The BEST SHORT Books (Under 200 Pages!)

These are, without a doubt, the best short books ever written!
In our opinion.
We all love the feeling of accomplishment when you finish a huge 1,000 tome, but honestly, sometimes you just want to rip through a book without feeling like it's dragging on forever!
That's why there's short books and novellas! In this episode Andy and I break down our favorite short books and what we love about them.
While many new authors today may be writing short novels because they take less time to write, and people have shorter and shorter attention spans, writing a thought provoking and memorable short book can be tough. Consider that the author has fewer pages to pack their narrative punch.
So if you're looking for a great short book, consider one of the books on this list!
And if you want to support the show, consider buying a book through one of the links below!
Solenoid Mircea Cartarescu
bookshop.org/a...
Fatal John Lescroart
bookshop.org/a...
Blinding Mircea Caratarescu
amzn.to/3YiUUnx
Marshland Otohiko Kaga
bookshop.org/a...
Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon
bookshop.org/a...
Fury Clyo Mendoza
bookshop.org/a...
The Good Earth Pearl S Buck
bookshop.org/a...
$100M Offers Alex Hormozi
bookshop.org/a...
Murder of Frogs Don Carpenter
bookshop.org/a...
Fridays at Enrico’s Don carpenter
bookshop.org/a...
American Gods Neil Gaiman
bookshop.org/a...
Gates of Fire Steven Pressfield
bookshop.org/a...
100 years of solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
bookshop.org/a...
The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
bookshop.org/a...
Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
bookshop.org/a...
World war Z Max Brooks
bookshop.org/a...
A fever in the Heartland Timothy Egan
bookshop.org/a...
Same Bed Different Dreams Ed Park
bookshop.org/a...
JR William Gaddis
bookshop.org/a...
Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
bookshop.org/a...
Lookout Cartridge Joseph McElroy
amzn.to/4f0MgQf
Fundamentals of Sports Training L. Matveyev
Catch 22 Joseph Heller
bookshop.org/a...
America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: a diagnostic Phillip Freedenburg
You bright and Risen Angels William T. Vollmann
amzn.to/3VYpQqd
Hurricane Season Fernanda Melchor
amzn.to/3WksUhR
This Other Eden Paul Harding
bookshop.org/a...
Enon Paul Harding
bookshop.org/a...
Cannery Row John Steinbeck
bookshop.org/a...
The Pearl John Steinbeck
bookshop.org/a...
The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
bookshop.org/a...
Between the world and me Ta-Nahisi Coates
bookshop.org/a...
In the heart of the heart of the country William H. Gass
bookshop.org/a...
The Rainbow stories William T Vollmann
bookshop.org/a...
Annihilation Jeff Vandermeer
bookshop.org/a...
Reinhardts Garden Mark Haber
bookshop.org/a...
Passing Nella Larson
bookshop.org/a...
Paradais Fernanda Melchor
bookshop.org/a...
Tinkers Paul Harding
bookshop.org/a...
The Jewish Son Daniel Guebel
bookshop.org/a...
Sweet Thursday John Steinbeck
bookshop.org/a...
The Lime Twig John Hawkes
bookshop.org/a...
Heart of a Dog Mikhail Bulgakov
bookshop.org/a...
The Crying of lot 49 Thomas Pynchon
bookshop.org/a...

[@carrollandbuddy]

Small things like these by Claire Keegan.A great short book.

[@reading_fastandslow]

It’s 250 pages so a little over, but In the Distance by Hernan Diaz is one of my all time favorites. Because of the language barrier the main character faces, and the setting - it feels very surreal, even though it’s completely rooted in reality.

[@Lifeonbooks]

@@reading_fastandslow and my TBR gets one book longer....

[@_d0ser]

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. VERY cathartic read for anyone who has been stuck working retail for an extended period of time. My favorite part might be how bad the reviews are on Goodreads/Amazon because people who have never HAD to work awful jobs just bash it.

