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What short standalone book is worth more than its page count?
This will be the final topic in the series. (Sorry about the confusion!)
This one is about short books that have more heft than you would think from their size alone.
As before, there are no hard requirements on what counts as “short.”
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Each city (never more than two pages) could be the setting for multiple novel-length stories.
I'm going to cheat a bit with some very sad stories.
The short story version of Flowers for Algernon is (imo) in some ways stronger for its brevity. I read it in middle school and was crying in the middle of class.
Another relatively short book that gutted me as a tween was Bridge to Teribithia.
On a less sad example, there is a book called The Other Side of the Island I read around the same age that I found myself repeatedly re-reading and finding new meanings in each time. I've never really seen anyone else discuss it, and I don't think it was very popular (I picked it up at a school book fair) but for a standalone, relatively short book that felt meaningful, it fits the bill.
This book personally attacked me and committed war crimes on my soul. I am still upset that it was mandatory reading for 11-year-olds at my school and I will never, ever read it again. I'd rather read Old Yeller a thousand times. There, I said it! :'(
(I've actually never read Old Yeller and probably should. The Disney film, and its sequel Savage Sam, aren't like Disney movies today.)
The yearling and where the red fern grows are in the same category as old yeller
Okay I promise to keep it to standalone books this time, and most of these I've read this year.
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut
Caravans by James A. Michener
A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Travels With Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
Severance by Ling Ma
Most people know of Slaughterhouse V and Breakfast of Champions, but don't sleep on Mr. Rosewater, it is probably my favorite book of his.
Caravans was spellbinding and enchanting in the least corny way. The text and story are brutal but such a fascinating insight into Afghanistan history from a 1940s-1960s perspective.
A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion is such a tragic memoir about the unexpected loss of her husband. Spectacular writing, sad story.
Travels With Charley is a fascinating book by Steinbeck, a memoir, and not one of his most well known books but he paints a beautiful portrait of America and it's people and so many aspects of it still ring true in today's modern world.
Severance was a book I could not put down, it's like a (very) mini "The Stand" in subject matter (pandemic vibes), but thematically it stands alone. It was written in 2017 as well before COVID and so much of it feels eerily prophetic.
These threads were fun, thank you!
I'm curious what makes God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater your favorite Vonnegut. I'm a big Vonnegut fan myself but I read Rosewater for the first time this year and was very let down by the ending in particular.
Oh jeez, I've read so many other books since reading this one that I am having a hard time remembering the ending. What I do remember was that I enjoyed what it had to say about community, capitalism, wealth, and greed. Topics I've been thinking about a lot lately. I found Mr. Rosewater to be a more interesting than usual character as well.
I have Player Piano on my 'to read' shelf as my next Vonnegut read and I'm very excited to see about what he has to say about automation and artificial intelligence. I'll be circling back to the rest of his books again in the future for sure, I'm sure there's so much I missed the first time around. His concepts still elude me at times.
Have you seen the Unstuck in Time documentary? I thought it was really good.
I haven't yet, but it's on my watchlist.
Player Piano will also be my next Vonnegut, as it turns out.
What I disliked about the ending of the book is basically that Eliot blacks out for a year while he's in treatment, and when he comes to, he has the solution to the secret plot that's been happening in the background of the entire novel. And that's how it ends. It just feels way too neat and abrupt for me.
That's a fair take, I can't remember being too perturbed by the ending myself though. Endings in general can be so tricky. I have a hard time judging books. Often—in what I suppose is naivety—I put legendary craftspeople like authors such as Vonnegut on a pedestal and put this metaphorical shield up where I view their work objectively and feel like whatever they create must be genius, and should exist on its own merit, free from any critique on my end. But I often feel in the minority in that regard.
The documentary humanized him in a way too, he's always been this reverential figure to me, almost mythical. Especially since I was quite young when he passed and can still remember where I was when the news came in regarding his death but being too young to read his books at the time. When I finally got around to it this year I guess the pedestal was still standing.
You may get to Player Piano before me, but interested in what you think of it when you finish!
So great to see big Vonnegut fans.
A memory I will always cherish is when in high school, I went to one of his readings in Indianapolis. It was at an art center and displayed his (and I think his son's?) visual art as well. His reading was a passage from Beowulf in the original Old English. Lovely. I usually try to get some me-time after a while at events to decompress, so I went outside and around to the side of the building. It took me a bit to realize KV was having a cigarette beside me. We made brief eye contact and nodded to each other, said nothing, and just...coexisted until he left after a bit. Quick smile as he left.
It can sound embellished, I know, but it really was impactful being mutually seen by/with a personal favorite. It was like having real-life confirmation of that conspiratorial and personal feeling with the author while reading their sardonic handiwork. I know he left Indiana for NY and barely looked back, but wow, talk about flipping over the "don't meet your idols" maxim. Maybe it's "don't talk to your idols when you meet them, if you can tell they don't want to talk." :) it's really influenced my way of being, hence the username I've had since around that time on various platforms.
Anyway, thanks for setting off a trip down memory lane. My favorite shifts with my memory, but a consistent favorite is Jailbird. Time for a reread.
The Goblin Emperor is fantastic. Technically there are two (soon to be three) other books set in the same world, released after The Goblin Emperor, but they tell an almost completely unrelated story.
