I started reading last year, mostly productivity stuff, but now I’m really looking to jump into fiction to unwind after a long week of uni, studying, and work. I need something to help me relax during the weekends without feeling like I’m working.
I’d love some recommendations for books that are short enough to finish in a day but still hit hard and are totally worth it. No specific genre preferences right now. I’m open to whatever. Looking forward to seeing what you guys suggest. Thank you very much in advance.
I would recommend checking out audio books as a medium for reading. It allows you to increase the speed to whatever works for you, so 2x for me, and listen to a lot more in a day. It also frees you to listen at any times you have nothing cognitive happening, so dishes, washing, cleaning, etc.
As for single day books, the first book of the Bobiverse series by Dennis E Taylor. I loved the whole series including the recently released 5th book and the first is only 9.5 hours at normal speed, so about 4.75 at double speed.
Also All Systems Red is the first book in the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. The perspective of a SecUnit, a type of sentient cyborg, which has hacked its own programming and removed its limiters so it can act freely. This means no guard rails, no rules, no limits, which results in lots of TV shows being watched and avoiding humans. It is snarky, fun, and interesting. It comes in at 3.5 hours normal time, so 1.75 at double speed.
The Fifth Season may take a bit longer than a day, but it’s worth it.
The Hornblower stories are also excellent. They might hit a bit simpler – the characters are a bit more heroic, a bit less complicated. IMO both are worth reading, but they hit a bit different even though they sail through similar waters (I was going to say ‘covers the same ground’, ha!)
Love that book
It’s not a short book as OP requested. However the episodic nature fits his requirements. The genre is comedic fantasy.
It’s a super generic choice, but Catch-22 (if you’re looking for something less generic, Heller also wrote the more obscure Something Happened that focuses his satirical prowess on 1960s family life, but that’s a longer book). It’s just so effortlessly funny.
i tried to read this more than once to figure out what the hype is, and it never made me care what happens next. every page to the halfway point is a boring slog for me-- what am i missing? i consider vonnegut’s cat’s cradle to be good satire. yossarian just seems like a whiny bitch to me, the type of person i go out of my way to avoid irl
Yossarian is kind of a whiny bitch, but it’s because he’s trying to cover up his exhaustion and terror with anything that will keep him out of harm’s way. What I liked about it was all of the silly jokes that come back to hit hard in the second half of the book.
i intend to give it one more try–it wouldn’t be the first book that took multiple attempts for me to start liking
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The Broken Earth series, Enders game series (the first 5 books about Ender), American Gods, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and the follow up A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, The Kingkiller Chronicle (we’ve been waiting 10+ yrs for the final book 3, some folks are pretty irked atp, but it will be ok). If you want YA beach reading, anything by Seanan McGuire / Mira Grant for easy fun books about fairies, cryptids, and zombies.
Rn I’m currently rereading The Inheritance Cycle, it’s fantasy, but it goes very in depth, there are your different races, elves, “orcs”, dwarves, you got dragons, there are different languages that the author made, its very good. Of course I might be biased since I’m rereading it rn lmao
Edit: I did not read the bit about reading it in a day. I guess you could if you read fast
For you, I’d suggest ‘I, Robot,’ by Isaac Asimov.
It’s a short story collection with a bunch of logic puzzles. the writing is clear and easy to follow and the conundrums are engaging.
If we’re doing short stories, I have two recommendations:
- Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others.
- Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House.
I’ve only read Ted Chiang’s exhalation, but one of the stories was the biggest thinker I’ve seen, and another was an emotional gut punch (in a good way)
The ratio of lasting impact to content length of his short stories is insane. He has no business having such compelling works being readable in a lunch break.
Asimov is so, so good. I first got into him by reading his collection of short stories Robot Dreams. It’s really approachable, and because it’s all short stories there’s no long term commitment or sense of letdown if you decide to stop reading halfway through the book.
Sally was particularly interesting (though not the best story in the book). I was working at a self driving car startup when I read it, and it was amazing that in 1954 Asimov predicted robotaxis that we were trying to build.
I’m sure he’s happy somewhere, knowing people are still enjoying his writing.
Cryptonomicon. It’s not really a short book, but it’s easily digestible as it has clear divisions where it is suitable to take a break.
The way the WW2 plot and the 90’s-plot intertwine is so much fun to read, especially since the 90’s characters are descendants of the ww2 characters.
And of course GEB Kavistik would grow up to be a pretentious cunt…
I disagree, I think Cryptonomicon is a very heavy book, might be too much for someone just starting, I’ve been slowly reading it for months, but I end up getting tired of it and reading something else to rest from it before going back and end up forgetting half of the characters and what they were doing.
Fully agreed very heavy.
Yes, it was interesting and I’m planning to reread it sometime soon, but no it’s not a quick easy read. I’d recommend snow crash or the diamond age, they’re both fun and easy books.
Not sure about the length, but Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End is one of my favorite works of speculative fiction that really aged well so far.
Robert Silverberg’s “The man in the maze” is a cool science-fiction book based on the Greek play Philoctetes. Iirc it’s a very short story (maybe about one or two hundred pages), I don’t remember the exact length but I recall reading it in one sitting. It is a very character-driver story where the “maze” itself is an allegory about mankind, isolation and disability, but it is very much enjoyable as a casual read as well.
The protagonist (“man in the maze”) is an astronaut who has been somehow cursed to always radiate its emotions in such a way that others, even his family, find repulsive, so he self-exiles to a remote and long-dead planet to live the rest of his life in isolation. But when an alien species makes hostile contact with humans, he is needed again, as his “curse” is the only way to properly communicate with them and maybe convince them that humans are sentient beings and thus their equals.
“Best” often is a literary work that can be slow to read and/or very long. You want stuff that is short and quick, which is fine, I read a lot of fanfiction for that purpose. But I’m going to recommend Pohl and Kornbluth’s “The Space Merchants” and their other short novels from that era (1950s). Their cynicism is absolutely prescient. The Space Merchants is about a world run by advertising agencies. A quick read while hard hitting.
Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf is a short book about the adventures of an alienated young man in a big city. Hesse also wrote a really good novella about Buddha titled Siddharta.
Ray Bradbury’s Mars Chronicles is a collection of short stories around the settlement of Mars.
Seconding the Mars Chronicles, its one of those books that sticks with you to some degree (but I also really like Ray Bradbury so YMMV)
