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    Short and sweet

    A functional thread for classic or just very good short novels that someone like me, who always has a backlog, to find a quick and easy way to impress friends with how well read I am.

    F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
    Joseph Conrad - Heart Of Darkness
    John Le Carre - The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

    #2
    To Have and Have Not - Hemingway

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      #3
      By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept — Elizabeth Smart.

      The Lives of Animals — J.M. Coetzee

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        #4
        Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
        Animal Farm - Orwell

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          #5
          Death In Venice - Thomas Mann

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            #6
            Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

            and as a middle school teacher I still love teaching:

            The Outsiders - SE Hinton
            Buried Onions - Gary Soto

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              #7
              Animal Farm – George Orwell
              Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Gabriel García Márquez
              The Sign of the Four – Arthur Conan Doyle

              And for the not-classics-but-just-very-good list, The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide.

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                #8
                A month in the country - J L Carr.

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                  #9
                  A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
                  The Third Man - Graham Greene
                  The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold - Evelyn Waugh
                  The Man who was Thursday - G K Chesterton
                  The 39 Steps - John Buchan

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                    #10
                    War of the worlds-H.G WELLS

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                      #11
                      Most classic crime writing was short. Simenon's novels tend to be c150 pp and all the Maigret ones are currently being 'properly' translated for republication.

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                        #12
                        Were they... improperly translated before?

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                          #13
                          Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

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                            #14
                            'Of Mice and Men' by John Steinbeck is very short. As is 'Cannery Row', if you want impress people by reading more than one Steinbeck book. (I enjoyed Cannery Row more.)

                            Bonjour Tristesse
                            Breakfast at Tiffany's

                            In more modern stuff, 'Generation X' by Douglas Coupland is the shortest of his books. 'The Cement Garden' by Ian McEwen is short as well, but I thought it was horrible.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by elguapo4 View Post
                              War of the worlds-H.G WELLS
                              This is a good shout. The Time Machine is quite short as well.

                              Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is barely a novella. It's really good, though. I read it when I was a teenager and it has a very interesting ending.

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                                #16
                                Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
                                Were they... improperly translated before?
                                Well, given the lack of status accorded to genre fiction- cheaply/quickly, yes.

                                I suspect there was significant toning down of language & sexual content pre-60s, too.

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                                  #17
                                  Good nominations here. I would add :

                                  Steinbeck : Tortilla Flat
                                  Bruce Chatwin : Utz
                                  Conrad : Typhoon*

                                  *I'm sure this used to be described as a short story, but has since been upgraded(?) to novella status. I have it in a volume entitled 'Typhoon and Other Stories'.

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                                    #18
                                    Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption - Stephen King

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                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by Felicity, I guess so View Post
                                      Well, given the lack of status accorded to genre fiction- cheaply/quickly, yes.

                                      I suspect there was significant toning down of language & sexual content pre-60s, too.
                                      I’ve read about 30 of the newly translated Maigret. They don’t have anything in the way of explicit language or sexual scenes. That said, they don’t shy away from the aftermath of a murder of a prostitute in describing how she earned or living or the state of undress that she is found in. Earlier translations may have tried to preserve more moral dignity.

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                                        #20
                                        I’ve never read one in English and don’t recall such scenes in the originals.

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                                          #21
                                          BS Johnson - Christie Malry's Own Double Entry
                                          Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat
                                          Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics
                                          Alice Oswald - Dart (not a novel, it's a long poem)
                                          Beppe Fenoglio - A Private Affair

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                                            #22
                                            The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity by James M Cain are both superb examples of short crime novels, their brevity enabling them to be read in one sitting, thrown headlong into the protagonists' feverish recollections.


                                            I've read a few Maigrets and enjoyed them, particularly for the old Parisian atmosphere, but shelling out eight or nine quid a pop for them fills even the mad completist inside me with dread.

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                                              #23
                                              I was glancing through my parents' bookshelves and found War Of The Worlds –*never knew it was so short.

                                              I used to read Albert Camus's The Fall regularly – it's so short you can digest it in a single furious afternoon.

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