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Finding time to read thanks to novellas
When you work full time, have a family and young children, it’s not easy to find time to read. Your schedule is so packed that you think longingly of those blessed years when reading was possible. Book lovers get frustrated. This was something we shared and regretted during a girls night out and I suggested to turn to novellas. I challenged these ladies to read at least one novella per month. And I committed to spread around a list around twelve recommendations of books with less than 200 pages. In the end, I ended up with a two tiered reading cake of twenty-four novellas.
Here’s the first layer, the first challenge:
| English title | French title | Author | Country |
| Agostino | Agostino | Alberto Moravia | Italy |
| Journey Into the Past | Voyage dans le passé | Stefan Zweig | Austria |
| Doctor Glas | Docteur Glas | Söderberg | Sweden |
| Beside the Sea | Bord de mer | Véronique Olmi | France |
| A Slight Misunderstanding | La double méprise | Prosper Mérimée | France |
| In the Dark Room | Dans la chambre obscure | RK Narayan | India |
| Play It As It Lays | Maria avec et sans rien | Joan Didion | USA |
| Awakenings | Eveils | Gaetano Gazdanov | Russia |
| The Murderess | Les petites filles et la mort | Alexandros Papadiamantis | Greece |
| In the Absence of Men | En l’absence des hommes | Philippe Besson | France |
| The Road | La route | Jack London | USA |
| Three Horses | Trois chevaux | Erri de Luca | Italy |
And the second one:
| English title | French title | Author | Country |
| Not available | Le mec de la tombe d’à côté | Katarina Mazetti | Sweden |
| Alien Hearts | Notre cœur | Guy de Maupassant | France |
| Not available | Crimes exemplaires | Max Aub | Mexico |
| The Bookshop | L’affaire Lolita | Penelope Fitzgerald | UK |
| Rendezvous in Venice | Le rendez-vous de Venise | Philippe Beaussant | France |
| Cheese | Fromage | Willem Elschott | Belgium |
| The Man Who Walked to the Moon | L’homme qui marchait sur la lune | Howard McCord | USA |
| Princess Ligovskaia | La Princesse Ligovskoï | Lermontov | Russia |
| Not available | Aline | C-F Ramuz | Switzerland |
| Fame | Gloire | Daniel Kehlman | Austria |
| Not available | Teen Spirit | Virginie Despentes | France |
| Not available | Je dénonce l’humanité | Férenc Karinthy | Hungary |
Pick and miw is allowed, of course. I thought I’d share the lists in the hope that it might helped other readers pressed with time. It might be an opportunity to discover good novels and new writers. And I hope they’ll have the impression that they keep in touch with books and literature, even if they have limited time for it.
What you do do when life eats up your reading time?
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