Top 10 bite-size books

Tim Key is the author of Instructions, Guidelines, Tuteledge, Suggestions, Other Suggestions, and Examples Etc: An Attempted Book.

For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of bite-size books. One title on the list:

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol

Another spot of Russian. Russian short stories are mental and Gogol wrote some real humdingers. This is the saddest and my favourite. About a titular clerk (obviously) who saves up his money to get a new overcoat and turn his life around. It goes quite well for him for a bit. But then Gogol leaves us all devastated.

The Overcoat appears on Peter Washington's top 10 list of ghost stories.

Read about another book on Key's list.

--Marshal Zeringue