I have always been an avid reader, but it is rare even for me to be so caught by a book that someone has to physically shake me to get my attention. It has happened with the Belgariad series by David Eddings, Neverwhere and Good Omens, and most books I've read by LeGuin or Heinlein. I'm sure there are more, but that's a start. How about everybody else?

Now, for the story in the title of the thread. I most often got lost in books while visiting my grandparents on the coast of Lake Michigan in the summers. Either on the beach, or on a bluff in a hammock, the summer air and sound of the waves and wind in the trees created a perfect background for me to get totally lost in a book. On days that weren't conducive for reading outside, there was a bed in a great little nook in the cottage that I would hide away in to read. Great memories...

Happens to me with almost any fantasy epic I'm reading. Definitely happened with Eddings, and everything I've read by Gaiman.

Then again, I'm one of those freaky people who gets so into her books that she reads while she's walking...

I wish it would happen to me, I keep starting a dozen books and not getting very far.

but the jungle book is seeming tempting, but the way it's written makes me want to read it out loud to someone rather than just read it.

when i was younger -- say, through part of high school -- i would get so deep into any book i was reading that i wouldn't hear what was going on around me, much like you described. I still remember the first time i read Through the Looking Glass (i was a teenager): i began to feel slightly physically sick (mild nausea and headache) and had to stop reading for a while.

my reading got less intense as i got older. I don't know why.