College students don’t have time for much. An average day is full of class, work, meetings and maybe some food in between. When there is time for a social life, many never make it out the door before they crash wherever their sleepless souls can land.

Some college students don’t think about recreational reading. It’s either the farthest thing from their minds or they repress the thought so their hearts won’t break from the lack of books.

Why read Sherlock Holmes when you have to read The Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets? Why spend your off time reading anything when you could be doing…well anything else?

Because it’s good for you; that’s why. There are many short books, or novellas, that you could start and finish on a Sunday evening given that you didn’t procrastinate all weekend. Novellas are usually under 200 pages. 

These usually aren’t meant to be complex and plot heavy but instead are meant to make you think.

One I read recently is “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Truman Capote. The book is a lot harsher and more real than the movie version starring the lovely Audrey Hepburn. Holly Golightly is a lot harsher. 

Hepburn plays Golightly as a sympathetic, lost girl who falls in love with her new neighbor. In the book, there is no romance and no kiss in the rain. She lets Cat out of the taxi and doesn’t get him back. 

“We Have Always Lived in the Castle” by Shirley Jackson is a strange, little book that I didn’t expect would stick with me so long. It isn’t horror, but it is creepy. Unreliable narrator Merricat Blackwood lives an isolated life with her sister and paraplegic uncle. 

The town thinks Merricat’s sister killed their family. Merricat thinks her visiting relative is a ghost.

Thomas Mann penned “Death in Venice” in 1912. This book follows aging writer Gustav von Aschenbach on a small vacation to Venice. 

While there, he slips further into a mid-life crisis and becomes obsessed with a young boy who is also vacationing in Venice.

It focuses on the loss of beauty and life, delves into ancient Greek allusions to “modern day” and reaching that point in life where it seems like there is no where else to go.

But on a more light-hearted side of the novella world, you can take a trip down memory lane and reread “The Giver” by Lois Lowry or “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton. These women will make you proud of the accomplishments of female writers and the classic novels they placed on the bookshelf of history.

Speaking of classic novels, who hasn’t heard of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?” Created by Douglas Adams, this “guide” may be a little longer than 200 pages, but you won’t even notice. Your life will be too busy being changed.

So get to reading.