25 Short Classic Books You Can Read in One Day

[@Zenocrat]

It would be tough to read all 25 of these in one day, but your title says that I can, so I'll give it the ol' college try. Wish me luck!

[@meljstephan]

The Portrait of Dorian Gray is quite a quick read and a personal favorite of mine

[@englishnerd5580]

I love Dorian Gray! 🖤

[@dickturpin435]

'I have found happiness nowhere in the world, except in a little corner, with a little book.' Attributed to Thomas Á Kempis. Writer from the Middle Ages. Thank you to all leaders to happiness in little corners everywhere.

[@jamesmccullough1162]

I read The Old Man and The Sea on a plane, and was surprised how much I enjoyed such a short story. Great list!

[@whilehavingcoffee]

Amazing book, so beautifully written ❤️❤️

[@meljstephan]

I sobbed in the middle of my study hall reading Of Mice and Men in month grade. I mean serious ugly crying. Steinbeck is one of the greatest of the greats.

[@dickturpin435]

I read of a Steinbeck fan who visited Steinbeck country. When she came back home she confided to a friend, 'It was terrible! All he ever did was look out of his window and write it all down!'

[@dinacox1971]

itinerant. This was a really great episode. I am 63 and have read lightly AND deeply all my life, so with only one exception I had read all of this terrific list, but what a great reminder!!!

[@englishnerd5580]

😊😊😊

[@AdrianasWonderland]

great video, i love reading classics

[@joseribamarferreirajunior1284]

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells is a classic short sci-fi.

[@clarasiegfursvw296]

Just finished, great thought provoking book, great ending

[@mj2495]

Steinbeck's The Pearl was another novella. And one of my favorites.I also liked Cannery Row by the same author. It seemed short to me, but may be a bit longer than I remember. Thank you, it's a great list!

[@Fernie4243]

I was going to add this one.

[@logankeseg4985]

So many great books to add to my goodreads. Thanks so much!

[@belhypotheque6417]

Oh thank you. As someone in their fifties who is trying to read a book a week and more classics, this was very helpful! I loved a few you had on this list like ‘The little prince’ which has stayed with me for years. Another you could add is ‘The outsider’ by Albert Camus translated to English from French. A few good existential questions in that. I also loved The Great Gatsby. It’s surprising some of the ones you mentioned I read as a teenager and they seemed long at the time ( such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad) but are on this short list! Another one I’ve just read by an Irish author that is short and sure to become a classic in the future is ‘Foster’ by Claire Keegan. Such beautiful pared back writing.

[@Nerak7219]

Excellent list! I would add The Metamorphosis by Kafka.

[@englishnerd5580]

Nice suggestion! 🪲

[@betinaceciliafeld9854]

Great list! Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton is another short, amazing and powerful classic.

[@rogersmith5870]

Wonderful book

[@Floppy-1235]

Thanks. I needed a few short books to pick up. Great recommendations

[@jjothim]

Such a great list!:)

[@Poohtle]

Farenheit 451 took me about a week to read but I loved it.

[@evanames5940]

Thanks, read many but added many to my to be read list.

[@rcprice011]

Thank you for sharing! wow!!

[@jamgart6880]

I read The Little Prince this year for the first time. It only really came into my radar a few years earlier surprisingly. It was strange, the setup, it makes no sense living on his own little planet extra. But it was so heart warming and made me cry and I ‘felt’ it so deeply. One of my favourites of the year 😊

[@englishnerd5580]

I felt the same way ☺️

[@imcbear6274]

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is such a good play! I had to read it when I read Hamlet for a college class and I'm glad we were assigned it.

[@englishnerd5580]

I think so too! It’s dark and weird, but I really enjoy it, more than most post-modern stuff 😁

[@ButOneThingIsNeedful]

Couple possible inclusions: Frankenstein, Animal Farm

[@englishnerd5580]

Love these suggestions!

