Recommended Reads: One-Sitting Books
Posted by David Duhr in 
Discussion questions: What are some of your favorite one-sitting books? What do you find appealing about one-sitting books? Have you ever written one? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
Lately we’ve been talking a lot about our struggles with writing (“Can Creativity Be Forced?“; “Creativity During COVID-19“) and reading (“Pandemic Reading: What Are You Reaching For?“) — really, attention span — since stay-at-home began.
Last week, in an effort to foster some writing inspiration, we ran a micro fiction contest — “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” The contest may be closed by the time you read this, but hey, no harm in using the prompt anyway, if you need it.
This week I want to offer up something for those of you — OK, those of us — who might be struggling to focus on a book. In the past few weeks I’ve picked up, read a few pages of, and then discarded some excellent literature: Catch-22; The Picture of Dorian Gray; Death Comes for the Archbishop, and more. I just can’t seem to launch into a long book.
Instead I’ve been rereading Vonnegut. Just, a lot of Vonnegut. Pretty much this entire book. Which is great, don’t get me wrong, but part of the reason it works for me is that I’ve already read these books, again and again. It requires less of me.
I wanted something new, and just in time, in the mail came a new novel called Whiteout Conditions by Tariq Shah, a quick 115-pager that looks good and, perhaps even more importantly right now, is something I can knock out in one sitting.
So I thought this week we could all join forces to make a list of our favorite one-sitting reads, partly just for fun, and partly to offer some recommendations to any of us struggling with attention spans right now.
I’ll offer up one of my favorite to get things rolling: Stewart O’Nan’s novella Last Night at the Lobster. In normal times I might suggest that it pushes the limits of “one-sitting,” but these days, maybe not so much.
How about you? What are some of your favorite one-sitting books? What attracts you to one-sitting books?
Have you ever written a one-sitting book? Tell us about it, and feel free to provide a link.
WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is fiction editor at the Texas Observer and co-host of the Yak Babies podcast, and has written about books for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives, and others.
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Hi Dave. The appeal, for me, of a short book (basically, a novella) is it being a dramatic whole that can be taken in at one time. Less is lost, it seems. I’ve considered writing novellas–maybe a series of related ones. Actually, my book of “short stories” (The Wider World) is a book of novellas, each about 30 to 40 pages. As for shorter classics, I think about “The War of the World” (H.G. Wells) these days. As a mass market paperback, it’s only 194 pages. It is a powerful metaphor for death and horror sweeping through a society with… Read more »
Raymundo,I love how you mention a classic. I have two choices. I just finished in almost one sitting James Patterson The Honey moon.I am sorry I began to carry on.
The Honeymoon by Patterson is like 400 pages. If you read that in a sitting, you are beyond me. Also, your entry is beyond my understanding, but I can go with that. Take care, dude.
Maybe he’s a speed-reader. Have you ever tried that? I have. It’s chaos. I’d almost rather not read at all.
I’ve thought about it, but never tried to learn it. I just try to set a fast reading pace when I feel I need to.
When do you need to? Sometimes I’ll read something quickly if I just want to move on to the next thing but still finish the first.
Speaking of Patterson, he does all of those Book Shots that get at what we’re talking about. I think the tagline is something like “Books you can devour in an hour.” I’m no Patterson fan or supporter, and I don’t think he actually writes any of them himself, just slaps his name on ’em, but… there you go.
That’s true. I’ve never read any of his work.
I did read a BookShots, for the old version of the podcast, but really just to shit on it. Which we did. The night ended with me ripping the “book” into shreds. (Don’t tell anyone…)
LOL. I think of Patterson as a sort of corporate machine. My theory is that the corporate structure can’t handle art. That’s why the last Star Wars movies were so bad.
Corporate machine is spot on. They slap his name onto books written by other people just so they sell. It’s like “Title” by JAMES PATTERSON!!!! and [in small font, the name of the person who really wrote the book]
You mentioning your book of novellas made me realize (anew) something curious. So, I really enjoy reading a good novella. I also enjoy reading a good story collection. But if there’s a story collection where one of the pieces is novella-length, I almost always skip it. So… WTF is that?
Maybe you tend to psych up for one or the other, just not both. Very little actual short or flash fiction appeals to me.
Yeah, maybe. I get arguably too much satisfaction from finishing a book. So if I read a novella, it’s a quick finish; if I read a story collection, it’s usually a quick finish. But when a novella is dumped into a story collection, it delays that quick finish. Something like that.
