Who doesn’t love books you can read in one sitting? If you’re looking to jumpstart your reading, quickly add a few books to your Goodreads Challenge tally, or are prepping for a readathon, this list of short books you can read in a day has got you covered. One of my guiding reasons for creating and curating this list is many of the other lists of short books cover the same ground. A lot of the same books are listed over and over, and there’s really not much contemporary fiction listed. Meanwhile, we are experiencing a renaissance of shorter books. It’s increasingly common that writers are tackling the perhaps bolder challenge of writing brief narratives rather than big epics which, don’t get me wrong, I love. Much like a dissertation or thesis that demands literature reviews that primarily reference the most recent (5 years or under) research, I wanted this list to capture what’s going on in fiction and nonfiction today. This meant choosing to leave out some of the stalwarts of short books articles. I wanted to give you the very best of what’s being published today, along with some choice older books that don’t get as much love.
This list of short books also includes diverse writers, which isn’t always the case when you read yet another article that recommends the same classic works by the same people. Also, it’s important to me that I recommend books that I myself have read and admire. Over 50% of the books on this list I have personally read. This isn’t just a regurgitation of someone else’s book descriptions. I also try to make it fun. I’m including clips from other reviews and fun facts and, in an experimental departure from my usual longwinded style, just boiling it down to the essentials of what these short books are about and why you might want to pick them up. Get your TBR ready, get your library record up in the next tab, and let’s read some books perfect for your next readathon!
(1)
The Nest by Kenneth Oppel (2015)
Fiction – Middle Grade / Children’s Literature
256 pages
In this eerie and enchanting novel from the Printz Award-winning author of the Silverwing series, a boy strikes a deal with some menacing wasps to replace his sickly younger brother with a healthy baby. A chilling look at jealousy, disability, and, ultimately, love, Oppel’s novel is a quick read that will stay with you long afterward. The Nest garnered starred reviews in Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and The Horn Book, who praised Oppel’s “tight and focused story about the dangers of wishing things back to normal at any cost.” In my review here on Broke By Books, I wrote of how this book impacted me on a personal level: “When I finished “The Nest” sometime before noon, I felt shaken, shattered with how much it teased out some of my secret fears and anxieties. As a person with a disability/chronic illness, its themes were immediate to issues I have with my identity as a “sick kid.” It was a nearly upsetting read, but ultimately, it made me feel hopeful and helped me process my life as a differently abled person.” The book was also a 2017 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award Nominee (2017)
How to read it: Add The Nest to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(2)
The Vegetarian by Han Kang, tr. Deborah Smith (2016)
Fiction
208 pages
From South Korea’s Han King and originally published in 2007, a chilling story told by three narrators close to a woman who one day decides to become a vegetarian after a disturbing dream. After she forsakes meat, Yeong-hye refuses to budge from her mission even as the people around her try to pull her back from the brink of increasingly extreme behavior and submit to their discipline. In 2018, the New York Times Book Review named The Vegetarian one of its 15 “remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.” I also listed it as one of my top 5 books that I read in 2017 for my hometown’s newspaper.
How to read it: Add The Vegetarian to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(3)
American Housewife by Helen Ellis (2016)
Fiction – Short Stories
208 pages
The American housewife is an iconic character in the American mythos, from the Stepford Wives to Mad Men‘s Betty Draper. In 12 darkly comic short stories, Helen Ellis takes a prismatic look at this stock figurine, with a focus on women who are housewives without children, in stories that challenge our notions of feminism, domesticity, and happiness. The Washington Post applauded this “catchy, smart and very, very funny” collection whose housewives “share Ellis’s wry sensibility. But as comical as they are—and they are very—these women also have a sly depth.” Helen Ellis runs a snarky humorous Twitter account in the voice of an American housewife. I wrote a book discussion guide, with summary, analysis, discussion questions, and a review roundup here on Broke by Books, where I named it one of my Best Books of 2016.
