Small reads for your not-small brains
Three books that aren’t massive tomes (and one massive tome).
I didn’t write an EELS last week, but it wasn’t because I was idle!
—former Quartz colleague, fellow book Substacker, and extremely smart person who knows about every possible current event—asked me to do a guest post and corresponding podcast for .It was International Booker Prize week, so if you want to read and/or hear me chat about the history and objective of the award as well as its particular usefulness for expanding my worldview as a reader, head on over there. I’ll preview one of the books I mentioned over there today in EELS!
But today, we’re getting brief: Short books to kick off your summer, presented to you by this short person. (If you want another one, reminder about Open Throat, which I wrote about in EELS: I’m a survivor, I’m not gonna give up)
Check out all my past recommendations, linked to all the past EELSes, in one easy-to-scan spreadsheet!. Click this link, hit “request access,” and if you’re on my subscriber list, it’s yours for the taking.
🚂 Train Dreams
Denis Johnson, 2002
Train Dreams doesn’t contain a lot of trains, and that’s something that intrigues me. Was it dreamed while on a train? I could look this up but I prefer to wonder. It’s a very masculine book—and I say this even having just suffered through every word of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (Blood Meridian lovers, feel free to reach out and argue with me, but fair warning, I am exhausted). And I liked how masculine it was! Sweat! Fights! Fires! Wolves! Living in the woods!
But like with all good short books (but unlike with all short people—looking at you, self) not a single word is wasted. It’s about an unusual life lived in an unusual way during an unusual time (the beginning of the 20th century in the American West). I wouldn’t call it an adventure book… I’d call it a struggle-by-choice book. Thanks to Ross for the rec.
Recommended for: Those who want to feel they have been through something but don’t want to be utterly destroyed by it.
Recommended format: I enjoyed the audiobook, and it’s only two hours long.
✉️Lady Susan
Jane Austen, 1871
“My dear Alicia, of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a man of his age! — just old enough to be formal, ungovernable and to have the gout — too old to be agreeable, and too young to die.”
The biggest mistake you can make is assuming Jane Austen is boring. This slim epistolary novel has a detestable titular character and a last sentence that slaps. My edition is 118 pages of sheer delight, because sure, 250 years have elapsed between our time and Jane’s, but we’ve all met manipulative pieces of work like Lady Susan. Edith Wharton sure had, and you can see a lot of Lily Barton here, though you’ll be here for humor, not tragedy. Thanks to Laura for sending me this in the mail! The surefire way!
Recommended for: Those who want a bit of Austen but don’t feel like hauling one of the bigger ones around. This is your Regency snack.
🐦 Still Born
Guadalupe Nettel, 2020 (Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey in 2023)
Excerpted from my write-up for This Week, Those Books, “Book world's Oscar goes to Germany”
If you’re considering, expecting, or currently holding an infant, now is not the time to read this book. But for the rest of you, I urge you to consider this quick novel. It was shortlisted for the [International Booker] Prize last year. Meet Laura, a grad student in Mexico City, who’s determined never to have children. Despite herself, Laura gets pretty wrapped up in her friend Alina’s fertility drama as well as the drama of a pair of disgusting roosting pigeons on her balcony.
Recommended for: Those who have ever been a parent. Or had a parent. That oughta cover just about all of us.
And if you want book recommendations that will help you put global events in context, consider subscribing to Rashmee’s Substack,
.Another thing I think you should check out
🐍Speaking of quick reads, I have it on very good authority that one of my very favorites, Snake Oil by Julia Malleck, is about to get back up and running, so if you enjoy extremely entertaining breakdowns of scams, that is the one for you.
Julia deeply researches these things in a serial fashion, and I do not want you to miss an episode. I have seen a preview. It is marvelous.
And now, a bonus recommendation
🖼️ The Goldfinch — Donna Tartt, 2013
Editor’s note: To be clear, this one is very long, but maybe you hated this week’s theme and want to sink your teeth into something big! If so, Nisha has got you, and also I loved this book and think you should read it. It won the Pulitzer for Fiction in 2014, just saying.
“The Goldfinch at surface level is a coming of age story about a boy with a secret. There are many wonderful questions it approaches. How do trauma, neglect, substance abuse, and loss affect us? Is a problem still a problem when gilded with wealth?
Donna Tartt describes old things beautifully and I felt transported to a bygone era and place. There are sensual descriptions of furniture, polished to shine in an old antique shop. Then of course the eponymous Goldfinch painting—there are delicious ekphrastic descriptions of art! What makes a painting compelling? What do we owe and to whom? Is beauty universal? Why is New York so darn wonderful and should we move? And so on. Well written and immersive, I enjoyed it thoroughly!”
Recommended by: Nisha! The last three books she loved were Demon Copperhead, The Poisonwood Bible, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
That was the forty-second EELS! As always, send any and all questions, feedback, and shouted book recommendations by hitting reply.
📚 Susan
I was really surprised that Jane Austen wrote a novel in 1871 since she was, you know, dead then, but I know Susan couldn't have made a typo so I looked it up and it WAS published in 1871, but probably written almost 100 years earlier. Either way, I am intrigued because I've never heard of it and will check it out at some point. Likewise the Denis Johnson, which sound like my kind of jam.
I started The Goldfinch and gave up (speaking of exhaustion). Maybe I'll try it again at some point.
-os