Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic this week is Top Ten Quick Reads/Books to Read When Time is Short (Books under 150 pages.)

The first five are fiction.

The Black Mountain by Kate Mosse 136 pages - based on a real historical event, this is historical fiction set in May 1706 on the northern part of the island of Tenerife, where Ana and her family live in the shadow of a volcano, known locally as the Black Mountain.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 71 pages – this is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 

The Guest Cat by by Takashi Hiraide 146 pages – a story of how a cat made itself at home with a couple in their thirties who lived in a small rented house in a quiet part of Tokyo.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett 124 pages, telling the story of Her Majesty, not named, but she had dogs, took her summer holiday at Balmoral and was married to a duke. She came across the travelling library outside the palace and borrowed a book to save the driver/librarian’s embarrassment. 

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton 128 pages – a tragedy, signalled right from the beginning of the book, when the unnamed narrator first saw Ethan Frome and was told he had been disfigured and crippled in a ‘smash up’, twenty four years earlier. Life had not been good to him.

The second five are all nonfiction.

Ink in the Blood by Hilary Mantel 31 pages – a short memoir about how she had surgery to remove an intestinal obstruction that ended up in a marathon operation, followed by intense pain, nightmares and hallucinations. Writing was Hilary Mantel’s lifeline – it was the ink, as she wrote in her diary, that reassured her she was alive.

Blue Tits in My Nest Box by David Gains 76 pages – I read this because we had a new blue tit box in our garden – one with a camera and waited to see whether it would be occupied. I wanted to find out more about their nesting habits. After checking several bird websites, I found this little book, a mine of information.

Painting as a Pastime by Winston S Churchill 96 pages – Churchill was forty when he first started to paint and art became his passion and an ‘astonishing and enriching experience‘. He talks about the fun of painting, the colours and the pleasure he found in not only in painting a picture, but also the pleasure he discovered in a heightened sense of observation, finding objects in  the landscape, he had never noticed before.

A Short Book about Drawing by Andrew Marr 144 pages – this is also a book about being happy and the importance of drawing and making, for a happy life. It’s not an instruction book, but it’s full of insight into what happens when you draw and it’s dotted throughout with personal information.

A Short History of Scotland by Richard Killeen There are 31 short chapters covering the period from Prehistoric Scotland up to the Twentieth Century – all in 69 pages, including coloured illustrations of people and places.