Very Short Books to Finish Your Reading Challenge Strong
Posted by Cybil on October 25, 2023
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!
Mark Magers
My Left Foot
Last 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
Last 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
Donald
I'll add "The Death of Ivan Ilych" (Tolstoy). Roughly 80 pages or so and well worth the read.
Laurel
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.
Fooie
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!
Matthew Jones
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.
✨ Morgan ✨
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.
coty ☆
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
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
Pradnya
I would add The Little Prince to the list. Some nice books in the list.
Nicholas Foster
'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.