11 Best Short Books You Can Read In One Sitting
There’s nothing worse than a reading slump, where few books seem to grab your attention, and the thought of finding the time to get through 400-odd pages feels almost impossible. The best way we’ve found to break through it is to pick up a shorter novel – not only do they take up less time, but they get right to the action, they can often be read in just one sitting.
Whether you’re looking to juice up your Goodreads numbers, fancy a short and sweet holiday read or just after a good book recommendation, here are 11 great books you can put away in one afternoon. We’ve capped it at less than 250 pages, but most of these lie under 200.
Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan made her name as a short story writer before bursting on the scene with Small Things Like These, garnering a place on the Booker Prize shortlist.
Set during the lead-up to Christmas in a small Irish town, it follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant who becomes increasingly troubled by the complicit silence around the local convent. It’s dreary and harrowing, but ultimately a crucial bit of storytelling about a period Ireland still today hasn’t fully come to terms with.
At 128 pages, it is a short read, but its effect will stay with you a long time afterwards.
Into The Wild
Clocking in at about 240 pages, Into The Wild is the longest book on this list – but it also features quite a lot of photography, so still more than possible in one sitting. Telling the infamous story of Christopher McCandless, who walked out into the Alaskan wilderness to pursue a life of solitude which ended in tragedy, it’s so propulsively paced it is hard to put it down.
Krakauer traces McCandless’ early adventures and his inspirations to find clues for his decision, interviewing those he met along the way and family members to try to make sense of a decision that seems senseless.
The Days of Abandonment
Best known for the Neopolitan novels, pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante’s early depiction of a life falling apart remains a cornerstone. It charts protagonist Olga’s internal crisis when her seemingly solid marriage of 15 years ends abruptly after her husband leaves her and her two children for a younger woman.
Introspective, raw and yet hopeful, it remains a great gateway into Ferrante – and is just 192 pages.
Elena Ferrante’s early depiction of a life falling apart remains a cornerstone
The Old Man And The Sea
Hemingway’s classic about an old man’s quest to catch a marlin off the coast of Cuba might be the best representation of what he was trying to do with his writing. It’s ostensibly a simple tale, just over 100 pages, about trying to capture a fish, but so much history and meaning lies beneath the flat prose.
It won the Pulitzer Prize and was the only work mentioned when Hemingway won the Nobel Prize a year after being published. It remains a must-read – ideally on a coastal holiday.
Ghost Wall
From one of the most interesting novelists working today, Ghost Wall details an archaeological university trip that digs up past trauma to the surface. Seventeen-year-old Silvie and her parents, including her amateur-historian father, join an academic re-enactment of an Iron Age settlement. As Silvie bonds with the older students, she becomes increasingly aware of a life outside the sheltered world her abusive father keeps her in.
As well as a tense personal thriller, there’s nobody better at depicting the dark side of nationalism than Moss at the moment, who unpacks the danger of nostalgia and conservatism.
Annihilation
A must for any fans of Sci-fi, Jeff Vandermeer’s modern classic follows a team of four women – a biologist, a psychologist, an anthropologist and a surveyor – as they venture into Area X, a zone cut-off from civilisation where nature behaves in strange ways.
They soon discover they aren’t the first expedition to the zone, and the previous groups have fallen apart due to various disappearances, suicides, memory loss and disease. You might have seen the 2018 adaptation, which is also great, but the novel tells a very different story and, at just 208 pages, is a perfect eco-thriller to keep you turning the pages.
Giovanni’s Room
This queer classic from James Baldwin follows a doomed love affair in 1950s Paris between American expat David and the bartender he meets.
Controversial in its time, it was groundbreaking in its exploration of sexuality, masculinity and identity – all in just 176 pages.
This queer classic from James Baldwin follows a doomed love affair in 1950s Paris
The Vegetarian
We’re big fans of Han Kang – check out our piece on her other novel Human Acts, our February Book Club pick – and The Vegetarian is the one that propelled her into the mainstream in the English-speaking world.
This short novel tells the story of a woman, Yeong-hye, in three parts, functioning as an allegorical tale about everyday violence towards women. At 185 pages, it packs an extraordinary punch.
Leaving The Atocha Station
Ben Lerner has since established himself as one of the most innovative modern-day authors, and his slim, funny and autofictional novel remains one of the best debuts in recent memory. It follows Adam, a young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid and an unreliable narrator, who spends his days wracked with self-doubt and cynicism about his work and its importance. Crucially, he’s not writing much poetry.
You start by finding the narrator completely insufferable, but by the end, you’re laughing at nearly every neurotic and overly misanthropic musing he has as he navigates his way through an internal crisis of meaning.
Animal Farm
George Orwell’s cautionary tale of revolution and the corruption of power remains a classic in the read-in-one-sitting genre. Everyone vaguely knows how the plot goes, but relatively few have read it – for the sake of one afternoon, it’s worth it.
Everyone vaguely knows how the plot goes, but relatively few have actually read it
The Sorrows of Young Werther
You might bristle at reading anything from the 18th Century, but the titular character in The Sorrows of Young Werther might be the original lovestruck, bumbling rom-com lead. In the vain of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 500 Days of Summer or Hugh Grant in anything from 1994 until 2006, he spends his time unsuccessfully chasing his crush, Charlotte, and recounting this to his friend via a series of letters. At just 144 pages, it remains incredibly relevant.
The titular character in might be the original lovestruck, bumbling rom-com lead
