Shorter books

Hi, does anyone have a list of the shorter books on the 1001 list? I know Yellow Wallpaper and Aesop are relatively short as I've read those two!

Any more? It would be good to fit them in around other things that I'm reading.

I appreciate your question. I've read zillions of books in my 44 years, but I've only read 50 or so from this list. I think it would be nice to see a higher number. The high number of lengthy books on the list is indeed daunting.

The length of a book is relative, however. Some longer books are quick reads, some short books are painfully long. I think there are more physically short books at the older end of the list, but sometimes it can take forever to slog through the language or writing style. I had to read Heart of Darkness twice for university, and while my copy is only 65 pages long, they were the longest 65 pages that I ever read.

Here are some books that I personally found to be a quick read: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Saturday & Atonement, Unless, and Like Water for Chocolate.

Other books that have a fairly low page count (but may or may not be laborious) include A Christmas Carol, Around the World in 80 Days, The Picture of Dorain Gray, The Turn of the Screw, Siddhartha, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Candide and the two Alice books.

Hope that helps. Looking forward to hearing other people's suggestions.

I think there are also a couple of Poe short stories.

I can affirm that the following books a quick and easy to read and enjoy (not study - that could take longer)

Animal Farm
Lord of the Flies
Like Water for Chocolate*
A Christmas Carol
The Curious incident of the Dog in Night-time*
Never let me go*
The things they carried* (a selection of short stories with the characters loosely connected throughout)
Hitch-hiker guide to the galaxy
Wide Sargasso Sea
To kill a Mockingbird*
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Catcher in the Rye
The Hobbit
All quiet on the western front*
The Great Gatsby
Ethan Frome
Little Women*

Sorry didn't tag or type out the authors I'm at work and a bit pushed for time.

There are more I'm sure but those are the ones I've read myself. Whether you like them or not is another question. I wouldn't read Ethan Frome or Breakfast at Tiffany's again. The ones I have astricked I would definitely enjoy reading again and would recommend to my sister.

_Zoe_ is right, there are three Edgar Allen Poe short stories on there listed as "books", so they should be quite quick reads (haven't got round to them myself yet though!)

Other short reads that I don't think other people have mentioned:
The Thirty Nine Steps
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Little Prince
The Old Man and the Sea
The Stranger (not necessarily particularly easy to read though)
Perfume
The Wasp Factory (short, but not pleasant, not that that means I think it's not worth reading!)

There are a few by Jonathan Swift, e.g. A Modest Proposal and Tale of a tub which I think are relatively short as well, but the unread caveat applies for those as well!

This thread is very similar to another one here titled "Feel stupid for even posting this..." You might wnat to check that one out.

A Modest Proposal is great, and should not be missed.

I noticed these, along with the Poe stories, and thought that perhaps in addition to being short stories, they were also titles of books that contained additional works. It seems odd to be able to read a short story and count it as a whole book. But I haven't actually read the entries for any of these, so I don't know.

If reading short stories counts, then Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party is also very short.

Also try

The heart of the country by J.M Coetzee
The life of insects by Victor Pelevin
Veronika decides to die by Paul Coelho
Foe by J.M. Coetzee
The sea by John Banville

sorry - touchstones arent loading for the three books - but they are all on the list

Thanks everyone, this is a huge help. It appears that I have read a third of the books mentioned here anyway (I've read 93 on the list altogether up to yet) but the rest of the comments, especially about the short stories, are really useful. I will check out the other thread too.

Apparently The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is very short.

Here's a list of books (some short, some easy reads, some both) that I finished in 1-3 days of normal reading time:

Aesop's Fables
A Modest Proposal (shortest "novel" in the 1001 book I think)
Candide
Castle Rackrent (short, but I didn't like it much)
The Nose (Short Story)
The Fall of the House of Usher (Short Story)
A Christmas Carol
The Pit and the Pendulum (Short Story)
The Purloined Letter (Short Story)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking-Glass
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (depressing but a really good short novel about death and dying)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Time Machine
The Island of Dr. Moreau
The Invisible Man
The War of the Worlds
The Turn of the Screw (short book, but I didn't like it much)
Heart of Darkness (short book but very dense reading)
Nausea (short book but very dense reading)
The Little Prince (Children's book)
The 13 Clocks (Children's book)
The Old Man and the Sea
In Watermelon Sugar (Short...and very strange...story)
The Atrocity Exhibition (Short...and even stranger...novel)
Watchmen (Graphic novel)
Whatever
The Life Of Insects
Intimacy
Fear and Trembling
Timbuktu
The Body Artist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Vanishing Point

-- M1001

The summer book by Tove Jansson- 159 pages!

