When you’re not in the mood for a book that will take a week or more to read, picking up a short book is your best option. Short books, or novellas, can be read over a weekend or even sometimes just a few hours. They’re the perfect bite-sized slice of literature that will fit in your back pocket.
The top short books to buy
I love the short book art form. It is a challenge for a writer to create a whole world with fleshed-out characters in so few words. The skill requires focus and a deep understanding of narrative. The best short books whip up intrigue, emotion, and excitement quickly, taking readers on wonderful journeys in just a few pages.
Before The Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Time travel is always an exciting topic to broach when telling a story. It opens up so many possibilities but also leaves the narrative open to plot holes and conundrums. However, in Before The Coffee Gets Cold, there are sets of rules that dictate the time travel and help reduce the risk of paradoxes. This leaves the short book to comfortably explore just what the characters would do with a limited ability to go back in time.
The premise is simple. It is possible to go back in time, but only using one particular seat in a cafe, and only while the ghost that usually inhabits it is on a bathroom break. Whoever travels can’t leave the cafe and must be back before their coffee gets cold. With these parameters in place, this beautiful short book explores the things people will do with their brief time, be it speaking to old relatives, trying to fix past mistakes, and many others.
The Old Man And The Sea – Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway, in his own unique and morbid way, likes to teach us about life as he sees it. Many of his works focus on the human struggle, digging deep into the challenges we face along the way, be they as small as frustration or as large as grief. Old Man and The Sea is a fascinating look into the ideas of struggle, success, and humility. I found the book hard to read at times, and once I put it down, it took me time to digest and come to terms with how I felt about the outcome. This short book is one of the best for making you think about yourself.
The book follows the journey of a fisherman out at sea looking for a break from his month-long streak of catching nothing. Eventually, he hooks a giant fish far too big for his small skiff. As the narrative goes on, our fisherman battles the marlin, coming to respect and understand it. Throughout his struggle, he takes time to contemplate a lot of things in his life, and the fishing trip becomes about much more than just what’s on the end of his line.
Factotum – Charles Bukowski
None of Bukowski’s books are particularly long, but what they contain will fill your mind nonetheless. His writing style and subjects are definitely not for everyone, but there’s no denying he is an influential writer. Picking up Factotum is a perfect introduction to Bukowski’s wreckless and breakneck life, as he writes in a semibiographical form about his own experiences. Alcoholism, whoring, fighting, and generally being antidisestablishment are running themes for all his work, and this is what made him a legend. His writing style is as rough and ready as he is, and Factotum will have you gritting your teeth with every page.
Henri Chinaski is the representation of Bukowski in this semi-biographical telling of his life. Chinaski is a war draft reject, making his way around the states during the 40s, unable to enlist and unwilling to sign up for regular life. He drinks, fights, and jumps from job to job as he makes his way around America. The narrative is a hard one, with hardly a glimmer of hope and a bleak look into the world of 40s America from a lost alcoholic soul.
The Stranger – Albert Camus
Camus is another master of short books, writing a number of the best novellas from history. Using the medium, he can narrate the lives of complex and often flawed characters in intense and fascinating situations. Like a number of the best short story writers, his books dig deep into the human psyche and expand on what it is to be human. The Stranger takes a look at one particular man who discovers something quite drastic about his own emotional range.
The Stranger is Meursault, a Frenchman living in Algiers. After hearing of the death of his mother, he begins the journey back to the place of her death. Through first-person storytelling, we travel with him, finding him at odds with his lack of grief. He is a man without emotion, lacking both the highs and lows that would be expected. The turning point of the book comes with a murder, resulting in a further exploration of just how emotionally remote our protagonist is.
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
This is a book that has been studied in schools for many, many years, and for good reason, too. However, when I was reading it, some POS decided to spoil the ending by writing it on the first page. Steinbeck gives an interesting view into the great depression in the United States from the perspective of two migrant workers. It’s difficult to imagine the struggle and displacement for many people at the time, but through the eyes of Lenny and George, we can start to understand just how hard it may have been.
Times are tough for Lenny and George as they travel across California, looking for ranch work. Employment is scarce, and pay is even more so. The two are bonded, with George acting as somewhat of a carer for Lenny. Lenny has a good heart but isn’t the brightest of buttons, but with George looking out for him, they make do. The short book follows their time at a ranch, working under the bullying and oppressive Curly and his femme fatale wife.
