The books that keep us up past midnight.

I am in love. The passionate, endless kind of love that takes place in my bed each evening.

I’m talking about my latest must-read book. You know the books that don’t come along often enough? The ones that seem like steel in your magnet hands? The ones that keep you up well past midnight as you greedily flick the pages like a truffle-hunting pig?

Whoa, my heart-rate just quickened at the thought of it.

My glorious friend Amanda bought me The Game of Thrones for my birthday which was a remarkable act of prescience on her part because I’d been meaning to find out what all this cool kid fuss was about.

I’d known precious little about the books (or indeed the worldwide phenomenon HBO television series of the same name) beyond that it was a little bit Lord of the Rings-ish (the writing style of which I didn’t particularly enjoy) and maybe there were some swords and stuff and probably a throne.

So here I was with this 780 page beast of a novel in my hands (which comes with a blooming chart of the character names) and I opened the first page and it sucked my whole gosh darned face right into it. I didn’t surface until, by my best estimate, 2015.

I’ve just finished it, a flurry of late-night reading later. Now I need the second one and I’ve become slightly unreasonable about it. People ask me out for dinner and I guard my time like a rottweiler at a spare parts yard. No, I cannot have dinner with you, I will be giving birth to a mind-baby this evening. You can ask again in several years.

Suddenly my whole life revolves around avoiding every major responsibility in the world so I can get to bed at 8.30pm sharp and read for as long as it takes to fly to Perth from the east coast.

When I’m done I suspect I’ll close the book dejectedly, look around to see if the world is still there and wonder whether life had really gone on as normal all that time.

I love that feeling. That feeling is the best.

Speaking of cult book classics, here’s a few others that spring to mind:

– Seeing as we’re now all in the mood, find out what type of book lover you are right here. We listed 7, but there are SO many more.

So, what book has kept you up past midnight lately? What book has made you drop everything just so you can dive back into it?