25. A book less than 220 pages OR more than 440 pages

[Joanne]

I read Gillespie and I by Jane Harris. It was very good on audio because the narrator did voices and accents very well. I flew through it even though it was almost 20 hours long.

[Nicola]

I have been reading some short children's books in french. This is one of them:

[Udari]

Read Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
545 pages on the Kindle edition

[Tiffany]

I was going to read Obama's A Promised Land, but The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers became available after a long wait at the library. I'm so glad - it's a masterpiece!

Other top-notch books are: The Pillars of the Earth, The Hate U Give, Half of a Yellow Sun, The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America's Great Migration, and Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

[Marie (UK)]

Between the World and Me such an impactful book

[Kylie]

More About Paddington by Michael Bond

[Marie]

I read Our Dark Duet by V.E. Schwab. Quite a lot of her books would fit this prompt, most are part of a series but The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a standalone.

I'd also recommend The Goblin Emperor, Six of Crows (my favourite two reads so far this year), The Passage and I Am the Messenger for longer books.

For shorter books, there's my recommendation for everything - Murderbot. The first four are less than 220 pages, starting with All Systems Red. If you get the right edition A Monster Calls just sneaks in, and I also love The Call of the Wild.

[Rachel]

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is a beautiful, award-winning collection of short stories set in India or Bangladesh, or involving Bengali immigrants to the US. It is poignant, insightful, full of loss and longing. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ here is my review.

[Rachel]

The Bleeding of the Stone by award-winning Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni is a short book about a shepherd living in the Sahara desert. It has strong environmental themes about species extinction and reads like a Bedouin folktale with a dose of magical realism and Sufi mysticism. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ here is my review

[Rachel]

The Orange Girl by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder is a short and sweet, enchanting tale set in Oslo about a 15 year old boy who discovers a letter from his deceased father. His father writes the story of his meeting the mysterious and captivating Orange Girl on a tram. This is a beautiful and moving read. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ here is my review