Shortest Books on My To-Read List

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

It's a freebie! All year I've been multiple books ahead on my Goodreads goal, and now with only a few weeks left I suddenly find myself right on track, in danger of falling behind. I'm sure I'm not the only one trying to make my Goodreads goal. Pairing this with another goal to read books off my original TBR list, I'm listing out the 10 shortest books on my list — maybe I'll try to get to them before the end of the year!

1. The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain

2. The Arrival by Shaun Tan

3. The Upanishads

4. Elevating Child Care by Janet Lansbury

5. For the Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann

6. The Truth About Stories by Thomas King

7. The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

8. Shalom and the Community of Creation by Randy Woodley

9. Ain't I a Woman by bell hooks

10. Celebrating Silence by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

What are some short books you plan to read?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: Lost in the City and The Future of the Mind
Five years ago I was reading: Like Water for Chocolate, Dreams of Joy, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Ten years ago I was reading: What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

Top Ten Longest Books I've Ever Read

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

In contrast to the shortest books we've read, this week we're talking about the longest! Exact length can be tricky — page counts vary by edition, word counts vary depending on which translation you're talking about — but these are the ten that seem to be the longest of the books I've completed. (I'm not counting The Lord of the Rings, frequently featured on "longest books" lists, because I read it as three separate books.)

1. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
As with many long books, I listened to this on audio. It was interesting but unfortunately there were a lot of long philosophical passages that were a slog to get through (even listening).

2. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
I'm kind of amazed that I found the time to read this in middle school, now that I see how long it is. No wonder I broke my teacher's rule that the plot summary should be less than a page of our book report and wrote 2 1/2 pages of plot summary. (I wrote 5 pages of analysis to make up for it.)

3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
I liked this more than I expected, but there were definitely some parts that were just too long, and the book got repetitive in the second half. Longer isn't always better — sometimes you need a good editor to cut it down!

4. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
This one, amazingly, I read in one or two sittings during some very long summer days. I kind of wonder now if I accidentally read an abridged version. (It was at a library in another state, and it was before I started using Goodreads, so I can't check.) It seemed pretty long, though!

5. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
I read this on Kindle as part of a buddy read with two friends. I had to check it out from the library several times before I finished it. One friend still hasn't finished it a year later — it's not only long but can be challenging to read for long stretches!

6. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
This one I started on Kindle but I couldn't get into it until I invested in the audio version, which was worth it. There are so much layers to this story of a single cattle drive from Texas to Montana that it's no surprise McMurtry took over 900 pages to tell it.

7. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
This was one of the first books I read on Kindle, and I honestly didn't realize how long it was until I saw it in print. I didn't particularly like it, so seeing how long it was just made it feel like it had been even more of a waste of my time.

8. The Stand by Stephen King
This is another one that I turned to audio for. As I said in my review, I'm glad the audiobook is the uncut version, because if you're going to write such detailed world-building and character development, you might as well go all the way.

9. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
This one I actually read in paperback (~1470 pages), which took checking it out of the library a couple times in order to finish it. I really enjoyed it, but man was it heavy and awkward. You can keep your book smell; I would've killed for a Kindle version of this beast.

10. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
It took me about six months to get through all 60 hours of audio for this. I had tried once before on Kindle and couldn't get past the first few chapters. On audio I was able to get immersed in the story and understand how the "war" and "peace" sections alternate and eventually blend into one another.

What are the longest books you've read?

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: All Things Bright and Beautiful, Bleak House, and Midwives
Five years ago I was reading: Room, The Cuckoo's Calling, and Getting Past No
Ten years ago I was reading: The Sound and the Fury

Ten Short Books I've Read

I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is about short stories and novellas, neither of which I read very often. I've written here before about how shorter formats simply lack the kind of deep development in characters, setting, and plot that I prefer in my stories. Instead I just looked on Goodreads for any books I'd read under 150 pages that weren't plays or children's books. Here are ten in that category.

1. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
I was familiar with the contours of this story from childhood, but I didn't read the actual story until middle school, when I also got to see a performance of the play version.

2. The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy packs a lot into fewer than 100 pages with his unflinching look at the way we are led to squander the time we have and deny when the end is coming.

3. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
I read this twice in high school and never really got much out of it except for an understanding of what a "vignette" is.

4. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
I got this off my parents' bookshelf, read it in an afternoon, and remember almost nothing from it. It's some sort of philosophical metaphor for life.

5. Night by Elie Wiesel
This was the first true-life account I read of living through the Nazi Holocaust, though I've read a number of others since then. I ought to go back and read this one.

6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
I read this in high school; I don't remember it being better or worse than Steinbeck's other classic books, so I wonder if it's usually chosen for its length (specifically compared with the much-longer East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath).

7. The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Another short Steinbeck, this one less well-known. I still remember some of larger themes from this book, which isn't surprising since it was based on a Mexican folk tale, and folk tales tend to focus around universal themes in a way that will be remembered.

8. A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
This is a slim but powerful overview of the history, politics, and current-day situation of Antigua, the small Caribbean island where Kincaid grew up.

9. With Burning Hearts by Henri Nouwen
Nouwen uses the story of the travelers on the road to Emmaus to walk the reader through the parts of the Mass with fresh eyes. I'd like to reread this one.

10. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El-Saadawi
El-Saadawai minces no words in showing how a society where women have no rights is a society that forces women to do the unthinkable to survive.

What short books have you read?

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Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: A Piece of the World
Five years ago I was reading: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, The Book Thief, and Thinking, Fast and Slow
Ten years ago I was reading: The Left Hand of Darkness

Ten Books I Read in One Sitting

I'm linking up with The Broke and the Bookish for another Top Ten Tuesday.

This week's topic is books that you read in one sitting. It's pretty rare for me to have enough uninterrupted hours to sit down and read a book straight through, so some of these may have been read in more than one sitting. Regardless, they're short enough that you could sit down and read them straight through. There's some overlap here with books I picked up on a whim.

1. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
This is one of the books I picked up on a whim, in this case from the guest room bookshelf while visiting my parents one weekend. In those luxurious pre-child days I could stay in bed for another three hours to read a whole book before getting up for the day!

2. Citizen by Claudia Rankine
I listened to this the first time on audio and got through the majority of it while cleaning the apartment one evening. The second time I read it in print and read it over the course of two evenings between my son's bedtime and mine.

3. Devilish by Maureen Johnson
As I mentioned in the other post, one summer my now-husband and I stayed with his aunt in her non-air-conditioned home in New Jersey, and so I would walk to the local library for the air conditioning and stay there a good part of the day reading. This is a book I picked up to read during one of those sessions.

4. Fences by August Wilson
I don't know if I read this in one sitting the first time I read it (in high school), but I recently reread most of it during my son's afternoon nap. Plays are good for reading in one sitting since they're meant to be performed within a set amount of time.

5. for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
I'm not saying you should read this in one sitting, as it can be pretty heavy, but it's another script for a performance where you can easily get through it in a couple hours.

6. The Giver by Lois Lowry
I've talked about how I loved this so much more on rereading it as an adult, and I also couldn't put it down. I'm not sure I read it in a "sitting" so much as had it on the Kindle app on my phone and read it everywhere I went that day.

7. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
This 1000+ page book is definitely not a book you'd expect to read in one sitting, but this was another one of those hot summer days where I spent all day at the library, and so I read this cover-to-cover during the course of the day. (OK, maybe it was over two days.)

8. Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton
Last summer a friend lent this to my husband, who kept it sitting out for months because he rarely reads books. When he went on vacation with our son for a couple weeks and I was looking for a new book to start, I picked this up and read it at the kitchen table over a few cups of tea.

9. Winter of Fire by Sherryl Jordan
This past Christmas we traveled to visit my in-laws and my husband and I both got sick, so my father-in-law took our toddler out for the day and I wrapped myself in a blanket, made a cup of tea, and spent the day reading this book I'd brought with me.

10. With Burning Hearts by Henri Nouwen
Last summer I started this book after work the day I was picking up my husband and son at the airport from their aforementioned vacation, and I read it up until I had to go get in the car to get them. When I got to the airport I was early, so I sat in my car and read until I had to go inside, then I stood by baggage claim and read until they arrived. It was that good!

Which books have you read in one sitting?

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