Another short title I like is a collection of Orwell essays called Books vs. Cigarettes. The title piece is great, but there’s another you’d like a lot about reviewing books professionally. If you haven’t read it, give it a look. I think it’s called “Confessions of a Book Review” or some such.
I’ll check it out. I have read another set of essays by Orwell called, “Why I Write.” Very quotable.
I love these essays. Yet I’ve never read 1984 or Animal Farm. Must fix that.
Both are well-deserved classics. Especially 1984. Very applicable to what’s happening.
Sometimes I use Orwell’s short essay “Shooting an Elephant” as a teaching tool for critical reading. I’ve had good reactions from students recently.
Hello world. I belong to the Wisconsin writers association. There is a writing contest closing June fifth. It is called the Jade Ring!Also I have just finished “James Patterson’s The Honeymoon. In a six hour sit down. I am now reading a fortyth anniversary of Stephen Kings Carrie. I truly expected this book to be a monolith in size but it is maybe 200 pages. Good reading to all. David keep mulling over my idea please!
Did he change anything in Carrie for the 40th anniversary? King’s an example of a writer who will edit/revise and then rerelease his old titles. Which strikes me as odd, for sure.
As I was told he could sell his shopping list and it would be on the best sellers list. I have not read the original Carrie. This version is written as a case study. Known as the White project.
I googled this “white project” but I can’t find anything. What kind of case study?
Hey David. I just read Steinbeck’s Cannery Row for the first time for the kids I teach. It’s a quick read in maybe two sittings, more of a series of vignettes sprinkled within a very simple plot of unique characters. Steinbeck loves life and it’s something we could all use right now. Very positive, life-affirming story during tough times. It reminded me a little of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio but with less eccentric personalities.
Cannery Row is great. I also recommend The Pearl and Of Mice and Men – both short, but interesting reads.
Yes, both of those are very different from Cannery Row, though. I think Steinbeck meant Of Mice of Men to be a stage play, originally, or at least be adapted for the stage well enough, as it certainly reads like a play. The Pearl feels a bit like a moral tale concerning greed and such. While Cannery Row has a little of that, it’s more of a light-hearted series of smaller tales about enjoying life or of people helping each other out. Nature plays a greater role in it than in the other two, and some of the stories are… Read more »
If you ever get the chance, go to Monterey, CA. I read Cannery Row when I was there, and the characters really came to life.
Not a bad idea. I will. Students of mine pained over reading the nature scenes with the sea life when the tide rolls out, but I loved it. I’ll see if I can find the same.
I love the idea of reading local lit when I visit a place. When I went to Portugal last summer I packed a couple of Portuguese novels. (And then didn’t read them.)
I haven’t read Cannery Row, but I like the sound of it. Jennifer mentions the Pearl and Of Mice & Men, both of which I read for school and enjoyed.
Do you like Winesburg, Ohio? I tried to read it last year, and maybe my expectations were too high or something, but it didn’t sit well. I didn’t even finish it. Something about it seemed… painfully dated, maybe? I read, and happily, plenty of fiction that’s dated, but that one didn’t work for me.
Yes, I did like it, but I’ve been told more than a few times that my tastes are “quaint.” I love John Cheever, too, but I was told by a writing mentor in college that I needed to read more contemporary stuff, which I was. But I’ll take the quaint but solid stories of Cheever over Mark Leyner’s “Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog” or David Foster Wallace any day. As for Winesburg, Ohio. I know what you mean, as I’ve read it one and a half times. I loved it the first time — the introductory essay on the… Read more »
I have to admit I am not sure what the definition of “novella” is, but I think the story I just finished (108 letter size pages, single spaced with a blank line between paragraphs) qualifies as a short book. I know writing it was a sanity saver.
Hi Doug. Definitions vary, and it’s really just semantics and marketing, anyway. Long short story, novella, short novel, there’s lots of overlap there. So did you intend to write a short book, or did it just come out that way?
It just came out that way. The story had been developing in my head for some time, and finally got to the point I had to write it down. It took the pages necessary to tell the story to the best of my ability. After the first draft and read through, it became obvious that some of the material had to be cut out, some stuff added, and even more needed revision. This is just how it came out.
So what are your plans for it, now that it’s drafted? Revise for publication? Or was it just a project for yourself?
Hi Dave, The first novella I remember reading in one sitting was Flowers For Algernon. I was about 14 at the time and it blew my mind. The intensity and arc of the story burrowed into my heart and psyche. A book had never had such an impact on me. Other favorite novellas from my teen years – The Old Man and the Sea – Hemingway Of Mice and Men – Steinbeck One of my favorite books is the international bestseller Embers by Sandor Marai. It’s just over 200 pages. Both times I’ve read it, I found it to be… Read more »
yes Mary…..Old Man and the Sea !
