Readers, this month is about to end, and how!? With only two months left before we begin 2023, we are rushing to find as many books to read as possible. Because how could we not? We still have books to read in order to reach our Goodreads reading goal.
Honestly, we can change the number of books in our Goodreads Reading Challenge for this year, but we were never the ones to give up. So, if you are adamant like us and don’t want to back down, then these short books might be the right choice for you. These are short, which means they won’t consume much time, and we will happily achieve our goal this year.
We are adding these to our TBR right away because we really need these short novels right now. However, you can still read them, despite your reading goal and TBR.
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Fahrenheit 451
Guy Montag is a fireman whose job is to destroy the printed book along with the houses in which they are hidden. He does his work as told, never asking questions. After work, he returns to his bland life and wife. His wife, Mildred spends her day with her television “family”.
When he meets Clarisse, his eccentric young neighbor, he is introduced to a past where people didn’t live in fear and a present where the world is seen through the ideas in books instead of television. Soon, he finds himself asking questions about everything he has ever known.
Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein is a young scientist. He always had a strong desire to understand the world and was obsessed with studying the theories of alchemists. When his mother dies, he buries himself in experiments to deal with the grief. He tries to create a humanoid, but it ends up being disastrous.
The Creature is hideous, and everybody is frightened of it. The Creature escapes, and soon Victor and The Creature are caught up in a war about who can become more evil and miserable. It’s a battle in which Victor has more to lose, and after a while, he will find himself realizing precisely that.
Giovanni’s Room
A young American, David is left alone in Paris after his girlfriend flees to Spain. Meanwhile, he starts an affair with an Italian man, Giovanni. Giovanni is a bartender at a gay bar. They meet and get intimate, but David is caught up in his train of thought. He wants to prove he’s not gay, and his feelings or whatever’s happening with Giovanni aren’t real. Along with his troubling views regarding the guy, his relationship with his girlfriend is also rocky. This book tells the tale of a man who was struggling with sexuality at a time when society didn’t even acknowledge such things as sexuality.
Girl, Interrupted
Susanna recounts her experiences as an 18-year-old girl admitted to a private mental hospital in this memoir. In 1967, after overdosing on pills Susanna was sent to McLean Hospital. She stayed there for two years, learning about her as well as other patients’ struggles. This memoir provides a clear view of what is sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.
Green Eggs And Ham
Do you like/ love green eggs and ham? Well, you do! That’s great. Oh, you don’t, that is great too. Uh-oh, you like green eggs only. Okay, you like only green hams. That’s fine because everybody is different. Diversity is okay, and humans need to embrace it. In this book, Sam-I-Am insists that Greens Eggs and Ham are an unusual treat that must be savored everywhere and in every possible way.
Invisible Cities
Exploring the imagination as well as the imaginable, Invisible Cities is framed as a conversation between an elderly and busy emperor Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. It consists of brief prose poems that describe culture, language, memory, death, time, and other general experiences of humans. It might be that the explorer is sharing his imagination or perhaps he is just recreating his hometown over and over again, or perhaps he is just sharing the different forms he thinks a city might take.
Lord Of The Flies
It’s the dawn of the next world war. A plane crashes due to some issues on an uncharted island stranding a group of English school boys. With no adult to control them or supervise them, they are thrilled at the idea of their freedom to do anything and everything they want. They all are far away from civilization which means they can do anything they wish to with no one to bother them. They try to forge their own society and choose a leader for themselves but in the face of terror, sin, and evil, how will they manage to achieve that?
Mrs. Dalloway
Clarissa Dalloway is an upper-class woman living in post-First World War England. She is hosting a party later in the evening. The nice day forces her to recall the time when she was young, spending her time in the countryside. She wonders about her choice of husband.
Meanwhile, Septimus Warren Smith, a First World War veteran suffering from deferred traumatic stress, is struggling. When he is prescribed involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital, he jumps out a window and dies. Later, at the party, when Mrs. Dalloway hears about the news, she admires the stranger’s act.
Of Mice And Men
It was the time of the Great Depression. Two migrant field workers in California are on their way to another part of the state. Both of them dream of settling down and owning their own piece of land. They both are almost close to achieving it until one of them does something that destroys it. The duo sits near the camping spot, retelling their dream after they were so close to tasting its sweet taste, but they know it will never be theirs.
