Oprah's Book Club Pick Named Among Novels Readers Devoured in One Weekend
There's nothing better than spending an entire weekend binging a great book. Readers looking for the perfect novel to dive into over the next two days should look no further than The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.
BookBub asked its readers to recommend books that "were so good they read them in just one weekend," and The Covenant of Water earned a spot on the compiled list.
"I just finished The Covenant of Water," reader Ann-Marie said. "It is a thick book, but I read it quickly; it was fantastic."
Released in May 2023, the novel follows a Malayali family living in southwest India, with the story spanning three generations from 1900 to 1977. Within each generation, some family members drown due to an affliction they call "the Condition."
The Covenant of Water became the 101st Oprah's Book Club selection in May 2023.
"It's one of the best books I've read in my entire life," Oprah Winfrey said at the time. "It's epic. It's transportive. Many moments during the read I had to stop and remember to breathe. I couldn't put the book down until the very last page. It was unputdownable!"
That same month, Winfrey, 72, explained how she chose The Covenant of Water for her book club.
"We probably read 12 [to] 15 books to get to choose this, and this book was on the list of books to read," she recalled during a sit-down with Verghese, 70. "It was on my desk, and I kept moving it because [it 's thick]. I kept moving it over there, then I'd put it over there, then I'd put it under something else, then I'd move it. And then one day we ran out of books and I said, ‘You know what? I'm gonna take a look at that Covenant and see what's happening in The Covenant of Water.'"
After initially hesitating to begin the book due to its intimidating 700-plus pages, Winfrey was hooked right away.
"I started and I knew by page three," she said. "The first opening sentence was it for me."
By the time she was more than halfway done reading the book, Winfrey declared, "I know that the world is gonna love this book."
The Covenant of Water was partially inspired by Verghese's mother, who wrote a 157-page history of her childhood in a spiral notebook in 1998 after her granddaughter asked what she was like as a girl. While the author used several of his mother's stories in his novel, he noted to Oprah Daily, "More precious to me were the mood and voice that came through in her words, which I supplemented with my own recollections of summer holidays with my grandparents in Kerala, and later visits when I was in medical school."
Beyond The Covenant of Water, BookBub's list of weekend reads also included The Women by Kristin Hannah, The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters, Christine by Stephen King, Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, among others.
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This story was originally published May 9, 2026 at 8:10 AM.