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Very Short Books to Finish Your Reading Challenge Strong
This year’s Goodreads Reading Challenge is going strong, with more than 7 million (!) participants globally and 300 million (!) books pledged. Autumn is always a good time to check in on your progress, before the stretch run of the holidays. If you find you’re a few books off your ideal pace, well, we have a cunning plan.…
We’ve assembled here several dozen Very Short Books for your perusal, the reading of which can do wonders for your overall progress. All the selections here clock in at fewer than 200 pages, and we’ve made sure to include options from every genre.
To switch things up a bit this year, we’ve dug deep into the archives and selected some famous and popular backlist titles. Now’s your chance to consume that nutritional literature you’ve been meaning to get to since high school—like Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Morrison.
There really are some incredible books on this list, especially in the realm of speculative fiction. We don’t play favorites, of course. Except sometimes we do. Click on the cover images for more details, and you can sort out your sequencing via your Want to Read shelf.
Books with fewer than 200 pages
Which books will you be reading before the end of the year (and to complete your 2023 Goodreads Reading Challenge)? Share your picks with us in the comments below!
Comments Showing 1-50 of 245 (245 new)
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Law
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Oct 25, 2023 12:47AM
Hey, I read Of Mice and Men. It was okay.
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The very first book listed is second in a series, don't do this to me.
Is this cheating Duncan? If I read 100 100 page books in a year vs. 10 1000 page books?
Duncan wrote: "Cheating."Reading is reading is reading.
No one is better than anyone else for reading chunky tomes instead of novellas.
Only cheating if done intentionally. But since it's not a contest, who cares.
Would you rather have too little of a good thing or too much of a bad thing?I'm more likely to take an adventurous shot on something short because a 50 page book I loathe feels longer than a 900 page book I love. I've turned down cracking a spine or two because I don't want to add to the albatross necklace of concurrent books I can only stomach one chapter a week or month.
Chimamanda's Notes on Grief was a beautiful read. After losing my Dad a year ago, it really resonated with me.
While The Poet X has a longer page count, it's pretty short on audio, under 4 hours.
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli. It's less than 150 pages long. It was suppose to be awarded a prestigious literary award but was cancelled by Frankfurt Book Fair because the author is Palestinian and the book is about real events.
Hi guys, I am new to Goodreads. Can someone help me out with what to do. I don’t fully understand.
lmao, the Goodreads editors are calling us out.Seriously though, shorter fiction gets the red-haired stepchild these days for no reason. No shame in having your read count padded out by it. (It does feel like someone just scraped the past decade's novella awards and threw in some low-page-count classics. (but, hey, it's good stuff! at least the books i recognise)
Thank gosh I got rid of my 2023 reading goal, I’d be in so much pressure rn
What do I do? I don’t know what is happening! Can someone please help me out?!
🐺🐴Missy🦄💕 wrote: "What do I do? I don’t know what is happening! Can someone please help me out?!"Just join in the conversation or put a comment about the subject. Today’s subject is short books.
Thanks. I really like the books by Chris Colfer and Erin Hunter.
Duncan wrote: "Cheating."this is no competition
The Deep and Ring Shout are both very good novellas about generational trauma, they're a little difficult for different reasons but so good.
🐺🐴Missy🦄💕 wrote: "What do I do? I don’t know what is happening! Can someone please help me out?!"Hmmm it's mainly just a platform to keep track of what you are reading and books on your tbr list (books you want to read in the future). You can set an objective of a number of books to read during the year (that's the challenge), but it's just a number you put there to motivate yourself, it's not a competition. You can rate the books you've read and review them if you want. It's nice to see recommendations based on what other readers who enjoyed a book also enjoyed, it helps to find new autors in a similar genre.
Thanks. Thant really clears things up.
Why do some people think it's some sort of contest and that only the "right" books should be read? I will gleefully add picture books that I've picked up at work out of boredom to my list. It doesn't matter. Read what you want. That's the fun of it. It's supposed to be FUN.
It IS supposed to be fun. Its also just nice to go back through your Read books and remember them. Stuff gets buried so quickly. The point isnt to prove anything to anyone...