Yup, The Yellow Wallpaper is actually a short story.

The Return of the Soldier took me 2 hours this afternoon. It's a wonderful little book - moving and beautifully written.

The Cement Garden Ian McEwan 140 pages
The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro was also quite slim 300 pages maybe?

I just finished Castle of Otranto. It was a short, fun read!

I noticed the other day in a book store that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark is a short book. Not having read it, however, I do not know if this means it's a quick read.

The Outsider (also known as The Stranger) by Albert Camus is only 119 pages long if you've got a penguin modern classics version.

#17 Yes, this is a very quick read and quite brilliant, too. I love it and keep intending to watch the Maggie Smith film.

#18 The Outsider may be short, but I recommend that you read it with notes/an annotated version. We read it for A-Level French and knowledge of the literature of the absurd plus the situation in Algeria really helps with getting what it's all about.

>19 AllieW: AllieW, no wonder I didn't get The Outsider when I read it in school ....

And you really must watch The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Lucky Jim is short, (251 pages), and funny too :D
I'd also recommend Breakfast at Tiffany's as a 'shortie'; I suppose you don't even have to read the other three short stories it is normally published with.

I have also Mooched, but not read The Body Artist which I was surprised by how short it was, and had great big double-spaced text !

The Reader is a short book. My copy has 218 pages, but there are large margins and lots of chapter breaks (therefore lots of white space). And the language is straightforward. I read it in about three hours. Time well spent, I think.

Is it just The Yellow Wallpaper that is on the list, or is it the book of short stories containing that short story?

"Notes from the Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

An afternoon read.

Of mice and men is a quick read that I really enjoyed. In fact the main reason I even read it is totally unrelated to books. The Dodgers are my favorite baseball team and I watch or listen to every 1 of their 162 games. Their announcer Vin Scully often quotes "The best laid plans of mice and men" when things are not going their way. I then finally understood the significance of this quote.

#23. It's just The Yellow Wallpaper by itself.

Don DeLillo has a number of titles in addition to The Body Artist with less than 300 pages. Altogether he has 7 books on the list.

Ian McEwan has a number of titles in addition to Cement Garden with less than 300 pages. Altogether he has 8 books on the list.

And because both authors are contemporary their style is easily read.

Just finished Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte - read most of it in one night. My copy was less than 200 pages and the chapters were very short so there were a lot of convenient stopping points - though I pretty much read straight through.

One you probably haven't read:
Trout Fishing in America.

It can be read in a couple of hours and it's well worth it!

#30 - The same can be said for Brautigan's other book on the list Willard and his Bowling Trophies. That was probably the fastest read I've ever encountered.

#30 One you probably haven't read:
Trout Fishing in America.

It can be read in a couple of hours and it's well worth it!

-----------------

I don't recognize that title. Is it from the 1001 list?

#32: Oops - I thought it was on the list. However the two Brautigans there are actually In Watermelon Sugar and Williard and his Bowling Trophies.
I think it should be there instead, but anyway..
They're both quite short too!

At 156 pages, I just finished Old Masters. It was short but it still took me several days to read. I guess it could be read faster. I just had to put it down every ten pages or so. I found I didn't have a very high tolerance for an elderly man, whose wife had died, trying to decide whether to kill himself for the entire book. That mixed with incessant (if understandable) complaining about the "world today" was hard to read.

Death in Venice is another shorty

The Third Man, by Graham Greene is another short one.

Franny and Zooey is a short, quick read, and very beautiful.

Also, the Great Gatsby.

In the second edition, Kaas (Cheese) by Willem Elsschot. Very short, very funny in an ironic-bleak kind of way.

