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broodings from the burrow

February 18, 2020


top ten most recent book hangovers
posted by soe 1:13 am

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share our ten most recent book hangovers — those books that we either absolutely could not put down, no matter the hour or consequence, or those that kept us so enthralled even after the final page was finished that we couldn’t move on to another book.

I had to go back almost a year and a half to get to ten, but I finally made it:

  1. Kate Racculia’s Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts is a tightly paced, slightly over-the-top story with quirky, lovable characters that wanted to keep living in my head even after the final page was turned, which seems appropriate given the storyline.
  2. Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory was such a sweet holiday romance that it wanted to be finished on back-to-back days, so it was good I read it over Christmas break.
  3. The same thing happened with Jasmine Guillory’s The Proposal, but in that case it was during baseball season instead of the holiday setting.
  4. Caravel by Stephanie Garber was also a fast read, full of a layered plot and unreliable characters and questionable motives.
  5. Check, Please! Book One: #Hockey by Ngozi Ukazu was an unusual read for me in that I don’t care at all about hockey, but I loved this book. And while I enjoy graphic novels, reading them gives me a little bit of a headache, so it’s rare for me to read them singly or for prolonged periods at a time. So it’s a real testament to Ukazu’s charming characters and New England elite liberal arts college setting that kept me absolutely glued to the pages.
  6. Just as it’s rare for me to power through a graphic novel, it’s also unusual for me to progress quickly through an audiobook. But with The Lido by Libby Page, a novel about community activism and friendship and the power of journalism, I finished it in less than a week, which means I was spending a lot of my spare time listening, rather than just while I was washing the dishes at night.
  7. Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce was another quick read, with a wartime setting and a BFF schism making everything more urgent.
  8. Ghosts of Greenglass House by Kate Milford is the second in a series. Checking in with old friends in a familiar, well-loved setting made this a one-day read.
  9. I did not love Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered when I read it, but it refuses to fully release me from its spell, pulling me back into its unsettling orbit even now on occasion.
  10. Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson was another fast read, rapidly investing me in its group of kids who go from forced support group to support network.

How about you? What recent book hangovers have you suffered from? ‘Fess up in the comments!

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