You can also add 84 Charing Cross Road to this list. I think it's under 100pgs.
your secret favorites are so good!! and novellas are so underrated!! My favorite this year was Untethered Sky
Shirley Jackson has several collections of short stories, depending on the year and publisher, some are shorter than We Have Always Lived in a Castle and all are worth reading.I don't care about my book count for the year, it's just a number. But sometimes some of the shorter ones can be refreshing when life is a bit busy or stressed. A well written short story is a gem!
i despise this idea. social media fucks up everything by turning it into some form of self-validation or avenue for bragging.
ick.
🐺🐴Missy🦄💕 wrote: "Hi guys, I am new to Goodreads. Can someone help me out with what to do. I don’t fully understand."You read books, and then you add them to your account.
Jim wrote: "i despise this idea. social media fucks up everything by turning it into some form of self-validation or avenue for bragging.
ick."
Is this challenge just for attention-seeking or what?
My Left FootLast Night at the Lobster
Push
The Colour of Milk
How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You
Regretsy,
F in Exams...,
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops
84 Charing Cross Road
I'll add "The Death of Ivan Ilych" (Tolstoy). Roughly 80 pages or so and well worth the read.
Cozy mysteries are also a good way to quickly add to your book count; they're normally on the shorter side and a lot have quite a few in the series. There's a lot of them and if you fall in love with one (or ten) you can knock them out pretty quickly.
I inflated my Reading Challenge numbers to accommodate graphic novels and gamebooks after I started reading (and rereading) them. If you really wanted to hit your targets, do consider those too. Some, like the Saga series are really good!
I wish I could choose a reading challenge by word count so I don't feel like I'm killing my reading challenge by reading some epic fantasy novels.
Loved seeing so many on my to read list! I’d love to have this as a filter for sorting books I’ve shelved. Because sometimes I can only focus enough for a short book and being able to easily find which ones are shorter would be a life saver vs borrowing on Libby and opening in kindle etc.
Morgan wrote: "Loved seeing so many on my to read list! I’d love to have this as a filter for sorting books I’ve shelved. Because sometimes I can only focus enough for a short book and being able to easily find w..."if you go to "my books" on the top bar (desktop browser), scroll to the bottom and choose "num pages" on the drop down 'sort' menu. your books will then be shown by page count
I would add The Little Prince to the list. Some nice books in the list.
'Pereira Maintains' by Antonio Tabucchi is a perfect and memorable short book, set in Lisbon in the late 1930s. Well worth a look if you haven't read it.
I add an extra 12 books to my challenge and try to go back to some of my childhood favorites (one for each month).They’re often on the shorter side, and it’s quite interesting to see how the things I read as a child hit differently as an adult.
Some of my past choices were The Westing Game (Ellen Raskin), My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George), and Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O’Dell).
This year I headed all the way back to elementary school and I’m reading the Wayside School series (Louis Sachar).
Farron wrote: "Why do some people think it's some sort of contest and that only the "right" books should be read? I will gleefully add picture books that I've picked up at work out of boredom to my list. It doesn..."I totally agree. Read what you want, when you want.
Law wrote: "Jim wrote: "i despise this idea. social media fucks up everything by turning it into some form of self-validation or avenue for bragging.
ick."
Is this challenge just for attention-seeking or what?"
I know right?
I've already read Kitchen and Elevation and liked both. Sometimes you don't need a chunky book to tell a good story, but also the opposite can happen. In the case of these books I felt the lenght was appropriate and the stories where meaningful. Though, this is just my opinion :)
Hey, what about... Read whatever you want to read for the sheer joy of it? Lol
Jessica wrote: "Hey, what about... Read whatever you want to read for the sheer joy of it? Lol"Totally
Matthew wrote: "I wish I could choose a reading challenge by word count so I don't feel like I'm killing my reading challenge by reading some epic fantasy novels."A reading challenge by page count would be great! Although the problem is, the page count on GR is often incorrect.
I also recommend The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw, which I finished last week and liked it pretty much!Fun fact: I hated Nothing But Blackened Teeth by the same author 2 years ago, but the former is so cool!
Naomi wrote: "The very first book listed is second in a series, don't do this to me."While #1 is about twice as long as #2, I think the listed book is fine as a free standing novel--it's the kind of series that, IMO, doesn't need to be read in order.
The books from this list that I've read have all been excellent, and most have stayed with me for various reasons. I love it when a writer can complete something of worth in as few words as possible. I might have added "The Empress of Salt and Fortune," one of the best revenge books I've ever read--right up there with Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." I don't see a single title here as a "cheat" in regards to a reading goal!
