Good books that are also fast and easy reads
May 25, 2022 6:00 AM   Subscribe

I'm find it hard to focus nowadays, so I would like some good book recommendations that are easy reads. By good I mean: with some thematic/emotional/intellectual heft, something that stays with you after you have finished it.

By easy read I mean: a fast moving plot and easy, approachable writing style. It can be a 'big' book as long as it isn't too dense and weighed down with philosophical musings, convoluted language, etc. Preferred genre: science-fiction, murder mystery, horror, general fiction. No YA or fantasy please.

YMMV of course but I think David Mitchell, Joe Hill, Scarlett Thomas and Iain Pears are good examples of this sort of thing. Maybe I should reread Arcadia.
posted by unicorn chaser to Writing & Language (57 answers total) 91 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 6:05 AM on May 25, 2022 [6 favorites]


William Kennedy's Albany novels. Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. Nadine Gordimer.
posted by goatdog at 6:09 AM on May 25, 2022


Try Lexicon by Max Barry
posted by Redstart at 6:14 AM on May 25, 2022 [9 favorites]


I find that anything on bestseller lists (of major media outlets, book clubs, and your local bookseller) tends to balance between easy readability and heft pretty well.
posted by redlines at 6:15 AM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith.
posted by FencingGal at 6:17 AM on May 25, 2022 [12 favorites]


Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark, Ten Low by Stark Holborn, the Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers, and the Prosper's Demon series by K.J. Parker.
posted by neushoorn at 6:25 AM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


Previously on Ask MeFi: Easy reads with literary flourishes
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:27 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
posted by hepta at 6:28 AM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


I just finished The Constant Rabbit. Loved it, and I believe it meets your requirement.
posted by bluefrog at 6:38 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Keigo Higashino writes excellent twisty, intricate and yet somehow quick-reading crime novels. The Miracles of the Namiya General Store and Naoko veer into the fantastical and might not suit, but everything else of his that's been translated into English is solidly here-and-now. Good starting points are The Devotion of Suspect X and Malice.

In general fiction, I would look to Sarah Moss, Tobias Hill, John Lanchester and perhaps Matthew Kneale (most of his are historical).

As for science fiction, I find Emma Newman's Planetfall books stay with me like no other.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 6:40 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Geek Love is a considerable work that everybody should have read at some point.
posted by flabdablet at 6:41 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]




Ok hear me out. I just finished Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon and I think it can match your requirements. It’s basically a detective story, it’s funny, I think it moves fairly quickly, it is stuffed with zany conspiracy theories and puns. So many puns. It’s set in pre/post 9/11, and touches on how the American psyche changed after it, how the internet changed itself and how it changed us.

it has its weak points (standard Pynchon fare — a whole bunch of characters, only a few of them really fleshed out arguably, it doesn’t really tie up all its loose ends, some sections i think you can read as misogynist but I think is more commentary on US society, said focus on US etc) but despite whatever associations with the impenetrable, navel-gazing prose that Pynchon may have (I think this is mostly bullshit, with the exception of Gravity’s Rainbow to an extent), it is a pretty damn approachable book.
posted by bxvr at 6:57 AM on May 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


No specific book suggestions, but you might want to try some young adult books. They are easy reads and often plot-ful by design and I've read many that can stay with you for some time after.

Also, not exactly action-filled plots, but Kazuo Ishiguro's book are easy reads and they definitely linger.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:01 AM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Jo Walton's Farthing. Very smart, but also a satisfying mystery. There are sequels but this one is the best.
posted by latkes at 7:01 AM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


The Goldfinch - long but there's plenty of plot, and interesting themes
The Smiley books - great spy novels and fascinating culture/character studies
+1 for Kavalier and Clay
posted by crocomancer at 7:09 AM on May 25, 2022




The Lover by Maguerite Duras
posted by Ardnamurchan at 7:35 AM on May 25, 2022


I am going to add:
Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch--Rivka Galchen
The White Bone--Barbara Gowdy
A Burning--Megha Majumder
History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters--Julian Barnes
Night Boat to Tangier--Kevin Barry
posted by sonofsnark at 7:37 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Seconding the Ishiguro recommendation and specifically want to suggest Remains of the Day, which is a very quick read that I think about all the time.
posted by earth by april at 7:40 AM on May 25, 2022 [8 favorites]


Mick Herron's Slough House series, for sure. The writing is just excellent.
posted by Gadarene at 7:47 AM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


Seconding the Ishiguro recommendation and specifically want to suggest Remains of the Day, which is a very quick read that I think about all the time.

Well if we're going to list specific books, Never Let Me Go is a book I gift to anyone I think will read it. It's the book that eats at my soul, because it is true and I know it is true. Not just the Ishiguro book that eats at my soul, THE book. The book was good/fine/interesting enough, I suppose, while I was reading it and then when I finished it I felt like a pile of bricks had fallen on me. Not because there's some twist at the end, just because the full weight of it just hit me.