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
Although the title of this novella may sound like a slasher movie, the short book itself is one of the best looks into the horrors of the Second World War. Using time travel, alien races, and a group of men stuck in the firebombing of Dresden, Vonnegut tells a semi-autobiographical story of his experience as a prisoner of war. It’s a bleak look from a boots-on-the-ground perspective of the tragedy. Vonnegut has a very particular way of writing, but there is no doubt that he is one of the all-time greats of the short story medium.
Billy Pilgrim is a time traveler, and his life has become disconnected from time as we know it. He lives out events in an apparently random order, jumping from one moment to the next. This tells the story of his life, from the bombing of Dresden to his time in a mental ward and others. It’s a novel way of telling a story, but it works.
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
A lot of what Brett Easton Ellis writes can be a pretty gritty read. Most know of American Psycho, which was made into a smash hit film starring Christian Bale. Ellis isn’t afraid to open up the nastier side of humanity, illustrating the degeneracy we are capable of. Less Than Zero digs into the dirty side of the party and drug scene that was so prevalent in 80s American youth. The glitz and glamour of rich kids partying gives way to addiction, fast and loose sex, and some seriously dangerous situations. It’s a hard read but one of the best short books if you can handle it.
Clay returns to his hometown in Los Angeles for a winter break. Reuniting with his old friends, he finds out they have been walking a very different path from him. Despite his time at college still being fun and full of parties, what his hometown friends are into now is a whole different kettle of fish. He is from a wealthy background, and so are his friends. They have the money to get into some serious drugs and throw some wild parties. However, there is always a toll to pay when you’re borrowing happiness from tomorrow.
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Travel writing is always wonderful to read if you’re looking to broaden your mind. Heart of Darkness is travel writing, but probably not as you know it. The journey down an African river on a steamer is more than just an exploration of the area and people therein. It is a critique of African colonialism and morality and a dive into the mind of the steamboat captain. The slow steamboat journey down the river questions our ideas of race and what, at the time, was called savagery. It is an important book for its time, as Western people ‘discovered’ the blank spaces on their maps to the detriment of the people within them.
Heart of Darkness follows the life of a steamboat captain as he progresses through his career and eventually pilots his own boat down the African river. The short book follows his journey through various camps, attacks, and other experiences that develop his views and opinions of what he and other colonials are doing. He encounters many struggles and gruesome hardships. The captain returning to his people after the experience on the river isn’t the same one that left.
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
Another hard read on this list is Toni Morrison’s first novel, which is still banned in numerous school districts in America. The book has been pulled from shelves and schools for being too explicit. However, I feel the book should be on everyone’s short books list for its insight into the hardships and reality of the characters in America still within living memory. The Bluest Eye captures the hurtful racism that was still so prevalent at the time and highlights how Toni Morrison was made to feel apologetic about the color of her skin growing up.
The book follows the life of Pecola, a daughter of two African Americans who brings her up in a primarily white Anglo-Saxon neighborhood. Throughout her life, she is made to feel ugly for the color of her skin, and all she dreams of is having the blue eyes she associates with beauty. Her parents are of little help, with her father being an abusive alcoholic and her mother who is a detached and deluded woman. Pecola lives without much support, and the narrative of this short book follows in her troubled and harrowing footsteps.
At The Mountains of Madness – H.P Lovecraft
One of the forefathers of horror has to be included in the best short books list. If you’re looking for a read that can be completed in just an hour, or, like At The Mountains of Madness, in a few days, pick up a short story by Lovecraft. There are few writers better at instilling fear and unease than H.P. himself, and if you’re looking for a yarn unlike any other, then this short book is for you. Indescribable ancient horrors from beyond time itself lurk deep within our planet, silently waiting in cities beneath the ice. What should have been a journey of discovery quickly becomes a horror story.
Arctic explorers take a journey out into the frozen wastes. They discover a mountain range far larger than the Himalayas, but what lies beyond it can hardly be believed. An ancient city, telling of a civilization far beyond the years of our understanding of the world, lies tucked behind the range. Buried deep beneath the ice is evidence of ancient beings. On the discovery of bodies, the story behind it takes a dark and dangerous turn. If you’d prefer to read this in graphic novel form, the short book has been beautifully illustrated and retold for fans of the art form.
Published: Sep 6, 2024 07:20 am