When I was talking to my friend about what my blog posts were going to be about for February, she saw this topic and shouted, “I know what the first one is!”  (She’s totally right.)  Book hangovers are both the absolute best and worst.  I’m always so happy to have found one because YES KILL ME, but also, oh dear god I think I’m dead?  I experienced some major book hangovers last year, and though none of them sent me into a slump (sheer determination makes slumps nonexistent for me), one of them came pretty close.  Thus, here are the top ten books that almost murdered me.

I still remember this book hangover so clearly.  I remember finishing it and just sitting in my bed, like, what the hell am I supposed to do now?  How am I supposed to go on with my life?  I was literally at a complete loss for what steps to take next.  I remember putting it away, crawling into bed, and not dreaming as I slept.  I remember waking up and staring at my bookshelves, like, I’m supposed to pick a new book to read?  SERIOUSLY?  I can say I don’t know what it was, but the writing + characters + world building was all so impeccable that my brain just short-circuited.

Yo, this book is STILL giving me a hangover, a full half year after I read it.  I literally just wrote a post about why I love it so much last month (link), and it was a struggle and a half for me not to devolve into complete madness during that.  I keep thinking I’m going to get over how much I adore The Silmarillion, but then I think about how I want to reread it again in less than a year just so I can experience it all over again.  It was SO GOOD.  Check back with me post-trilogy-reread, but y’all, this might be my favorite Tolkien book.

This was the first time in a lonnnnnnng ass time that, after binge reading the last 150 pages in one sitting, I looked up at the clock, saw that it was 9:45PM, and wondered how obnoxious it would be if I went to B&N right then to get the second two.  I refrained because I used to hate that person, but you can bet your bottom dollar I was there when they opened the next day.  And yet, did I read them right away?  No, of course not, Amberlough made me weep so much that I shoved the second two onto my bookshelf in a fit and didn’t pick up Armistice until last month, and now we’re doing the same dance all over again with Amnesty.

This was another case of me feeling like well what do I do now?  What are hands?  How do they turn pages?  Am I alive?  I was so in awe by the full novel by itself, but then that ending just picked me up by my toes and flipped me upside down to shake out my pockets, and when I was crumpled on the ground again, it was left wondering how soon I should read the sequel.  Not could, should, because I was so overwhelmed with my love for this one.

I have been known to, at random, just scream KAROUUUUUU at the top of my lungs in public spaces, so if you think I was okay after DOSAB, you’ve got another thing coming.  I don’t think it’s ever taken me as long to read a series as it did with this one.  I had legitimate anxiety and full blown pre-crying about finishing it, and finally cracking the spine on the third one was like preemptively breaking my own heart.  Every single book in this series destroyed me, and I appreciate it so much.

YES I HAVE TWO LAINIS ON HERE CAN YOU EVEN BLAME ME???  My relationship with Lazlo Strange is so delightful because this was 100% a cover & title buy, and even when I go back now to the summary, I find it confusing.  I could not figure out what this book was about going in, and for the first 80 pages, I wasn’t really into it.  I felt like I was forcing myself through, and then, around page 81 (I’m not even joking), I texted my friend: holy shit I would die for this book.  10/10 overnight, full-blown love, would do anything Lazlo Strange asked of me.

THIS BOOK.  Every time I rec this book, I feel weird because weird is the most chill term every used to describe it.  Weird is this book’s jumping point.  Honestly, though?  Weird isn’t even the jumping point.  It’s the mindset you have to be in before you get to the completely bizarre of the first chapter.  But did I consume all 650 pages as fast as was humanly possible?  YUP.  Was I able to read the sequel fairly soon enough?  Not a freaking chance, and when I did, I felt like my ribs had been smashed with a tire iron.

I still think about this book every day.  I keep wanting to reread it, and not really knowing how to, which seems like an odd thing to say, you just open the book and start reading, but it hit me in such a very specific way that I was left exhausted by the end.  It’s in my top five favorite books of all time, and it has a very, very special place in my heart.

Oh, you mean the book that I read in one sitting because every time I tried to put it down, I literally could not focus on anything else until I picked it back up?  Nothing could hold my attention while I was reading this.  Nothing.  I tried really hard, too, because I had a lot of other things to do that day, but I would put it down and just putz around for a half hour before realizing it was completely fruitless, and finally pick it back up again.  And, you know what, Kayla’s other book and novella have done the same exact thing to me.

The days leading up to reading this were pretty hilarious because, unlike most series in my life, I read Six of Crows fairly soon before this.  Normally, I’ll read the first in a series and then waste away for a few months before picking up the next one, but I think I read this in the same month, or close to it.  I didn’t, however, read them one after the other because I wanted to be ready to read Crooked Kingdom.  I had a cold, and I was determined to be in full capacity, body, mind, and soul, before I delved into the sequel.  And though I’m nuts, I was also totally dead on because pretty much every other chapter dismantled my ability to function.

And those are my top ten book hangovers, which are, incidentally, also some of my favorite books ever!  What do you think?  Did one of these also give you a book hangover?  Are you immune to book hangovers?  What’s the worst one that’s ever gotten you?