What book could you not put down?

Bretrick

Bretrick

Well-known Member
Location
Perth Western Australia
We have all done it. Started reading a book and before we know it 6 hours have past. Or it has gone past 3 am and you need to rise in 3 hours.
Two books have had that effect on me.
Fyodor Dostoevsky's House of the Dead.
Lyall Watson's Gifts of Unknown Things.

House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical account of Dostoevsky's time spent in a Siberian Prison. In a time when the Tsars ruled supreme. Published in the early 1860's.

Gifts of Unknown Things is a non fiction account of time spent on an Indonesian Island. It documents Watson's observations regarding mystical occurrences, magical feats, miraculous phenomena and psychic healing.

Dostoevsky was a Russian Journalist, Novelist, Aristocrat and Philosopher who died in 1881. Some of his writings being, Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamozov, The Idiot and notes from the Underground.

Lyall Watson was a South African Botanist, Zoologist, Biologist, Anthropologist and Ethnologist. Author of Supernature, Lifetide, The Romeo Error, Dark Nature and many more.
 

I read this book after seeing the film of the same name, starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman

Papillon - Author Henri Charrière

Henri Charrière was a French writer, convicted in 1931 as a murderer by the French courts and pardoned in 1970. He wrote the novel Papillon, a memoir of his incarceration in and escape from a penal colony in French Guiana.

On finishing it I had to know what happened to Henri and wrote to the publishers, they informed me he had sadly passed away but also there is a sequel to Papillon

Banco is a 1972 autobiography by Henri Charrière, It documents Charrière's life in Venezuela, where he arrived after his escape from the penal colony on Devil's Island.

A brilliant read and true story
 
The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell - Self- Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

Thunder Below by Admiral Eugene Fluckey - Story of how a US Submarine revolutionized submarine warfare in WWII.

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky - The author outlines his methods of how to effect social change.
 
Bretrick said:
We have all done it. Started reading a book and before we know it 6 hours have past. Or it has gone past 3 am and you need to rise in 3 hours.
Two books have had that effect on me.
Fyodor Dostoevsky's House of the Dead.
Lyall Watson's Gifts of Unknown Things.

House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical account of Dostoevsky's time spent in a Siberian Prison. In a time when the Tsars ruled supreme. Published in the early 1860's.

Gifts of Unknown Things is a non fiction account of time spent on an Indonesian Island. It documents Watson's observations regarding mystical occurrences, magical feats, miraculous phenomena and psychic healing.

Dostoevsky was a Russian Journalist, Novelist, Aristocrat and Philosopher who died in 1881. Some of his writings being, Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamozov, The Idiot and notes from the Underground.

Lyall Watson was a South African Botanist, Zoologist, Biologist, Anthropologist and Ethnologist. Author of Supernature, Lifetide, The Romeo Error, Dark Nature and many more.
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Oh my goodness I love the books of Lyall Watson! I've never found anyone who knew if them.

I have several and I am stunned at his knowledge, his spiritual connection with nature and the life he led. He truly was a brilliant man. I love nature books, especially about unusual animals.
 
I was gifted a book by John Ross the author 845 pages! (Unintended Consequences.) About govt coverups etc. I personally knew many of the people in the book it sure told me many things the avg reader would not get from just reading it, I could not put it down. Many characters have been in my home or were on vacation with me that were in the book.
 
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It's many years since I read fiction.... but in reality almost every book I read of non-fiction is almost unputdownable, which is one reason why I now only read before going to sleep otherwise I'd be reading ll day...

The books I read over and over again.. are books covering real time events..war diaries etc... like Private Battles by Simon Garfield, and all that same grenre written by him...
 
Operation Mince Meat, written by Ben Macintyre. The most successful deception plan of World War Two, which convinced the German high commanders that the Allied invasion in 1943 was going to be in Greece, not in Sicily. Truly a master plan that is still taught in military intelligence courses as an example of a multi prong deception involving planted information in the briefcase of a drowned Royal Marines officer courier, along with a number of double agents who appeared to be working for the Germans, but were actually agents of MI 6 back in London.

