8 Short Books To Read In A Day 

My journey through David Foster Wallace's works was a gentle build-up, one I highly recommend: from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (stories) to A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (essays) to Broom of the System (first novel, with all the youthful verve and curious missteps one hopes for) and then finally to Infinite Jest (his magnum opus, one that feels an ideal culmination of what came before). Perhaps it was merely the right works at the right times, but it felt like an ideal series of works to get through-each building atop the ones that came before-for understanding Wallace's passions and aims and shortcomings and strengths. That was a wondrous year (Brief Interviews had been read in the backseat of a road trip, almost single sitting, with each story stirring the same ups and downs of my own insecurities and entrances into new places as a young teenage self). I hope such works find you at the proper times, too.

Always glad to see people recommend Letters to a Young Poet! I think it is quite possibly the most impactful piece of writing that is simultaneously short and endlessly meaningful. It helped me quite a lot as a young person who felt kind of lost in the world, and Rilke's advice is beautifully poignant. It’s also a great introduction to the writer so that readers then can move on and read his poetry, which is equally brilliant.

Would love a video discussing Kafka's works. ^.^

I've avoided Wallace for a long time, but you've mentioned him before and now you've convinced me to loosen up a bit. In the meantime, I'll add to the list by suggesting Ivan Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" and "Diary of a Superfluous Man," Antoine de Saint Exupery's "The Little Prince," and Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea."

Congratulations on finishing your semester! Hope you have a relaxing break. 😊

Great recommendations. Thanks for sharing!

Yay - was looking earlier today for your latest video It's a sort of self love to let ourselves take a break from "hard" literature

Would 100% love to see a video from you on Metamorphosis (and Der Prozess and Das Schloss)

That's also what we all need sometimes😊, some need it all the time😅...but "de gustibus non disputandum"... Thank you so much❤🎉. By the way "Matamorphosis" is great classic, but I believe you'll present it when the time comes ❣

The Metamorphosis is definitely at the top of my list. Kierkegaard and Nietzsches' shorter works are always fun quick reads for me. The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker is my favorite quick read.

Happy to see Gluck. I have read that book and have loved it as an aspiring but frustrated writer.

Ty for the suggestions

Great recommendation... Thank you ❤

Thanks, saved a few into TBR

Great video, Maria! I'm keen to check out those essays from Louise Glück (after I work through her poems).

One speculates that the reason things haven't changed much since the time of the Concord brainiacs may relate to the possible evolution we didn't attain. Strangely two of the books I read on yesterday were Proust's Remembrance and Mann's Magic Mountain...both of which you mentioned as loving, and most understandably. We have devolved. My old acquaintance, Anthony Burgess, in Earthly Powers, his favorite, talks about Rilke's emotional lability, describing the way his nose would flow profusely, when under an emotional wave. His little book was most helpful, being like a Reader's Digest Condensed version of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory, written for his son, this with great care. His Duino Elegies, and the birds therein, have flown my head since they first lighted in my mind. Thanks for this great collection. I need to finish something for a change. Your first couple were the ones I knew not of. Just ordered the Wallace.

Great recommendations, definitely got some new picks for the shelf ;) When it comes to fiction i'd also ad "Little Herr Friedemann", "Death in Venice" and "Tristan" by Thomas Mann. All can be finished within a day and they give a good glimpse into the work of Mann. So when you want to start reading Mann and are in awe of "The Magic Mountain" or "Buddenbrooks" maybe go for these first :D Also I remember, that me and some friends all read "Animal Farm" by George Orwell a few years ago and everyone (even the not so trained readers) finsihed it in a day. When I feel a little bit stuck and want to have the feeling of finishing a book (quickly) I tend read plays sometimes. "The Wild Duck" by Ibsen or even "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles are rather short reads that give you a lot to think about. Keep up the good work Maria \m/

its damn good video for sleeping , i slept while watching this

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway are good quick reads. Best wishes.

