 |
| This post contains affiliate links. I earn a commission from qualifying purchases. |
The end of the year is creeping ever closer. Will you hit your Goodreads reading goal? I won't hit mine, but that won't stop me from trying. My strategy is to read a bunch of short books.* Here's what's on my to-be-read list. Now I need to work up the motivation to actually read them.
*Obviously, different editions of books will have different page counts. Trust me, these books are tiny!
Very Short Books(Convince Me To Read Them. I'm Lazy.)
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse by Charlie Mackesy
Graphic Novel
128 Pages
Charlie Mackesy offers inspiration and hope in uncertain times in this beautiful book based on his famous quartet of characters. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse explores their unlikely friendship and the poignant, universal lessons they learn together.
Why I want to read it: It has an insanely high Goodreads rating and seems to pop up on a lot of "best books ever" lists. I want to know what the hype is about.
Support Independent Bookstores
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
History Nonfiction
127 Pages
Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”
Why I want to read it: *Gestures vaguely at everywhere.*
Support Independent Bookstores
Dearly: New Poems by Margaret Atwood
Poetry
124 Pages
By turns moving, playful and wise, the poems gathered in Dearly are about absences and endings, ageing and retrospection, but also about gifts and renewals. They explore bodies and minds in transition, as well as the everyday objects and rituals that embed us in the present. Werewolves, sirens and dreams make their appearance, as do various forms of animal life and fragments of our damaged environment.
Why I want to read it: I'm on a quest to read all of Margaret Atwood's fiction and poetry. She's a confusing author. Some of her books are my all-time favorites. Others are so silly that they're barely readable. I don't know what I'll think of this one, but I like the cover.
Support Independent Bookstores
The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers: And Other Gruesome Tales by Jen Campbell & Adam de Souza
Middle Grade Horror
120 Pages
In this collection, fourteen fairy tales from around the world are retold for young readers, restored to their original, grisly versions. Featuring fourteen short stories from China, India, Ireland, and across the globe, The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers is an international collection of the creepiest folk tales. Illustrated with Adam de Souza’s brooding art, this book’s style is a totally original blend of nineteenth-century Gothic engravings meets moody film noir graphic novels.
Why I want to read it: I was obsessed with ghost stories and creepy folk tales as a child. This is the type of book I would have requested from the library. I was a spooky kid!
Support Independent Bookstores
Black Dog: The Dreams Of Paul Nash by Dave McKean
Graphic Novel Biography
120 Pages
A graphic novel by legendary artist Dave McKean, based on the life of Paul Nash, a surrealist painter during World War I. The Dreams of Paul Nash deals with real soldier's memoirs and all the stories add up to a moving piece about how war and extreme situations change us, how we deal with that pain, and, in Nash's case, how he responded by turning his landscapes into powerful and fantastical psychoscapes.
Why I want to read it: I flipped through this book at a store and liked the art style. It was so long ago that I don't remember why I liked the art style. This is the problem with having books on your to-be-read list for years!
Support Independent Bookstores
Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly
Memoir
113 Pages
Combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book. Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys.
Why I want to read it: I attempted to write micro-fiction in a graduate school writing workshop. Everybody hated my stories. I'd like to see how a real writer handles micro-nonfiction.
Support Independent Bookstores
The Baby Is Mine by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Literary Fiction
107 Pages
When his girlfriend throws him out during the pandemic, Bambi has to go to his Uncle's house in lock-down Lagos. He arrives during a blackout, and is surprised to find his Aunty Bidemi sitting in a candlelit room with another woman. They both claim to be the mother of the baby boy, fast asleep in his crib.
At night Bambi is kept awake by the baby's cries, and during the days he is disturbed by a cockerel that stalks the garden. There is sand in the rice. A blood stain appears on the wall. Someone scores tribal markings into the baby's cheeks. Who is lying and who is telling the truth?
Why I want to read it: I liked the quirkiness of My Sister, The Serial Killer and want to read more work by Oyinkan Braithwaite. This one sounds like a compelling mystery.
