Short but good reads?

[Angie]

Help! To "win" this year's book challenge, I need to read 19 books before the end of the year. I know I could go to the Children's section (I work at the library) and finish, but I don't know what to pick.

I'd prefer to read a mix of Young Adult, Children's and Fiction titles, if this helps anyone. Favorite short book I've read recently: "Mister Pip" by Lloyd Jones.

[Christy]

How about A Monster Calls and Mother, Come Home? They're both short and very good, if not exactly happy reading. In supershort reads, if you can find The Gigantic Robot, I quite enjoyed that and it's probably a five minute read.

[Robert]

The Sense of an Ending

[Robert]

Or Michael Chabon's The Final Solution

[Angie]

Christy wrote: "How about A Monster Calls and Mother, Come Home? They're both short and very good, if not exactly happy reading. In supershort reads, if you can find [book:The Giganti..."

I have "A Monster Calls" here at home from the library! Can definitely read before end of the year!

[Angie]

Robert wrote: "The Sense of an Ending" Thanks. I'm on the waiting list at the library. Don't think I'll get it before the end of the year, but thanks for the recommendation!

[Janet]

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner,
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan,
Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje.

Do you like short stories? If so I recommend You Know When the Men are Gone by Siobhan Fallon.

Haven't read Tinkers by Paul Harding but it's short and award winning.

Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier is over 300 pages but it's a quick read.

Good Luck!

[Christy]

Let me just second You Know When the Men Are Gone and The Lover's Dictionary. I loved both of those. I didn't love Tinkers, but it was short and it was okay.

If you're up for short stories, I would recommend Margo Lanagan's stories. Black Juice has a couple of really amazing stories in it.

Zombies Vs. Unicorns is also fun and reads pretty quickly.

[Robert]

or J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country

or Jamaica Kincaid's At the Bottom of the River

[karen, future RA queen]

Visitation is short and pretty damn sad. but also really rich and important.

also - HELP! A Bear is Eating Me!. fast and funny with one of my favorite covers ever.

[Jasmine]

I haven't read the book you mentioned but:

Muscle Memory
Winnie-the-Pooh
Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick
How To Steal A Car
anything by Ray Bradbury
Animalinside
Tree of Codes
Iphigenia in Aulis
Customer Service
The Sorrow of Elves
Meat is Murder
Shoplifting from American Apparel
Detective Story
By Night in Chile

okay so that's a very wide variety chosen based on number of pages and whether I thought the book was good, most are adult books on the simple end except animalinside which is experimental but also only like 36 pages or something. the modern novellas series (contains the tao lin and customer service has a lot of great short books).

there is also this book that I don't really like that everyone else thinks is fucking genius:

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
I think it was very very short.

also now that I think of it, etgar keret's books are also very short.

[Jasmine]

also I know you said you prefer fiction but plays read super fast if you are interested in those...

[Tuck]

here's lepucki's novella, flat out best 94 pages you'll read this year If You're Not Yet Like Me

[MJ]

Great list Jasmine! Shorties I loved, w/reading times = Checkpoint by Nicholson Baker (1hr), Singular Pleasures by Harry Mathews (30mins), Hotel Splendide by Marie Redonnet (1hr 30mins), Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras (1hr), Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith (1hr 30mins), A Working Mother by Agnes Owens (2hrs).

[Eric]

Nicholson Baker's Vox is also super short. So is Houllebecq's (sp?) Lanzarote. Both of those are ... um ... sexual, and thus hard to put down.
The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity -- James M. Cain ... those 2 are noir, and also un-putdownable.

[Jasmine]

I like vox

[Rhiannon]

You know what to do? Read a few graphic novels. I love the Fables series by Bill Willingham and The Walking Dead series by Robert Kirkman. Also, just started the Chew series by John Layman, and it was really funny and original!

You can read each of these trade paperback collected volumes in 1-2 hours, for sure.

In my opinion, all of these series are very well done. There are plenty of volumes to choose from (well, Chew only has 4 so far, but the other two are in the teens!). Also, the themes and stories are still "adult," if you get sick of the kids stuff.

