lazylibrary

Busy, busy...I give you Lazylibrary , for all of you who have better things to do than read just because you want to read.

Ever read a book that was a few hundred pages longer than it needed to be? Yeah, so have we. Fortunately, there are authors out there that would rather have a concise and effective book than a lengthy and diluted tome, and that's where we come in.

Welcome to the lazylibrary, where you can find books on any topic without having to worry about high page counts. If it's over 200 pages, you won't even see it. Read all about anything, in less time, for (usually) less money.

This goes a step beyond cut versions of books.  Use this website and you are promised you won't even be troubled by having to acknowledge the existence of a book longer than 200 pages.

Of course, the assumption is that books have a point, a practical purpose.  Concise and effective is not how you might describe Portrait Of A Lady but then it doesn't have a purpose, it's a novel.  Put Henry James into the search facility and you get The Heiress, the movie script version of Washington Square, Harold Bloom on James's Short Stories (111 pages) and - actual  prose fiction - various James Bond books (Fleming's no fool, 128 pages).

So forget the made-up stuff.  But you don't want to waste time finding out about the topic of your choice, either.  The quick version of everything will do.   Look up 'death' on search and you'll find Dog Heaven (40 pages) and Tear Soup (56 pages) towards the top of the list.  Masterpieces for all I know. 'Love' gets you Individual Power: Reclaiming Your Core, Your Truth, Your Life (a weighty 192 pages) as well as I Love You Stinky Face (a more manageable 30 pages).  No need to linger over anything.  Try 'Quantum Physics' and you won't be troubled with anything over 192 pages. You can bone up on the 'Cold War' in 196 pages, and get Elizabeth Bishop, strangely. It's a biography, however, not her poetry (in fact a search on Elizabeth Bishop only brings up biogs and studies - short ones, of course.  No actual poetry at all). 

I suppose it's perfectly reasonable in a world where fast information is paramount and rough information will do.  Perfectly reasonable if you're in a terrible hurry.  Lifehacker.com who flagged lazylibrary describes it as a way for those who want 'to get back in the habit of reading but need a light point of entry'.  It supposes that 'diehard literati' (that's likely me and you) will yell travesty.  What the hell, they imply, any reading is better than none.  I wonder if that's true?  I really don't know.  It seems a much more moralistic and pointless position than my moaning about cut and short books.  If you don't want to read, then don't.  A little reading is not necessarily better than none.  I'm up for the pleasure of reading, not as little as it's possible to get away with because it's such a dull thing to do. If you don't enjoy it, don't bother, check out Wikipedia. 

Sod it, let's make long, complex, intricate books really hard to find, available only to those who know the secret password, or who can recite Finnegan's Wake backwards.  If you want to read anything longer than 200 pages or more taxing than The Thorn Birds you're going to have to beg.

Comments

[LisaJ]

Thanks for the comment about how it's questionable if any reading is better than none. I kept thinking the same when people were sooooo über-happy that children apparently started reading again when Harry Potter first came out. But if you read one book every two years, it doesn't really help, does it? And it's not like reading = reading = reading = "morally good" = now-you're-a-better-human-being-and-can-be-proud of-how-educated-you-are-etc.

[Ralf Heinritz]

Yes, as philosophy is only for people who like the stuff, no reading is the much more pleasing for all concerned option, if you actually hate to do it, are to dumb to do it ("too fat to fuck, sorry bout that") or so clever you manage to have people around to do all your thinking and all your work for you
There also are books, essays, poems going on and on without a point, sometimes only a few sentences long.
Which reminds me

[Steven Augustine]

The average white-collar consumer just isn't quite ready to admit they'd rather be collecting text-free Japanese porno comics, are they? Give it another ten years and all this pretense will fall away.

[JB]

Thank YOU again - a great website but what to look for? I then remembered how offputtingly long the bible was so did a search for any new work by God. (Obviously what's worth saying in a squillion words ...) Couldn't believe it. God, via Ms Barbara Rose, is published and has a concise message (152 words) that "...will set humanity free." Biggest claim though is that this book "... will reach the ears of those who would hide and run away." Don't even try.