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Unputdownable Book

110 replies

RayofSunshine18 · 21/11/2023 14:01

What is your number one, unputdownable book, that you would recommend to absolutely anyone and everyone that will listen. Either fact or fiction - I am looking for some inspiration!

OP posts:
LadyEloise1 · 26/11/2023 15:07

TranquilityofSolitude · 26/11/2023 10:53

American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins. I've thought about it so often since I read it. It was absolutely gripping!

It was really good.

impressivelycunty · 26/11/2023 11:07

Invisible Child - it won the Pulitzer last year and is honestly one of the most amazing books I've ver read.

TranquilityofSolitude · 26/11/2023 10:53

American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins. I've thought about it so often since I read it. It was absolutely gripping!

FizzingAda · 26/11/2023 10:49

I found the first three or four books of Jean Auel's Earth's Children series gripping. Unfortunately she went off the rails in the later books and turned them into a sort of prehistoric Peyton Place.

Isheabastard · 26/11/2023 10:47

The Enchanted by Rene Denfield, but it’s very very dark.

I don’t usually go for the subject matter (death row prisoners), but the prose is almost lyrical. My favourite ever book.

Venomous · 26/11/2023 10:27

tobee · 22/11/2023 16:26

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Good call. I must reread this! Also his The Moonstone.

I think the answer comes down to whether you mean ‘unputdownable’ in the plotty sense, or in the sense of being plunged into a vividly-realised world you don’t want to leave.

Most recently, in the latter sense, Rebecca West’s The Fountain Overflows trilogy. This was a familiar reread for me, but I literally reached for the next book each time and kept going. They are astonishingly vivid, a sort of family saga about an eccentric family where two of the daughters are gifted pianists, the mother is a formerly famous concert pianist, the father a brilliant political writer and gambler. Set mostly in South London before, during and after WWI.

For plotty people, they may be frustrating in the sense that she left them unfinished at her death — only the first was published in her lifetime, and the others were put together posthumously, so one central mystery is never resolved, or the resolution was only mentioned vaguely in her notes. But I can’t recommend them more highly.

LadyEloise1 · 26/11/2023 10:12

What a great thread to start @RayofSunshine18 Flowers

Coolstorysis · 26/11/2023 01:40

The girl who loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King made me stay up to read it. Bad idea reading at bed time.

Labradeedle · 26/11/2023 01:40

'How High We Go in the Dark' by Sequoia Nagamatsu. Epic story that I'm still thinking about every day, having read it in one day about 2 months ago.

Feellikeafailurenow · 26/11/2023 01:38

Kristin Hannah - The nightingale

MicrowaveRice · 26/11/2023 01:26

On The Beach by Neville Shute - its weirdly hypnotic, though I read it in first lockdown so possibly my mental health state at the time influenced it.

Isometimeswonder · 26/11/2023 01:14

The Stand, Stephen King.

CharlotteBog · 26/11/2023 00:36

Not without my daughter by Betty Mahmoody - could not put it down.

CharlotteBog · 26/11/2023 00:34

A tree grows in Brooklyn by betty smith and dairy of an ordinary woman by Margaret Forster
(Sorry for grammar, phone not being smart!).
Currently loving Demon Copperhead by Barbara kingsolver.

CatChant · 26/11/2023 00:28

Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally
Desolation Island by Patrick O’ Brian
Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski

MrsW9 · 26/11/2023 00:11

I found Wilkie Collins unputdownable - both 'The Moonstone' and 'The Woman in White'. I kept going to bed ridiculously late because I just couldn't stop reading!

ABCXYZ17 · 23/11/2023 22:48

Michelle Paver’s adult fiction - wonderful ghost stories.
Agatha Christie, especially The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Claire Chambers - Small Pleasures

ronconcoke · 23/11/2023 22:45

The Red Tent - Anita Diamant.

Read it over 20 years ago and still remember how gripping it was. Annoyingly I seem to have lent my copy to someone over the years and not had it returned as I can't find it anywhere!

ManAboutTown · 23/11/2023 12:05

The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer

ellebelli · 23/11/2023 10:06

I really enjoyed David Baldacci s early books.
The perfect husband by Lisa gardener
Most of tami hoags
The dead room by Chris mooney

Fawbs89 · 22/11/2023 20:27

Blood orange

LydiaGwilt · 22/11/2023 20:24

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin - deceptively simple writing and a twist at the end

tobee · 22/11/2023 16:26

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

musicmaiden · 22/11/2023 10:53

The early Shardlake books (CJ Sansom) are very much like this, IMO.

JaneyGee · 22/11/2023 09:47

I've been binging on the big 19th-century classics this year. It's surprising how well they stand up. With every single one I was hooked and desperate to know what happens in the end. To my shame, I'd never read any of them before:

Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Jane Austen: Emma
Thomas Hardy: Return of the Native
Dickens: Great Expectations