Looking For Short, Fun and Smart Fiction

June 17, 2015 7:20 AM

I currently work such long hours that I don't have much time to read. I can't read the types of books that I normally would want to - literary fiction - because I am too exhausted to really concentrate at night and I just don't have the time. I also don't want to be stuck in a 400 page novel for 3 months. details inside

I just read Dept of Speculation and that was the perfect book for my current predicament. Last year I read The Driftless Area and found that to be great fun (particularly as a palate cleanser after large PoMo books). Galveston was a little bit of a let down but that is also the type of thing that I am looking for.

I will have some beach time coming up and am looking for the following

Fun but Smart! I am a real snob and require intelligent writing. Not necessarily complicated prose, but not airport fiction.

Less than 2 hundred pages if possible. I have so little time that unless I can really motor through it....

I like basically every genre, not huge on pure Fantasy (don't mind sprinkles of it - Game of Thrones for example)

Thank you in advance

posted by kbbbo to Media & Arts (23 answers total)

I love Ayn Rand's "Anthem" for short and smart.
posted by Sassyfras at 7:25 AM on June 17, 2015

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng.
posted by lyssabee at 7:31 AM on June 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Can you handle Hard SF short stories?

Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others

Greg Egan's Axiomatic

Paola Baciagalupi's Pump Six and Other Stories

Joe Haldeman's Tool of the Trade is a short, fun novel
posted by doctor tough love at 7:34 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Revengeby Yoko Ogawa. Anything by her, really. Her works tend to be shortish.
posted by BibiRose at 7:40 AM on June 17, 2015

Response by poster: Thank you everyone so far!

I should also say that by and large, I don't enjoy short story collections

Thank you
posted by kbbbo at 7:44 AM on June 17, 2015

Lenny Bruce is Dead, by Johnathan Goldstein, is a novel written in little tiny paragraphs -- small scenese -- and would be easy to dip into and out of. It's funny and sad and great.
posted by thursdaystoo at 7:47 AM on June 17, 2015

Check out this post on the Blue.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:52 AM on June 17, 2015

Anything by George Saunders would fit - all his books are short(ish) and fun (I don't love short stories most of the time either, but his are an exception to that rule).

Cat Valente's Silently and Very Fast is beautifully written and has such an interesting premise (it was recommended in one of my asks!).

Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr is touching and very short.

If you like sci fi, Samuel Delany's Babel 17 is a good short novel, and all of John Scalzi's book are fun, well-written and fast paced (some are longer than you're looking for, but they go fast).
posted by snaw at 7:56 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

And this is something that's not technically what you asked for, but may still suit: the Memory of Fire trilogy by Eduardo Galeano. It's three books and it technically isn't fiction; it's an overview of North and South American history. But the style he writes in is very, very suitable for dipping-in-and-reading-in-small-chunks - the entire book is a series of short vignettes, most only a couple paragraphs long. And the tone is fantastic - it's a magic realism style, so the book reads as if Gabriel Garcia Marquez had sex with Howard Zinn.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:57 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

César Aira - An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, Ghosts, Varamo.

Muriel Spark - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, A Far Cry From Kensington.

Michal Ajvaz - The Other City.

And seconding Yoko Ogawa.
posted by misteraitch at 8:00 AM on June 17, 2015

Previously:

I'm looking for novels that have a very strong and engrossing narrative but are well-written, or at least competently written.

I need some well-written and very suspenseful books to take my mind off of a 25-hour flight.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:03 AM on June 17, 2015

I am in much the same situation as you, and am currently enjoying Gaudy Night tremendously. Very witty and pure fun.

Otherwise, check the recommendations in this old AskMe thread: Beach Reading for Snobs
posted by veery at 8:03 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Lots of these were culled from previous Asks:

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., by Adelle Waldman
Mind of Winter, by Laura Kasischke
Next, by James Hynes
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson
Confessions, Kinae Minato

Five smart, engrossing novels that can be read in a sitting. Thanks for the 'Driftless Area' rec, btw - I'd never heard of it before and it sounds right up my alley.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:39 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Engine Summer by John Crowley (he has written a few other short novels if you like the style)
Franny and Zooey by Salinger (I guess Franny is really a short story, but together they form a novella length)
posted by crocomancer at 9:03 AM on June 17, 2015

Too Loud a Solitude.
posted by BibiRose at 9:47 AM on June 17, 2015

Some Vonnegut is pretty speedy. And, well, so smart that i'm not smart enough to say how smart.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:58 AM on June 17, 2015

Seconding Ted Chiang. He writes super-smart, finely-crafted literary fiction that wears science fiction's clothes. You cannot go wrong with Stories of Your Life and Others.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:35 AM on June 17, 2015

I took the 100 Top Mystery Novels of all time as determined by the Mystery Writers of America (association) and the Crime Writers Association of Britain and ranked them in order of book length.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 11:23 AM on June 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I read Dept. of Speculation recently and tend to lean toward literary fiction. Recent things I've enjoyed that are short (or short-ish but quick):

Green Girl by Kate Zambreno (304 pages, very quick read)

O Fallen Angel also by Kate Zambreno (164 pages, bounces between three narrators, excellent)

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (176 pages, kind of floaty/plotless but I like those types of things)

Satin Island by Tom McCarthy (208 pages, VERY floaty/plotless, but that's McCarthy's m.o. and I love him for it)
posted by jabes at 1:15 PM on June 17, 2015

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break if you're up for something a little darker but still quick and engrossing.
posted by snaw at 2:19 PM on June 17, 2015

+1 Vonnegut -- Cat's Cradle is pretty amazing; my copy is just under 200 pgs. Really short chapters, some are just a couple pages.

Couple other SF novels:
+1 Delany -- Einstein Intersection is ~160 pgs.
Bester's The Stars My Destination is a super fast, fun read.

Near the top of dances_with_sneetches list, above, is Double Indemnity, by James Cain, I really enjoyed that one. And I've always liked John McDonald's Travis McGee series.
posted by Bron at 5:55 PM on June 17, 2015

If you loved the Driftless Area (Tom Drury rocks!), you might also enjoy Drury's other work (ie. the Grouse County trilogy: The End of Vandalism, Hunts in Dreams, and Pacific). Vandalism might be a bit longer than you specified, but it's a very fast read, as is all of Drury's stuff.

Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is a fabulously engrossing novella.

Also: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick De Witt; anything by Alice McDermott, Stoner by John Williams; The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson. If you're OK with older stuff, some shorter work by Edith Wharton is really engrossing (Ethan Frome, maybe?).
posted by Miss T.Horn at 6:13 PM on June 17, 2015

Also: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, if you haven't already read it. And maybe something by Calvino? If On A Winter's Night A Traveler?
posted by Miss T.Horn at 6:15 PM on June 17, 2015