Short but sweet e-reads for winter

To call the singles in this winter nonfiction round-up "shorts" would be doing them a disservice: these are more substantial in length and content than your average e-pamphlet.

In The Man With the Electrified Brain (Byliner), Simon Winchester describes his sudden descent into mental illness at Oxford in the 1960s, and how he was cured by ECT. Its disturbing subject matter is offset by a good dollop of black humour: Winchester recalls how listening to Tony Blackburn on Radio 1 triggered a suicidal urge to sit down in the middle of a main road.

An equally affecting though rather different sort of memoir is Only Child by Christopher Meyer (Kindle Singles), in which the former diplomat pays tribute to his father, an RAF pilot shot down before he was born. Meyer's account of meeting the Greek villagers who buried his dad is hard to read with dry eyes.

Penguin Specials has marked the Benjamin Britten centenary with a breezy profile by critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic. Its journalistic tone may irritate some readers, but I found this to be an intelligent and balanced introduction. While making no excuses for Britten's personal weaknesses, it mounts a passionate critical defence of "the composer the avant garde have [always] loved to hate".

Two more Penguin Specials find Nick Hornby in reflective mood with compilations of his writing from the past 20 years – Books, Movies, Rhythm, Blues (on culture) and Fan Mail (on football). Both ebooks are worth downloading: standout pieces "Internet music" and "Fever Pitch revisited" showcase Hornby's winning blend of nostalgia and optimism.

They left me, however, with a strong sense of the former. Anthologies such as these – perfect for presents, for keeping by the bed or loo, for dipping into rather than reading from cover to cover – are surely better off in print.