Book Shelf: Books to Read in a Day, Pt 2

Six more short, snappy, one-sitting reads + six top articles

Last week, I reviewed eight books to inhale in a day. Here are six more. Half are debuts. A bonus: each of them has a bloody excellent cover.

Mr Salary, Sally Rooney

48 pages

Even if you’ve read Conversations With Friends, Normal People, and Beautiful World, Where Are You, you may not have heard of this short story released as part of Faber Stories. The blurb reads: “Years ago, Sukie moved in with Nathan because her mother was dead and her father was difficult, and she had nowhere else to go. Now they are on the brink of the inevitable.” If you’re after another dose of Rooney, this doesn’t disappoint. I bought and read the story on Kindle, but you can read it here in the Irish Times.

Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier

208 pages

This debut follows Jane, a pregnant, 18-year-old pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with one of her customers, Jenny. Jane is lost, grieving, and unexcited about motherhood. Jenny is a stay-at-home mum new to the LA neighbourhood and reliant upon a weekly order of picked-covered pizza for her son.

Quirky, tender, and funny, Pizza Girl is well worth your time. You can read an excerpt here in the New York Times.

Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata

163 pages

Keiko is 36, and has worked at Smile Mart for 18 years. At the convenience store, she has a sense of belonging and purpose that eluded her at school and in her personal life. In the store, things make sense: everything has a place, the door whooshes open and closed, and while she finds humans baffling, she can fit in with her colleagues by copying their style and behaviours.

But Keiko can’t escape the pressure to find a husband (she’s never had a partner), settle down, and build a ‘proper’ career. Convenience Store Woman is about work, routine, and what a ‘good life’ looks like, for fans of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Pizza Girl, and When the Coffee Gets Cold.

Winter in Sokcho, Elisa Shua Dusapin

154 pages

If you enjoyed Pizza Girl and/or Convenience Store Woman, you’ll love this evocative, atmospheric debut too.

Sokcho is a tourist town on the border between North and South Korea. Our protagonist works at a guest house. When French comic book artist Kerrand arrives at the accommodation, they strike up a strange friendship and she accompanies him to mountaintops, waterfalls, and into North Korea.

It’s about unforgiving landscapes and places, body image, identity, and intimacy. And it comes bearing one of my favourite covers ever.

So Late in the Day, Claire Keegan

43 pages

This short story is exquisite - not a word out of place. Cathal spends a weekend contemplating his former fiancé, Sabine, and the way their lives could have panned out had he behaved differently.

After reading it, and a recommendation in last week’s comment section from

Jodi Wilson

, Keegan’s acclaimed Small Things Like These has rocketed to the top of my TBR.

I bought and read the story on Kindle, but you can read it here in the New Yorker.

Assembly, Natasha Brown

112 pages

Brown’s slim debut rightly received a lot of attention in 2021. It follows an unnamed Black woman over the course of 24 hours and 100 pages. She is diagnosed with cancer, but keeps this from her rich, white boyfriend, with whom she is attending a garden party at his family’s estate in the English countryside.

When I read it two years ago, it wasn’t a five-star read for me, but I remember being particularly impressed at its clarity, and the depth of exploration in such a tiny book. I’m interested in revisiting it.

If you missed my eight picks from last week, here’s Part 1:

In other news, happy Good-Material-by-Dolly-Alderton-launch-day to all who celebrate. I’m awaiting my pre-order to arrive in the post. Here’s a lovely interview with her ahead of its release.

That’s one of a handful of excellent pieces I’ve recently read. I can’t choose a favourite, so rather than pluck one at random for the next Top Shelf instalment, I thought I’d pop them all here:

• I’ve chosen to be child-free: here is how I plan to build a life full of joy and meaning by

  Emma Gannon
  for The Guardian

• The Startling Candor of Helen Garner by Helen Sullivan for The New Yorker

• ‘There is no line’: how Kyle Sandilands thrives in the cancel culture era by Sam Buckingham-Jones for the Australian Financial Review

• The Rochambeau Club by

  Nick Parker
  for
  Tone Knob

Until next time,

Britt