage Cait was going to be stuck with her for a further year, and I didn't want to make it worse for her.

[Cornflower]

I would be narked, too, Liz!

[Tui]

Have enjoyed this discussion but feel sad for those young readers who aren't being encouraged in a way that will turn them into lifelong readers.

I couldn't put "The Secret Garden" down when I was about six, passionately in love with Colin and his love of animals. In my teens it was "The Master and Margarita" and The Lord of the Rings. I studied English at university so there were many years of intense reading where I always seemed to be reading into the wee hours. Last year it was "The Book Thief" and I cried my heart out at the end. This year I had several: "The Earth Hums in B Flat"; "A House in Flanders" (a lovely Slightly Foxed edition); the Stieg Larsson series; and "Gilead".

Being of middling years, the eyes and brain give out before the book is finished these days but I have at 'er as soon as I can the next day.