12 Great Reads Under Two Hundred Pages
Short but exceptional books to help you fulfil your 2020 reading goals.
Here we are in 2020, probably wondering now how to fulfil our new year’s resolution to read more or to read at least one book a month. I am going to help you with it, recommending great books short enough for one reading evening.
I found those selected very interesting. Some I had already read and was delighted by, some were recommended by a friend and a few recommended by other readers I follow — the latter group is on my personal reading list this year.
Hope you find some nice picks for yourself!
The Dog, the Wolf and God
Folco Terzani
Amazon | Goodreads
A dog left on the side of the road, abandoned by his owner, comes across a wolf who tells him to go on a journey to find his true identity, and who his creator really is. He then meets a pack of wolves also on a journey to discover their creator, and learns about their ways and values through each individual character. This is a parable that encourages mindfulness, purpose and spiritual searching and spiritual formation.
This spiritual fable intends to make us reflect on our own lives, the things we put our security in, the values we live by, the dreams we have set aside as wishful thinking. It makes us look at the community around us, the connections we have.
Ryan’s Christmas: A DCI Ryan Mystery
LJ Ross
Amazon | Goodreads
DCI Ryan and his team of murder detectives are enjoying a festive season of goodwill and mulled wine. That is, until a freak snowstorm forces their car off the main road and into the remote heart of Northumberland. Their Christmas spirit is soon tested when they’re forced to find shelter inside England’s most haunted castle, where they’re the uninvited guests at a ‘Candlelit Ghost Hunt’. It’s all fun and games — until one of the guests is murdered. It seems no mortal hand could have committed the crime, so they must face the spectres living inside the castle walls to uncover the grisly truth before another ghost joins their number.
Another Brooklyn
Jacqueline Woodson
Amazon | Goodreads
They used to be inseparable. They used to be young, brave and brilliant — amazingly beautiful and terrifyingly alone. August, Sylvia, Angela and Gigi shared everything: songs, secrets, fears and dreams. But 1970s Brooklyn was also a dangerous place, where grown men reached for innocent girls, where mothers disappeared and futures vanished at the turn of a street corner.
Another Brooklyn is a heartbreaking and exquisitely written novel about a fleeting friendship that united four young lives.
The Cockroach
Ian McEwan
Amazon | Goodreads
Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis. In his previous life, he was ignored or loathed, but in his new incarnation, he is the most powerful man in Britain — and it is his mission to carry out the will of the people. Nothing must get in his way: not the opposition, nor the dissenters within his party. Not even the rules of parliamentary democracy.
With trademark intelligence, insight and coarse humour, Ian McEwan pays tribute to Franz Kafka’s most famous work to engage with a world turned on its head.
From a Low and Quiet Sea
Donal Ryan
Amazon | Goodreads
Farouk’s country has been torn apart by war.
Lampy’s heart has been laid waste by Chloe.
John’s past torments him as he nears his end.
The refugee. The dreamer. The penitent. From war-torn Syria to small-town Ireland, three men, scarred by all they have loved and lost, are searching for some version of home. Each is drawn towards a powerful reckoning, one that will bring them together in the most unexpected of ways.
Chocky
John Wyndham
Amazon | Goodreads
Matthew’s parents are worried. At eleven, he’s much too old to have an imaginary friend, yet they find him talking to and arguing with a presence that even he admits is not physically there. This presence — Chocky — causes Matthew to ask difficult questions and say unexpected things: he speaks of complex mathematics and mocks human progress. Then, when Matthew does something incredible, it seems there is more than the imaginary about Chocky. Which is when others become interested and ask questions of their own: who is Chocky? And what could it want with an eleven-year-old boy?
A story of innocence and alien contact, Chocky is a sinister tale of manipulation and experimentation from afar.
Cain
José Saramago
Amazon | Goodreads
After killing his brother Abel, Cain must wander forever. He witnesses Noah’s ark, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf. He is there in time to save Abraham from sacrificing Isaac when God’s angel arrives late after a wing malfunction.
Written in the last years of Saramago’s life, Cain wittily tackles many of the moral and logical non-sequiturs created by a wilful, authoritarian God, forming part of Saramago’s long argument with God and recalling his provocative novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.
Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas
Adam Kay
Amazon | Goodreads
Christmas is coming; the goose is getting fat . . . but 1.4 million NHS staff are heading off to work. In this perfect present for anyone who has ever set foot in a hospital, Adam Kay delves back into his diaries for a hilarious, horrifying and sometimes heartbreaking peek behind the blue curtain at Christmastime.
Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas is a love letter to all those who spend their festive season on the front line, removing babies and baubles from the various places they get stuck, at the most wonderful time of the year.
Wishful Drinking
Carrie Fisher
Amazon | Goodreads
Born to celebrity parents, she was picked to play a princess in a little movie called Star Wars when only 19 years old. “But it isn’t all sweetness and light sabres.” Alas, aside from a demanding career and her role as a single mother, Carrie also spends her free time battling addiction and weathering the wild ride of manic depression.
It’s an incredible tale: from having Elizabeth Taylor as a stepmother to marrying (and divorcing) Paul Simon, and from having the father of her daughter leave her for a man, to ultimately waking up one morning and finding a friend dead beside her in bed.
Very Good Lives
J.K. Rowling
Amazon | Goodreads
In 2008, J.K. Rowling delivered a deeply affecting commencement speech at Harvard University. Now published for the first time in book form, Very Good Lives offers J.K. Rowling’s words of wisdom for anyone at a turning point in life, asking the profound and provocative questions: How can we embrace failure? And how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and others?
Drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, the world-famous author addresses some of life’s most important issues with acuity and emotional force.
The Uncommon Reader
Alan Bennett
Amazon | Goodreads
The Uncommon Reader is none other than HM the Queen who drifts accidentally into reading when her corgis stray into a mobile library parked at Buckingham Palace. She reads widely ( JR Ackerley, Jean Genet, Ivy Compton Burnett and the classics) and intelligently. Her reading naturally changes her world view and her relationship with people like the oleaginous prime minister and his repellent advisers. She comes to question the prescribed order of the world and loses patience with much that she has to do. In short, her reading is subversive. The consequence is, of course, surprising, mildly shocking and very funny.
He Wants
Alison Moore
Amazon | Goodreads
Lewis Sullivan, a RE teacher at a secondary school, was approaching retirement when he wondered for the first time whether he ought to have chosen a more dramatic career. He lives in a village in the Midlands, less than a mile from the house in which he grew up. He always imagined living by the sea. His grown-up daughter visits every day, bringing soup. He does not want soup. He frequents his second-favourite pub, where he can get half a shandy, a speciality sausage and a bit of company. But when a childhood friend appears on the scene, Lewis finds his life and comfortable routine shaken up.
Hope you enjoyed and see you next time!