Last month I got a book titled: 100 One-Night Reads: a book lover's guide, by David C. Major and John S. Major. It's a collection of little reviews on 100 books that one can apparently read in one evening. I've read some of the books, and most of them certainly took me more than one night to read, but I guess none of them are too long. Anyway, here are the books from their list that are also on the 1001 list:

Things Fall Apart
Lucky Jim (they say this is funny, so if you're also looking for a non-depressing 1001 book, you may want to look at this one)
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The Big Sleep
The Secret Agent
The Great Gatsby
Where Angels Fear to Tread
The Maltese Falcon
The Sun Also Rises
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Kim
Death in Venice
The Razor's Edge
Animal Farm
The Crying of Lot 49
All Quiet on the Western Front
Portnoy's Complaint
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Treasure Island
The Hobbit
Around the World in 80 Days

Address Unknown by Katharine Kressman Taylor

Seize the Day is a fantastic one.

The two I've just finished reading were pretty short and easy reads too:

Hideous Kinky Esther Freud
The Graduate Charles Webb

and Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan is very short too.

Both Ethan Frome and Summer are short reads (I finished each in less than a day, I think) and I really enjoyed both.

Recalling the lesson that fewer pages does not mean easier reading that my daughter learned with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I've been steadily reading books of 250 pages or less from the first list (check my list on 75 Books for commentary on ones I've read this year). If I can't find the books on my shelves or in the book store, I check with the public library or online for books out of print. So far, the "shorter" books I've found are:

A Modest Proposal .... by Jonathan Swift
Oroonoko; or The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
The Princess of Cleves by Mme de Lafayette
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
The Wonderful O by James Thurber
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
Homo Faber by Max Frisch
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia by Samuel Johnson

I've really enjoyed most of these, but those that I despised, I REALLY despised. These choices also seem to cover a large range of styles and time periods. Just dive in and enjoy!

Thanks for the great list!
--BJ

I'm just about finished Survival in Auschwitz, which is called If This is a Man on the list. It's 175 pages and a fairly quick read. Very good, but very disturbing (as one would expect from a book titled Survival in Auschwitz!).

All the Georges Bataille novels are pretty short. There are three of them (at least in my edition): Blue of Noon, The Story of the Eye, and L'Abbe C. They're a little on the surreal side so if you're looking for something a bit more down to earth I also recommend A Pale View of the Hills and After the Quake.

The Awakening is also very short (a little over 100 page sin my copy) and Fanny Hill; Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is pretty thin as well.

Anyone read any short 1001 books lately? Last month I read The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, by Peter Handke, and it was pretty short (about 130 pgs). And straight-forward language.

If you liked Handke, you might also like some other existential writers like Sartre and Camus. Most of their books like Nausea and The Stranger are pretty short. (Though, I did find Nausea a bit dense.)
I hope that helps.

Ficciones by Borges is fairly short page-count-wise if you want to zip through it although I enjoyed savouring it :-)
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton's also reasonably short in my edition.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is wonderful and a very quick read.
Silence by Shusako Endo in my edition was 200 pages so reasonably quick to get through.

Pippi Longstocking is a quick read on the new list. Definitely one of the easiest to knock off in a hurry. :D

Cannery Row and To Kill a Mockingbird are short in length and quick to read because they are so good!

There are a very large number of books on the list which are under 250 pages long. If you check them out on any of the lists, or through your library, you can see the number of pages. Most of the ones I read last year were fewer than 250 pages, several were fewer than 150.

Ah, yes, but a small number of pages does not necessarily equal a short read! At just 63 pages, The Heart of Darkness is one of the longest books I ever read.

And talking about quick reads, I just finished after the quake by Haruki Murakami, and it took me about three hours. I like to find these quick ones that I can fit in around all the other reading I have to do.

My copy of The Diary of a Nobody has just arrived from the Folio Society and it's very dinky too!

Nickelini--LOL--that lesson was learned by my daugher when she opted to read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde instead of any other of Stevenson's works--because it was the shortest! True on all counts, but you can start with page numbers, and then check out the book.

Oh, yeah, I'm with your daughter--Jekyll and Hyde was definitely another one of the long short books!

Some short books on the new list are The Sound of Waves by Mishima, Eugene Onegin (in verse but easy to read), and Lazarillio de Tormes (~100 pages). I just ordered from the library Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, Rameau's Nephew and Thousand Cranes - all on the short side.

55: Nickelini : that is so true! I've been caught in this trap a few time myself in the past, always a bad surprise! Fortunately, I've also discovered long books that were so great I would go through really fast!

Another short book, I don't know if it has been mentioned yet, is Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb.