How to read it: Add American Housewife to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(4)
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (2018)
Fiction
213 pages
This tiny novel is packed with insights about life, death, and companionship. An unnamed writer is left the beloved great dane of her longtime close friend and fellow writer after he takes his life. Despite living in an apartment building that bans dogs, and despite her other reservations (she’s a cat person), the author adopts the dog as they both grieve together. This poignant novel is also peppered with insights about the literary scene and what it means to be a professional writer in the publishing and teaching industries. NPR noted with awe how Nunez seamlessly orchestrated multiple themes: “Nunez deftly turns this potentially mawkish story into a penetrating, moving meditation on loss, comfort, memory, what it means to be a writer today, and various forms of love and friendship — including between people and their pets.” Nunez has written about animals before. Her 2007 novel Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury brings the real-life story of Mitz, a marmoset monkey adopted by Leonard Woolf, husband to Virginia and member of the prestigious Bloomsbury literary scene.
How to read it: Add The Friend to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(5)
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg (2017)
Fiction
224 pages
Andrea, the thirty-something heroine of the sixth novel by Jami Attenberg (The Middlesteins, Saint Mazie), has woken up in her life and stunned at how she got to where she is now. Once a promising artist, Andrea’s life took a detour when she moved to New York and got a job in an advertising agency. With her brother and sister-in-law’s daughter suffering from a life-threatening illness, Andrea tries to find her way out of the wilderness and back to some kind of hope. Bustle nails the seesaw tragicomic vibe of All Grown Up: “Jami Attenberg will have you laughing, cursing, and ranting right along with her book’s vibrant main character, Andrea—a 39-year-old single New Yorker trying to figure out how to hold her life together. (And trying to figure out what ‘having your life together’ even means.) This book has got serious spunk.” Attenberg draws upon her experiences traveling all over; over a decade, she lived in 26 different homes, she revealed in a profile in the Guardian. The book also made my list of best books of 2017.
How to read it: Add All Grown Up to your TBR on Goodreads, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(6)
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler (2016)
Fiction
237 pages
Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler (Breathing Lessons) adapts Shakespeare’s classic comedy The Taming of the Shrew to contemporary Baltimore in this witty and smart look at modern courtship. When her scientist father hatches a plot to marry his lab assistant, the Russian Pyotr, so he can obtain a green card, prickly Kate Battista is forced to choose between willful spinsterhood and wounded pride or a life that seems measurably not that bad, especially when chemistry alights between them. It’s not easy to update a Shakespearean comedy for today, but Tyler pulled it off, as the New York Times praised, “Novels such as Anne Tyler’s, which are so precise and current, are like photographs or digital clock faces that tell us where we are and where we are coming from at the same time. Vinegar Girl is an earthy reflection of this fleeting moment, both lively and thoughtful. Vinegar Girl is one book in the Hogarth Shakespeare project, wherein modern authors are asked to reinterpret a Shakespeare play. Other works in the series include Margaret Atwood’s Hag Seed (from The Tempest) and Jo Nesbo’s Macbeth (from, of course, Macbeth). A similar effort is the Austen Project, which updates Jane Austen’s beloved novels in contemporary courtship. Vinegar Girl made my list of best books of 2016.
How to read it: Add Vinegar Girl to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(7)
The Misfit’s Manifesto by Lidia Yuknavitch (2017)
Nonfiction – Memoir
120 pages
Based on her TED talk, memoirist Lidia Yuknavitch (The Chronology of Water) writes an ode to nonconformity by weaving her misfit history and those of her writing students and notable artists, writers, and creatives. For anyone who has felt like they never fit in, The Misfit Manifesto is a searing manifesto that will inspire a rebel stirring in your weird little heart. From New York Times bestselling novelist Hope Edelman (Motherless Daughters):“The antidote to feeling alienated is to find one’s tribe and stand together. Lidia Yuknavitch defines and offers a shared space for everyone ever labeled ‘oddball,’ ‘weirdo’ or ‘freak.’ Hard-earned sparks of wisdom spring off every page. A love letter to non-conformity, this book is going to change lives.” You can watch the TED talk that Lidia Yuknavitch based her book on here.
