Monday, March 20, 2017

Ten Books I Read in One Sitting


I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is books that you read in one sitting. It's pretty rare for me to have enough uninterrupted hours to sit down and read a book straight through, so some of these may have been read in more than one sitting. Regardless, they're short enough that you could sit down and read them straight through. There's some overlap here with books I picked up on a whim.


1. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
This is one of the books I picked up on a whim, in this case from the guest room bookshelf while visiting my parents one weekend. In those luxurious pre-child days I could stay in bed for another three hours to read a whole book before getting up for the day!


2. Citizen by Claudia Rankine
I listened to this the first time on audio and got through the majority of it while cleaning the apartment one evening. The second time I read it in print and read it over the course of two evenings between my son's bedtime and mine.


3. Devilish by Maureen Johnson
As I mentioned in the other post, one summer my now-husband and I stayed with his aunt in her non-air-conditioned home in New Jersey, and so I would walk to the local library for the air conditioning and stay there a good part of the day reading. This is a book I picked up to read during one of those sessions.


4. Fences by August Wilson
I don't know if I read this in one sitting the first time I read it (in high school), but I recently reread most of it during my son's afternoon nap. Plays are good for reading in one sitting since they're meant to be performed within a set amount of time.


5. for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
I'm not saying you should read this in one sitting, as it can be pretty heavy, but it's another script for a performance where you can easily get through it in a couple hours.


6. The Giver by Lois Lowry
I've talked about how I loved this so much more on rereading it as an adult, and I also couldn't put it down. I'm not sure I read it in a "sitting" so much as had it on the Kindle app on my phone and read it everywhere I went that day.


7. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
This 1000+ page book is definitely not a book you'd expect to read in one sitting, but this was another one of those hot summer days where I spent all day at the library, and so I read this cover-to-cover during the course of the day. (OK, maybe it was over two days.)


8. Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton
Last summer a friend lent this to my husband, who kept it sitting out for months because he rarely reads books. When he went on vacation with our son for a couple weeks and I was looking for a new book to start, I picked this up and read it at the kitchen table over a few cups of tea.


9. Winter of Fire by Sherryl Jordan
This past Christmas we traveled to visit my in-laws and my husband and I both got sick, so my father-in-law took our toddler out for the day and I wrapped myself in a blanket, made a cup of tea, and spent the day reading this book I'd brought with me.


10. With Burning Hearts by Henri Nouwen
Last summer I started this book after work the day I was picking up my husband and son at the airport from their aforementioned vacation, and I read it up until I had to go get in the car to get them. When I got to the airport I was early, so I sat in my car and read until I had to go inside, then I stood by baggage claim and read until they arrived. It was that good!

Which books have you read in one sitting?

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