Short Books You Can Read Before the End of the Year
Want to read a few more books before the end of the year? We can help with that! We’ve compiled a list of short books that you can squeeze in to the last two weeks of 2024. If you aren’t able to finish them, no worries, these books will be great to kickstart your 2025 reading. Plus, with our Holiday Sale happening now, you can get them all for 30% + free shipping on orders over $75.
142 pages
Everywhere the Undrowned: A Memoir of Survival and Imagination by Stephanie Clare Smith
A Kirkus Reviews No. 1 Must-Read New Memoir
“This stunningly lyrical memoir is a profoundly insightful glimpse into the complex and frightening consequences of parental neglect . . . . A masterful literary memoir about caring for those responsible for our trauma.”—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED review)
“In lyrical, metaphor-rich prose fragments that mine the cosmos, television, and avian life for meaning, Smith offers a harrowing yet hopeful look at the long road to recovery. This cathartic personal history is difficult to shake.”—Publishers Weekly
“Everywhere the Undrowned is, somewhat unbelievably, Smith’s first book . . . . [it’s] a kind of prose poetry that recalls the work of famed writers like Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver . . . . not only a compelling memoir but a work of literature.”—Washington Post Book World
152 pages
Stories I Lived to Tell: An Appalachian Memoir by Gary Carden, Edited by Neal Hutcheson
“Gary Carden is the last of the lantern keepers and with him goes the flame. Stories I Lived to Tell makes me thankful for the immortality of the written word.”—David Joy, author of Those We Thought We Knew
“Gary Carden is a national treasure.”—Lee Smith, author of Dimestore: A Writer’s Life
156 pages
The After: A Veteran’s Notes on Coming Home by Michael Ramos
“Powerfully written, unflinching accounts of life on active duty—essential reading for anyone who cares about our veterans.”—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED review)
“An intricate narrative of service, its meaning, and the life that comes after. Deeply felt. Beautifully written.”—Elliot Ackerman, author of Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning
160 pages
The Distance from Slaughter County: Lessons from Flyover Country by Steven Moore
Finalist, 2024 Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction, Oregon Book Awards
“Steven Moore’s nuanced, hypnotic essays about growing up in the Midwest balance nostalgia with critique, sharing childhood memories that were formative to his identity . . . . If ‘estrangement toward place … is an estrangement toward self,’ these essays, with their sensitive probing of geographical identities, chart the way back to harmony.”—Foreword Reviews (starred review)
“A series of impressionistic essays on the culture and history of middle America…Moore incisively catalogs the ironies and complexities of the Midwest. It’s a subtle yet effective eye-opener.”—Publishers Weekly
180 pages
Brown Women Have Everything: Essays on (Dis)comfort and Delight by Sayantani Dasgupta
“Witty, thoughtful reading . . . . As she explores issues of race, culture, and gender, Dasgupta’s lively, intelligent book celebrates the “honor and dignity” of embracing the discomforts of the transnational life, which offers the unexpected rewards and delights of the unfamiliar.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Perceptive and personal . . . . Dasgupta has a talent for finding the profound in the everyday.”—Publishers Weekly
184 pages
Come! Come! Where? Where?: Essays by James Seay
“A reflective and tender essay collection . . . . the kind of book that, by its end, reminds us of our world and our place in it. Even when it focuses on death, it is still buzzing with life.”—Chapter 16, Humanities Tennessee
“With the touch of a poet and the depth of an offshore fisherman (both of which he is), James Seay ranges from wrangling with hard men and heavy equipment to feeling for his butter-churning mom and a baby cowbird. The little cowbird is ignored, except by Seay, but this book shouldn’t be.”—Roy Blount Jr., author of Alphabet Juice
204 pages
A Question of Value: Stories from the Life of an Auctioneer by Robert Brunk
“Deeply thoughtful and elegant in its forthright simplicity, A Question of Value is one of the best books on collecting in many years.”—Antiques and the Arts Weekly
“In his new memoir . . . the gavel-wielding philosopher shares wisdom gleaned from his many years on the road and in the salesroom. [Brunk’s] empathetic tales capture the comedy, pathos, joy, and ultimate mystery that is collecting.”—The Magazine Antiques
“A Question of Value is a fun and enjoyable read that not only offers a behind-the-scenes look into second-hand sales and auctions but also earnestly revisits the many lessons Brunk learned from observing and dealing with personal accumulations and the ephemera of our daily lives. No matter whether you are an experienced collector or are just curious about how auctions work, Brunk’s anecdotes and perceptive reflections will leave you with a new appreciation for the objects we hold dear and the stories embedded within them.”—H-Material-Culture
224 pages
Looking for Andy Griffith: A Father’s Journey by Evan Dalton Smith
2024 Outstanding Southeastern Author (Non-Fiction), Southeastern Library Association
“A poignantly candid memoir . . . . Shot through with admiration and grief for all the father figures Smith ever loved, this unique, at times wistfully lyrical memoir is a moving celebration of fatherhood as well as a warm tribute to the lessons all fathers, real and imagined, have to teach us.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Smith bounces his life against Griffith’s to see where the sparks fly. Their twined lives get meted out in vignettes, in short capsules glancing on Griffith’s career, his fan base, his cultural legacy, North Carolina history, Smith’s shambolic post-divorce existence, and, perhaps most of all, ‘our desire and nostalgia for things that didn’t exist.’ . . . A surfeit of pain courses through this book, but, as Smith reminds us, a similar river trickled through Mayberry.”—Jonathan Miles, Garden & Gun
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