How to read it: Add The Misfit Manifesto to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(8)
Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard (2017)
Nonfiction – Essays
128 pages
This collection of two essays adapted from lectures given by the author of the acclaimed SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome is a commanding analysis of our very long tradition of silencing women. Interestingly, Cambridge Classics professor Beard’s two essays span before and after the United States’ 2016 presidential election and look at the vilification of Hillary Clinton and the appeal of sexist Donald Trump through this lens. Famously targeted by online trolls and harassers, Beard’s quest to defend her name and that of other women is chronicled in a lengthy New Yorker profile.
How to read it: Add Women & Power to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(9)
Heather: The Totality by Matthew Weiner (2017)
Fiction
138 pages
Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner’s novella is a haunting study of lust, power, and the objectification of women. Set in the upper crest of New York’s wealthiest, Heather, the Totality traces the devastating effect one beautiful teen girl, the titular Heather, has over the men in her life as their obsession escalates to shocking degrees. Though the novella is just 138 pages, Weiner packs a lot in, says Booklist: “Written in descriptive and illuminating scene-like snippets-though nearly free of dialogue-this one-sitting read concerns the eerily shared delusions of a privileged Manhattan family and a man who stalks the periphery of their lives…The sense of doom is sharply rendered, characters are well developed, and their motivations are finely wrought. Readers will hope for more book-form fiction from Weiner.” In the Acknowledgements, Weiner credits a who’s-who of actors and creatives who read drafts and supported him with the project, including novelist A.M. Homes (May We Be Forgiven), Jessica Pare (actress who played Megan on Mad Men), David Chase (creator of The Sopranos), and musician Regina Spektor.
How to read it: Add Heather: The Totality to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(10)
Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong (2017)
Fiction
208 pages
Rachel Khong’s debut novel is narrated by a twenty-something woman who returns home following a breakup. Ruth’s journey forward back in her hometown takes place over the course of one year and is juxtaposed against her professor father’s descent into dementia. With dark comedy, Goodbye, Vitamin balances the bittersweet and the humorous as Ruth starts over. The New York Times Book Review captured Khong’s compelling novel that’s, “told in a diary format over the year that Ruth spends at home, Goodbye, Vitamin is a quietly brilliant disquisition on family relationships and adulthood, told in prose that is so startling in its spare beauty that I found myself thinking about Khong’s turns of phrase for days after I finished reading.” A food writer, Khong was partially inspired to write Goodbye, Vitamin based on her experiences keeping a diary of everything she ate: (quoted in a Vogue profile): “I’m terrified of forgetting,” Khong admitted in a 2014 essay that appeared in Lucky Peach, the food magazine where until recently she was an editor. “If I could remember everything, I thought, I’d be better equipped; I’d be better able to make proper, comprehensive assessments—informed decisions. But my memory had proved itself unreliable, and I needed something better. Writing down food was a way to turn my life into facts: If I had all the facts, I could keep them straight. So the next time this happened I’d know exactly why—I’d have all the data at hand.” Goodbye, Vitamin was included in the Best Books of 2017.
How to read it: Add Goodbye, Vitamin to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(11)
Displacement: A Travelogue by Lucy Knisley (2015)
Graphic Novel – Memoir
168 pages
New York Times bestselling cartoonist Lucy Knisley (Relish, Something New: Tales from a Makeshift Bride) recounts her experience as a companion to her aging grandparents on a Caribbean cruise. Knisley’s cheery watercolors are set against larger existential questions of life, death, and aging, with plenty of dark comedy to lighten the mood in what the Washington Post calls a “funny and heartfelt graphic memoir.” Knisley has won praise for achieving, “an impressive balance between humor and poignancy, juxtaposing observations on the bizarre line-up of nighttime entertainment and the strangeness of her fellow passengers with thoughtful observations on aging and excerpts from her grandfather’s World War II journals” (Paper). Lucy Knisley is a graduate of the MFA program at the Center for Cartoon Studies, where my friend, Josh Kramer, also studied.