I know Return of the Soldier has already been mentioned here, but I just wanted to speak up and say "read this one!" There are short books from 1001 that have few pages but burn out many brain cells (as already discussed, Heart of Darkness* and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and then there are those short books that are wonderful from beginning to end. Return of the Soldier is one of those. It's not simple, and it packs a lot in to its 90 pages, but it's just brilliant.

* I slam Heart of Darkness all the time, but it honestly does have it's merits. And Conrad's descriptions of scary, creepy fog are really amazing. I like to diss HoD, but really, it's not all bad.

Also, The Kreuzter Sonata by Tolstoy, not too long, and a lovely treat--Irish tales by Plunkett in The Trusting and the Maimed.

The book Amok on both the new and old list versions and Chess Story, also translated as The Royal Game, from the new list are about 50 pages each. The book The Royal Game and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig contain both short stories.

More short books, all from the 2008 list: None but the Brave, This Way to the Gas, Closely Watched Trains, Street of Crocodiles, The Manila Rope, So Long A Letter, Couples, Passerby, Life of a Good-for-Nothing, Hero of Our Times.

Has anyone mentioned Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson? It is fairly short the edition I read was 144pages.

Silk is 70 pages and many of those have only a half a page of writing, its is also an excellent read. The Wonderful O is not quite so wonderful but less than 100 pages

I just finished The Graduate. At 191 pages, it may not seem especially short, but it's mostly short, snappy dialogue, so it moves very quickly. A good one to read if you feel you want to make some progress on the list.

I just finished Passing.
I read a Penguin Edition that was 122 pages. Included in that was 7 pages of Explanatory notes. In addition there was 35 Pages of an Introduction, which I should have read at the end, because it gave too much of the story away.

Winterson's The Passion from the old list is another short one, depending on the edition. The Edition I have at the moment is 160 pages.

Annie John is set in the Caribbean its only a novella really and a great read. Its from the 2008 list, not the 2006 one.

Hi! first time poster here. =)

H.G Wells books are on shorter side.

War of the Worlds 240
The Invisible Man 192
The Island of Dr. Moreau 160
The Time Machine 118

I recently finished Le premier jardin (The first garden) by Anne Hebert. My copy was very short, about 188 pages, with lots of white space between paragraphs and chapters.

I'm just starting The Lover by Marguerite Duras, which is 123 pages and lots of white space.

Yesterday I read The Reader by Bernhard Schlink in two hours. It was a great read, fascinating; it's very thoughtful and thought-provoking, but not incredibly complex like some of the earlier German WWII fiction. It's overt enough about what it's doing, and the writing is direct enough, that you can read it quickly and get a lot out of it. Recommended.

The three Ismail Kadare books The Successor,
Spring Flowers Spring Frost and Broken April are all short easy reads - and very interesting books at that. I think they were about 200 pages each. Also I just finished They Shoot Horses and that book was only 125 pages.

I don't think Chocky has been mentioned yet. Short and enjoyable classic sci-fi.

Great thread. I noticed that I have read most of these shorter 1001 Books but there are still a good number that need exploring from my side.

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon is a short one... thank the Lord!
Remembering Babylon by Malouf
I'm Not Scared by Nicolo Ammaniti is a gripping short read with one of the best endings for ages
Lambs of London by Ackroyd
The Devil and Miss Prym by Coelho
After the Quake by Murakami
Amsterdam by McEwan
Disgrace by Coetzee
Another World by Pat Barker
The English Patient
The Things they Carried
The Newton Letter
August is a Wicked Month

just some off the top of my list that I've read and are short and easy reads.

Don't forget that page count doesn't necessarily mean it's an easy read. Try A Clockwork Orange or Naked Lunch for short books which take a while... or if you're desperate Adjunct: An Undigest which is bonkers.

I liked Adjunct!

Anyway, I just found out that The Fox by DH Lawrence is a short story. I checked the write up in 1001, and they only discuss the story and not any collection it might be printed in.

I took your suggestion Nickelini and read The Fox and at 64 pages it was a short read but well worth it. It is Lawrence at his most accessible.

Two that I don't think have been mentioned yet and that I recently finished The Tartar Steppe and Waiting for the Barbarians. Both were brilliant and about 200 pages.

Edited for touchstones.

