Five Short Books That Are Better Than Most Long Books

by Mike Errico
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5 books
Did you foolishly enter into a New Year's Book Reading Challenge? Here's a hack to help reach your ill-advised goal: Read shorter books. I've compiled five titles that beat most 2-, 3-, 4-, or 500-page options. Bag your limit by Memorial Day, then read whatever you like—and don't enter into a Beach Reading Challenge because I can't help you there.
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Parade

A Folktale
Hiromi Kawakami, 2019
a short, weird little book recommended by a friend at the bar after a show of mine. Basically, a woman wakes up to find that two characters from Japanese folklore (“tengu”) have attached themselves to her and are arguing with each other. Some people can see them, some people can’t. One gets sick? I don’t even know what I’m talking about right now but it was cool. Now I’m interested in checking out her other work.

A Shining

Jon Fosse, 2023
"...yes, I'm in the forest, but then again, this isn't like how things are in a forest, is it." Lately, I've gotten really into 'the woods' as a metaphor (don’t ask), and when I read Lauren Groff’s review of this in the Guardian I walked straight to Books Are Magic, my local Brooklyn hang, to pick it up. In it, a man decides to drive his car aimlessly, ends up stuck in (yes) the woods, and is visited by cryptic apparitions. That's all I'll say. The writing is as murky and circuitous as the forest itself, and even though it's 74 pages long, you'll swear you were lost and wandering among the trees, yourself.

The Gospel of Orla

Eoghan Walls, 2023
A troubled teen plans to escape her precarious home life by bike, but in mid-flight crashes into Jesus, who is having troubles of his own finding an audience for eternal salvation in a cynical, modern world. Befitting this Northern Irish poet's roots, the language is jagged, the scenery flies, and I’ll tell you this: I doubt you’ve ever been here before. I was genuinely sad to have finished it, because I know this is the only place like it.

Bonsai

Alejandro Zambra, 2022
People read books and have sex for 83 pages. Conflicts include which character from Madame Bovary they remind each other of. Still, the ending was strangely moving.

The Writing Life

Annie Dillard, 1990
Read this and tell me if you think it’s funny. “Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?” If you just burst out laughing, you may be a writer. This book is full of gems like that, and I laughed out loud in the way one might while driving off a cliff. You know, in the good way?