5 Great Short Books to Read When You’re Too Busy for Long Books

Are you feeling rather too busy to read books? I hope not, and yet, I’m guessing you probably are feeling that way. I feel that way myself—for, despite being an avid reader, it always feels as if I’m not reading enough. In this situation, it helps to read short books. With a short book, you can make progress quickly and finish it in a few days, even if you can only snatch a few minutes of reading time here and there. In this blog post, I will share five great short books to read, when you’re too busy for long books.

I read all five of the selections below during the past two months. All were published within the last 10 years, and most were published with the last two years. Three are fiction, one is nonfiction, and one is autofiction (a blend of fiction and autobiography). I heartily recommend them all. I am listing them in alphabetical order because I liked them all equally well, though for different reasons.

#1 in my alphabetical list of great short books to read: Eradication: A Fable by Jonathan Miles, 2026

This short book, clocking in at less than 200 pages, is a fable. It is essential to remember what the word “fable” means to fully appreciate the ending. A fable is a short, moralistic tale in which animals talk and act like humans. Remember this fact as you read this little tale about a gentle man with a habit of overthinking. He lands an unusual job on a tiny desert island, on which live hundreds of goats.

#2 in my alphabetical list of great short books to read: Evil Genius by Claire Oshetsky, 2026

This short novel, at just over 200 pages, is not technically the shortest book in this list, but it’s the one that speeds by the quickest. The writing is snappy and fun. The voice is exquisite—delightful and pitch-perfect in its depiction of a young woman whose head is always in the clouds, but who has more oodles of spunk than she knows what to do with.

The protagonist is a 19-year-old woman in the 1970s who is obsessed with a true crime story and then somehow accidentally becomes a witness, victim, or perpetrator of several true crimes herself. This is also a story about a marriage gone completely off the rails.

#3 in my alphabetical list of great short books to read: Keeping Quiet: Sixteen Essays on Silence by Adriana Páramo, 2024

At just over 200 pages, this nonfictional, autobiographical collection of 16 personal essays can be dipped in and out of, as you have reading time. I picked up this book at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Baltimore at the Red Hen Press table. This indie press awarded the book a prize for best nonfiction.

Based on the title alone, I thought the book was going to be about meditation and stillness. It is actually about the author’s tendency not to speak up, due to the power dynamics of being a woman (or girl) in a man’s world.

The author is from Columbia and has also lived in the United States and Qatar. She works as a petroleum engineer, which often puts her in situations in which she is the only woman, surrounded by men. The best essays in this collection are the ones in which Páramo describes her body and personhood being disregarded as unimportant, whether she speaks up or not.

#4 in my alphabetical list of great short books to read: Lion by Sonya Walger, 2025

This short work of autofiction, under 200 pages long, is a fictionalized version of the author’s relationship with her father. You may know Sonya Walger as an actress on the TV drama Lost and other shows. She also hosts a podcast called Bookish with Sonya Walger, in which she interviews guests about the five books that most shaped who they are. She has stopped podcasting to focus on writing. I hope she resumes at some point because the podcast is really great.

Walger was raised in England by her British mother. Her father, the center of this book, is from Argentina and was often absent during her childhood, though he looms large as a daredevil who flirts with danger and the law. It’s never boring to read about how father and daughter maintain their unsteady and often toxic but overall loving relationship.

#5 in my alphabetical list of great short books to read: Ties by Domenico Starnone, 2014, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri in 2016

I’m cheating because this book was technically published more than ten years ago, but since it was translated into English ten years ago, I’m counting it as a modern book according to my definition.

I picked up this short novel of only 150 pages because of the speculation surrounding the identity of the pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante. Ferrante wrote the famous series of Neapolitan Novels that begins with My Brilliant Friend. My personal favorite by Ferrante is The Days of Abandonment. (Read my previous blog posts about Elena Ferrante’s books here.)

I do not know who the real Elena Ferrante is, and she wishes to keep her identity private, as is her right. But some people say she is either Domenico Starnone, the famous Italian author who wrote this short book called Ties; his wife, the prize-winning German-to-Italian translator Anita Raja; or both of them working collaboratively. So I read Ties to assess for myself whether the writing style is at all similar to the style I have known and loved in Elena Ferrante.

My verdict: the writing style and subject matter could not be more similar, with one exception: Ties has a male perspective, while Ferrante’s books have a female perspective. Both Ties by Starnone and Ferrante’s books focus on gender and power dynamics within marriages, families, and friendships. Both take place in Naples and Rome. Both are told in a sweeping and engaging style with characters who are often unreasonably angry and volatile: liable to explode into extreme violence, defiance, or passion at any moment. I liked Ties, but it made me flinch. This is also how I feel about Ferrante’s novels.

I don’t know whether Starnone and Raja are the real authors of Elena Ferrante’s books. But Starnone and Ferrante are certainly mining the same territory, in the same way, with just a gender difference. Mostly, I feel glad to have discovered Starnone because I really love Ferrante’s style, but I’ve already read most of her books, so now I have a treasure trove of books just like that to dive into.

This Lit Hub article delves into the controversy about who wrote Elena Ferrante’s novels and whether and why it matters.

These 2 books are not short or modern, but they are great

This year I read two classic masterpieces that I absolutely loved, and I can’t help sharing. For those daring enough to dive into a thick classic of literature, I could not recommend more highly . . .

• Sophie’s Choice by William Styron. I had heard of the choice. What I didn’t know was how astonishingly virtuosic Styron’s sentences and storytelling are. Or that the book is not just about the Holocaust; it’s also about America. I knew it was about life and death; I didn’t know it’s also about sex. What a masterpiece.
• The Castle by Franz Kafka. I highly recommend the translation by Mark Harman, which is more accurate than some other translations. The Castle is unfinished, but what a masterpiece it is. The protagonist is a striver who works so hard and gets so exactly nowhere in the cold, snowy, and shadowy town beneath the castle. This novel is delightful and chilling.

Have you read any great short books lately? Or any great classics of literature of any length? Drop them in the comments—I’m always looking for recommendations.