One-sitting reads?

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Yesterday I read Ira Levin's Stepford Wives (the movie previews reminded me that I had wanted to read it) and, due more to the massive print than to the brilliance of the prose/plot, I read it all in one sitting. What are some books for which this happened to you (hopefully for reasons having to do with authorial gifts rather than print-size)? Before the Stepford Wives, the last one for me was Nicholson Baker's Mezzanine.

― David Elinsky (David Elinsky), Sunday, 13 June 2004 12:44 (twenty-one years ago)

The 2nd time I read Raymond Federman's "Double Or Nothing", I read it all in one sitting. It's a stream-of-consciousness style novel with no real chapter breaks or anything so it was the perfect way to read it.

I really enjoy books that can be read all in one sitting.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 13 June 2004 14:49 (twenty-one years ago)

God's Debris by Scott Adams
On Writing by Stephen King
Some James Hadley Chase books
Some plays...

― Fred (Fred), Sunday, 13 June 2004 15:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Maeve Brennan's The Visitor, and Magnus Mills' In a Blue Moon. Both of these are short books, though. The Maeve Brennan is a very satisfying novella, while the Magnus Mills is a book of short stories that are so short they might almost be prose poems, except that the individual words are not that interesting, so maybe they're sketches.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Sunday, 13 June 2004 16:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King...

― Fred (Fred), Sunday, 13 June 2004 16:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I do this with Lorrie Moore and David Sedaris.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 13 June 2004 19:22 (twenty-one years ago)

The last thing I read in one sitting was Margaret Atwood's "Survival".

I tend to read pretty much everying by Jeanette Winterson or Julian Barnes in one sitting. Or Henry James.

― August (August), Sunday, 13 June 2004 19:29 (twenty-one years ago)

In my idle yout' I used to read Ed McBain 87th Precinct books in one sitting. Probably the longest book I read in one sitting was "Curtain" by A. Christie. Oy, the headache afterward.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Monday, 14 June 2004 02:44 (twenty-one years ago)

I read 'A Clockwork Orange' in one sitting on one boring weekend.

― fcussen (Burger), Monday, 14 June 2004 03:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I read The King by Donald Barthelme in one sitting a couple months ago because I couldn't put it down. I have no idea why more people don't read him.

― otto, Monday, 14 June 2004 04:02 (twenty-one years ago)

The last novel I did in one sitting was The Girl with the Pearl Earring.
I feel like I would do the Harry Potter books in one sitting if they were all the size of the first couple installments.

― SJ Lefty, Monday, 14 June 2004 05:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I read I Capture the Castle in two sittings this weekend - it would have been one but reading was interrupted by having to go to A&E with a neck injury (not caused by the book incidentally). However it was also a great book to read while recuperating on the sofa once I got back...

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 14 June 2004 08:38 (twenty-one years ago)

My girlfriend swears by I Capture the Castle. I like Dodie's descriptions of animals. No wonder she had success with 101 Dalmatians.

Sorry to hear about your neck!

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Monday, 14 June 2004 10:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Hey, I read the Stepford wives last week, too! The get the feeling the movies not going to be so good (i.e. Where's Joanna's kids?).

I don't read much in one sitting. I can read a whole Nora Roberts book in one sitting but that's only because I want to get through the whole thing before anyone catches me.

― Vermont Girl (Vermont Girl), Monday, 14 June 2004 12:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Siddhartha, Hesse. The Old Man and the Sea, Hemmingway.

― Moti Bahat, Monday, 14 June 2004 13:37 (twenty-one years ago)

"Caveman Dave" by Nick Sharratt. It's about a caveman called Dave who's very brave and sits in a cave.

Only joking. Seriously, when bed-ridden with a bad cold a while ago, a lot of James Ellroy in one go, as well as a fair amount of Bernard Cornwell, Robert Rankin and Hunter S. I think the absence of even the possibility of being distracted helped enormously.

― Cornelius Murphy, Monday, 14 June 2004 14:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Animal Farm

My ambition is to write one-sitting books for people who don't normally read.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Monday, 14 June 2004 17:44 (twenty-one years ago)

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Illusions by Richard Bach
And many wonderful short horror stories...

― Fred (Fred), Monday, 14 June 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson. I was early to a friend's house and picked it off the bookshelf..he was late home from work and the next thing i knew he was home and i had five pages to go...finished it before saying hi, of course.

― Docpacey (docpacey), Monday, 14 June 2004 23:00 (twenty-one years ago)

i assume one sitting means that, if you have to sleep with book dropped next to your bed, you pick it up and read it propped while making coffee, take five minutes to read before a shower and then try to devise ways to keep reading in the shower (an impossibility - someone should make entirely waterproof books).
I always read mysteries between literary choices, and it is the page turners that I can't put down (and Harry Potter). There are so many literary novels that compelled me to stay up way to late, inspiring a hang-over like feeling the next day because of the indulgence...but generally when I read a great book that isn't a whodunit I want to temper my plot greed with my love of language...I hate missing good sentences and phrases just because I'm lost in a plot.
ILB does keep me up late at times, and the plot is always changing and thickening...

― aimurchie, Tuesday, 15 June 2004 00:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Animal Farm
The Bell Jar
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events - but maybe this shouldn't count, because they're children's books, the print is large, and the sentences are *triple* spaced.

― Natalie (Penny Dreadful), Tuesday, 15 June 2004 02:43 (twenty-one years ago)

I LOVE Lemony Snicket.

― aimurchie, Tuesday, 15 June 2004 03:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm a fast reader so I tend to stretch books out for enjoyment's sake. Back in the day I ripped through "Bright Lights Big City" in an evening. Like snorting that stuff the author goes on about: briefly exhilarting, then monumentally depressing.

― lovebug starski, Tuesday, 15 June 2004 09:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Animal Farm
11 seconds - coelho (too light to stop!)
Bassotuba non c'è - Paolo Nori - (GREAT!!)
The Book of Proper Names - Amelie Nothomb

― Bed, Tuesday, 15 June 2004 10:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. damn but thats an amazing book. i tend to read most books in one sitting, i grab one from work, read before i go to bed then take it back the next day to annoy my manager who reads far far slower than i do . Terry Pratchett's Discworld series are great for single sittings: no chapter breaks, excessivly funny and fantastic characters.

― Rowie (Rowie), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 08:11 (twenty-one years ago)

i can read extremely fast if need be, but i try to savor things. a few that i couldn't help tearing through were cathedral, the crying of lot 49, miss lonelyhearts/day of the locust, and pale horse, pale rider. i've read loads of really embarrassing books in one go on transatlantic flights, but i don't like to talk about that.

― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 12:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, I figure I've got 12 or so hours left to read Ulysses.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 16 June 2004 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Desolation by Yasmine Reza (who wrote the plays, Art, Conversations After a Burial, LifeX3). It's very short, but everyone I've lent it to hasn't finished it, they find the lead character too misathropic (which is part of why i loved it).
Wide Sargasso Sea.
On the other end of the scale - Skallagrigg by William Horwood and At Swim, Two Boys (admittedly, it was a re-reading), big books that I swallowed whole in one day.

― Margo, Thursday, 17 June 2004 03:49 (twenty-one years ago)

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