This is a really good thread, I'm going to struggle to keep up with what's already been mentioned but I'll pop in the ones I found short and/or quick to read. Please note I haven't read many - there are plenty of recommendations above that I haven't touched as of yet.

Shorter or quick reads:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
Perfume – Patrick Süskind
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
Chocky – John Wyndham - Don't think this one has been mentioned yet. It's short and very quick and easy to read.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell - Animal Farm is short too, though I haven't read it yet.
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson

I'm also going to make a list of books that aren't necessarily short, but that I found very easy going:

The Plot Against America– Philip Roth
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi (at 288 pages it's not too long either)
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

I recently read Under the skin. My copy was a bit over 200 pages and it was a page turner.

I don't think anyone's mentioned News from Nowhere by William Morris . It's not very good (and I'm sympathetic to his viewpoint), but it's very short.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck is another quick read -- under 200 pages with straight-forward language. It's also pretty funny.

I found an ongoing list I have been using that has books under 300 pages. In some cases I put in the actual page numbers as well. This is not complete since I have been removing books as I have been reading them, but it should provide a lot of shorter books for people to check out:

Aithiopika by Heliodorus
The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius
The Unfortunate Traveler by Thomas Nashe
The Princess of Cleves by Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus by Alexander Pope
Rameau's Nephew by Denis Diderot
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
Humphry Clinker by Tobias George Smollet
Reveries of a Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Interesting Narrative by Olaudah Equiano
Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot
The Nun by Denis Diderot
Hyperion by Friedrich Hölderlin
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
On the Eve by Ivan Turgenev
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola
In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu
The Red Room by August Strindberg
The House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga
A Woman's Life by Guy de Maupassant
Against the Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans
Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
The People of Hemsö by August Strindberg
The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
By The Open Sea by August Strindberg
The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy
Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith
Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane
Fruits of the Earth by André Gide
What Massie Knew by Henry James
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. by Somerville and Ross
The Immoralist by André Gide
Professor Unrat by Heinrich Mann
Young Törless by Robert Musil
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
Strait is the Gate by André Gide
Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
The Charwoman's Daughter by James Stephens
Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Summer by Edith Wharton
The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
The Last Days of Humanity by Karl Kraus
Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings
Amok by Stefan Zweig
Cane by Jean Toomer
The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet
The Green Hat by Michael Arlen
The Professor's House by Willa Cather
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Blindness by Henry Green
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Amerika by Franz Kafka
Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Nadja by André Breton
Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
Quartet by Jean Rhys
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau
Harriet Hume by Rebecca West
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
Living by Henry Green
Hebdomeros by Giorgio de Chirico
Her Privates We by Frederic Manning
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Novel with Cocaine by M. Ageyev
England Made Me by Graham Greene
The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
The Last of Mr. Norris by Christopher Isherwood
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
Wild Harbour by Ian Macpherson
Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemmingway
In Parenthesis by David Jones
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Murphy by Samuel Beckett
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
Coming Up for Air by George Orwell
Party Going by Henry Green
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati
Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf
The Poor Mouth by Flann O'Brien
In Sicily by Elio Vittorini
Embers by Sandor Marai
Caught by Henry Green
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Transit by Anna Seghers
Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi
Arcanum 17 by André Breton
Loving by Henry Green
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Back by Henry Green
The Path to the Nest of Spiders by Italo Cavino
The Victim by Saul Bellow
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
Death Sentence by Maurice Blanchot
Disobedience by Alberto Moravia
All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani
Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
The Abbot C by Georges Bataille 158 pages
Molloy by Samuel Beckett 241 p.
The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq 292 p.
Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett 120 p.
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin 291 p.
Watt by Samuel Beckett 256 pages
The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett 179 p.
Under the Net by Iris Murdoch 252 p.
A Ghost at Noon by Alberto Moravia 247 pages
The Story of O by Pauline Réage 203 p.
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagen 130 p.
The Trusting and the Maimed by James Plunkett 232 pages
A World of Love by Elizabeth Bowen 244 p.
The Floating Opera by John Barth 188 p.
The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon 171 pages
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin 169 p.
Justine by Lawrence Durrell 253 p.
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov 191 p.
Homo Faber by Max Frisch 214 pages
Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille 155 pages
Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet 150 pages
The End of the Road by John Barth 188 p.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
The Bitter Glass by Eilís Dillon
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring by Kenzaburo Oe (Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids)
Billiards at Half-Past Nine by Heinrich Böll
