One of the top reasons I’ve heard for why people don’t read is because they don’t have enough time; they work full-time, have a family, and/or their schedules are otherwise filled up with extracurricular activities. In an effort to guide those who have a desire to read but not the time, I’ve compiled the following list of my top eight books under 200 pages. Feel free to let me know how many you’ve read, or if you have any other suggestions!
Animal Farm
by George Orwell
This was a book I didn’t appreciate until I was older. I remember reading it in high school and thinking, What does this book about talking animals have anything to do with the government? When I read it again at age 30, I had a completely different take-away.…
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Last night I dreamed I died and went
to hell. I have no idea why I went to hell—
I’ve been a good girl.
Well, maybe it had something to do
with my fib about the accident.
A train did not really derail.
Its caboose did not come loose
like a fishtail whipping
around, wrecking my car.
No, that fishtail was some man’s hand
a slap on passenger seat
where someone else’s—
not mine, I’ve been a good girl—
beer can sat on my lap
and then rolled all over the upholstery
and then spilled all over the floorboard
all over my smoke-filled clothes—
from his cigarettes, need I remind you
I’ve been a good girl. But the spin made me
naked, my body now misaligned
as this stranger’s hand-slap slide
down to flatten tire around
my waist, down past
my thighs like a slippery
fish out of water.…
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A frail old man treks into the hamlet, his filthy, grotesque rags covering only a miniscule portion of his body. His long hair protrudes beneath his knees, and a scent similar to that of a skunk emanates from the fragments of his crude clothing. The flesh of this man is reduced to the outlandish outlines of bones.
Upon his entrance the hamlet morphs into pure silence, the sun illuminating the various wrinkles dwelling upon his withered brown skin. The villagers evacuate to avoid his presence. Perhaps the villagers view him like a wild beast, a presence of gut-ripping fear, a monstrosity. Or perhaps the villagers view him like a fungus, a contagion of disgust and malaise.…
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The awning over the table has a hole in it; a tear that is the precise shape of nothing. Absolutely nothing the woman can think of would fit into that space. It is mid-morning, but the moon is out, a shadow-skull in the hot and brittle day. She has never seen a sky less blue.
Across from the woman sits another woman, the friend of the first woman. The friend is talking; words are climbing out of her mouth like ugly little men. The woman nods along. Ugly creatures climb out of her own mouth in response. The ugly things sit on the table. They kick off their ugly shoes. Wiggle their ugly toes. The woman looks away. She wishes there were something she wanted. Expensive sunglasses, social justice, a cheeseburger, a child… anything really.…
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Begin with a cottage on the beach,
a faded two story house,
crusted in yellow shingles,
a block from the ocean with a roof
like a Chinese pagoda
and a screened in porch on three sides.
Outside of the front door,
sea grass and slack sand,
an unfinished game from yesterday,
mallets scattered across a lawn
surrounded by a chest high hedge,
aged and bowed from
the constant salt wind.…
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The kids at school ask where my daddy is and I tell them Bird is my daddy. They say he’s not, he can’t be, because he is black and I am white. They say who did my mama marry before she had me? I say I don’t remember, and anyway Mama told me I have to be good and do what Bird says because he is my father now. They say that’s not true. He’s not Mama’s real husband either because he can’t marry Mama because she’s white. So he can’t be the boss of me.…
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Franz Kafka moved in with me today. His hair is greasy with the slime of the grave. His bald pate, colored like a palm tree in the middle of an oasis of hair, shakes dandruff sequins from the desert mirage onto the floor. His hollow eyes, the size of a vulture’s balls, penetrate me.
“Franz,” I say, “what are you doing at an hour like this? You should be in bed.”
Franz winks and smiles wide, revealing what remains of his two teeth. They are the color of ointment extracted from a baby’s behind three days after its deposit. …
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