How to read it: Add Displacement to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(12)
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (1964)
Fiction
192 pages
This slim novel about George, a professor grieving the loss of his younger male lover, caused outrage when it was first published in 1964. The story, which takes place over the course of a single day, shocked audiences with its bold and unapologetic grappling with society’s paralyzing stigma towards the gay community and advocating for LGBT rights. Famed fashion designer Tom Ford’s directorial film debut adapted A Single Man for the screen in Academy Award-nominated performances by an “explosively good” Julianne Moore as Charley, a divorced woman who longs for George, her close friend to marry her. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone agreed with many critics that, “…the film belongs to Firth. Uncanny at showing the heart crumbling under George’s elegant exterior, he gives the performance of his career.”
How to read it: Add A Single Man to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(13)
The Only Great Harmless Thing by Brooke Bolander (2018)
Fiction
96 pages
This eerie, chilling, and ultimately astonishing novella intertwines two historical tragedies that occurred in close proximity during the opening of the 20th century: the slow death of women who worked in a radiation factory in Newark, New Jersey, and the electrocution of an Indian circus elephant on Coney Island. In a telling blurb, H is for Hawk author Helen MacDonald captured the experience of reading this haunting work: ““Devastatingly powerful. The Only Harmless Great Thing is a searing meditation on myth, history, and the persistence of poison in all its terrible forms. Bolander gives voice to the voiceless with such controlled and perfect fury the pages seem to char and burn as you read. It feels like an alternate Just So Story revealed to us by an ecstatic punk oracle. I can’t stop thinking about it. Nor will you.” Brooke Bolander is an up-and-coming author whose work falls into the “weird” genre of speculative fiction and pioneered by China Mievelle and Jeff VanderMeer. Bolander has already been a finalist for several prestigious awards, including the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards.
How to read it: Add The Only Great Harmless Thing to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(14)
The Grownup by Gillian Flynn (2015)
Fiction
64 pages
Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl and other excellent thrillers, writes a tight little tale about a fraudulent psychic who gets drawn into the life of one of her wealthy customers who is convinced her house is haunted. When the psychic checks out her tale, though, she realizes she might be able to sense a sinister supernatural power after all. More than 33,000 Goodreads users have rated The Grownup at 4 stars or higher. Flynn’s creepy short tale won the mystery genre’s elite Edgar Award for Best Short Story in 2015.
How to read it: Add The Grownup to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(15)
The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang (2018)
Graphic Novel – Fiction
288 pages
I love this adorable and swoonworthy graphic novel that depicts the forbidden feelings that develop between a cross-dressing Belgian prince and the dressmaker who clothes him in her bold, beautiful designs. This “unique and thoroughly modern fairy tale. . . . a great story about being true to yourself and the kind of companionship you can find when you do” (Nerdist) is saturated in gorgeous colors and dreamy scenery from turn of the century Paris. Jen Wang is a Los Angeles-based artist who has illustrated Adventure Time comics and In Real Life, a YA graphic novel about gaming co-written with Cory Doctorow.
How to read it: Add The Prince and the Dressmakers to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(16)
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman (1998)
Nonfiction – Essays
162 pages
Of all the books I recommend, this is among the ones I recommend the most. Anne Fadiman’s essays detail her lifelong love of books, starting with growing up with two very passionate readers as parents and continuing on through adolescence, college, and married life with her bookish husband. If you geek out about the particulars of shelving your books, you will find in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader a fellow book nerd of the highest order. This collection is guaranteed to break you out of a book slump when you feel you’ve forgotten why you read. The Guardian found Ex Libris, “a rare and enchanting celebration of bibliophilia” in their interview with Fadiman. Fadiman is the Francis Writer in Residence at Yale University, where she teaches nonfiction writing, and has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (1997).