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark 224 p.
Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes
Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee
The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien
How It Is by Samuel Beckett
The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Conner
Cat and Mouse by Günter Grass
Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
Girl with Green Eyes by Edna O'Brien
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Inside Mr. Enderby by Anthony Burgess
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carré
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein by Marguerite Duras
Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
Albert Angelo by B.S. Johnson
The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector
August Is a Wicked Month by Edna O'Brien
The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Things by Georges Perec
The Vice-Consul by Marguerite Duras
Trawl by B.S. West
A Man Asleep by Georges Perec
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
The Cubs and Other Stories by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf
A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines
Dark As The Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid by Malcolm Lowry
Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Blind Man with a Pistol by Chester Himes
Pricksongs and Descants by Robert Coover
Mercier et Camier by Samuel Beckett
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Wild Boys by William Burroughs 184 pages
In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul 256 p.
House Mother Normal by B.S. Johnson 204 pages
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood 199 p.
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson 170 p.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino 165 p.
Sula by Toni Morrison 174 p.
The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino 129 p.
A Question of Power by Bessie Head 206 p.
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll 146 pages
Dusklands by J.M. Coetzee 125 pages
The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle 191 p.
Correction by Thomas Bernhard 280 pages
Dead Babies by Martin Amis 206 pages
High Rise by J.G. Ballard 204 pages
The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme 177 pages
W, or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec 164 p.
Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Márquez 255 p.
The Left-Handed Woman by Peter Handke 94 pages
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector 96 p.
Dispatches by Michael Herr 260 p.
Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin 271 p.
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter 191 pages
In the Heart of the Country by J.M. Coetzee 138 p.
Rituals by Cees Nooteboom 153 pages
Rites of Passage by William Golding 278 p.
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee 156 p.
Broken April by Ismail Kadare 216 p.
Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin 146 p.
July's People by Nadine Gordimer 160 p.
Concrete by Tom Bernhard 155 pages
On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin 248 p.
A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro 183 p.
A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White 196 p.
The Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee 184 p.
Fools of Fortune by William Trevor 207 p.
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes 190 p.
The Lover by Marguerite Duras 117 p.
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd 217 p.
Queer by William Burroughs 134 p.
Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard 156 pages
Perfume by Patrick Süskind 255 pages
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson 176 p.
The Parable of the Blind by Gert Hofmann 152 pages
The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi 203 p.
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro 206 p.
The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis 294 p.
Matigari by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o 194 pages
Anagrams by Lorrie Moore 225 pages
Beloved by Toni Morrison 260 p.
Cigarettes by Harry Matthews 292 pages
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan 263 p.
The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind 115 p.
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson 160 p.
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga 204 p.
The Beautiful Room is Empty by Edmund White 227 p.
The Book of Evidence by John Banville 219 p.
The Trick is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway 236 pages
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi 284 p.
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien 246 p.
The Music of Chance by Paul Auster 217 p.
Vertigo by W.G. Sebald 263 p.
Wise Children by Angela Carter 234 p.
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord by Louis de Bernières 251 p.
Regeneration by Pat Barker 251 p.
Typical by Padgett Powell 207 p.
Mao II by Don DeLillo 241 p.
Asphodel by H.D. 215 p.
The Heather Blazing by Colm Tóibín 256 pages
Jazz by Toni Morrison 229 p.
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson 190 p.
Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker 288 p.
A Heart So White by Javier Marías 278 p.
Life is a Caravanserai by Emine Özdamar 296 pages
The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald 237 p.
On Love by Alain de Botton 194 pages
Looking for the Possible Dance by A.L. Kennedy 224 pages
The Invention of Curried Sausage by Uwe Timm 217 p.
Disappearance by David Dabydeen 180 pages
The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee 250 p.
The End of the Story by Lydia Davis 231 pages
Love's Work by Gillian Rose 144 p.
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink 218 p.
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald 296 p.
Forever a Stranger by Hella Haasse 127 p.
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker 277 p.
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels 294 p.
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan 262 p.
The Hours by Michael Cunningham 229 p.
Another World by Pat Barker 277 p.
The Talk of the Town by Ardal O'Hanlon 244 p.
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan 193 p.
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee 220 p
As If I Am Not There by Slavenka Drakulic 201 p.
The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra 260 p.
Pastoralia by George Saunders 188 p.
City of God by E.L. Doctorow 272 p.
Ignorance by Milan Kundera 195 p.
The Heart of Redness by Zakes Mda 277 p.
An Obediant Father by Akhil Sharma 300 pages
Fury by Salman Rushdie 259 p.
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald 298 p.
Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon 242 p.
Shroud by John Banville 257 p.
In The Forest by Edna O'Brien 262 p.
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer 276 p.
Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee 233 p.
The Sea by John Banville 263 p.
Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee 265 p.

