Summer is the perfect time to read short books: instead of scrolling through Instagram or simply for pleasure. Our selection features five diverse books, from Joan Didion’s novel to the work of sci-fi classic Robert Heinlein, which can be devoured in a single evening.
“Play It As It Lays”, Joan Didion
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A brilliant writer who began her career at the American Vogue editorial office, a Hollywood screenwriter, an intellectual, a style icon: Joan Didion is an inspiring woman. Her texts, which are a model of New Journalism and combine the power of fiction with sharp reportage, have practically not been translated into Ukrainian, and “Play It As It Lays” is a great opportunity for those who haven’t yet read Didion in the original to finally get acquainted with her work.
The 1970 novel tells the story of 1960s California: glamorous, cruel, cynical. The main character, Maria Wyeth, an actress who failed to make a career in the world of fierce competition, is experiencing a marital breakdown and an inner crisis, trying to find herself in chaotic relationships. Events unfold between Hollywood and desert highways, which become symbols of her escape and isolation. “Play It As It Lays” is a subtle and sad novel about Hollywood, loneliness, and unfulfilled dreams.
“Urbino”
“Baumgartner’s Novel”, Paul Auster
Paul Auster is a popular American author, known for the novels “Moon Palace,” “Timbuktu,” “Mr. Vertigo,” and screenplays for many films, including “Smoke” and “Lulu on the Bridge.” His short novel “Baumgartner” is a poetic, beautifully written, and meditative story about feelings, fragility, and love after death.
Seymour Baumgartner is a philosophy professor, a widower, a man trying to learn to live after his wife’s death. Many years have passed, but the memories of their life together do not fade – they fill his daily life, bring him back to the past, and make him rethink love, creativity, and the randomness of human fate again and again. This novel is ideally suited for unhurried reading somewhere in the mountains or at a dacha – preferably in silence and solitude.
“Stary Lev Publishing House”
“Audition”, Katty Kitamura
Kathy Kitamura, whom you may know from the novel “Intimacies,” is one of the most interesting contemporary American writers, a person deeply knowledgeable in philosophy and art, whose novels dissect modern people and their relationships with themselves and their surroundings. Her acclaimed novel “Audition,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2025, has been published in Ukrainian. In it, she explores the masks we wear in our relationships with loved ones and colleagues.
Two people meet in a New York restaurant. She is an acclaimed actress engrossed in rehearsals for a new play. He is an attractive young man who claims to be her son… And then the performance begins: the book consists of two parts, and in the second, the heroine already accepts the man as her son, although this is impossible. The author makes us wonder: where is the line between play-acting, hypocrisy, and reality?
“The Door into Summer”, Robert Heinlein
Robert Heinlein is a classic of world science fiction, a bestselling author who knows how to create captivating worlds you want to escape into.
“The Door into Summer” is his bestseller, first published in 1956 and repeatedly recognized as the best science fiction novel since. Heinlein’s protagonist is engineer Dan Davis, who invented a unique robotic assistant. While Dan was busy with brilliant inventions, he was betrayed by his fiancée and friend, who took over his company and sent him to a place from which there is no return. However, the talented engineer finds a way to travel through time and find his door into summer to return home and… to his beloved cat.
“КСД”
“Where the Sun Sets”, Olena Pshenichna
Olena Pshenichna’s novel tells the story of a pensioner, Vera, who finds herself in a nursing home at the beginning of the full-scale war. The disoriented 72-year-old Vera, whose son is completely immersed in volunteer work and cannot take care of his mother, meets wounded, prickly old people in the home who simply watch day after day as their lives, like the sun, set beyond the horizon. Olena Pshenichna’s touching, very humane book focuses on a theme that rarely gets attention – the feelings, fears, and hopes of elderly people at the end of their lives.
“Laboratoriya”