Would recommend The Yellow Wallpaper by Perkins, The Sandman by Hoffman, and Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin (also maybe Tropisms by Sarraute even though it's weird).

video suggestion: what to actually read when youre going through a life crisis: rilke, khalil fits perfectly

" Even for a man like P.D. Ouspensky, who made Gurdjieff world-famous - even with him Gurdjieff was difficult. Ouspensky remembers that they were traveling from New York to San Francisco in a train, and Gurdjieff started making a nuisance of himself in the middle of the night. He was not drunk, he had not even drunk water, but he was behaving like a drunkard - moving from one compartment to another compartment, waking people and throwing people's things about. And Ouspensky, just following him, said, "What are you doing?" - but Gurdjieff wouldn't listen. Somebody pulled the train's emergency chain, "This man seems to be mad!" - so the ticket-checker came in and the guard came in. Ouspensky apologized and said, "He is not mad and he is not drunk, but what to do? It is very difficult for me to explain what he is doing because I don't know myself." And right in front of the guard and ticket-checker, Gurdjieff threw somebody's suitcase out of the window." The guard and the ticket-checker said, "This is too much. Keep him in your compartment and we will give you the key. Lock it from within, otherwise we will have to throw you both out at the next station." Naturally Ouspensky was feeling embarrassed on the one hand and enraged on the other hand - that this man was creating such a nuisance. He thought, "I know he is not mad, I know he is not drunk, but...." Gurdjieff was behaving wildly, shouting in Russian, screaming in Russian, Caucasian - he knew so many languages - and the moment the door was locked, he sat silently and smiled. He said to Ouspensky, "How are you?" Ouspensky said, "You are asking ME,'How are you?'! You would have forced them to put you in jail, and me too - because I couldn't leave you in such a condition. What was the purpose of all this?" Gurdjieff said, "That is for you to understand. I am doing everything for you, and you are asking me the purpose? The purpose is not to react, not to be embarrassed, not to be enraged. What is the point of feeling embarrassed? What are you going to get out of it? You are simply losing your cool and gaining nothing." "But," Ouspensky said, "You threw that suitcase out of the window. Now what about the man whose suitcase it is?" Gurdjieff said, "Don't be worried - it was yours!" Ouspensky looked down and saw that his was missing. What to do with this Master! Ouspensky writes: "l felt like getting down at the next station and going back to Europe... because what else would Gurdjieff do?" And Gurdjieff said, "I know what you are thinking - you are thinking of getting down at the next station. Keep cool!" "But," Ouspensky said, "how can I keep cool now that my suitcase is gone and my clothes are gone?" Gurdjieff said, "Don't be worried - your suitcase was empty. Your clothes I've put in my suitcase. Now just cool down." But later, when he was in the Caucasus and Ouspensky was in London, Gurdjieff sent Ouspensky a telegram: "Come immediately!" - and when Gurdjieff says "Immediately," it means immediately! Ouspensky was involved in some work, but he had to leave his job, pack immediately, finish everything and go to the Caucasus. And in those days, when Russia was in revolution, to go to the Caucasus was dangerous, absolutely dangerous. People were rushing out of Russia to save their lives, so to enter Russiaand for a well-known person like Ouspensky, well-known as a mathematician, world famous.... It was also well-known that he was anti-communist, and he was not for the revolution. Now, to call him back into Russia, and that too, to the faraway Caucasus.... He would have to pass through the whole of Russia to reach to Gurdjieff who was in a small place, Tiflis, but if Gurdjieff calls.... Ouspensky went. When he arrived there he was really boiling, because he had passed by burning trains, stations, butchered people and corpses on the platforms. And how he had managed - he himself could not believe that he was going to reach Gurdjieff, but somehow he managed to. And what did Gurdjieff say? He said, "You have come, now you can go: the purpose is fulfilled. I will see you later on in London." Now this kind of man.... He has his purpose - there is no doubt about it - but has strange ways of working. Ouspensky, even Ouspensky, missed. He got so angry that he dropped all his connections with Gurdjieff after this incident, because this man had pulled him into the very mouth of death for nothing! But Ouspensky missed the point. If he had gone back as silently as he had come, he may have become enlightened by the time he reached London - but he missed the point. A man like Gurdjieff - may not always do something which is apparently meaningful, but it is always meaningful."

