unputdownable

adj

1. (informal)Of a person, etc.: difficult or impossible to put down (in various senses).

   “I have known an operating surgeon, because he possessed a medical title, to be elected physician to a county hospital. I have known the surgical staff for years refuse to recognize this irregular. Yet, after all, when he became popular and unputdownable, giving in their isolated adhesions to the conqueror, not because they had altered their sentiments, but that their pockets taught them, like nature, to abhor a vacuum.”

   “Finally, we appeal to all right-minded playgoers. Let them remember that they have got tongues, and that a vigorous, unmistakeable, un-put-downable hiss is, in a theatre, a potent instrument.”

   “[W]e're unputdownable, like Alcayaga said up 'til last night, and now here we all are happy, unputdownable, dearest old skinny bosom-buddy, you've collapsed on us so early in the morning like a sack of spuds, [...]”

   “Des Capper blinked, as if he has been hit with a dictionary. But he was unputdownable, at the same time giving the impression that he was registering all the snubs.”

   “Only someone with enormous unputdownable optimism would ever have embarked on a project like this.”

2. (informal, specifically)Of a book or other written work: so captivating or engrossing that one cannot bear to stop reading it.

   “I found it absolutely (or almost) unputdownable and at the same time as complete a waste of time in a sense as one of [Erle Stanley] Gardner's Perry Mason stories, which I also find unputdownable.”

   “Now begins the allurement of the ‘unputdownable’ text. But is it unputdownable? The author must spin out and embroider the theme of a demoniacally possessed girl for all that it is worth.”

   “To make unputdownable an intricate, technical account of the anatomies of worms, and other inconspicuous denizens of a half-billion-year-old sea, is a literary tour-de-force. But the theory that [Stephen Jay] Gould wrings out of his fossils is a sorry mess.”

   “Since "Next" is one of Mr. [Michael] Crichton's more un-put-downable novels, the reader may experience some frustration. It's tempting to stop and look up each of the genetic, legal and ethical aberrations described here in order to see how wild a strain of science fiction is afoot. Save a step. Just believe this: Oddity after oddity in "Next" checks out, and many are replays of real events.”

   “[James] Lees-Milne does not always show himself off in a good light, and he is by turns self-aggrandising, cruel, dismissive, mean-spirited and totally un-put-downable (though there will be occasions when you want to throw his books across the room with some force).”