Binge watching TV shows has been something I try to avoid doing for most of my college career. I have fallen off the deep end when it came to One Tree Hill, Supergirl, and Arrow. I need to focus on school and work, so watching 8 hours of TV no longer fits into my schedule. This understanding of myself and my inability to have control my binge instincts, you think I’d be able to apply it to other areas of my life. Guess not.

There is a clear distinction between binge-watching a TV show and binge-reading a book series. Watching is a passive process, reading is active. Reading makes people tired because one actively uses their minds to process the information and make images in their heads. Also, reading takes longer than watching, so the time consumption is so much more. I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in about 4 days, which was impressive for a third grader. I stood up, leaning against my bed for a whole day reading Catching Fire from The Hunger Games series. And now, this.

Over winter break, I ordered the book trilogy Chaos Walking off Amazon after seeing it recommended for me on my Thrift Books app (cheap books, highly recommend). Same app I used to by And The Band Played On, so I should have known some trouble would follow. So anyway, I order these books and bring them back to school with me. It’s a young adult series, pretty easy to read, 550 to 600 pages a book. I started reading a chapter a night, pretty short too, until about the 4th chapter when, well, it hit the fan.

In that moment, after staying up until 2:30 AM reading, I knew that this would be a series I would binge. So I did the mature thing and put the first book, The Knife of Never Letting Go, down, stopping over half of the way through. And then I became afraid to pick it up again because AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT. So that was it, I was done. Until spring break.

I knew I would be able to finish the first book on the way to Chicago that first night of spring break, so I brought it along. As well as the second one, because heaven forbid it ends on a cliffhanger (spoiler alert: it did). So I finish book one on the way home, and I AM SHOOK. But again, knowing I’m going off to Spain to live my best life, I didn’t start the second book, The Ask and the Answer. I did bring it along because I thought I might read on the plane. Waste of space because I didn’t (I did watch Bohemian Rhapsody for like, the sixth time).

I do, however decide to read it on the flight back from Chicago to Dallas the last day of break. This book was 550 pages, and I managed to get through 200 pages on that flight. When I got home, instead of doing homework, I read another 100 pages. The next night I stayed up until 3:00AM finishing the book, completely oblivious to how time had gotten away from me and how I was falling into a binge pit.

Common sense struck again that Tuesday. Instead of opening the third book, Monsters of Men, I made myself wait until Thursday night to read it, since I don’t have classes on Fridays. A genius decision, I do say myself. Well, of course I wait until midnight to start reading, and wind up awake until 3 AM Friday morning. And then I read all afternoon. And then when I came home at 11:00 PM, I finished the book. In total, I probably spent 18 hours just reading these books, which might not seem like a lot (I’m a fast reader) but it really hits when those 18 hours are happening in the early AM on school nights.

So Patrick Ness, author of these horrendously amazing books, the extremely grouchy me from Monday, Tuesday, and Friday morning write this letter of anger to you in the fact that this trilogy was so unbelievably difficult to put down, I almost sacrificed grades in every class just to keep reading. To the fact that, not only have I badgered about starting this series to everyone I’ve come in contact with since, but because now I really don’t know what to do with myself, because for a solid three weeks, those books were everything. I’m so unbelievably frustrated. Reading is supposed to be fun, but now I feel like if I have no one to discuss these books with, my head is going to explode. Why did you have to make these books so good? I will resent you forever.

So dear readers, I 20/10 recommend the Chaos Walking trilogy to you all. And if you have any other notable binge-books, please let me know.

PS: to add to the pit of frustration, this series is being made into a Motion Picture. It was supposed to come out on March 1st, 2019. But now it doesn’t even have an official release date because they have to do reshoots and I want to cry. That is all.