How to Read a Book You Don't Have the Attention Span for?
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Struggling these days to sustain the focus yous need to read? Friend, you're non alone. Mayhap yous've always had a short attention bridge, or possibly the general state of the globe combined with the shortening winter days is making it difficult to sit down with a book and tune everything else out. If you lot've only got a little attention to spare, this probably isn't the fourth dimension to pick upward War and Peace. And that's okay! Here are 20 brusk books hand-selected for qualities that make them ideal for short attention spans.
Each book in this listicle is nether 200 pages, and to make information technology even easier, all descriptions below are under 100 words. Within each genre heading, I've arranged the books from shortest to longest. One-half fiction, half nonfiction, these short books for short attention spans range from literary fiction to sci-fi to essays to illustrated humor. No thing what you're in the mood to read, I hope you lot find solace and escape in i of these books.
Short Novels for Brusque Attending Spans
Fair Play by Tove Jansson, Translated from the Finnish past Thomas Teal
100 pages
Mari and Jonna are two artists who live on opposite ends of a shared apartment. Their domicile is a mannerly metaphor for their relationship; they accept lived together in a committed partnership for decades, yet they each understand the other'south need for private space to withdraw and work. This slim novel is substantially a collection of interconnected brusque stories, offer snapshots of the two women doing life together. Information technology brings into focus the full range of petty disagreements and placidity kindnesses that come to define such devoted relationships.
La Bastarda past Trifonia Melibea Obono, Translated from the Castilian by Lawrence Schimel
120 pages
An orphaned teen in Fundamental Africa is drawn into a tight-knit circle of queer girls who one time defended her gay uncle. She begins exploring her ain sexuality in rebellion against her overbearing grandmother and their strict Fang civilization. Aggrandize your reading horizons in one sitting with this novella from the Feminist Press, the first book past a woman from Equatorial Republic of guinea to be translated into English.
Convenience Store Adult female by Sayaka Murata, Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori
163 pages
Keiko Furukura has never felt like she belongs. At 18 she takes a job at a convenience store—and continues working there for 18 years. At 36, she'due south perfectly content to spend her days serving customers and organizing shelves, but mounting pressures from her family and friends to pursue a "normal" life send her on a dangerous spiral outside of her comfort zone. I read this novella without stopping, totally captivated by Keiko's unique graphic symbol and increasingly bizarre, desperate attempts to achieve the appearance of normalcy.
Dept. of Speculation past Jenny Offill
179 pages
Dept. of Speculation is a portrait of a marriage, equanimous as a collage of moments, thoughts, and visits to "the Piddling Theater of Hurt Feelings." Our narrator is a witty woman known only to united states of america every bit "the wife," a writer who exchanged her aspirations of being an "fine art monster" for matrimony and motherhood. Her keen observations relate the trials and triumphs of this life as it plays out. Jenny Offill has the kind of prose style that absorbs you so completely that you'll need to remind yourself to come for air.
Love Commission Members by Julie Schumacher
181 pages
This delightfully funny novel is written entirely in letters of recommendation by Jason Fitger, an overworked English professor in an underfunded department whose once-promising writing career has fizzled out. Now, his greatest literary creations are the increasingly sarcastic and absurd letters he writes for colleagues and students, which collectively tell a tale of his descent into existential despair. The epistolary format makes this an ideal book for short attention spans, every bit you can dive in for just a letter of the alphabet or ii at a time or breeze through the whole novel before you know it.
Cherry at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
196 pages
This novella opens in Brooklyn at the coming-of-age ceremony of 16-year-old Tune. It and then stretches back in fourth dimension to tell the stories of her parents and grandparents, and the life-altering decisions in their teen years that shaped the grade of their adult lives. If you lot're craving an intergenerational family saga but don't have the attending bridge for the door-stopping tomes this genre entails, Jacqueline Woodson has you covered. At less than 200 pages, this magical book is somehow bigger on the inside.
Short Speculative Fiction Books for Short Attending Spans
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Translated from the French past Richard Howard
83 pages
A pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince who asks him to describe a sheep. If by some take a chance yous haven't read The Little Prince yet, what'south stopping yous? Literally nothing. Information technology's under 100 pages and total of pictures, yet still manages to be one of the most profound stories of dearest, friendship, and meaning-making that I accept ever read. And should any of you object by proverb "But it's for children!" may I then suggest that you need this book more than most?
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
128 pages
A woman trapped in a tiresome marriage meets an amphibious human being escaped from a nearby research facility, who she takes as her lover. Lately this novella has often been compared to Guillermo del Toro's moving-picture show The Shape of H2o, but this nether-historic piece of work was published 35 years earlier and can actually be read in less time than information technology would take you to lookout the motion-picture show. Plus, this sea monster talks, so it's honestly more like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, if Frankenstein'south monster had a niggling more luck in love.
Landscape with Invisible Hand past G.T. Anderson
149 pages
When vuvvs colonize globe, they bring with them technology, avant-garde medicine, and a fascination with vintage human culture. Aspiring artist Adam and his girlfriend Chloe profit from this past performing 1950s-fashion human being dates for their captive alien audience. They presently beginning to despise each other merely are forced to keep upwardly the façade, equally vuvv technology has rendered well-nigh earthen jobs obsolete without altering the planet's brutal capitalist arrangement. This intriguing futuristic fantasy novella offers wry commentary on privilege, form, economics, and the future of piece of work.