[Rhiannon]

Or, there's great "memoir" graphic novels that also make for short reads:

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Clumsy
American Born Chinese

[reading is my hustle]

The Outsiders: S.E. Hinton

The Giver: Lois Lowry

Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde: Robert Louis Stevenson

The Chosen: Chaim Potok

[Angie]

Thanks to everyone who has replied! So far I have made it through "A Monster Calls." Great recommend! And I do like graphic novels, thank you folks, as well as plays and collections of short stories. Also, thanks for any suggestions by authors not from the US--I have a spot on the bookshelf in my heart reserved for them!

[karen, future RA queen]

all of Tove Jansson's books are short - i am thinking specifically of her work for adults, but the moomin stuff too, i guess. and she is finnish, so - yay.

[Kirstine]

There's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as well. It's a very quick read, and incredibly moving and thought provoking. It's not quite the genre you were looking for, but still amazing.

Maybe Coraline is something, or The Perks of Being a Wallflower. They can both be read in a day, and I enjoyed them a lot.
Neil Gaiman has a few collections of short stories as well; Fragile Things and Smoke and Mirrors.
There's a good chance you know them, or have heard about them, but I thought I'd throw them in anyway. He's an excellent author if you like his style.

For children's books, try looking up some Astrid Lindgren. She's swedish and her stories are fantastic (I especially love Mio, My Son, The Brothers Lionheart and Ronia, the Robber's Daughter).

[Angie]

Eric wrote: "Nicholson Baker's Vox is also super short. So is Houllebecq's (sp?) Lanzarote. Both of those are ... um ... sexual, and thus hard to put down.
The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity --..."

I own a copy of "Vox." I guess that dates me.

[Angie]

Thanks to everyone who gave me some great suggestions for the end of the year and for this year (I set a goal of 110 bks), and I will try to stay aware of my number read). I can't wait to discover these new authors.

[Jasmine]

Angie wrote: " I own a copy of "Vox." I guess that dates me.".

Well, I own a first edition of vox. So I suppose peer wise that makes you 25.

Congrats

[Angie]

Thanks, Jasmine. Never have checked to see if it's a first edition, but I did buy it when it was still a hardcover. (That makes me 45.)

[Mostly on Storygraph]

Ella Minnow Pea - so much fun.

[Sam~~ we cannot see the moon, and yet the waves still rise~~]

Tinkers
The Old Man and the Sea
Tuesdays With Morrie
The Little Prince
Animal Farm
The Great Gatsby
Lord of the Flies
A Separate Peace
Number the Stars
The Giver
most novels by Roald Dahl
The House on Mango Street
Sideways Stories From Wayside SchoolWayside School Is Falling DownWayside School Is Falling Down
Of Mice and Men
The Bad Beginning
Night
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Maus, Vol. 1: My Father Bleeds HistoryMaus, Vol. 2: And Here My Troubles Began
The Westing Game
Tuck Everlasting
most plays would work too, if you like that kind of thing.

[Erin]

Some great suggestions. Perhaps The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill or Nothing by Janine Teller. Read each in about an hour or so.

[Angie]

Thanks to Sam and Erin for more great ideas.

[Stella]

I just read I Am Legend. It's great and it is fairly short. (I think it classifies as a short story)

And The Machine Stops

[Jason]

anything by Aimee Bender

[Steven]

The Dalkey Archive is a novella, I would say. O'Brien is pretty easy to read, and I think most of his books are comedic. I'm also currently reading a "shorty" that's pretty good: The Living End

[Larissa]

Stuck in Neutral is the story of a kid with severe cerebral palsy who believes his father is going to kill him "so he doesn't suffer any more." What the family doesn't realize because Shawn is nonverbal is that Shawn is intelligent, funny, and full of life and love for his family--he just cannot communicate with them. I read it in less than two hours. I couldn't put it down.

[Rebecca]

Ooh, thank you for this thread. I need some shorties to make my 2016 reading challenge goal.

[Carrie]

The Borrowers, Mr. Poppers Penguins, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Bridge to Terabithia, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.