[@SSNewberry]

Good list. Some notes: 1. Один день Ивана Денисовича, Записки из подполья, Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, Syr Gawayn and The Grene Kny3t, and Le Petit Prince in the original. 2. The Stranger (L'Etranger) Camus, No Exit (Huis clos) Sartre, Screwtape Letters and Perelandra CS Lewis, The Prophet Gibran, Waiting for Godot Beckett, The Prince (Il Principe) Machiavelli, The Dead James Joyce, Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits von Gut und Böse 2 Days) Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Fortress Besieged ( 围城 2 Days) Qian, Animal Farm Orwell, The Jungle Book Kipling, Beowulf Anonymous, Siddhartha Hesse, A Doll’s House (Et dukkehjem) Ibsen, Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) Kafka, A Modest Proposal (Really Short) Jonathan Swift, The Time Machine Wells, The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane, Slaughterhouse-Five Vonnegut, As I Lay Dying Faulkner, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues 2 Days) Remarque, Mrs. Dalloway (2 Days) Virginia Woolf, Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili) Calvino, Breakfast at Tiffany's Capote. 3. I would not recommend Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. (joke)

[@deblawrence8341]

Great list! Having read most of these, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your summary of each. I have "Peter Pan" waiting in the wings; it just seems like a good winter read. I heard on another Book Tubers channel that PP is really Wendy's story so I'm interested in re-reading it with this in mind. Thanks for making this video!

[@englishnerd5580]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the video. 😁

[@gugu532]

Thanks for recs..added to my tbr

[@tfpp1]

I was surprised not to see Animal Farm, or Call of the Wild (or White Fang, for that matter), Candide by Voltaire on the list. Cannery Row by Steinbeck feels “short” just because its chapters are so short.

[@englishnerd5580]

Great recs for this list, I agree!

[@shuween706]

great list!

[@robertcrompton2733]

Plato - when I was young, I adored the dialogs. Now that I'm old and crusty, I find Plato to be a purveyor of half-baked analogies and premature conclusions.

[@chelseyummali]

Dostoevsky White Nights is a super quick and lovely read, as well as Kahlil Gibrans The Broken Wings.

[@eanayac]

If you make another list, which many of us would love, please include Breakfast at Tifanny’s and some Heese! Maybe Siddhartha!

[@englishnerd5580]

Great recommendations-thanks! In fact, I do have a part two coming up in a couple weeks 👀

[@mangalapalliv]

Fabulous List. Thank You ! One could add "The Kruetzer's Sonata' by Tolstoy and Chingiz Aitmatov's Jamila to this list

[@sandraelder1101]

Some other great shorties: Night by Elie Wiesel, Puddinhead Wilson, Up from Slavery, and Agnes Grey.

[@jamessgian7691]

Gawain version by Boroff is best, and includes Pearl, which is one of the best poems ever written.

[@johnsaxongitno4life588]

I really really love this video and also love you and your amazing channel please stay safe and enjoy your reading love 💖 your Australia friend John xxx still wanting to read your books 📚 for opinions and love the cover of this book 📖

[@davidallhusen]

What, no Vonnegut?

[@sandraelder1101]

Maus is a masterpiece!

[@MymilanitalyBlogspot]

Unless I just missed hearing you talk about it, I'd suggest the still timely ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell. Another suggestion ("parental discretion advised"😊): Aristophanes' comedy "Lysistrata"...men are always away at war, so their wives stage a sex strike

[@soul_that_travels_chandan_ks]

Nice channel ma'am!

[@robertcrompton2733]

Okay, I misunderstood the title - I thought it meant I could read all 25 in one day.

[@nedmerrill5705]

Daisy Miller, by Henry James

[@sandraelder1101]

Isn’t Daisy Miller a short story?

[@nedmerrill5705]

@@sandraelder1101 Novella

[@cristianmicu]

for a native english speaker you're a champion of pronouncing saint-exupery's name . i could give you a 9 out of 10, well done! usually english speakers butcher any other non english name no matter what language it is, but they excel at butchering french and italian names

[@englishnerd5580]

Thanks! I don’t feel confident pronouncing French names, so I appreciate it. (I’m a little better at pronouncing Italian.)

