Books
Sure, we love to watch a whole TV series in one afternoon, but here's a pro-media-consumption tip: reading books all the way through, start to finish, without leaving your room or taking a break may be intellectually tough, but the payoff is kind of, uh, incredible. In a post on the /r/books Reddit board, Redditor calathe asked which books readers read in just one sitting. "I'm curious!" they wrote. "Please participate and tell me the best books you just couldn't put down because they gripped you in some terrific way, or you were engrossed in the settings the author created, or you loved the characters too much to put the book aside before you knew their fate, or perhaps you simply loved an author's style?"
In less than 24 hours, the post gained nearly 300 comments, from readers across the world anxious to share the book (or the series, or the author) that has kept them up all through the night, that has given them paper cuts and tired eyes and brand-new perspectives.
If you've never read a book in one sitting, then you should, uh, absolutely try it. You can't be watching TV, playing on your phone, or doing anything, really, other than simply staring at the page, taking in word after word, step after step into a new world. There's something deeply, intensely cathartic about going on a complete journey with a character, emerging on the other side and then sitting up, adjusting your eyes and parachuting back to reality. It's magical.
'The Stranger' by Albert Camus
The Stranger was one of the first books suggested as speed-read-able and for good reason — it's short and packed with philosophical fodder that asks the question, "Does any of it matter? When we refuse to play 'the game,' what are we? Where are we?"
Like, Any 'Harry Potter' Book
I mean... duh. Remember in the 1990s and early aughts when each new book would come out and for the next 72 hours it felt like the whole world was inside reading?
'Dept. of Speculation' by Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill's 2014 Dept. of Speculation tells a story in moments, in fragments, in letters between "The Wife" and her husband, coyly marked "Dept. of Speculation" in a nod to the uncertain, indefinable, subjective nature of, well, life.
'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy
There's something to be said for reading a book as dark and soul-crushing as the post-apocalyptic The Road in one, single sitting. Sure, it's incredibly tough-going, but when it's all over, when the last page has been read, you can re-join reality - tired and puffy-eyed and maybe a little bit changed.
'Room' by Emma Donoghue
The book that inspired the movie that catapulted both Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay to fame, Emma Donoghue's 2011 Room documents the survival - and the escape - of a woman who's been held captive in a hidden room for seven years. But what comes after the escape, after the happy ending? How do you find your own new "normal" after your whole world's been torn apart?
'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' by Douglas Adams
Don't panic, and don't forget to bring a towel when spending all heckin' night burning through the 2002 sci-fi/fantasy hit The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
'Pretty Girls' by Karin Slaughter
Claire and Lydia are sisters who haven't spoken in nearly 20 years, torn apart by the disappearance of their third sister, Julia, decades earlier. Pulled in? Duh, of course you are. The resurfacing of a crime pattern rips their lives apart once again, bringing the two woman reluctantly together.
'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood
I mean, we all know why Margaret's Atwood's terrifying Handmaid's Tale is a book that pulls in readers and doesn't let them go, right? There's so many kernels of truth and "maybe that could happen"'s that you gotta get to the end - to see if we will.
'The Gunslinger' by Stephen King
The first in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger serves as an introduction to immediate icon Rolad of Gilead, "The Last Gunslinger." In this darkly futuristic world, Rolad takes the road — literally and figuratively — less traveled.
