I admit it: I am the kind of person who puts tasks I’ve nearly completed on my to-do list just so I can quickly check them off. I love the satisfaction of having completed something. That extends to reading too. There’s a lot to be said for losing oneself in a long novel, but it’s a special kind of pleasure to blaze through a short book in a day and add it to my reading log. If you’re looking to rack up your book count for the year or just seeking a book to start and finish in one afternoon, here are 10 short reads that are light on page count but not in substance.
10 Books That Are Small But Mighty
His Favorites
On a lark, three teenage girls "borrow" a golf cart and drunkenly speed it across the greens at night. When it crashes, one of the girls is thrown from the cart and killed. The driver, Jo, flees her hometown and enrolls at a prestigious boarding school, where she must come to terms with the shattering events of her past—and the beloved, predatory teacher occupying her present life.
Page Count: 160 pages
Walks With Men
In 1980 in New York City, Jane, a valedictorian fresh out of Harvard, meets Neil, an intoxicating writer 20 years her senior. The two quickly become lovers, living together in a Chelsea brownstone, and Neil reveals his rules for a life well lived. But Neil's certainties, Jane discovers, mask his deceptions. Her true education begins.
Page Count: 112 pages
Affections
Shortly after the end of World War II, the egocentric and extraordinary Hans, once the cameraman for a Nazi propagandist, flees to Bolivia with his family to start over. There, he embarks on an expedition in search of the fabled lost Inca city of Paitití, enlisting two of his daughters to join him on his outlandish quest into the depths of the Amazon, with disastrous consequences.
Page Count: 144 pages
Affections
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Another Brooklyn
Running into a long-ago friend sets memories in motion for August, taking her back to her childhood in 1970s Brooklyn, when the world was full of both promise and peril. This novel exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.
Page Count: 192 pages
Another Brooklyn
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West
When widowed mule breeder Cy Bellman reads in the newspaper that colossal ancient bones have been discovered in Kentucky and giant monsters may still roam the wilderness beyond the Missisippi River, he sets out from his small Pennsylvania home to see for himself, plunging headlong into the unknown.
Page Count: 160 pages
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The Body
Twelve-year-old Gordie Lachance hears a rumor that a missing kid's body is lying along the railroad tracks, so he and his three friends set out to see it. During the course of their journey, Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern come to terms with death and the harsh truths of growing up in a small factory town that doesn't offer much in the way of a future.
Page Count: 192 pages
The Body
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Annihilation
The basis for the recent film adaptation, this slim novel follows four women: an anthropologist, a surveyor, a psychologist, and a biologist, as they venture into the mysterious, quarantined Area X. They must attempt what 11 teams before them have failed to do: map the terrain, record observations, and come back alive.
Page Count: 208 pages
Annihilation
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Giovanni's Room
David, whose fiancée, Hella, is away on a trip, meets a bartender named Giovanni to whom he is drawn in spite of himself. They begin an affair, but Hella's return home brings David's relationship with Giovanni to a crisis that rapidly spirals into tragedy.
Page Count: 176 pages
Giovanni's Room
Read a Classic by an Author of Color
Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
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Of Love and Other Demons
Sierva María, the only child of a decaying noble family in an eighteenth-century South American seaport, is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. There she is tended to by Father Cayetano Delaura, who gradually feels something shocking begin to occur: he has fallen in love—and it is not long until Sierva María has too.
Page Count: 160 pages
Of Love and Other Demons
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Binti
Binti is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza, the finest university in the galaxy. But to accept the offer, she'll have to give up her place in her family, travel among strangers, and place herself in the crosshairs of a deadly intergalactic war.
Page Count: 96 pages
Binti
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