How to read it: Add Ex Libris to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(17)
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander (2014)
Fiction – Middle Grade / Children’s Literature
240 pages
Have you been introduced to verse novels? These novels are made of poetry. Initially, I was skeptical of reading one for my YA class in library school, but I grew to love them, and if you’re just getting started, Kwame Alexander is an excellent introduction to the form. In Crossover, Alexander’s narrator is 12-year old Josh, a basketball player competing with himself and his twin brother on and off the court. As one of many glowing reviews, Publishers Weekly awarded a star for Alexander’s deft writing: “The poems dodge and weave with the speed of a point guard driving for the basket, mixing basketball action with vocabulary-themed poems, newspaper clippings, and Josh’s sincere first-person accounts that swing from moments of swagger-worth triumph to profound pain.” The Crossover sweeped the prestigious children’s book award circuit, earning the 2015 Newbery Award Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award, among others, and has over 13,000 five-star ratings on Goodreads.
How to read it: Add The Crossover to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(18)
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (2015)
Nonfiction – Essays
176 pages
Have you ever been on the receiving end of “mansplaining”? Or had the horror of witnessed it? Historian, writer, and feminist activist Rebecca Solnit deconstructs this phenomenon, which she made famous in the titular essay, and other ways that women are marginalized in this witty and on-point collection. “Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions,” writes Salon. Solnit is the first female writer to write the “Easy Chair” column in Harper’s Magazine, a regular feature that first ran in 1851.
How to read it: Add Men Explain Things to Me to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(19)
Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire (2016)
Fiction – Fantasy
173 pages
Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children has three rules: no solicitations, no visitors, and no quests. But when this orphanage-slash-boarding house takes on Nancy, a returning resident, things start to get deviant and magical. NPR praised McGuire’s achievement in fantasy as a new classic in the genre, writing, “A jewel of a book that deserves to be shelved with Lewis Carroll’s and C. S. Lewis’ classics, even as it carves its own precocious space between them.” The first of a trilogy, Every Heart a Doorway won the 2017 Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards in the Best Novella category.
How to read it: Add Every Heart A Doorway to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(20)
Sisters by Lily Tuck (2017)
Fiction
156 pages
Lily Tuck’s quietly brilliant slow burn of a little novel asks what life is like for “the other woman.” Our unnamed narrator describes her mounting guilt and despair as the woman who a married man left his wife to be with and her relationship with his first wife. Set amidst the glitz, glamour, and weath of New York society, Sisters immerses you in a world where infidelity jeopardizes one’s social standing. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly gushed, “With her signature clipped and measured prose, National Book Award winner Tuck’s new novel is elegant, raw , and powerful…Though compact enough to be read in one sitting, it’s also magnificent enough to be reread and renewed.” Lily Tuck won the National Book Award for her novel The News from Paraguay in 2004.
How to read it: Add Sisters to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(21)
Landscape with Invisible Hand by M.T. Anderson (2017)
Young Adult – Science Fiction
149 pages
From the National Book Award winning author of Feed, a weirdly wonderful work of dystopian literature about what happens after aliens invade Earth. Adam, our narrator, just wants to live a normal teen life, but an alien invasion has thrown everything for a loop and threatened his intended career as a painter. While Adam and his family try to survive on limited rations and the new strict guidelines on the economy and government, he still manages to find the beauty to depict in his paintings. “In short vignettes titled as if they are pieces of fine art, the bleakness of this new reality is expertly rendered…Resplendent with Anderson’s trademark dry, sarcastic wit, this brief, complicated read serves as a scathing social commentary and, as the title indicates, an interrogation of free market economics,” writes Kirkus in a starred review. There are clear parallels between Adam’s world and the American political climate, Anderson recognizes, but in an interview with Entertainment Weekly he reveals he had actually been working on the book several years before it was published and admitted, “If anything, I was worried that it would actually be irrelevant by the time it was published. And instead, a lot of the elements have just become more relevant and more extreme — much to my chagrin.”
