The countdown to year’s end has begun. If you’re behind on your reading challenge for 2016 or just want to pad your statistics, here are some books you can easily read in a day or less.
Fiction
My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Dubliners by James Joyce
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Of the Farm by John Updike
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
No! I Don’t Want to Join a Book Club by Virginia Ironside
A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Where Are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark
Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Nowhere to Be Found by Bae Suah, translated by Sora Kim-Russell
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
The Plains by Gerald Murnane
The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal
Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark
Nonfiction
Slow Reading by John Miedema
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
The Ancient Art of Tea by Warren Peltier
Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
Days on the Road: Crossing the Plains in 1865 by Sarah Raymond Herndon
The Tao of Psychology by Jean Shinoda Bolen
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle by C.G. Jung, trans. R.F.C. Hull
Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky
Comfort: A Journey Through Grief by Ann Hood
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art by Joyce Carol Oates
Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life by Douglas Wilson
In Addition
19 Wonderful Short Books and Stories to Read Now
© 2016 by Mary Daniels Brown
