5 Short Books You Can Read in One Weekend
It’s still the early months of 2024, which means many of us are at the early stages of getting on the right foot with our writing and reading goals.
(The Book That Broke My Heart)
Personally, I do not track my reading anymore. The numbers game simply doesn’t work for me, nor does it motivate me. This is another topic for another day, but I also recognize that most readers track their reading, and most set reading goals at the start of every year.
Reading “a lot” has more than one definition, but if your goal is to quantify your reading this year with more books than you’ve read in the past, these five short books will help you achieve your goal faster and will broaden your reading experience across various genres.
Here are 5 short books you can read in one weekend.
1. The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
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Genre: Literary; magical realism
Synopsis: The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief. One of these swimmers is Alice, who is slowly losing her memory. For Alice, the pool was a final stand against the darkness of her encroaching dementia. Without the fellowship of other swimmers and the routine of her daily laps she is plunged into dislocation and chaos, swept into memories of her childhood and the Japanese American incarceration camp in which she spent the war. Alice’s estranged daughter, reentering her mother’s life too late, witnesses her stark and devastating decline.
2. Shy by Max Porter
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Genre: Psychological; coming-of-age
Synopsis: This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy. You mustn’t do that to yourself Shy. You mustn’t hurt yourself like that.He is wandering into the night listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him. Got your special meds, nutcase? He is escaping Last Chance, a home for “very disturbed young men,” and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past, and the heavy question of his future. The night is huge and it hurts.
3. Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter
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Genre: Contemporary; magical realism; novel-in-stories
Synopsis: Annie, Edward, and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn’t there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. A city dweller’s dream come true! But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world. Terrace Story follows the characters who suffer these repercussions and reverberations: the little family of three, their future now deeply uncertain, and those who orbit their fragile universe. The distance and love between these characters expands limitlessly, across generations. How far can the mind travel when it’s looking for something that is gone? Where do we put our loneliness, longing, and desire? What do we do with the emotions that seem to stretch beyond the body, beyond the boundaries of life and death?
4. Luster by Raven Leilani
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Genre: Literary
Synopsis: No one wants what no one wants. And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home—though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.
5. Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory
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Genre: Short story collection; contemporary fables
Synopsis: Loory’s collection of wry and witty, dark and perilous contemporary fables is populated by people—and monsters and trees and jocular octopi—who are united by twin motivations: fear and desire. In his singular universe, televisions talk (and sometimes sing), animals live in small apartments where their nephews visit from the sea, and men and women and boys and girls fall down wells and fly through space and find love on Ferris wheels. In a voice full of fable, myth, and dream, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day draws us into a world of delightfully wicked recognitions, and introduces us to a writer of uncommon talent and imagination.
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