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bookwyrminspiration · 6 months

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do you have any novellas you'd recommend? I've been in an awful reading slump

I must confess, I don't read many novellas, but! My dad does, and he frequently recommends them to me (we have fairly similar taste), so I can pad the list with some of those.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe; there's multiple, and they're these ridiculous short tales of these ridiculous pirates doing. ridiculous things. They made a movie out of the first one. the pirate captain worries he's not entertaining his crew, and on a heist they encounter Charles Darwin, who is training a monkey to be a man and he promises to help him show off this magnificent feat to his snobby superiors and help his rescue his brother from Oxford. Suffice to say things go funky. this is a story that embraces its ridiculousness beautifully

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto; a bittersweet exploration of grief and healing. there's no huge drama, just a girl healing from the loss of her grandmother who finds someone who knew her late grandmother, and finds healing in time and new connections. and in sharing grief with new family. there's also a short story within banana at the end called Moonlight, which also discusses grief. one of my favorites :)

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone; you've likely heard of this one before. an epistolary novel of letters between two enemy soldiers in an infinite war across space and time. one fights for a machine-based side, the other for a garden/nature-based. they travel up and down time, ensuring pieces of the future are correctly in place for themselves and sabotaging each other. but more and more...they find themselves valuing these at-first taunting letters. and there are consequences to that

The Ice Dragon by George RR Martin; this one's meant for a younger audience, but I'm quite fond of it. a little girl was born with the cold inside her, and when the ice dragon visits during winter, she can safely touch it and all the other cold creatures without melting them like other kids. but war is coming, and she has to grow. and as much as she loves this dragon as cold as her, survival means sacrifices.

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones; an. intriguing story about a kid living on the reservation who sees his dead dad's presence come back to visit--but there's something...off happening. and his little brother's seizure and condition are getting worse, and it turns out there's no escaping the past. this one leaves a bit of unsettling contemplation in my experience--and this author has also written a bunch of other things if it turns out to be to your liking

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark; this is one I haven't read myself, but it's apparently an alternate history in Egypt of detectives trying to solve why this tram car is haunted--and trying to fix it. i intend to read it one day, just haven't yet

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard; another one I haven't read about a princess sent away as a hostage when she was younger, but who has now returned and now faces an old love (I think? it's a little fuzzy. i believe it's also queer, but I wouldn't want to advertise it on that alone).

American Hippo by Sarah Gailey; recommended by my partner, is comprised of 2 novellas. I don't know much except that it's an alternate world where America did, indeed, bring hippos over to serve as a main meat source. however they are very viscous, and that causes problems, which I believe the main characters are trying to help solve...? they're spoken very fondly about it with me :)

I could likely come up with more if needed, but these are a solid few to get you going--if you want to read any of them. There is, of course, no pressure if none of these work for you! I think, personally, the first two are my top picks from this list; I've used them to get out of slumps myself. I wish you luck!!

#book recs #book recommendations #novella recs #quil's queries #gayupstraight #another trick to get out of reading slumps I've learned is to reread old books you like #hence my tgI reread #a quick series I know I like to just go through the motions and make it familiar again #warm up and strengthen my reading muscles enough to move on to new stuff :)#long post

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