Great "CHEATER" Books

subtitled: "How to read 50 books in a year if, by the time you sit down to read at night, you can only get through 2 pages before you are drooling on the couch and your husband has to, once again, wipe up the drool and drag you up to bed"

If you are anything like me (too busy for anything, blah, blah, blah) this is a real challenge for you. Kudos to those who make it happen - I am trying.

I just thought we could help each other out in a way that is not so scrupulous (is that spelled right????).

Recommend some books that will "add up quickly", you know, good "fillers". Book number and page number - for those doing the # page challenge.

Here is my contribution:

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick - I got this children's book from the library to share with my child because I heard it was supposed to be excellent. I have started glancing through it. The illustrations are beautiful and so far the bit of actual words I read are very nice, too.

The reason it makes it to this category is because it is over 500 pages long and only a few pages actually have words on them. You could fly through this one in minutes. Although, I do recommend savoring it - it is lovely!

OK - you're turn - the books don't have to be good, like the one I recommended. But I do think more people will "cheat" if they were.

You could try out
100 One-Night Reads: A Book Lover's Guide by David C. Major and John S. Major

Ooh - nice listing in that book - thank M

But I have to admit (please don't hold this against me) many of those selections would take me way more than one night...

Well, these won't help all that much with page count, but books by Chris Van Allsburg and Nick Bantock have a lot of art and not that much text, but are still beautiful and wonderful books.

Maybe I think this because I read more than 50 books a year, but why try to "cheat"? Why not just pick a goal that will work for you? Fifty is just a random suggestion, an arbitrary number that I (and the original creator of the group) didn't even come pick.

I'm not actually looking for "cheats", just another topic to facilitate a book discussion (which I am addicted to).

50 is actually a good number for me because (I think) it is just out of reach.

There's a number of shorter works which are considered classics, and even appear on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

George Orwell - Animal Farm - less than 100 pages
Saul Bellow - Seize the Day - about 150 pages
Ian McEwan - The Cement Garden - about 150 pages
Martin Amis - Time's Arrow - about 150 pages
Aesop - The Complete Fables - total of about 260 pages, but each fable is only a paragraph or two, the longest being 3 pages

Other short works:
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Don DeLillo - The Body Artist

Excellent children's book:
Kate DiCamillo - The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

You could also try reading short story collections.

I'm attempting to read 100 books this year and so far I am on pace, having completed 25 in the first three months. I do this by mixing longer and shorter works.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
The Prince by Machiavelli
The Immoralist by Andre Gide
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

All under 200 pages (average around 150). Very quick (and good, imo) reads.

Gideon Defoe's Pirates! series are brilliantly funny and tiny little books that take maybe an hour at most to read.

There are plenty of classics that come in at under 300 pages:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (262 pages)
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (255 pages)
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (213 pages)

All of those can be read in a day off if you've nothing else to do and are excellent choices.

You could always take a look at children's and young adult books - there are LOADS of really good ones, both modern and classic, many of which come in at under 300 pages and don't take all that long to read.

I really enjoyed The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke. It is a slim book, and could be read in one sitting, I'm sure, but I found that I preferred to pause after each story and savor it.

Oh my gosh, I won't delete that, but doesn't it sound silly - "I preferred to pause after each story and savor it."

Below are some classical novellas. They don’t take a lot of time to read and most editions come with Lit theory related to the story.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Yellow Wallpaper Charlottle Perkins Gilman
Two early feminist must reads!

The Dubliners James Joyce
The Dead by James Joyce
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

Also, a lot of classic and/or Canonized (oh how I hate to bring up that term!) novels hover around 200-250 pages depending on the edition.

The Great Gatspy F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
Franny and Zooey J.D. Salinger

Just ‘cos its short doesn’t mean it’s not intense.

PS: If you find you are really off track, plays and graphica can usually be read in one sitting.

I've been mixing my reading up with books that are long (the current one is over 700 pages) with shorter books that have a different style.

Last month, I read Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine first trilogy (there's a second trilogy that I need to order). The story is told through postcards and letters between the two characters, and it moves very quickly. They were fun and filled with mystery, and the artwork on the cards is fantastic. Definitely worth a look.

Griffin and Sabine sounds so interesting - and not just because its a quick read, either. Thanks for the recommendation.

I have to say, that the fact that I am involved with this challenge hasn't really impacted my choices. I decided at the begining of the year that I was going to keep up with my book club choices and, when I had time in between those, I was going to try to read books that had won a Pulitzer.

The truth is I LOVE longer books - the longer the better. I tend to get so caught up with great characters that I miss them when they are gone.

I am shooting for 50, though. We shall see...