Enjoy a well earned rest, Maria, and some quality downtime with Eric, after those exams, - and the exhaustion you mentioned, - it's not only justified but healthy, - Warm regards, Gus and Puddies - who already know most of what the authors and sages you quoted from knew :) 😾

Based Rilke appreciator. Clearly, his stand-out poems are "Christus am Kreuz" and "Der junge Bildner", both being about the greatness of men and the triumph over suffering. Kafka is whiny and pleb-tier.

" Once a man asked Emerson, "What is your age?" Emerson said, "Three hundred and sixty years." The man could not believe it -- he looked no more than sixty. And he could not believe that Emerson would lie because he was well known for his authenticity. He thought, "I must have heard wrongly." He said, "Pardon me, I could not hear. What did you say? What is your age?" And Emerson said, "Three hundred and sixty. And you have not heard wrongly, I said exactly that: three hundred and sixty." The man said, "I cannot believe it." Emerson said, "I cannot believe it myself, so I don't expect you to believe it. But I say I have lived three hundred and sixty years because ordinarily people live in such a lukewarm way that if they live three hundred and sixty years then they will come close to me, although I have lived only sixty years. But I have lived intensely and totally. Each moment I have squeezed the juice of life; I have not left a single drop behind. So in sixty years I have lived six times more than people ordinarily live.""

" In America, a very rare thinker by the name of Henry Thoreau existed. When he was close to death an old aunt of his, a religious old lady, who thought Thoreau was not religious because he never went to church or read the Bible, she came to him and asked compassionately, “Henry, have you made your peace with God?” Lying on his death-bed, Thoreau opened his eyes and said, “I didn’t know we’d ever quarreled. What is there to make peace about?” Henry Thoreau was not the type of man to quarrel with God. He never went to church because it wasn’t necessary. If there is no quarrel, then what is the point of going to court? He never made a mantra of God’s name; he never said a rosary. None of this was necessary because a continuous hymn to God was being sung within him. Henry Thoreau was an incomparable flower among men. He was always calm and unperturbed and never quarreled with God. So how could he pray? Whom would he worship? Whom would he adore? The quarrel between you and God disappears when you are at peace. Otherwise, you would be in conflict twenty-four hours a day. And the more you are in conflict, the more agitated you will become. How can a tree that quarrels with the earth remain calm and tranquil? Its roots are in the earth! Its roots are buried in the earth! Are you fighting with the earth? Are you fighting with your own roots? If you are, uneasiness will become your natural state. Then you will be disturbed; you will be perplexed and confused. If they fought with the earth the trees would go mad. The earth is the womb…"

Spoiler alert: Don't read my comment if you have plans to read this fantastic book. The Metamorphosis by Kafka is a book that I find myself repeatedly recommending. There are probably as many interpretations of this work as there are readers and that's actually one of the beauty's of this work. Like you Maria, I think about this book a lot. For me, reading this book was a punch in the gut because it made me realize how much I don't want to be like Gregor Samsa's family members. Gregor had worked many hard years in order to meet the needs of his family but he wakes lying in bed to find that he has became a "monstrous vermin” (disabled in my mind), his family and associates slowly began to look upon him as a burden until they eventually thought it would be better for the family if he was gone. It hurts because I could see some of myself in his family members and I don’t like that. I'm lying in my bed and suddenly I'm four years old again I long for closeness and security only the people I want it from change -Sprach, Kunst

Watched in 1.25x speed, it doesn't seem much difference..