How to read it: Add Landscape with Invisible Hand to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(22)
Calvin by Martine Leavitt (2015)
Young Adult Fiction
181 pages
This tender and big-hearted novel about mental illness is anchored in our hero, Calvin, who felt a connection to the famous Calvin and Hobbes comic strips by Bill Watterson and has felt attached to them ever since. Calvin’s schizophrenia makes him believe that Calvin, the tiger character, is real, and that all of his problems could be solved if he can just convince Watterson to write one last strip. Calvin and his best friend, Susie, undertake a dangerous quest to track down Watterson and find some closure. “The novel has a fresh, funny voice that never diminishes the seriousness of schizophrenia,” Booklist writes. “Leavitt delivers an imaginative exploration of mental illness, examining what’s real and what’s true in this magical world.” (starred review) Leavitt, the author of 10 books, lives in Alberta, Canada, and teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts’ program in Writing for Children and Young Adults.
How to read it: Add Calvin to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(23)
The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the “Alt-Right” by Jon Ronson (2016)
Nonfiction
48 pages
Bestselling author Jon Ronson (So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, The Psychopath Test) is one of my favorite writers as his books are always a reliably entertaining and thoughtful read. Here Ronson publishes an extended essay as a Kindle Single about his experience covering the 2016 Republican Convention and the nomination of Donald Trump. Ronson grapples with a sense of personal responsibility as he once profiled a younger Alex Jones, founder of the conspiracy site Infowars and influential supporter of Trump, and now sees what Jones has done with the fame Ronson lent him. The Elephant in the Room garnered a ringing endorsement from Parks and Rec actor Nick Offerman: “This is a deeply salient read.” Ronson is known for covering fringe extremists and subcultures, from the community of online trolls and doxxers in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed to the people who work in the niche industry of online pornography in The Butterfly Effect.
How to read it: Add The Elephant in the Room to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(24)
The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, translated by Ted Goossen (2014)
Fiction
96 pages
With vivid illustrations by artist Chip Kidd, The Strange Library is an excellent introduction to the dreamy, magical world of Haruki Murakami. In this novella, an unlikely trio—a shy boy, a tortured sheep man, and a strange girl—work to escape a creepy library.
The Boston Globe notes that, “Murakami’s wry metaphysical play feels no less diffuse in this concentrated form. His usual fascinations—the instability of identity, the uses of knowledge, the oppression of memory—fade in with just enough time to fade out, offering just enough light to coax you forward, deeper into the dream.” If you love book covers, you’ll fall for illustrator Chip Kidd’s bold and inventive cover designs. You can check out some of his most notable covers from a long career for authors like Oliver Sacks, Donna Tartt, Michael Crichton, and David Sedaris in his online portfolio.
How to read it: Add The Strange Library to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
(25)
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (2017)
Fiction
120 pages
This charming novella from Britain’s celebrated Alan Bennett (The History Boys) imagines the Queen of England becoming an avid reader after her beloved corgi dogs lead her to a mobile library that introduces her to the pleasures of books.
The New York Times Book Review calls The Uncommon Reader, “A delicious and very funny what-if…. a delightful little book that unfolds into a witty meditation on the subversive pleasures of reading…. Mr. Bennett has written a captivating fairy tale … a tale that showcases its author’s customary élan and keen but humane wit.” Tony-winning playwright Alan Bennett has voiced a cameo character of himself on the American animated comedy Family Guy, according to a Guardian profile that talks about his legacy.
How to read it: Add The Uncommon Reader to your Goodreads TBR, borrow from your local library, and find on Amazon.
What are some of your favorite short reads? Leave a comment below!
A quick note: This post contains affiliate links, which means this bog receives a commission if you purchase on Amazon. However, for each book I’ve also included links to Goodreads and to WorldCat, an online library catalogue that will find a copy at the nearest library to you. Happy reading!
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