[@_d0ser]

Well, that, and people complaining about one of the characters being a bad person which is such a pet peeve.

[@Lifeonbooks]

Sounds interesting, thank you for the rec!

[@zachstephens2561]

I’ve binged this podcast for the week and really enjoy. I found Tony through Tik Tok and really enjoy how he interacts with us in the comment section. Love the show guys!

[@Lifeonbooks]

@@zachstephens2561 thanks for watching! Chatting with other readers is my favorite part of doing all this social media stuff.

[@jackwalter5970]

Two great short novels are Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal and The Train Was on Time by Heinrich Boll.

[@Lifeonbooks]

@@jackwalter5970 thank you for the recommendations, I'll check them out!

[@grippersrealm]

too loud is the best book

[@readinsteadbyjake]

The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway

[@kurtfox4944]

From 0:00 to 1:04:42 is current books reading and Q&A The BEST SHORT Books (Under 200 Pages!) begins 1:04:42

[@1995yuda]

Not sure if Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conard is over 200 Pages, it's more of a Novella than short story for sure, but it's possibly one of the top 3 works of Literature ever written. I'm willing to argue and die on that hill. But you gotta read it along with Genesis to get the proper contextuall understanding so you can penetrate the deeper meaning of it.

[@AM-is1jh]

A favorite between the ages of 8 and 14. Essentially a writer for very young people. Certainly inferior to Hemingway and Wells. Intolerable souvenir-shop style, romanticist clichés. Nothing I would care to have written myself. In mentality and emotion, hopelessly juvenile. Romantic in the large sense. Slightly bogus.

[@asemicwriter]

Thanks for the reading list gents. I'm an art student but read and write poetry and novellas. I usually read classics if they are longer books because I have commitment issues. Short books usually pack more of a punch and seem to have more urgency. There are so many great books out there and not enough time for one life. Shorter books are probably more ideal to turn into screenplays, if a writer were to translate a book from page to screen. Books are a nice alternative activity if video game playing gets stale. Cheers for keeping literature alive!

[@Lifeonbooks]

thanks for being part of our community!

[@werke_und_tage]

Solenoid is such a great book!!

[@trudejensen8512]

Some of my all-time favorite books are short. The Notebook by Agota Kristof The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono The Stranger by Albert Camus The Bird Tribunal by Agnes Ravatn Consent by Vanessa Springora Babette's Feast by Karen Blixen

[@Lifeonbooks]

@@trudejensen8512 nice picks!

[@trudejensen8512]

@@Lifeonbooks Thanks! But I forgot to mention the master of short stories - Guy de Maupassant. Boule de Suif (The Dumpling) got me hooked.

[@NaeOnYT]

Nothing wrong with new releases, YA, romantasy, etc.--I read a decent amount of new releases myself--but it's nice to see some channels that include older stuff and more genres.

[@anasofiabracamonte]

A good short novel i would like to recommend to you if you haven't read it yet, it's Gabriel García Marquez' "Of love and other demons". Its very very beautiful, and 150 pages long I think...

[@Lifeonbooks]

@@anasofiabracamonte can never go wrong with GGM

[@1995yuda]

Cathedral by Reymond Carver is a GREAT short story.

[@tarquinmidwinter2056]

Animal Farm (George Orwell) is less than 200 pages. The short book that first came to my mind was Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain Fournier. This is over 200 pages, but I think of it as a short book and it's one of my favourites.

[@usmnt4423]

Glad Crying of Lot 49 made this list. Shoutout Notes from Underground

[@alanalan-tc8no]

In the last period I have approached Italian literature. I found it so full of truth and rawness. I fell in love lol. These are some books under 200 pages if you want to see what they're about and enter the world of Italian literature that I often see forgotten. Perhaps overwhelmed by the fame of the art of painting, sculpture, architecture and music of that beautiful country. But literature doesn't joke either. "Ties" Domenico Starnone "The lovers" Paolo Cognetti "A Private Affair" Beppe Fenoglio "Fontamara" Ignazio SIlone

[@Lifeonbooks]

I agree Italian lit doesn't get enough love. It's definitely a weak area in my own reading. I'm a huge Primo Levi fan though.