The Alchemist
Santiago, a shepherd boy, dreams of a treasure while in a ruined church. Seeking the meaning of this dream, he finds a fortune teller who informs him that the dream is a prophecy and he will discover a treasure at the Egyptian pyramids. He embarks on this journey to find treasure for himself. He meets different kinds of people who teach him lessons in their own way. At last, he will learn his most important lesson from the most unexpected people which are thieves.
The Giver
Jonas is a 12-year-old living in a Community. This Community is isolated from all except a few similar towns and everyone has an assigned role. His father is a nurturer and his mother is an official in the Department of Justice. In the Annual Ceremony of Twelve everyone is assigned their lives work. The day arrives when he must be assigned a role too. He has been selected as the next Receiver Of memory which is a position of high status and responsibility. He drifts away from his friends as he trains for his role. The current Receiver asks him to call him the Giver. They form a relationship of sorts as he guides him throughout. Upon starting his role, he will learn what good and evil mean and if it’s possible to have one without the other.
The Little Prince
The Little Prince follows a young boy who is nicknamed “the little prince”. This boy has golden hair and a really lovable laugh and he has a tendency to repeat his questions until they are answered. One day, the prince meets the narrator in a desert and tells him his life story. Days pass as the narrator learns his story until the day they have to bid goodbye and it’s a rather sad goodbye.
The Ocean At The End Of The Lane
In Sussex, England a middle-aged man has returned to his childhood home for a funeral. The house he lived in, is no more but it’s not the house. Rather, he is drawn to a farm. The farm lies at the end of the road, where he met a girl when he was only seven years old. The girl was Lettie Hempstock, who had promised to protect him. His is a past that is too strange, too frightening to have happened to a young boy and his unremembered past floods him now when he visits the same pond they used to sit by.
The Old Man And The Sea
Santiago is an aging and experienced fisherman. But, it’s been eight four days and he hasn’t caught a single fish. Despite it, he is determined to catch a fish. He decides to venture far out into the Gulf Stream to break his unlucky streak. Luckily and due to his determination and hard work, he catches a marlin. But between his days of catching the marlin and returning, something will happen that will lead him to fish-less.
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
Charlie is an introverted and observant child. The fifteen-year-old boy writes about his life in letters. Those letters begin with “dear friend”. However, the name of this recipient remains unknown. In these letters, Charlie talks about his freshman year of high school and other things such as his struggles with two traumatic experiences, his teachers, and two senior friends. This is his journey of trying to “participate” in life and how he comes to terms with it.
The Prophet
The prophet Al Mustafa lived in Orphalese for around twelve years. Now, he is about to board a ship that will take him to his home. However, he is stopped by a group of people on his way. With them, he discusses topics such as life as well as human conditions. It deals with love, marriage, giving, joy, work, prayer, pleasure, religion, beauty, friendship, knowledge, and death.
The Strange Library
A young boy, on his way home, visits the local library. He requests to borrow a book and is led to room 107. There a stern old man confronts him. He lends him the books taking him to the reading room where he is allowed to read. But, then he is told that he has one month to memorize all the books he has after which the old man will eat his brains. With help, the terrified boy plans to escape and decides to never visit the library again.
The Stranger
Meursault takes time off from work to attend his mother’s funeral, who had been living in an old age home. However, it’s surprising for people when he doesn’t cry or show any signs of grief or mourning. He doesn’t even see her body, going on with his day normally. He meets Marie and begins a relationship with her. He helps Raymond, his neighbor. But, his life turns dramatic when he shoots a man and is sentenced to public execution.
The Time Machine
The protagonist, a Victorian English scientist, and inventor living in Richmond, Surrey travels forward in time. He continues forward and travels to A.D. 802,701. There he meets the Eloi, which is a society of small and childlike adults living in small communities. He learns that the entire planet has turned into a garden and that communism has finally been achieved. The Time Traveler travels back and forth in time using this machine and living in different years.
The Trial
Josef K is the chief cashier of a bank. On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, he is arrested for an unspecified crime. The men who arrest him are two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency, and they haven’t imprisoned him. Josef is left “free”. He seeks lawyers around him, but no one helps him in an effective way. So, will Josef be punished for what he did or didn’t do, or will he find a way out?
To The Lighthouse
Ramsay’s family owns a summer house in the Hebrides on the Isle of Skye. The Ramsays, with their eight children, are joined by friends and colleagues at this house. Ten years later, Mr. Ramsay finds himself longing for his dead wife’s praise and comfort. At last, the family takes a trip to the lighthouse.
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