Thanks to my friend Julee for handing me this book with the simple instruction:
“Here. Read this.”
Julee said she couldn’t put it down. Now I can’t put it down either, and when I do have to put it down — to go to sleep to walk the dogs to read the paper to dry my hair to fold the laundry to write to cook to eat — I can’t wait to get back to it. It’s that good.
Tell me about the last book you couldn’t put down.
Teri Carter's Library 
Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I put it down to read your blog but…
I was the same way with WILD. Right from that intro chapter where she’s on the mountain and loses her boot etc…. I kept thinking, “But how are you going to get down the mountain?!?!?!” Love that book.
Yes! Love this book. My mom is reading it now and she loves it too. Cheryl Strayed will be doing a reading in Dallas in April for the “Arts & Letters Live” program.
Two of them:
1: “Orientation and Other Stories” by Daniel Orozco
2. “Shadows of Men” (story collection) by Kevin Grauke
I’m adding “The Garden of Last Days” to my list now.
Thanks, Pamela. These are added to my list!
Hi Teri,
I am loving “Gone Girl”…almost done, and still twisting and turning. I will be adding “The Garden of Days” to my must-read list. Thanks!!
I just started GONE GIRL and I’m totally digging it, as well.
For me it’s been what book keeps you sitting in the driveway long after you’ve gotten home from work because you want to hear the end of a chapter. I’m adding this recommendation to the list.
Dubus III is such a good storyteller. The writing is exceptional, but you really just want more story.
11/22/63 was the last one that kept me reading. I’m not a King fan (well actually I love all of his non-horror books), but it was just a fun read at the right time and I whizzed through it. Something about big books…
But, I got $75 in Barnes & Noble gift cards to use, so you best believe I’ll be putting all of these mentioned on my list!
I love big books.
Gone Girl, although I hated the ending.
And then, The Rules of Civility, but towards the end I started putting it down a bit because I didn’t want it to end.
I’m going to google this one now.
I didn’t want Rules to end, either.
The last book I didn’t want to end was The Lacuna. The beginning was hard-ish reading as you aren’t sure what this or that has to do with the overall story, but when you get to the end and find out, Wow. I still need to go back and read that one again.
Oh The Lacuna.How I loved that book. Harrison Shepard and the larger than life Frida and Diego and Trotsky. Yes, to be reread for sure.
Last book I couldn’t put down? I have to admit it was Labyrinths, a collection of stories and essays by Borges. Maybe it’s because as a book reviewer I am inundated by books that read essentially the same–style, plot, themes. Here was something completely different. His technique would probably be panned today as slow and didactic, but the imagination and ideas encased within those stories was so far beyond the stuff that’s produced today. After almost every entry I had to sit back and really think about what he was saying, how he questioned reality. I’ll trade a little craft for some thought provocation.
This is exactly what I loved about the last 2 Nick Flynn books I read. You are required to participate and think. There’s no other way to read his books.
I agree about Borges. The luxury of sitting back and just thinking.
chris guillbeau’s The Art of Non-Conformity.
i know.
it’s where i am right now. i switching between it and Hell Bent.
at this very moment, i couldn’t tell you the last five books i read. isn’t that weird. i’m blank.
I believe you could teach this class, Josephine. Like the tapping of the ruby slippers, you have it inside you already… Of this, I’m sure.
Me too Josephine! I’ve wetting down every book I’ve read since about 7th grade…I wasn’t too consistent with it in high school, but at about 1998 I started dating each with the date when I finished reading. Otherwise I couldn’t tell you the last few books I’ve read either. (It’s a good problem to have – means I read a lot 😉
Actually to answer the question presented, I opened that book list and starting at the end, perused the list until I came to a book that I knew I flew through cause I enjoyed it! Lol
I’m whispering this, because I’m aware that I’ve fallen and can’t get up: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates.
Help me.
The last two books I flew through were By Nightfall and Flesh and Bone by Michael Cunningham. I picked them up at every opportunity. There is something about his writing that just pulls me in and doesn’t let go even after I close the book.
Lyra, did you read The Hours? It’s the only Cunningham book I’ve read.
I did. I read it when I was on a Pulitzer kick. I liked it but it didn’t…sing to me? That was years ago and By Nightfall I saw at the library a couple of weeks ago. I liked the cover, read the dust jacket and brought it home. The story was tight, simple and so well written it blew my mind. Then I flew through Flesh and Bone and just picked up A Home at the End of the World from the library today. I don’t know if I’d like The Hours more now as I’m a far different reader than I was then, but I’ve adored his last two books.
Yea, it didn’t “sing” to me either…I did like it for its connections/parallels to Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.” I always like overlaps between books. Which one book of his would you recommend I pick up?
Looks great. My last like that was ‘Dark Roots’ by Cate Kennedy.
The Getaway Car (wish it was so much longer!) and before that Arcadia, and before that, The Age of Miracles.
I love this post because now I’m going through everyone’s responses and adding them to my (insanely, ridiculously, shamefully long and overwhelming) to-read list.