- “Second Variety” by Ph. K. Dick
Philip K. Dick’s 1953 short story “Second Variety” posits the ramifications of a human propensity for playing God, and for mankind’s wanton disregard of the consequences of its technological innovations.
Number of pages: 50
Reading time: 42min - “The Fall of the House of Usher” by E. A. Poe
Roderick Usher’s fate is inextricably intertwined with that of his sister, Madeline, and that of their estate. As one falls, so do they all. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is considered Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest work, and a masterpiece of Gothic horror.
Number of pages: 25
Reading time: 21min - “The Body-Snatcher” by
Set in the Edinburgh of Dr Knox and Burke and Hare, this is one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s darker tales (the posters accompanying its publication had to be confiscated by the police because they were too gory!) A wonderful example of a truly grave story.
Number of pages: 48
Reading time: 40min - “The Call of the Cthulhu” by H.P. Lovecraft
An old manuscript unleashes the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, for him to rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway.
Number of pages: 34
Reading time: 28min - “Guns” by Stephen King
In a pulls-no-punches essay intended to provoke rational discussion, Stephen King sets down his thoughts about gun violence in America. Anger and grief in the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School are palpable in this urgent piece of writing, but no less remarkable are King’s keen thoughtfulness and composure as he explores the contours of the gun-control issue and constructs his argument for what can and should be done.
Number of pages: 25
Reading time: 21min
Get it here (US).
Get it here (UK). - “The Long Run” by Mishka Shubaly
After nearly twenty years of chasing oblivion, a fight in a bar reveals to a newly sober Mishka Shubaly that he is able to run long distances. Despite his best attempts to dodge enlightenment and personal growth, the irreverent young drunk and drug abuser learns to tame his self-destructive tendencies through ultrarunning. His outrageous sense of humor, however, rages unabated.
Number of pages: 61
Reading time: 51min - “Gutenberg the Geek” by Jeff Jarvis
Johannes Gutenberg was our first geek, the original technology entrepreneur, who had to grapple with all the challenges a Silicon Valley startup faces today. Jeff Jarvis tells Gutenberg’s story from an entrepreneurial perspective, examining how he overcame technology hurdles, how he operated with the secrecy of a Steve Jobs but then shifted to openness, how he raised capital and mitigated risk, and how, in the end, his cash flow and equity structure did him in. This is also the inspiring story of a great disruptor. That is what makes Gutenberg the patron saint of entrepreneurs.
Number of pages: 20
Reading time: 17min - “The Nose” by N. Gogol
“The Nose” is a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol written during his time living in St. Petersburg. During this time, Gogol’s works were primarily focused on surrealism and the grotesque, with a romantic twist. Written between 1835 and 1836, “The Nose” tells the story of a St. Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own.
Number of pages: 44
Reading time: 37 - “Glitch” by Hugh Howey
When a robot defies his programming, is he broken? Or is he something else?
Number of pages: 15
Reading time: 14min - “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by F. Fitzgerald
In the title story of this collection by one of America’s greatest writers, a baby born in 1860 begins life as an old man and proceeds to age backward. F. Scott Fizgerald hinted at this kind of inversion when he called his era “a generation grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.” Perhaps nowhere in American fiction has this “Lost Generation” been more vividly preserved than in Fitzgerald’s short fiction. Spanning the early twentieth-century American landscape, this original collection captures, with Fitzgerald’s signature blend of enchantment and disillusionment, America during the Jazz Age.
Number of pages: 64
Reading time: 53min - “Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx
In 1963, two young men, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, are hired for the summer to look after sheep at a seasonal grazing range on the fictional Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Unexpectedly, they form an intense emotional and sexual attachment, but have to part ways at the end of the summer. Over the next twenty years, as their separate lives play out with marriages, children, and jobs, they continue reuniting for brief liaisons on camping trips in remote settings.
Number of pages: 64
Reading time: 53min - “Next Day on the Condor” by James Grady
Award-winning short story author, screenwriter and novelist James Grady delivers a bullet-paced, savage journey with the iconic character he created and that Robert Redford made an international sensation in the movie THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR. Love, sex, loyalty, honor and savagery loosed in our modern world electrify this novella, a portrait of heroism and horror and America beyond 9/11. It is an espionage adventure unlike anything you’ve ever read.
Number of pages: 46
Reading time: 38minGet it here !
- “Phoenix” by Chuck Palahniuk
If all is fair in love and war, there are few contemporary writers better equipped than Palahniuk to travel the extremes, right to the chilling intersection of “I do” and “I’m damned.”
Number of pages: 28
Reading time: 23min - “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by G. Garcia Marquez
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is a short story by Gabriel García Márquez first published in 1955. It falls within the genre of magic realism and is included in English in the book Leaf Storm and Other Stories.
Number of pages: 32
Reading time: 27min - “Lifeboat No. 8” by Elizabeth Kaye
One hundred years after that disastrous and emblematic voyage, Elizabeth Kaye reveals the extraordinary, little-known story behind one of the first lifeboats to leave the doomed ship.
When the Titanic started sinking, who would make it off alive? The two cousins who had been so eager to see their first iceberg? The maid who desperately tried to escape with the baby in her care? The young newlyweds who’d booked passage despite warnings not to?
Number of pages: 67
Reading time: 56min
15 Books You Can Read in Under 1 Hour
Books Rock My World 
Reblogged this on cohortsite and commented:
Time is money so quick is good…sometimes.
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