-- M1001

There we go. Was having some character troubles with the list but I got it fixed now.

Enjoy :)

-- M1001

Hedayat's The Blind Owl is scarcely 100 pages.

(The touchstones aren't touching today it seems.)

>85 media1001: Thanks for the list!

A few authors specialize in novellas. Joseph Conrad wrote quite a few really great short novels (or long short stories), including 'Youth', 'Typhoon', 'Victory', 'Chance' and 'The Secret Sharer'. Honore de Balzac also wrote quite a few novellas.

One of my favourite authors, Stephen King, who usually writes bricks of 400-600 pages, has written a few great novellas, including 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption', which the movie was fairly faithful to, and 'The Body,' which inspired the mid-80s movie, 'Stand by Me.' Both are in his collection, Different Seasons. (I know these aren't on the 1001 list, but they're still well worth reading.)

Thought I would post a couple recent reads that were short and reactivate this thread...
The Breast
Kokoro

I just finished Falling Man (2008 & 2010 lists) and read it in two sittings. It's fragmented and sometimes a little cryptic, but I still found it quite an easy read.

I read Hallucinating Foucault earlier this month, I don't think that one has been mentioned yet.
The version I have is 178 pages and I found it a pretty quick read. And I really liked it :)

Thanks for reviving this thread!

I just read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a re-read). Both are short, and very very funny.

I looked through the thread and did not see Reasons to Live mentioned yet. My edition had 129 pages, but the formatting worked at lengthening it--like a term paper trying to get to a set number of pages. It reads fast and felt more like about 80 pages to me.

I don't think it's been mentioned before, but I recently finished Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates. 154 pages.

Can't see that The Life and Death of Harriet Frean has been mentioned before. It is a really quick 130 page read.

The Nose by Gogol is a fun short story and only 30 pages or so.

>98 Leer-e: Spam in Spanish? That's a new one for me. Is it common in the U.S.?

Thought I would revive this thread.
Albert Angelo was an easy read even though I didn't like it much -- two days and at least I had a strong opinion! Billy Liar was less completely quick but still short and quite good -- especially on audiobooks where John Simm gives a masterful performance.

On this note, some short ones I have read recently, some probably mentioned already above:

Les enfants terribles by Jean Cocteau
Life & Times of Michael K by J.M.Coetzee
Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini
King Lear of the Steppes by Ivan Turgenev
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

It's probably worth mentioning There but for the there as while it clocks in at 300+ pages in my edition, the font is so large that it felt like a very short one.

It's been mentioned already, but I just want to say that I just finished Chocky by John Wyndham, and not only is it short, it's also fun. The audiobook ran just over 4 hours.

Just finished Rashomon. 24 pages but each sentence carefully crafted to paint a vivid picture. Absolutely recommended!

Thank you paruline for giving me something to read while on my break at work today!

>105 amerynth: Glad to help!

Just finished The Afternoon of a Writer by Handke and it's about 80 pages.

Our current Group Read Notes from the Underground is 169 pages long, and is quite readable - more like a Group Snack compared with some we've done. I started yesterday and will finish at lunchtime today.

Bumping up

Thanks Nikelini :)

Now reading Patrick Süskind's The Pigeon which is really a longish short story and very entertaining in a dark way.

No doubt it's already mentioned, but I read Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates last night in one sitting. 154 pages, but short chapters which make for lots of white space. She's also very readable, so it clicked along quickly.

I came across a list that has the page counts for all the books in the list, so its easy to find the shorter ones
heres the link:

http://books1001.livejournal.com/16600.html

>113 Jan_1: I see at least one error, but overall that's great and definitely very helpful. thanks for sharing.

Just finished Kitchen and it was very short.