So, years ago I was at a Barnes and Noble with a friend of mine. She was looking for books on dog training and i just wandered. I found this book that I started reading and could not stop. She found me in the isle and said “let’s go”. I pretty much never put that book down.Bought and it read it every chance i had. So what is your book? The one one you cant put down.
Years later I had that book on my bookshelf and a friend of mine from out of town recognized the spine of that Krakauer book…We had a wonderful conversation about it.
I have been a reader my entire life. I don’t know why; i used to get in trouble for using a flashlight to read after ‘bedtime’. I am the only person I know who knows some Shakespeare, Twain, Poe, etc. I often say “Once more into the breach” when i go into the jail. it is lost on the staff.
For ten consecutive years now I’ve reread Elmoore Leonard’s Rum Punch while vacationing in St Martin in January. On our first day there we traditionally visit Friar’s Bay, where I light up a doobie, get comfortable in my lounger, and hook up with Jackie Brown.
It’s been said that the quickest way to teach an English boy French is to give him a copy of Around the World in 80 Days with only the first half translated. He’s not going to be able to put it down even if it means learning a new language to keep reading.
I once spent a weekend reading *Into Thin Air *six times. I would read the book all the way through, then turn around and start at the beginning again. I could not stop reading it. I have both Into Thin Air and Into the Wild on my Kindle, so if I have a spare moment and nothing else I’m reading, I can read them again. I’ve probably read each at least 30 times.
But that’s nothing compared to a book called *When Genius Failed *by Roger Lowenstein. I have read that book well over a hundred times. I just read it again last week.
I have Into the Wild on the shelf, waiting for me to get around to it. I’ll check it out.
I find the Little House books to be compulsively readable, and I’ve read through them about thirty times. Usually I intend to stop after Big Woods & Farmer Boy, but they suck me in.
I don’t know; I am a reader, though my current phase of life doesn’t provide many opportunities for sitting quietly doing nothing. I’ve rushed headlong through so much. Agatha Christie’s mysteries; the Game of Thrones books; the Outlander books; the Anne of Green Gables books; many Booker prizewinners; many Victorian triple-deckers.
The book I keep coming back to, that reveals new layers every time I read it, is Howard’s End.
The Harry Potter series. It’s almost as if as soon as I’m done reading them, I want to start all over again. For Christmas I got a new set of the first five books because mine had just fallen apart.
“The Lord of the Rings”. First picked it up at age 14, immediately re-read it, repeated that process about 8 times before interrupting it briefly with another book.
I’ve been re-reading that trilogy on and off for more than 30 years. I can pick it up anywhere and the world fades away, and I am in another world.
Gone With The Wind is another, I must have read that 50 times.
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. That one is in my heart and soul forever. I am so disappointed a live version movie has never been made (it was planned, starring Mia Farrow as Molly, but never came about. Cillian Murphy would have made a stunning Schmendrick.)