Short books

Why I love them, the ideal length, and Sunday reads

“What you do on a Sunday is who you are.”
— Dave Holmes

Dear Readers,

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my love of short books for The Toronto Star.

The idea for the article was prompted by Dave Holmes, who wrote about his glorious Sundays (he doesn’t have kids). I am in a different situation, but I loved his approach, that a day-off explains a lot about a person.

Who do I want to be? A reader, mostly.

So, I was thinking of you as I described my long standing habit. Many of us readers have this in common, we are looking for something specific inside the pages. What do I find in a book that I don’t find elsewhere?

A short book, by my definition, is about 120 pages.

A few of the short books on my shelves

This length of book can be fiction, a novella, or non-fiction, I’m not picky. In the article, I talk about curling up with a short book on a Sunday. The day doesn’t matter, but that’s the day that tends to be my slowest — the one where I can hide away and remain undisturbed.

This is at the heart of why I love short books: As a reader, I can stay inside a book this length without coming up for air. I submerge.

I want to be able to read a short book in one sitting.

You may have seen the news, that Orbital by Samantha Harvey, the book I wrote about in October, won the Booker Prize last Tuesday. It pushes at the upper edge of a short book at around 200 pages. I have talked to a few people who had trouble sinking in to this book. I read it in a gulp and think it works best that way — blast off and remain in its atmosphere.

Short books become especially important when life is busy.

This past week, I’ve been recording the audiobook for my forthcoming memoir, How to Survive a Bear Attack. There are still a few sessions to go, but this is my first time doing voice work. I’m floored by how difficult it is, mentally and physically. I am working with the best team who are coaching me through, but at the end of a recording day, I am depleted.

With a reduced capacity, a short book is the perfect thing.

The one I turned to most recently, one I highly recommend, is Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative, by Isabella Hammad. It’s a short-short book, only 80 pages. In this, I found an answer — this is what I look for inside the pages of a book.

Recognizing the Stranger by Isabella Hammand

Hammad writes about the special experience of reading, that it’s a rare chance to find what she calls concentrated solitude, “to be neither working nor passively consuming the content of a screen but thinking deeply about experiences other than our own.”

I love this, exactly.

A short book gives me the chance to travel to another place, be inside the mind of another person, or to learn about something new, but all from the comfort of my couch.

I can rest. I can read.

After my piece appeared in the The Toronto Star, I received some great recommendations.

Do you have a short book you love? If yes, please let me know in the comments.

Yours in reading,

Claire

P.S.

• For Halloween, in my monthly “Assembled” column in The Globe and Mail, I wrote about Michael Myers and his Halloween films. Before working on this, I didn’t realize there have been 13! [Gift link]

• Inspiration: “'Editing is the most wonderful part of writing.’ She looks ferocious with delight. ‘It begins to roar in the edit.’” Debra Levy interviewed in The Guardian.

• Thank you to Amy F. for sending the article by Dave Holmes about his glorious Sundays.

• Many of you aren’t from Canada, but that only means you need a deep dive into the sport of curling all the more. I loved Broomgate, a six-part podcast — come for the thick Canadian accents and stay for the high scandal in the curling community.

• How to Survive a Bear Attack isn’t out until March 2025, but the CBC published an excerpt. I appreciate pre-orders as they help my publisher, Knopf Canada, judge interest.

• Books I love is monthly, free, and about books I love. Thank you for reading!