When you are done reading that, you're going to need an anecdote book. No less weighty, but weighty in the other direction. I suggest Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards, but that one is quite dense so doesn't fit your requirements in this ask.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:48 AM on May 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code?
posted by GernBlandston at 7:56 AM on May 25, 2022


Response by poster: As often happens in these threads, I have read a number of the books recommended, but they are exactly the kind of books I meant (the Ishiguro rec in particular is spot on) so I am confident that the ones I haven't read will fit the bill. Once again AskMe has understood the assignment. Thank you all so much.
posted by unicorn chaser at 8:02 AM on May 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


Oops...I said this:

Any name other than "The Cabal" is a non-starter.

But I meant antidote.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:07 AM on May 25, 2022


A Psalm for the Wild-Built probably fits the bill. If you're open to short stories, Her Body and Other Parties is excellent.
posted by wesleyac at 8:07 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


I've been reading a ton of Stefan Zweig lately (currently in the middle of The Post Office Girl) and I think he qualifies. He has a very light and approachable style but those stories will stick with you.
posted by theodolite at 8:07 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


I love those authors. The latest books to scratch my easy-read itch are:

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts: what if the Westing Game but for adults - eccentric rich guy dies and our fearless protagonist must solve the puzzle for his inheritance with a team of misfits.
The Verifiers: sketchy dating app detective agency employee must follow what happened to a client
Every Heart a Doorway: sometimes, kids just don't fit in the world and go somewhere else. And when they come back, then what? Well, there's this school... This is the first book in the series, probably technically YA but I like it anyway.
posted by quadrilaterals at 8:08 AM on May 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


Ishiguro's latest (Klara and the Sun), if you haven't read it yet.
Sourdough by Robin Sloan is lighter than a lot of these recommendations, but satisfying.
Gamechanger by LX Beckett is a wild ride and I've thought about it a lot more than I expected after the initial read. Looks long but moves fast.
posted by esoterrica at 8:09 AM on May 25, 2022


T. Kingfisher's horror novels The Twisted Ones and The Hollow Places seem to fit your criteria.

(Many-times-previously on The Blue.)

Edited to add: Martha Wells' Muderbot Diaries series, starting with All Systems Red.
posted by sourcequench at 8:12 AM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


Iain Banks’ Culture series fits in this niche for me. One caveat is that these books are often a bit confusing to start off but if you stick with it everything comes together and is fast-paced, with crisp writing and some depth without trying to be overtly meaningful.

I like The Player of Games and The Hydrogen Sonata the best but I’ve enjoyed every book. No duds. Also check out Transitions by Banks. Not part of this series but also Sci FI with a similar writing style.
posted by scantee at 8:17 AM on May 25, 2022


The Diviners by Margaret Lawrence. Let's get some Canadian content in here! :)
posted by jeszac at 8:23 AM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


Some scattered suggestions:

Imaginative counterfactual novels with themes that stuck with me
Exit West - Mohsin Hamid
The City and the City - China Miéville

Thought provoking Japanese novellas about labor
No Such Thing as an Easy Job - Kikuko Tsumura
Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata

Strongly evocative of some specific US East Coast times and places
LaserWriter II - Tamara Shopsin
The Idiot - Elif Batuman
posted by yarrow at 8:32 AM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


books that helped me get past a reading slump
Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist) by Min Jin Lee was a good read, set in Korea and Japan, and with great details.
novel

Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc Tran
Memoir that is just exceptional, can't say enough good things about it.


A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons by Robert Sapolsky
A book I recommend a lot, funny, intelligent, and meaningful.
posted by theora55 at 8:39 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


A bunch of the suggestions here are on my comfort re-read list.

Last night I put down the Hilary Mantel (too rich for my brain just at the moment) and picked up The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle, for just this feeling of good but readable.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 8:40 AM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Oh, and plot-filled and mind-sticking: Not Wanted on the Voyage, by Timothy Findley.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:43 AM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Anything by Ian McEwan. Very easy to read.
posted by mani at 9:07 AM on May 25, 2022


If you like historical fiction at all, Kate Quinn's books are great. I really enjoyed The Alice Network (about female spies in WWI and WWII) and The Rose Code (about female codebreakers in England WWII). Great plots, very immersive.
posted by radioamy at 9:09 AM on May 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


Larry McMurtry's 1966 novel The Last Picture Show is vivid, plainly written and creates a small world of its own that I missed after I turned the last page. (The other Thalia novels didn't really do it for me -- I liked the more succinct McMurtry.)
posted by virago at 9:14 AM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


