Dearest Gentle Reader,

I’m starting this series called “Brainrot Begone,” to help you reduce your brainrot. If you are reading this, congratulations! You’re already on step one to a clearer and healthier mind.

One of the biggest things that helped me clear my brainrot was replacing doomscrolling with reading books!

That’s why for this first article in the series, I’ll be recommending exciting books that I read in a day for all you people with short-attention spans like myself 🙂 These books are

Let me know if they worked for you!

Note: Even if you read them in much longer than a day, they are still good for your brain – so don’t worry about the speed! I just read them in that timeframe because I couldn’t put them down🥲

1. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

This novel stands out because the narrator such a uniquely robotic voice, that is both entertaining and unsettling – the entire experience being very much like reading a creepy Junji Ito comic.

“It is the start of another day, the time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move. I am one of those cogs, going round and round. I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning”

From creepy stalkers to a woman trying to force herself to adjust into a “normal life” without her beloved convenience store, it’s deeply hilarious and offers a lot of fascinating commentary about how society judges people who are different.

The book also comments on the commodification of humans via capitalism.

I read the whole thing in a day because I was morbidly invested in what would happen to this robotic convenience woman. The dialogue and writing is very very uniquely Japanese, so fans of anime and manga will like this as well.

2. If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

If you like dark academia and Shakespeare, you will probably devour this book in no time like I did.

It starts out as a slice-of-life novel about the life of a group of theatre students studying Shakespeare, strewing in some love, relationships, and jealousy – then one of them is killed in a boat house, and it turns into a demented murder mystery.

Another reason my short attention span liked this book is because it switches POVs from the present (police interview) to the past (school), so you never feel stale or stuck in one area.

If you liked The Secret History, you will LOVE this book. It’s hauntingly beautiful at times, but is also a page-turner that will keep you clawing at the pages for more details.

3. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes by Suzanne Collins

This is a villain origin story like no other, starring no other than the evil President Snow from the Hunger Games series in his youth – back when he was in love with a Covey girl named Lucy Gray.

His inner monologue is extremely unhinged and will have many moments where you go “Did he just say that!?”

This will make you root for a toxic love story: their hushed meetings through jail bars, saving each other time and time again, the care and attention- him bringing her food, her doing him favors- it all makes you so happy for them until you remember it’s a trauma bond.

Ballad is Suzanne Collins at her best, painting a dystopian world that enraptures the reader with its passages of the steely Capitol, the pastoral lakes of 12 that the Covey frequents, the Hobb, and the fast-paced fight scenes in the arena.

While I loved Sunrise on the Reaping, the Ballad still has my heart.

4. The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

This book may have garnered quite a few bad reviews, but it was definitely not boring. I read it all in one night, right after picking it up one a whim at the local bookstore.

As a group therapist, the narrator Mariana has a unique voice, primed towards group settings and analysis of the characters she faces – particularly interesting during the “mean girls” section of the book.

It also had a few moments that made me cry, especially when Mariana describes the feeling of losing a loved one so tenderly and beautifully, like losing a part of yourself.

“She was already so in love there was no way out again.”

“The life she had known has been obliterated, leaving Mariana here: thirty-six years old, alone and drunk on a Sunday night, clutching a dead man’s as if they were holy relics.”

Overall, the pretty vignettes of sunlit Greece and European summers, as well as references to Shakespeare (Kate & Petruchio) were lovely to read through, contrasting the chapters about stalker-ish patients, killers, and bloodstained animals.

Freudian passages and disturbing revelations (especially that insane ending) keep you on your toes for the entire read, although I will admit a few of them are predictable and will require some suspension of disbelief.

I also enjoyed that the book has quite a few red herrings here and there. It even has some chapters written from the POV of the killer, to keep things interesting.

5. Dowry of Blood, by S.T. Gibson

This is one of the most gripping, visceral stories I have ever had the pleasure of reading and I wish I could read it all over again with fresh eyes. Every description is so vivid, you can taste the Gothic decadence on your lips, like the kissing in hushed theatre boxes and fighting with your lover in a cathedral – the prose brings the world of this group of vampires so richly you’ll wish you were one of them, even if just for the summer.

The story begins with the death of a woman whose village was destroyed. Upon “waking,” she is offered a chance by Dracula to enact revenge. Constanta then becomes the vampire’s first wife and follows him from one European village to the next: living through plagues, crusades, and one historical event after another. If history was taught this way (and in so alluring a manner), I think more students would make it their favorite subject!

We then meet Constanta’s next intoxicating love: Magdalena, a fiery noblewoman with a rebellious streak who (gasp) presides over her own estate. Then Alexi, a young male model posing for a portrait.

It’s all very lovely, and I hope you put this high on your reading list!

Thank you for reading! Check out the rest of my “Brainrot Begone” series!