Novellas in November begins today! Cathy (746 Books) and I are delighted to be celebrating the art of the short book with you once again. Remember to let us know about your posts here, via the Inlinkz service or through a comment. How impressive is it that before November even started we were already up to 20 blog and social media posts?! I have a feeling this will be a record-breaking year for participation.
I’m kicking off our first weekly prompt:
Week 1 (starts Wednesday 1 November): My Year in Novellas
- During this partial week, tell us about any novellas you have read since last NovNov.
(See the announcement post for more info about the other weeks’ prompts and buddy reads.)
I relish building rather ludicrous stacks of novellas through the year. When I’m standing in front of a Little Free Library, browsing in secondhand bookstores and charity shops, or perusing the shelves at the public library where I volunteer, I’m always thinking about what I could add to my piles for November.
But I do read novella-length books at other times of year, too. Forty-six of them so far this year, according to my Goodreads shelves. That seems impossible, but I guess it reflects the fact that I often choose to review novellas for BookBrowse, Foreword and Shelf Awareness. I’ve read a real mixture, but predominantly literature in translation and autobiographical works. Here are seven highlights:
Fiction
How Strange a Season by Megan Mayhew Bergman: A strong short story collection with the novella-length “Indigo Run” being a Southern Gothic tale of betrayal and revenge.
Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt: The heart-wrenching story of a woman who adopts her granddaughter due to her daughter’s drug addiction. Its brevity speaks emotional volumes.
Crudo by Olivia Laing: A wry, all too relatable take on recent events and our collective hypocrisy and sense of helplessness. Biography + autofiction + cultural commentary.
Nonfiction
Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati: Lovely snapshots of a bookseller’s personal and professional life.
La Vie: A Year in Rural France by John Lewis-Stempel: A ‘peasant farmer’ chronicles a year in the quest to become self-sufficient. His best book in an age, ideal for armchair travel.
My Neglected Gods by Joanne Nelson: The poignant microessays locate epiphanies in the everyday.
Eggs in Purgatory by Genanne Walsh: A stunning autobiographical essay about the last few months of her father’s life.
I currently have five novellas underway, and I’ve laid out a pile of potential one-sitting reads for quiet mornings in the weeks to come.
Here’s hoping you all are as excited about short books as I am!
Why not share some recent favourites with us in a post of your own?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
Gosh, I didn’t think of La Vie as a novella, but yes, I guess you’re right. I will be a desultory sort of participant, but I will make a start by seeing what I’ve demolished in the last year – a few, I think.
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Going by the under-200-pages rule of thumb (I seem to remember it was about 190?)…
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Fair point!
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[…] It’s week one of Novella November and the theme is My Year in Novellas. […]
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46 novellas! You’re amazing. Thanks for the Crudo reminder. And the Boyt looks great.
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I think the Boyt would be just your sort of thing. It came out in the UK a couple of years ago but has gotten a wider release through New York Review Books. I expect you’d be able to find it for Kindle.
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You are a novella legend! I pale in comparison with my 4 novellas in 2023. I saw all your images of novella bookstacks and have saved them as reference. I will try to read more novellas in 2024, really, I’ll try.
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Quantity is not the chief concern 🙂 Enjoying what one reads is better.
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I’m writing a novella, so I’m super happy to participate–I read a historical novella, “The Distance of Mercy” by Shelly Milliron Drancik, in which a young Austrian woman leaves home to study the violin against her father’s wishes. This is a moving story. Kirkus review here: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/shelly-/the-distance-of-mercy/
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Thanks for reading and commenting! Music and wartime seem to be perennial thematic partners. (I used to review for Kirkus Indie.)
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It’d be helpful for BettyJoyce’s link to be coded to open in a new tab, as once I clicked through to read the Kirkus review, my open tab had navigated away from BookishBeck, so it’s easy to get lost or forget to come back and contribute to the conversation. Maybe that’s not something the host i.e. Rebecca can change from the admin panel in WP (everyone’s admin controls are different), so perhaps it would work better to mention one’s book and request to include a link in a nested comment below, so that the administrator can modify it more easily, to encourage conversation. Just my two cents.
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I don’t know if there’s a way to change that. I tend to right-click and open links in a new tab.
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Wildly impressive! I’m hoping to spotlight two novellas this month (a paltry amount in comparison, but I want to stay mostly clear of reading challenges as the year winds down): Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s The Gates Ajar, which was apparently a post-US Civil War bestseller about the grief of the women who lost brothers, fathers, sons, and loved ones; and a nonfiction novella in the form of Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, a dissection of the online culture wars “from 4chan to Trump”.
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Two books I’ve never heard of, and you could hardly find two more different!
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I know! Entirely by accident, too.
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I just added Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop to my TBR! I’m going to see if my library has it in audiobook format. 🙂
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Hooray!
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I echo those above who’ve commented on how inspiring your lists and possibilities and plans are for those who love the form and for those who are just discovering it. The way you’ve structured this month is great, but I don’t know how well I’ll be able to structure my posts; will we have to sit on the most uncomfortable sofa if we are late or off-topic? hee hee I know you’ll take us in any shape or form. I’m looking forward to seeing what others have been saving with this event in mind, what gets pulled from the long-neglected shelves and corners, and what people pick up as others start to novella-chat throughout the month.
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Thanks! I figure people can tie into the prompts if they find them useful, or ignore them and post whatever they want to that’s novellas-related. I’m happy with either approach! The topics are pretty open-ended.
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46 is an amazing number! Have made a note of loads of these.
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I reckon you’d get on well with the Laing if you don’t already know it.
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Blimey! That’s quite a score. Looking forward to exploring contributors’ posts and adding a few myself.
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I’m sure you’ll introduce us to some great novellas over the month.
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Olivia Laing’s books turned up in another novella I read recently, The Sitter. Seeing Crudo on your list has made me very happy that I’ve put it on order 🙂
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I’ve added several from your list to my final post for Novellas in November.
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I even more can’t manage the prompts for NovNov23 while helping to run Nonfiction November! But it’s been lovely reading your and other people’s contributions to the week!
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Not a problem at all! Use them if they’re useful; ignore them if they’re not. We’re grateful for all reviews and other contributions. And likewise, I’ll try to add in a few posts for Nonfiction November, though not likely attached to the themed weeks.
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[…] Rebecca can be read at bookishbeck […]
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