I just read Daisy Jones and The Six and I could not put it down. It's a fictional oral history of a band from the 70s. It reads like you're watching a VH1 Behind the Music.
posted by radioamy at 9:27 AM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Life of Pi really hit this spot for me: brisk and absorbing in equal measure, and I was actively thinking about it when I wasn't reading it.
posted by xenization at 11:19 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Anything by Cory Doctorow. Some (Little Brother, Homeland) are technically considered YA but ignore that.
posted by TimHare at 12:41 PM on May 25, 2022


Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon. FTFA:
Gentlemen of the Road, which was first published as a serial in the New York Times Magazine last spring, is a self-consciously old-fashioned adventure story given a Jewish twist. The gentlemen in question are two blades for hire in the Caucasus and what's now Ukraine; the action takes place some time around 950AD. Zelikman - young, skinny, pale - is a Frankish Jew from Regensburg, a physician by training, who fights with an outsized bloodletting instrument and rides a horse called Hillel. Amram - older, bulky, dark - is an Ethiopian who thinks of himself as being Jewish, a former soldier in the Byzantine army and the owner of an axe called "Defiler of Your Mother". By chance, the two of them find themselves guarding a Khazar prince named Filaq, who's on the run from a homicidal usurper.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:56 PM on May 25, 2022


Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Also, I love reading plays and find classic plays often easy to read. One of my favorites is Caligula by Camus.
posted by anzen-dai-ichi at 1:18 PM on May 25, 2022 [8 favorites]


Seconding murderbot.

First few are very short, and murderbot has many emotions...
posted by Windopaene at 3:15 PM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


I just read The Wedding by Dorothy West and I'd put it in this category, under general fiction. It's fantastic.
posted by happyfrog at 3:48 PM on May 25, 2022


Left field recommendation: Half Magic by Edward Eager
posted by wittgenstein at 4:38 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


This is my favorite sort of book :) seconding Arcadia and the Ishiguro recs. I also like Vonnegut for this (esp. Cat’s Cradle). The Idiot, by Elif Batuman, is long but IME extremely readable, with plain but smart and funny language, and goes by quickly. She has another book coming out around now :)

The author who reminds me the most of Mitchell (and I’m far from the first to say this, I vaguely recall Mitchell himself saying this maybe?) is Murakami. YMMV, but I find his stuff to be quick reads, and they hit a lot of your genre boxes. Big caveat that the way he writes women and sex can be a bit offputting.

Finally, it’s a bit of a cliche to recommend Rooney at this point, but I think she also fits the bill, especially her first book (Conversations with Friends).
posted by chaiyai at 4:48 PM on May 25, 2022


The Observant by Ravi Mangla. Reviews describe it as “short and powerful” with appreciation for his “cool economy of words.”
posted by vitabellosi at 7:41 PM on May 25, 2022


Annie Dillard's The Maytrees comes to mind. Also Barbara Comyns' Our Spoons Came from Woolworth's.
posted by aws17576 at 10:11 PM on May 25, 2022


I’ve just read White Tears by Hari Kunzru which I enjoyed and which zipped along, like all his previous books that I’ve read.
posted by fabius at 4:49 AM on May 26, 2022


Old School by Tobias Wolff
posted by rollick at 8:10 AM on May 26, 2022


Because you said Ishiguro was spot on, Ted Chiang’s short stories. Many available free online, his new book is Exhalation.
posted by momus_window at 9:28 AM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Lots and lots of good suggestions here!

... I have one that may be a little off your beaten path. When I am in the mood for a fast-moving plot, or a lower-lift "easy" read, I often turn to comics (or graphic novels, or what have you). The superhero stuff is fine, but it's far from everything, and that medium is really great at splitting the difference between a novel (where you do all the imaginative work) and a movie (where you have no control over the speed or pacing of the story). Also, I like looking at pictures! It's art!

Anyway, if you want one with "thematic/emotional/intellectual heft," and "something that stays with you after you have finished it" and you're into science fiction and the work of David Mitchell then I can't say enough about anything by Brian K. Vaughn, but most specifically Saga.

IT IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK. It's barely safe for home. But it's also a book with lots of heart, plenty of surprises, a fair amount of gore and sex, and some massively beautiful passages. If you have an awesome library, you can pick up the first volume there and see what you think.
posted by heyitsgogi at 9:16 AM on June 1, 2022 [2 favorites]


Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky, so good, so short. Any summary would spoil it a bit.
posted by nicwolff at 10:38 AM on June 1, 2022


Since Murderbot has already been mentioned, I'll just leave this: The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery
posted by Quasirandom at 3:48 PM on June 1, 2022


Anything by Alexander McCall Smith. His novels are filled with keen observations and enlightened wisdom. They will warm your heart and lighten your mood.
posted by ragtimepiano at 9:37 AM on June 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


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