“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy held me captive, staying up all night immersed in its pages, awakening the next morning with a lingering sense of melancholy. Stephen King’s works, especially “The Shining,” share that unique ability to make you eagerly anticipate the next page, constantly wondering what twist awaits.
Sleep comes first!
Close range, Annie Proulx. Happened just a few nighta ago
LOTR, IT, The Shining, Wheel of Time, GOT.
Girl with the dragon tattoo series
I guess most good thrillers would do that, but even in the genre, I give The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy my vote. Lisbeth is still living rent free in my mind now.
Fucking Dan Brown. I just had to know the ending - 3 hours later it’s 3 AM and I’m fucked.
Lockwood & Co book series
Recently, “When We Cease to Understand the World” and “The Maniac” by Benjamin Labatut. Read them back to back in a couple of days, just could not put them down… both are masterpieces, imho. In the past, Child of God and Blood Meridian by McCarthy, same deal, also masterpieces.
Back when I was a teen I read the Eye of the dragon by Stephen King on a bus, and I did a few rounds because getting off at my stop was less important.
Then nothing such until I became greybearded, until I read the last third of the first Honor Harrington book after work, at the front of the building on a bench. Time just flew until the receptionist came out to ask if everything is okay, around 21:00.
Since then several of the Peter Grand and Dresden and Laundry Files books had the same effect. And Project Hail Mary.
I work flexible hours so no problems if I had to read until dawn.
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
Bird Box, Josh Malerman. I started it at 9:30pm thinking I’d read a few chapters and then go to bed.
Finished it at 1am, and then had nightmares for weeks.
Great book.
Gone Girl
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
…aaaaand at the opposite end of the literary spectrum:
Vicious by VE Schwab (the only one of this author’s books I actually enjoyed)
Valley of the Dolls. I just needed to know what happened to those dames.
Almost everything I read. The way my ADHD, OCD, impulsiveness and curiosity all combine to make it almost an obsession to know and understand. I also enjoy reading the most when I’m desperately trying to cram in a few paragraphs before I fully succumb to sleep because I often have insanely vivid dreams of my book as I imagine it to be. I will say this (for the purpose of perspective) I have a few mental illnesses not limited to the ones I listed above, and VERY VERY severe forms of sleeping disorders as well including but not limited to narcolepsy, severe insomnia, somnambulance, somniloquy, sleep paralysis, nightmares, waking nightmares and full-blown night terrors. I tend to use books as a way to control what I’ll dream about that night, rather than gamble on meds or hope for the best (which only happens about 12% of the time so not reliable).