As a teen I must’ve read the Old Man and the Sea six times, maybe more. I liked Of Mice & Men too, and the Pearl.
Jekyll & Hyde is another favorite. Does Bartleby count? That one always stands out.
I’ll have to check out Embers. Thanks for the tip.
The first one-sitting book I read this year was Greta Thunberg’s No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference. As a collection of her addresses, it contains a fair amount of internal repetition. But her message is sound (and urgent) and I like the way she tailors her points to her different audiences. Sergei Dovlatov’s The Suitcase is a short book of marvelous interconnected essays. I think I read Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (which coined the term “robot”) in one sitting. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a great single-sitting book that simultaneously invites one to spend time with and… Read more »
Just today I was looking on my bookshelf to see if I have any short books I can remember reading, and I found Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, and I can’t even remember if I read it or not (altho’ I seem to be on about a thing today of royal people living in trees.) I studied Italian in college, and Calvino was a favorite of my professore, so we read some of his short stories. I will see if I can get a hold of Invisible Cities, because I was wanting to re-read some of those Italian… Read more »
I had written this in my journal: The Calvino has brought me to tears — not so much because of the subject matter, though it is very evocative and could easily generate an emotional response. My tears came from the sheer craft of it. The wordsmithing, economy of phrase. I thought of the “sickness” that afflicts some people who visit Florence and are overwhelmed by its beauty (Stendhal syndrome). Translate that into literary form and you have Invisible Cities.
Some of my MFA classmates had a lit course where they read Cosmicomics and (I think) Invisible Cities and immediately became lifetime Calvino fans. Naturally I’ve never read a word of his…
I think it will be good for my aging brain, especially during quarantine, to read Invisible Cities in Italian, get those r’s rolling again. There used to be a bookstore here that sold books in many different languages, and I miss it. What is Stendhal Syndrome?
Info on Stendhal Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome I was lucky enough to visit Florence in 1987 and learned about it then. I didn’t experience it myself, but the beauty of Florence had made that trip unforgettable. Probably the closest I came to being overcome by awe was after I had climbed to the top of the Duomo (with many others in a very tight enclosed space as we inched up the dome). Suddenly we were out in the open, above a sea of terra cotta roofs at the top of the hour (5 PM if I remember correctly), and it seemed all… Read more »
Pleistocene, oh ya, those were the good old days. I’ll go to wiki now and check out Stendahl
From the wiki/Stendhal, “Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty … I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations … Everything spoke so vividly to my soul.” That sounds something like how the Irish describe being in a “thin place”, certain places are spiritually charged, and they say the veil between Heaven and Earth is thinner there and you feel intense awe, but I’m not sure if you also get the physical symptoms. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced it either, maybe came close once, but it was more an experience that was beautiful rather than a place. When… Read more »
I love this “thin place” concept. I forget, have you spent much time in Ireland? I think I suggested Kevin Barry to you; my podcast pals are going to read Night Boat to Tangier so we can do a group discussion of it. Beatlebone, his previous novel, spends more time in thin places, but this one dips into it a bit.
Haven’t been to Ireland (yet!). Kevin Barry sounds new to me; I’ve bookmarked Beatlebone and Night Boat to Tangier as next in line to borrow. There are currently two books ahead of them — I’ve started reading the final USA volume, Dos Passos’s The Big Money, and I’m on waitlist for Cixin Liu’s Supernova Era. Thanks for the recommendation!
I just typed a reply and then hit a wrong button and it disappeared, so I hope it doesn’t show up twice.. Wasn’t sure if you addressed this to me or Elissa, but could be either or both. Anyhow, no, I have not been to Ireland (yet!) either, except for travels of the mind, and I have some deep emotional/psychological connections there. You did suggest Kevin Barry to me, and he is definitely on the list and may move up now that you mention the thin places.
I hope you both read Kevin Barry, and enjoy it. And then together take a trip to Ireland, including County Sligo, where Barry’s from (and where I have a friend who runs an airbnb…). And along the way, you two forge such a strong friendship that you end up traveling the whole world together, and then co-writing a bestselling memoir about the experience, and then you send me a signed copy.
