Just finished three terrific novellas by Jim Harrison. What a manly man that guy is, and such a gorgeous writer. Vibrant descriptions of the American west and the kind of man (and woman, but with less insight) who once lived there.

While I was reading these engaging sagas, I was wondering why so few novellas—or short novels—are being made available for readers. Nowadays, everybody reads on the go—on the phone in transit, during lunch break with an iPad, while sweating and pumping away on a treadmill or stationary bike. A shortie novel often proves to be a perfect fit: forty pages, eighty pages, a hundred or so. Just enough to keep you entranced from the bus station to the car park.

In Europe, thin novels are quite popular. Here in the US, where everything is so much bigger and fatter, the blockbuster mentality limits us to thick novels that double as doorstops. You can hardly find a contemporary novel under two hundred pages. Typically, I find novellas as collections. Like the three packaged together in Jim Harrison's Legends of the Fall, or some of Stephen King's best writing like "The Body" (which became the film Stand by Me) and "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" (made into the popular film), both included in the collection entitled Different Seasons.

I like to read novellas and short novels, so that's what I write. E-book publishers are starting to warm to the shorter length novels too, so I've been able to publish a handful of my own shorties. (I publish under my pen name, Mickey J. Corrigan.) Perhaps an increase in demand for good short fiction will accompany the rapid-pace development of new handheld technology. I, for one, am hoping for such a change.

Here's a list of my favorite short novels. One wonders if they would've appeared in print if the authors had tried to find a publisher in 2013.

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (James Cain)
Reflections in a Golden Eye (Carson McCullers)
The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler)
Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane)
Pale Horse, Pale Rider (Katherine Anne Porter)
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote)
Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Gabriel Garcia Márquez)
Daisy Miller (Henry James)
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Leo Tolstoy)
Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)
Miss Lonelyhearts (Nathanael West)
Of Mice and Men, The Pearl, Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
The Stranger (Albert Camus)

Tell me other novellas worth reading and I'll add them to my reading list.