[@alanalan-tc8no]

@@Lifeonbooks I have to tell you, Primo Levi changed my way of being a reader. I read If This Is a Man when I was 20 and for two months I couldn't pick up any other book because I couldn't get his words out of my head. Such raw, analytical words without frills or victimism of any kind. It opened me up to a completely different world of literature. I bought everything I could find written by him and he became one of my favorite writers.

[@Lifeonbooks]

@@alanalan-tc8no same. It's really a life changing book. I wish we had him around today, the world could use his wisdom.

[@alanalan-tc8no]

@@Lifeonbooks Completely agree with you. Well I'm starting to catch up on some of your videos and you're great. New subscriber to the channel. I hope then that in the future you will find an Italian book or author that will win you over just as much as Primo Levi. (Maybe impossible but never give up lol)

[@1995yuda]

The Necklace by Mopasaun is a fantastic short story.

[@1995yuda]

Kate Chopin's story about a River and a married couple is also great.

[@1995yuda]

That's the second time Tinkers comes up and Paul Harding gets pretty high praise, being compared to Steinback no less.. You've convinced me to give it a read.

[@1995yuda]

Reinhardt's Garden sounds good, I'll have to check it out.

[@BetheQuail]

Definitely got to be the only sub-200 page books list post that prominently mentions JR, Infinite Jest, etc... I think European authors tend to dominate lists like this because it's a format they tend to buy more often. I'm thinking Camus' The Stranger, several by Italo Calvino (especially the two collected together in The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount, both among his best works). The Metamorphosis, Candide, etc. I'd also include Russians like Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. Maybe House of the Sleeping Beauties by Kawabata. Didn't come up with a ton of contemporary titles, but that's a product of my tendencies more than anything else. But for stories of this length, there are a ton of great plays to read, too.

[@kurtfox4944]

Award that most fits my tastes? PEN/Faulkner Least fits my tastes is Booker. IMO, Pulitzer and Booker, especially since 2005, seem to be chosen more for virtue signaling than quality writing.

[@_d0ser]

Tao Lin made me want to try writing because after I finished Taipei I thought: "This is so bad I can do better."

[@Intheearthrn]

Marblehead may seem pretentious until you find out who he is. He has seen a lot of shit. His father and uncle became victims of police brutality, before he was born/when he was an infant. His uncle wrote to him when he was in jail, and the book is titled “Soledad Brother”.

[@Lifeonbooks]

I don't really see what one has to do with the other, but interesting info nonetheless.

[@Intheearthrn]

@@Lifeonbooks he’s very qualified to have some of these critiques. When he criticizes someone like James Baldwin for example, it might seem pretentious until you find out that he actually met Baldwin.

[@marcelhidalgo1076]

Has Metafictional Meathead read Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo?

[@Metafictional.meathead]

I have read it! I enjoyed it, but I was not blown away by it as it seems many other people have been

[@1995yuda]

Alex Hermozi is an amature marketer, if you want the REAL stuff check out Todd Browns's stuff... Especially his main program. Just an FYI from one sales man to another.

[@1995yuda]

Speaking of Audiobooks, if you allow me to cheat a little and include Radio Drama as an Audiobook just this one time, than the BBC's 'Dangerous Visions' audio drama version of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is God's gift to mankind. A 3 part Audiobook of Moby Dick here on KZbin , as well as a Solaris one here are a close second and third spots, in that order. Thank me later.

[@Lifeonbooks]

@@1995yuda I'll check it out!

[@1995yuda]

@@Lifeonbooks Awesome, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts/response in the future. Make sure you listen to the one WITH the Songs intact 👍

[@kurtfox4944]

Did you just compare Catch-22 to Taylor Swift? LOL

[@Frank78565]

Are you guys on Instagram?