The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes
166 pages
The Deep explores the mythology of the wajinru, the mermaid-like descendants of pregnant Africans thrown overboard from slave ships. Information technology follows Yetu, the historian of her people who stores their commonage memories and so they can alive unencumbered by their traumatic origins—until it becomes besides much for her to bear alone. Novelist Rivers Solomon adjusted the story from a song of the same name by the rap grouping clipping., whose members include Hamilton star Daveed Diggs. The book skips over the dense capacity typically required for fantasy world-building, instead offer readers with short attention spans just a glimpse.
Curt Nonfiction Books for Short Attention Spans
Hither Is New York by Due east.B. White
58 pages
Here Is New York is dearest writer E.B. White'south love letter of the alphabet to the urban center. Though written in the summer of 1948, his reflections on the magnetic pull of this island ring true for its life-long residents, commuters, and settlers even today. "The isle of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest homo concentrate on earth," he writes, "the verse form whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose total meaning will always remain elusive." Speaking from personal experience, it's the perfect length for reading during a subway ride from Midtown to fundamental Brooklyn.
For Every One past Jason Reynolds
102 pages
You could phone call this book a poem, a letter of the alphabet, or a motivational voice communication, but no matter how you label information technology, For Every Ane is a push button for dreamers on the verge of leaping into a promising unknown. The concrete book is beautifully designed with simply a few lines on each page, making yous flip through like lightning as Reynolds'due south words feed some untended inner fire. "The truth is," he writes, "our dreams could be as far abroad as forever or equally shut as lunchtime"; only whether we "brand information technology" or not, he reminds us that there is "courage in trying."
A Calendar week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary by Alain de Botton
112 pages
In 2009, Alain de Botton spent a calendar week equally a "writer-in-residence" at London'south Heathrow Drome, living out the dream of people watchers everywhere. In this curt volume, he offers meditations on transitory spaces and the nature of journeys. He moves quickly through sections on departure, transit, and arrival, his reflections held together by the countless scenes he observed during his stay. With an illustrative photo on well-nigh every page, it makes for a quick, satisfying read.
New Erotica for Feminists: Satirical Fantasies of Dear, Animalism, and Equal Pay past Caitlin Kunkel, Carrie Wittmer, Fiona Taylor, and Brooke Preston
155 pages
The all-time way to explain feminist erotica is with an example: "He calls me into his office and closes the door…to promote me. He promotes me again and again. I am wild with ecstasy." Playing on mutual tropes of the genre, this collection of satirical writing invites the reader to imagine herself into fantasy worlds with things like a gender-balanced congress and Tinder dates who respect boundaries. Most of the bits are merely a few paragraphs each, making this an easy book to enjoy a petty at a fourth dimension.
100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Go Past Without Fifty-fifty Trying by Sarah Cooper
176 pages
You may know Sarah Cooper for her Donald Trump lip syncs or Netflix comedy special Everything Is Fine. Earlier becoming an cyberspace phenomenon, withal, she worked at Yahoo! and Google, where she spent a lot of time looking smart in meetings. In this book, she shares 100 hilarious illustrated tricks such as #14: "React to everything equally if y'all already knew that" and #55: "Before moving on, ask if information technology'south OK to move on." She also provides helpful charts and graphs covering of import topics similar what to do with your face (key in the Zoom era!).
Short Memoirs for Brusque Attention Spans
The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri
74 pages
In this slim essay, author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the relationship betwixt the text of a book and the jacket that clothes it. She combines insight into the history and function of book covers with personal reflections as both a reader and an author. Punctuated with stories from her girlhood, this brusk volume is a delightful read for whatever book lover who'south e'er examined a jacket and wanted to know more well-nigh how it came to exist.
Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai by Nina Mingya Powles
96 pages
A young woman raised in Australia seeks to connect to her Chinese-Malaysian heritage during a year spent studying Mandarin in Shanghai. Comprised of 11 bite-size essays, this collection offers meditative reflections on family, confinement, and belonging, intertwined with mouthwatering descriptions of noodles, dumplings, and sesame pancakes.
The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography past Deborah Levy
144 pages
After divorcing her long-time married man at the age of 50, Deborah Levy began interrogating the role of women in modern social club through a fresh lens equally she synthetic a new life for herself. She illustrates her thought processes with examples from both literature and reality, showcasing observed moments of female erasure. As she notes, "All writing is about looking and listening and paying attention to the globe." Composed of fourteen cursory essays, this is a memoir that tin be read in a unmarried sitting or beyond a dozen stolen snippets of time in the margins of life.
I'chiliad Even so Here: Black Nobility in a Earth Made for Whiteness past Austin Channing Brown
185 pages
Austin Channing Brown is a Black woman whose parents named her and so that on paper she could exist mistaken for a white man. Raised in predominantly white spaces, she had to larn how to encompass her Blackness despite being surrounded by subtle (and not-and so-subtle) anti-Blackness sentiment. In these securely personal essays, she offers insight into the prevalence of racism in churches and Christian nonprofits and recounts her journeying to fighting for racial justice within these institutions and the larger world. These brusk, digestible essays cover a lot of ground apace while still leaving the reader plenty to reflect on.
What I Talk About When I Talk Nigh Running by Haruki Murakami, Translated from the Japanese past Philip Gabriel
192 pages
Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's cursory memoir is primarily a relate of his running life, rather than his writing life. Yet he uses the sport equally a frame for illuminating the relationship between physical exercise and the cerebral creative process. If you're usually wary of writers writing almost writing, then this writer'due south memoir volition be a welcome, innovative relief.
Looking for more curt books for short attention spans? Check out these 7 one-sitting books and this list of 50 must-read books under 250 pages.
Source: https://bookriot.com/must-read-short-books/
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