short book recommendations
over 300 books that are under 300 pages to get you out of a reading slump
This is literally my magnum opus. Mainly because it took me almost two full days to make.
Here are some short book recommendations (under 300 pages)! I've arranged them in order of page count to make it as easy as possible and tried to include as many as possible. As always this will be strictly literary fiction, classics, and nonfiction (and some poetry). This list has over 300 books, so use this as your guide!
The guide is organized into: books under 100 pages, 150 pages, 175 pages, and so on (in intervals of 25 pages). I’ve also linked Goodreads pages to each of the books for your convenience & so you can add it to your TBR immediately.
This list is for me as much as it is for you, for busy periods in our lives when we want to pick up a short book because we don’t want to commit to a big one. I've read and enjoyed most of these, and the others are high up on my to-read list and have been vouched for by friends whose taste I trust with my life.
I put a heart next to the ones I especially love.
UNDER 100 PAGES
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (22 pages)
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (32 pages)
Mr. Salary by Sally Rooney (48 pages) ♡
Dark Days by James Baldwin (50 pages)
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (52 pages)
Marigold and Rose by Louise Glück (55 pages)
The Missing Girl by Shirley Jackson (55 pages)
The Vigilante by John Steinbeck (55 pages)
Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag (58 pages)
Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast by Oscar Wilde (60 pages)
The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt (69 pages)
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (70 pages) ♡