You have five minutes

To pick five books from your shelf, to read for the next year. (Backstory? Oh, OK: You're being sent to the Sakhalin Islands as part of a diabolical student exchange program—you filled out all this paperwork months ago, half drunk, and didn't know what you were agreeing to.)

If you're me, you maybe select the following:

1. The Scorpions, Robert Kelly
2. Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
3. Prater Violet, Christopher Isherwood
4. Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, P.D. Ouspensky
5. Afternoon Men, Anthony Powell

A bit too British, and none of these are by Nabokov or Charles Portis—but that's fine. You will like these books. Some are comedies. Some are eerie. All are quite short and can be savored again and again.