IN 1956, shortly after the war was over, a film was made called " The Man Who Never Was ". This was a fictional account, that was based on actual MI 6 files. The real story is set out in Mister Macintyre's 2018 book. Fascinating reading from the first page. A recent film by the name of Operation Mince Meat is a VERY close version of what really happened. The man whose body was floated onto the sea shore of Spain, dressed as a R.M. officer, was recently awarded a medal by the UK government. He was buried in Spain during the deception plan. Ian Fleming had a small part in the deception as a member of the RN's intelligence unit in London. Yes, that Ian Fleming, the later author of the James Bond books.

Mister Ben Macintyre is a great writer, and his books are flawless in terms of the depth of the research, and the characters are memorable. JImB.
 
I don't really consider myself much of a reader. If I read maybe 2 to 3 books in a year that is good for me. There are three books(well actually more because one is a series of books), that I could not put down. They are The Princess Bride by William Goldman, The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, and The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling.
 
Books by Catherine Ryan Hyde, Marilyn Messik, Stephen Graham Jones, Belinda Bauer, Craig Johnson, Kate Atkinson, August Ansel, Jenny Lawson, oh a lot more; I'd better stop now lol. One book in particular that I recently couldn't put down because it reminded me in sad ways of my childhood was All That is Mine I Carry with Me by William Landay.
 
Chet said:
The journal of the Lewis & Clark Expedition by Meriwether Lewis.
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Very cool, Chet!

I have a friend who owns a local bookstore- The Second Reading- who has authored some books on Lewis & Clark: John Dunphy.

Also interesting to note, as a retired nurse who worked primarily in psych, was the fact that at the end of his life, Meriwether Lewis suffered from symptoms akin to schizophrenia.
 
This thread is a gold mine I shall be returning to as soon as I have time for more novels.

Among the page turners I’ve enjoyed (and can call to mind now):

All The Light We Cannot See

Cider House Rules

Cutting For Stone

A Gentleman In Moscow

The Sea of Poppies trilogy

Stones From The River

I Claudius and Claudius The God

The Count of Monte Cristo

A Thousand Splendid Suns and everything else by Khalid Hosseini

Almost anything by Tom Robbins, Anne Tyler or Elizabeth Strout will be fun to read.
 
There must have been many books I couldn't put down, but the only one I remember is Clan of the Cave Bear. I remember that one because it was such a long book that I was up all night and then had to go to work without having gotten any sleep. Very painful experience.
 
Some of us go so far as not being able to put a book down that we become obsessed with it. In reading and rereading books such as Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote, this has happened with me. Books written over 400 years ago that still ring true today!

Don Quixote, in its original version, lead me to two well-illustrated graphic novels and became an inspiration to numerous art projects such as this:



3d don.jpg


​

I frequent OpenArtsForum.com and submitted some spontaneous sketches, such as this one, which became a featured thread:



WIN_20221014_15_18_25_Pro.jpg​




Here's a link: https://openartsforum.com/forum/threads/to-fight-for-the-right.16651/#post-139432

Yeah- when I get into a book, I read it, devour it, study it, and make it a source of inspiration for art.
 
Pinky said:
A Few Favourite Authors:

Lee Child
Elmore Leonard
David Baldacci
Tim Maleeny
Martin Edwards
Robert Crais
Nick Petrie
Benjamin Black
Lisa Jackson
Lisa Unger
Lisa Gardner
Thomas Mogford

I love detective mysteries. If I had a list, it would be far too long to post here.
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I read so many Detective mysteries in my younger days..I can't read them any longer because I've usually worked it the baddie from the first few pages...

I've read every Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle novels.. more than 5 times each..probably even more than that.. :D📖📚
 
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