Crib Notes: 6 Books to Read When You Are Super Short on Time

Since the birth of my son I have often felt like I am reading on borrowed time. The hours I used to spend luxuriating in the company of doorstop Donna Tartt novels are now a thing of the past. Typically, when a moment’s peace does arrive, I am often too knackered for anything more ambitious than watching Parks and Rec. Do you feel this way too? Maybe you spent lockdown engaged in the Herculean task of balancing childcare and work. Maybe your attention and energy are consumed by a newborn. Maybe you just feel too anxious to focus on anything for more than a few minutes. I hear you. In this issue of Crib Notes, I have chosen books well-suited to a pick-up-put-down reading style: below you will find essays and short stories to sneak in before bed, one novel to gobble up whole, and a poetry anthology to dip into.

HOW TO BUY YOUR BOOKS: If you would like to support an independent bookshop, we recommend purchasing your books from our wonderful partner Storytellers Inc. Email Katie at katie@storytellersinc.co.uk and quote ‘cribnotes’ to receive free postage on singles orders and 10% off orders of more than two titles. 

A NOTE ON SENSITIVE CONTENT: After having my baby, I found some subjects more upsetting. For some reviews, I have flagged ‘sensitive’ content so that you can take your mental and emotional state into consideration when choosing what to read.

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6 Books for Time-Poor Mums 

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

Ferocious and shimmering, Julia Armfield’s Salt, Slow features gorgeously weird stories which blend the Gothic and mythic with the contemporary. In ‘Stop Your Women’s Ears with Wax’ girls riot in the streets and rip men’s hearts from their chests, lured by the siren call of a female pop group. In ‘The Collectibles’, a woman recovering from a bad break-up takes to grave-robbing. My favourite story is ‘The Great Awake’, in which an entire city turns insomniac overnight. Elsewhere teenagers shape-shift and ex-lovers appear as ghosts. Salt, Slow is jaw-droppingly good. It reeled me in and refused to let me go until I had finished the final, mesmerising story.
When to read:  Salt, Slow is an apposite read for uncertain times. At the beginning of 2020, quarantining and covering up our faces seemed unfathomably dystopian. Like our ‘new normal’, these stories look a lot like modern life but feel unsettlingly different. I read Salt, Slow during week seven of lockdown and found it a strangely comforting read. 
How to Consume: If you only have time to scroll, you can read ‘The Great Awake’ on The White Review website. I love the gold-flecked paperback edition, which weighs in at only 160 pages.
What to Read Next: Try Helen Oyeyemi’s linked short story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Aoko Matsuda’s gently spooky feminist retellings of Japanese Ghost Stories Where the Wild Ladies Are, Cathy Sweeney’s Modern Times and Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and other Parties.