Newsletter 1

I Don’t Like Big Books And I Cannot Lie

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Carina Pereira

Staff Writer

Carina Pereira, born in ‘87, in Portugal. Moved to Belgium in 2011, and to Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 2019. Avid reader, changing interests as the mods strikes. Whiles away the time by improvising stand-up routines she’ll never get to perform. Books are a life-long affair, audiobooks a life-changing discovery of adulthood. Selling books by day, writer by night. Contact

It took me some time to come to terms with the fact that large books are just not my thing. Admitting this, even to myself, was some sort of a process, because when you declare that you are an Official Bookworm™, the label doesn’t seem to fit unless you are the sort of person who likes to bury themselves in voluminous editions, long book series, and the like. So, I had to do some introspection, and it even took some courage to accept this about myself as a reader.

Now, before I get my bookworm card revoked, let me start by saying that I have read big books, and I have enjoyed them. However, more often than not, I get bored. Impatient. I want to know how the story ends without all of the—usual—unnecessary plot fillers.

Harry Potter, as an example, is still my favourite series, to which I go back very often, and I am usually not intimidated by a big book but, more and more, I find that I’m eager for the story to develop faster. Unless the book is incredibly interesting and something new is always happening, I start losing focus. It ends up taking me a lot longer than it should to finish a book and, because I don’t tend to read more than one book at once, I end up spending less time reading, dreading picking up whichever book I’m reading at the time, since it is taking me so long to get to the parts I truly find crucial to the story. This happens even if I’m really enjoying the writing style and the premise of the book, which is frustrating because, like any bookworm, I have a huge TBR pile.

Of course there are exceptions; some bigger books are really good and I go through them in an instant, but most of the time they just have so many details that were probably unnecessary to the plot and could easily be removed from the book without making much of a difference, since they don’t really add all that much to the story.

So, yeah, I’m using Book Riot to say it out loud, unashamed: I don’t like big books and I cannot lie. Anyone else with me?

Here are a few short-books for you: YA, and books you can read in 2 hours. Also, short mystery audiobooks and short non-fiction audiobooks, for the audio lovers.