2022 ONTD Reading Challenge discussion

Can’t face another big-ass book? Let’s take it easy: this month, read a novella or a book under 150 pages.

Some links to help give you ideas: Note: Some of these lists contain books longer than 150 pages so you may have to confirm the page count!)

World's Greatest Novellas - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
Popular Under 150 Pages Books - https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...
Best Books Under 200 Pages - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
Short & Sweet Treats Under 250 Pages - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4...
Christmas and Winter Novellas - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4...
Historical Romance Novellas - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4...
The 10 Best Books Shorter Than 150 Pages - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...
The Best Short Books You’ll Ever Read - https://www.rd.com/culture/short-books/
9 books under 100 pages for a quick afternoon read - https://hellogiggles.com/reviews-cove...

The ONTD post is up!
https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com...

I'm either going to read Lyra's Oxford or The Grownup. Maybe both!

I am going to read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I'm going to try and read a few since I'm craving some books that will be quick to finish. I'm aiming for:

Binti, The Only Harmless Great Thing and Kitchen. Kitchen is 152 pages, but I'm making it up with the other two books being so short ;)

Link to the ONTD post is above!

Perfect. I've been meaning to tackle The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, actually.

Ran wrote: "Perfect. I've been meaning to tackle The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, actually."

I loved that one! I believe it's being adapted to a tv series.

Rachel wrote: "I loved that one! I believe it's being adapted to a tv series."

Oh, cool! Good to know - I'll put the series on my radar for the future.

I have...a lot of selections for this month. idk how many I'll get through, but I've been having trouble w/ long books lately so I might just read a bunch of short fiction (aside from a couple books) in November:

Binti
Passing Strange
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
The Turn of the Screw
Animal Farm
The Strange Library
The Ballad of Black Tom

To all those who are thinking about Binti, I can’t recommend it enough.

i think the only book i have currently in my pile that fits this is Diary Of An Oxygen Thief so i guess i will be reading that!

I have a few short books on my kindle that I plan on reading:

Three Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens
Body of Christ
The Haunted House: A True Ghost Story

and i still need to read Sour Candy so I'll do that one too.

I'd like to read The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly as well.

I feel like I've read sooooo many novellas this year already omg what do I have left on my to-read list even.

My library has Kai Ashante Wilson's fantasy novellas, which I'm VERY impressed by and have already reserved for this challenge. Very curious about The Ballad of Black Tom too!

The Alienist, and maybe Bartleby the Scrivener

I saw The Only Harmless Great Thing at the library, and since it's under 80 pages, I think I can swing it with all the other library books I have checked out. ;-)

If you are interested in fantasy or science fiction, Tor.com has put out a TON of novellas/novelettes. There are 5 sets of novellas listed in this post: https://www.tor.com/2018/10/29/tor-co...

One Tor novella that I read recently that I liked (but wished was longer) was Time Was. The paperback is under 150 pages, but for some reason, the ebook is like 170pgs.

And ooh, I see that All Systems Red is under 150 pages, so if I'm feeling ambitious, I might read the copy that has been gathering cobwebs on my Kindle.

E wrote: "I saw The Only Harmless Great Thing at the library, and since it's under 80 pages, I think I can swing it with all the other library books I have checked out. ;-)

If you are intere..."

Curious to see if we both like The Only Harmless Great Thing. I'm going to read it sometime this week.

Thanks for mentioning All Systems Red! I've been trying to figure out what I might read for December and it's been tough as I'm not really interested in any of the prize winners I've looked at so far. Since All Systems Red won both the Hugo and the Nebula for best Novella, I can check it out next month!

I read Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates.

This book sucked me in quite unexpectedly. Oats is such an amazing writer she puts you in the mind of someone you could never imagine being. While some of the scenes were too graphic and intense for my liking, they ended up making sense to the plot for some odd reason. This story is unnerving and thrilling all at the same time. It'll stick with you.

I picked Elevation by Stephen King and this was too on point for me right now.

I had no idea what it was about going in as I hate being book spoilered...

But it's a book about a man who weighs 240lbs and keeps getting on the scale to find himself weighing less and less each day. Losing 1-2lbs per day and weighing the same on the scale with his clothes on or off or holding 25lb weights. He still looks like he weighs 240lbs but his weight is slowly evaporating... it was a wild ride.

The problem is that I've been sick lately and I have unexplained weight loss myself that my doctor is looking into so this book was inadvertently creepy to me. However the story as a whole was very nice and I loved the ending. Just now wondering if I am wasting away like Scott in this story.

So I read an abridged edition of the Decameron by Boccaccio (abridged because it contains only 10 out of the 100 stories which make up the original book). It was a special edition I bought a while ago, illustrated like a medieval manuscript. It's under 150 pages, so I thought it's be a good opportunity to read a classic and knock a book down from my tbr.

It was fine? Okay, it's not like I read the original thing, but this was supposed to be a selection of the "best" stories, and I only really liked one of them. Some were a bit pointless, others were really just porn. Most were pretty misogynistic (yeah well, what can you expect from a medieval book).

Like, one of them is about a guy who pretends to be a mute and goes to work in a convent hoping the nuns will sleep with him. They all do, and he lives happily ever after sleeping with the whole convent. This is apparently a very popular story, some people think it's hilarious, it was even recently adapted to a movie (The Little Hours, with Allison Brie). It's just a nonsense male fantasy, it's not even satire. (Plus, I feel like that situation would easily turn into something more like The Beguiled).

Anyway. This was not for me. I don't really appreciate this kind of humour.

I read The Strange Library and it was strange. It reminded me of this one Goosebumps episode, which is not really similar in plot at all besides there being a monstrous librarian.

It's the first Murakami story I've completed. I feel like I'm missing out on some of it, but I always feel that way with translations.

I read Lyra's Oxford which was interesting because somehow I had thought it was going to take place before The Golden Compass but it actually took place after. Not really too much to say about it as a story but I listened to the audiobook and Phillip Pullman read it with a full cast as well, so that was cute. I did like the brief glimpse into some things after the books.

I finished LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom and absolutely loved how LaValle outdid Lovecraft at his own game, extracting the xenophobia and racism from Lovecraft's work and illuminating it with short, clever prose. Highly recommended.

I read Diary Of An Oxygen Thief and i...didn't like it really. Nothing felt developed enough and the narrator felt like a cross between Holden Caulfield and Ticker Max which is not a compliment.

Ran wrote: "I finished LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom and absolutely loved how LaValle outdid Lovecraft at his own game, extracting the xenophobia and racism from Lovecraft's work and illuminating it with s..."

YES! I loved it too, one of my favorites. I love LaValle and that story in particular.

Chalk up another victory for The Ballad of Black Tom. A whole new, winning twist on Lovecraft, and I loved it to bits. Recommended it to everyone and their dog, as soon as I finished reading!

Definitely gonna check out more of his works, too.