It's pretty much impossible to explain what the book is about without spoiling the twist at the very beginning of the book (seriously, first five pages), but I'll say this:
It's about a guy, Maia, who is about as just-a-guy as a guy can get while being an emperor's son. He's fourth in line to inherit the throne, lives far away from the rest of his family, and is never destined (nor desired) to become the emperor...
Very beginning spoilers
So you can probably guess what happens... he becomes the emperor.
And that's it. That's what the book is about: the surprisingly not fun, not sexy, not safe, very stressful experience of suddenly being thrust onto the throne and becoming responsible for an entire empire.
The book is an absolute treat. It has little action, and isn't fast-paced, at times taking readers through the protagonist's life day-by-day. It does have its fair share of intrigue though, and its detailed examination of Maia's life under his new circumstances more than makes up for a lack of sorcery and swordplay.
The world is interesting, and the society the book portrays is refreshingly intricate. The books rides through highs and lows of thrill, depression, and heartwarming moments. It's the only book I've ever read that, after reaching the last page, I couldn't help but immediately start again. It's my 10/10.
Once again, I have to thank @RheingoldRiver whose review of the book convinced me to read it.
I recommend reading her review if you're okay with the same first-page spoilers I've included here, but even if you aren't and don't, I still want to highlight this part of her review:
It's such a cleverly written, fun, and interesting book.
I loved the Goblin emperor.
Voltaire's Candide helped me in my terrible 20's cope with the world at large. I need to go back and reread it
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. If I see a used copy, I buy it so I can give it away.
Letters to a young poet by Rilke. 80.pages.
The Death of Ivan Illych is one of the most impactful stories I have ever read. 86 pages
Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck. 95 pages. I will never forget that ending.
And every morning the way home gets longer and longer by Frederick Backman. 97 pages. A humane and moving story of Loss of capacity in old age.
Night by Elie Wiesel at 120 pages. An intense Nazi concentration camp memoir.
Animal farm by George Orwell 141 pages,
The hidden wound by Wendell Berry. 150 pages. Bel Hooks used to teach this memoir of growing up in a family with a history of keeping slaves, when she taught university classes on racism in the US.
Call of the wild by Jack London is only 173 pages.
I haven't read this one in decades, but the Ronin by William Jennings was published in 1968. It was designed for emotional impact. It's loosely based on a Zen Myth. 159 pages.
Giovanni's room by James Baldwin. Baldwin is a brilliant writer. Life and love and tragedy in an underground gay subculture in Paris. 178 pages.
Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
It's about a princess that goes on a quest to a sorcerer's tower to beg for the help promised to her family in the past.
It's also about the last living anthropologist from the crew of his spaceship awakening from cryo to a native of the planet at his door.
It has one of the most poignant and evocative descriptions of depression I've ever read.
two quotes, mild spoilers
And
To be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers
Astronauts can survive new, harsh environments due to advances in suspended animation, this crew goes to explore space on 4 different planets seeking and documenting actual extraterrestrial life. Idk I love what she writes (and have heard she's writing again!) and this one has an exploration of what happens to people all alone in the dark.
Foster by Clair Keegan was so touching and heartbreaking and beautiful to me. I cried a number of times while reading it through one night.
Way Station by Clifford D. Simak. 210 pages. Simak's most well renowned novel and winner of the Hugo Award in 1964. Simak has a very cozy comfortable writing style often depiction low key rural living, here combined with a sense of wonder from a much greater populated universe. It is a really unique novel in the science fiction genre.
The Chimes by Charles Dickens is a timely short story and weighs in at just over 110 pages. It's much more grim than A Christmas Carol that proceeded it, but is also a more critical examination of wealthy society at the time. Someone on GoodReads wrote a great review here.
I posted this other recommendation in a thread a while back, so just copy-pasting it here:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a <200 page novel written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who actually was sent to a gulag. But the story is more about the hope and positivity of persevering in a world that is not only brutal, but also extremely monotonous. Yet Ivan Denisovich remarkably perseveres because he keeps a healthy (and seemingly upbeat) attitude, appreciates life, and rationalizes ways to help others and accept help in return, in spite of all the hardships. Really, skim the reviews on GoodReads because it's a great book!
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Clear, straightforward, and amazing detail of life in the Gulag.
One of my favourite books is a novella: All My Friends Are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufman
Any description of the plot feels like too much because it handles everything with such a light touch. Tom is a normal guy living in Toronto, his friends all have mundane "superpowers", and the book is broadly about his relationship with The Perfectionist with asides to illustrate or just describe various other people's "powers". It just has a vaguely surreal yet realistic vibe that I can't adequately put into words.
Stardust
I don’t know what it is about it, but I love every single adaptation of this storyline. I have the full length audiobook, an abridged dramatized audiobook, and the movie. I will admit that it has some weird themes around Stockholm syndrome, but for some reason that has never soured me from the story. The storyline is just fantastic.
Bridge to Terabithia
I will say I don’t remember this story well, but it was absolutely moving. I should probably reread it at some point.
The Highest Treason by Randall Garrett. 60 pages - 1961 Science Fiction about a war between Humans/Aliens. I just happened to give it a shot and knocked it out during a boring lecture. Had a pretty cool ending that caught me a little off-guard.
Project Gutenberg link
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse - I suggest the librivox recording if anyone prefers audiobooks. It’s a quick and beautiful read.
The Divine Farce - Michael Graziano
A Short Stay in Hell - Steven L. Peck
Both deal with finding meaning in a meaningless eternal existence. You can read both in one sitting.