It would take me a year to read all of the books you’ve recommended in this space over the years. I know this because I have a list of them…
Hello Dave, I hope you are staying safe. I am one of those who, hopefully at the moment, can’t read what I normally read. I am reading on a writing ‘how-to’ and going chapter by chapter. Right now, I am working on it only a few days a week. I also started reading short stories, but, even these, if it doesn’t grab my interest, I put it down for another time. I refuse to give up on reading though, and have considered listening to a book on video via a library app. Maybe it’s time for the picture books ;)… Read more »
Jennifer, I recommend “Uncommon Type” written by Tom Hanks for short stories. You can hear “hear” his voice when you read through the stories which makes them even more interesting.
Thanks David – I like Tom Hanks so I will give it a go.
It’s good? I’m always wary of celebrity fiction.
surprisingly good. I was suspect but like the stories. Not sure I finished them all but did like what I read. And now after his Covid behavior I like him even better.
Have any short stories really hit home in the past few weeks/months?
Well, I have been trying to read “Classical Whodunnits – Murder and Mystery from Ancient Greece and Rome” edited by Mike Ashley (I like mysteries and history). One or two have grabbed my attention, but my reading time has really dropped because my attention has been on finding out how to meander through this viral mess to stay safe, as everyone has been doing AND focusing more on writing than reading when I can. I’m happy to say that, although not as much as I had wanted, I am writing more words. I hope your reading and writing is improving!… Read more »
We’re getting there. I’m happy, though, that he’s opening only the parts of the state that are ready. We are not. I mean, I’m no scientist, but 10 million people cramped into a tight space? Nope.
I’ve thought again about what I’m reading now and, interestingly, I’m actually watching more TV when I might normally have been reading. I think its because I don’t see/watch people as I did on a daily basis before the stay-at-home policy. Though I do have 1-2 ZOOM meetings, which are also videos, I think I must need to see the interactions of people (??).
For the first couple of weeks I did nothing but watch TV. And now, two months into it, anytime I see people on a TV show sitting in a coffee shop or whatever, my brain says “Why are they gathering in public? And why are they not sitting six feet apart?”
You are now in Stage 3 of stay-at-home dilemma ;). I’m still in Stage 2.5. Now I have been reading, though not as much as usual, but part of that might have been taken over by writing (yea), which I’m starting to do- right now, outlining. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Just read Sweeney Astray, translated by Seamus Heaney–a translation of the original ancient story of The Frenzy of Sweeney, about a king who goes mad in battle then lives as a bird in the trees and recites poetry and can fly. He is considered a shaman by some. I had to read it because At Swim Two Birds by Flann O’Brien is based on it, and I wanted to understand the source so I can understand O’Brien. Anyhow, to get through the original story is a quick read, but to understand all of its references could take, like, a lifetime… Read more »
Have you read any James Liddy? You mentioning Heaney and then poetry made me wonder. The one I remember best is “I Only Know That I Love Strength in My Friends and Greatness.” I was an awful poet, and I’m an equally awful reader of poetry, but his poetry workshop at UWM was such a fun class. Especially the one at the end of the semester where we all met at the Gasthaus and drank beers.
That does sound like a fun class. Never read Liddy, but I will look for his poems. I took a UWM workshop with poet Susan Feuer. There were a lot of good poets in that class, and I was intimidated, but I learned a lot. Speaking of Milwaukee poets, I see Antler in the park a lot when I am dog-walking. I always wonder why he called himself Antler, but I haven’t asked him yet.
I had a Susan Firer workshop as well, and now I’m enjoying the possibility, however unlikely, that it was the same one. Susan’s husband, James Hazard, was one of my favorite people at UWM. (And his poem “The Snow Crazy Copybook” is one of my favorite poems of all time, and seems up your alley. If you don’t have or can’t find a copy, I can send you a scan.) Within a few years of me leaving UWM, he was dead, and Liddy was dead, and my other favorite, Cam Tatham, was dead. I mention this why? I don’t know.… Read more »
Hmm… I’ll have to think about that a bit and see if I can remember the year. I have a poem I wrote for her, and I know I still have the handouts she gave us and they might have dates on them. It was a long time ago. Susan Firer…is that how she spells her name or that is how it is pronounced? For some reason I had a maybe false memory that she went by name Susan Fury…maybe I was misremembering Firer. I’ll look for a copy of the Hazard poem.
I so far haven’t found that poem online, but you might enjoy this: https://shepherdexpress.com/arts-and-entertainment/poetry/jim-hazard-missing-year/, a tribute to Jim Hazard written as a poem (a bit long, but I liked the beginning of it even though I didn’t know the guy, now I wish I had!)