[@jubrakitjuhbieit6301]

Could you analyze Romeo and Juliet? All of your analyses were so in-depth, and as I read Romeo and Juliet, I'm lost, wishing I had a video of yours to reference, like I did for TOTC.

[@jamesduggan7200]

To understand R&J watch the Baz Luhrmann, who more than any other director captures the hopelessness of the lives to which the heroes can reasonably foresee. With that in mind, it makes sense for the two kids to find even one single short transitory moment of happiness, before accepting the inevitable misery of life in a strife-torn, plague-threatened city, as children of profoundly unhappy parents.

[@susan3831]

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Edward Albee

[@Ostkupa]

Passing!

[@lightscamerasashley.]

great video 💖

[@rogersmith5870]

How about The Samurai's Garden

[@rolcarislew7761]

"Itinerant workers," i.e, traveling workers.

[@andrewanderson3746]

@englishnerd5580 I don't know if you'll see this comment, but I wanted to ask, since you don't care for Tolkien's Green Knight, would you also recommend avoiding his Beowulf translation? If so, which translation would you recommend?

[@eanayac]

Would you recommend The Importance of Being Earnest??

[@englishnerd5580]

Absolutely! It’s hilarious 😁

[@apollonia6656]

Personally,however short a novel might be I like to make notes so it might take me !in her than one day to read day 100 pages ! No,I am not a slow reader but I like to ease myself into a story and it's characters are which means absorbing the vocalbury, the grammar,syntax ,punctuation etc. Am I picky ? Yes. Am I critical ? Absolutely.....ah,brings me to "The Great Gatsby "; please do tell why this is a great modern piece of !literature ? Honestly,I am puzzled as to why it is considered by many as nearly perfect ? Sure,subjectivity. However,if I hear a logical argument as to the book's merits then I shall re-read it for the fifth time 🙂 All the Best from the UK. PS: Typos are essentials in UT!

[@cristianmicu]

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by JRR Tolkien

[@englishnerd5580]

Good suggestion-I like that story. Not a big fan of Tolkien’s translation, though.

[@Floppy-1235]

The little Prince is interesting. There are two ways to read it

[@ClearOutSamskaras]

Which edition of Notes From The Underground is the one in your video?

[@AmalijaKomar]

If we talk about drama nobody mantion Ibsen and Strndberg, very important writers.

[@sohaibahmad7742]

how can someone read lord of the flies in one day 😭it literally took me like 3 weeks in freshman year

[@smalltown4855]

I once read The Count of Monte Cristo whilst cleaning my teeth.

[@tfpp1]

Damn you must have some fu*ked up teeth lol

[@sandraelder1101]

Your teeth must’ve been very clean or very sore afterward.

[@chelseyummali]

Are you a shark?

[@ant7936]

Nice list. Add these! Anthem Ayn Rand 100pp The Snows of Kilimanjaro Hemingway

[@miriamalonso3959]

Agree w Hemingway but sorry Ayn Rand was a terrible writer!

[@ant7936]

@@miriamalonso3959 You've read all her work?

[@ClaudiaGiannasi]

White nights by Fjodor Dostoevsky

[@haroldleboeuf8648]

I felt your assessment of Shirley Jackson was inadequate....she is more amazing as a writer than you credit her.

[@cristianmicu]

the western culture people can get a glimpse BUT ONLY A GLIMPSE of the russian way of life and style of thinking of the russian culture through Dostoyevsky novels. like peeking into a room through a keyhole. dostoievsky really did a great service to western society in this sense, western society looking so ''SOFT'' in russian eyes ... and also evil lately

[@josephr9930]

This video is for AP slackers and fans of literature. 😉

[@LokRevenant]

IS THAT WISHBONE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[@blessthegood1404]

Ranch hands.

[@faraz8314]

What's behind you,?? On your your wall the pcs of desinged clothes look attractive???

[@laraahmed4765]

Hello

[@annamariacurrivan6142]

Add “The Little Lame Princess”. Throw away “Lord of the Flies”