Age Of Blight: Stories by Kristine Ong Muslim
Dystopian Short Stories
105 Pages
What if the end of man is not caused by some cataclysmic event, but by the nature of humans themselves? In Age of Blight, a young scientist's harsh and unnecessary experiments on monkeys are recorded for posterity; children are replaced by their doppelgangers, which emerge like flowers in their backyards; and two men standing on opposing cliff faces bear witness to each other's terrifying ends.
In haunting and precise prose, Kristine Ong Muslim posits that humanity's downfall will be both easily preventable and terrifyingly inevitable, for it depends on only one thing: human nature.
Why I want to read it: I think it would be difficult to write dystopian short stories. How do you cram all that world building into a tiny space? I want to find out.
Support Independent Bookstores
How To Stay Sane In An Age Of Division by Elif Shafak
Politics Nonfiction
96 Pages
Ours is the age of contagious anxiety. We feel overwhelmed by the events around us, by injustice, by suffering, by an endless feeling of crisis. So, how can we nurture the parts of ourselves that hope, trust and believe in something better? And how can we stay sane in this age of division?
In this powerful, uplifting plea for conscious optimism, Booker Prize-nominated novelist and activist Elif Shafak draws on her own memories and delves into the power of stories to bring us together. In the process, she reveals how listening to each other can nurture democracy, empathy and our faith in a kinder and wiser future.
Why I want to read it: *Gestures vaguely at everywhere.*
Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami
Literary Fiction
92 Pages
Ms Ice Sandwich seems to lack social graces, but our young narrator is totally smitten with her. He is in awe of her aloofness, her skill at slipping sandwiches into bags, and, most electric of all, her ice-blue eyelids. Every day he is drawn to the supermarket just to watch her in action. But life has a way of interfering—there is his mother, forever distracted, who can tell the fortunes of women; his grandmother, silently dying, who listens to his heart; and his classmate, Tutti, no stranger to pain, who shares her private thrilling world with him.
Why I want to read it: The cover makes me crave sandwiches. Also, this book has been compared to Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. I love books with memorable characters and odd plots.
Support Independent Bookstores
Talk to me about the short books that you haven't read yet.
The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers sounds like something I would've checked out as a kid, too! It's interesting that some of the fairy tales for kids are so grim and downright terrifying if you think hard on them. Hope you enjoy all on your list and good luck meeting your Goodreads reading goal! If you haven't read/listened to The Murderbot Diaries, they are fun sci-fi novellas I wholeheartedly recommend! There's seven plus a few short stories.
ReplyDeleteI have only read Tyranny from this list, but I think, especially given the times we're living in right now, it is so significant. It's not an easy read, but important.
ReplyDeleteThe Boy, The Mole... was a good one! Definitely worth a read.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I've already read On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century as I've seen so many references and blurbs from it. I actually didn't know that Margaret Atwood wrote poetry. I will a have to check that one out.
ReplyDeleteWell, I think instead of me convincing you to read any of these, you've convinced me to add some of them to my own TBR.
I am not sure why I am anonymous, but it's me, Wendy (Literary Feline)
DeleteYour reason for wanting to read On Tyranny made me laugh. That about sums it up!
ReplyDeleteI've read three of these, and I had one and passed on reading it. I would not really recommend any of these. Here's my list, if you want to see what I'd go with: https://readerbuzz.blogspot.com/2024/02/wonderful-books-you-can-read-in-one.html
ReplyDeleteI'm not a huge fan of short stories, either. But Elif Shafak and Margaret Atwood are always worth reading!
ReplyDeleteOn Tyranny is essential reading right now
ReplyDeleteI can imagine. "Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience." Right now, I see no hope that's going to happen.
DeleteI have never read any of these books so I'm not sure how to convince you to read these, but I love Margaret Atwood's works and I think you should definitely read that one! Also The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers; with a title like that, you really shouldn't need any additional convincing!
ReplyDeleteThese all sound so interesting!
ReplyDeleteI haven't read any of them, but we all like different books for different reasons, so if they look good to you, I say....Go for it.
ReplyDeletesherry @ fundinmental
'I think it would be difficult to write dystopian short stories.' --- I may have written... several. There's two are def. dystopia, and a fair amount are bordering-on, lol.
ReplyDelete(Also, your '*Gestures vaguely at everywhere.*' is a mood!)