Yeah, this is really nice. Thanks for passing it along. The classroom scenes are definitely familiar… including the passage about waiting for him to show up. There were a few times he didn’t show up at all, and usually, at that age, you think it’s awesome that you don’t have to sit in class, but with him the feelings were more mixed.
Still searching for that poem, and instead I found something about Susan Firer. Her name is pronounced like the word “fear”. Now, why did I remember that her name is actually Feuer and is pronounced Fury?? Then I looked up feuer and it means fire in German. This is how my brain (no longer) works these days.
“I mention this why?” you ask. Could it be that all of those writers dying within a few years of your leaving their tutelage, implies that it was YOU that they were all living for? The only student who ever learned anything?
Ha. I wish that were true. Cam Tatham told me I was a disappointment, which was more than fair and accurate. Though I suppose he wouldn’t have said such a thing if he didn’t see anything in me.
Paul Yoon author of “SNOW HUNTERS” A great short read…208 pages of elegant prose. Winner of the 2014 New York Public Library”Young Lions Fiction Award”….the Simon & Shuster review describes the beauty of this novel is “Brief simple sentences that have the effect of making you slow down to read them”
Excellent choice, Doris. And for some reason it reminds me of the existence of Tinkers, the borderline novella that won the Pulitzer some years ago. Another quick read, though I don’t remember how it sat with me.
Got this link from an online friend whom I met via a creative nonfiction group. “Why it’s so hard to read a book right now, explained by a neuroscientist,” Constance Grady’s interview with Oliver J. Robinson, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College, London:
https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/5/11/21250518/oliver-j-robinson-interview-pandemic-anxiety-reading
Jackpot, thank you! I’ll be reading this with great interest today.
I’m going to read this too. One thing that was actually helpful to me today is that I listened to a lot of the testimony of four doctors, including Fauci, to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and it was the most informative, calm, reasonable senate hearing I’ve heard. The questioning was not extreme. Good questions were asked, not a whole lot of politics, although Elizabeth Warren criticized Trump, but the panel included her, Bernie Sanders, Mitt Romney, Tammy Baldwin, and they were all good. (I wish this panel and these doctors were in charge of things.… Read more »
I watched it too, and did my best not to take a hammer to my computer screen during Rand Paul’s time.
Yes, I felt the same way. It’s not only that his questions were not realistic nor well thought-out, it was the tone of voice/posture/attitude in which they were asked. “Dr Fauci, you’re not the be-all and end-all…” Have some respect, Senator. But I thought Fauci’s response to him was stellar.
I don’t know if they are technically one-sitting books for most people (250-300 pages), but I blitzed thru Tony Earley’s “Jim The Boy” and “The Blue Star”. Certain books become one-sitters when I literally can’t put them down (“Roots” and “Catcher In the Rye” for example, both of which my teenaged self stayed up all night to finish, without meaning to). Earley strikes me as a sort of kinder, gentler Carson McCullers. His short story “Charlotte’ was a hoot. I have no interest in pro wrestling, but Bob Noxious was irresistible. James Carabatsos’ novelization of the film “Heroes” was a… Read more »
Wait, Roots? Isn’t that well over 500 pages? Must’ve been a hell of a night. I remember an all-night reading of Ed Abbey’s The Fool’s Progress, and that one’s a beast too, but I think I was already a couple hundred pages into it.
Yeah, actually I think I’d already started it and then finally just got the book from the library and finished the unread parts. I seem to remember somebody’s grandmother’s Readers Digest which may have been the gateway drug…so maybe it was a two-sitter…
…so, if you just read the Cliff’s Notes, would that be a baby-sitter?
This isn’t a “one-sitter” but it solved my attention span problem. I have been waiting for a book to grab me and absorb me and finally found it. I was looking for good books about pandemics and such, as I always like to read about the thing that’s depressing me. That way I can continue to obsessively ruminate but call it a literary pursuit. Anyhow, someone online suggested that the best book about an epidemic was Camus’ The Plague. Oh my gosh, what a wonderful idea. I hadn’t read it since college, and didn’t want to order and wait for… Read more »
I’ve never read that, somehow. I’m glad you’re digging it. If you listened to it at 2x or 3x speed, it could become a one-sitting book. If you want to paste the link sometime, I’d like to take a look.
Looks like there are a few. Is it this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkbFA1GbWAY
I just emailed this to you because I wasn’t sure if I could get this reply working again, but here is the link again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKnCnY5wbxU. Would love to know if you get a chance to listen to it what you think.