45 short books to finish your 2024 reading challenge

Short books with a mix of fiction and non-fiction—whatever your taste, you will find something here

A roundup of 45 short books to help you hit your 2024 reading goal, with a little note about each. Sorted by word count, with a mix of fiction and non-fiction, classic and modern, contemporary and science fiction.

Under 250 pages

1. Persuasion by Jane Austen (249 pages). We’re starting this list with a classic set in Regency-era England.

2. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (247 pages). An epic spanning three generations with the benefit of being short. Gilead gives insight to very real personal, spiritual struggles.

3. Being Heumann: The Unrepentent Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann. Judy is an icon and this memoir details the incredible fight she and her fellow activists went through to get disabled people the rights we have today. It’s also a helpful reminder of the work still to be done.

4. Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (240 pages). Gentle, quiet, and full of love. You will enjoy it if you liked Remarkably Bright Creatures, and I might also describe it as a Thursday Murder Club book without the murders.

5. Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK by Simon Kuper (240 pages). Exactly as it says on the tin.

6. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (239 pages). This follows Michelle’s journey as she loses her mother to cancer at 25 and reconciles with her Koreaness. It is imbued with grief, love, and beauty.

7. Land of Big Numbers: Stories by Chen Te-Ping (233 pages). I loved this collection of short stories set in mainland China. Each is unique, yet together paints a complex, cohesive picture of what it is like to exist there now. (P.S. If you know me irl, I would quite like a hard copy of this.)

8. Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (228 pages). Another collection of short stories, this time with a bit of magic realism / surrealism that I enjoyed. Even though they are all so abstract, they are so real.

9. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (227 pages). One of the first books we read in my little book club. It is set in a small alley café in Tokyo where you can time travel for the length of time it takes for the coffee to get cold. It is the first in a series, so you have plenty to keep you company if you like it, though I found the first sufficient.

10. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (226 pages). This is set in West Africa, and follows Okonkwo, the greatest warrior alive, as he is sent into exile and returns to a vastly different village being colonised. It is thought-provoking and I am grateful to Chinua for writing this.

11. Happy Families by Julie Ma (226 pages). A book about a woman who returns from working in the city to work in her family’s Chinese takeaway and live with her grandfather.

12. Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel (224 pages). I bought this at the International Booker Prize shortlist readings at the Southbank Centre in 2023 with a friend, and loved it. It is gentle but also unexpected, delving into the complexities of motherhood and how women handle it, whether we desire it or decide it is not for us. It is messy in all the right ways.

13. This Other Eden by Paul Harding (224 pages). Shortlisted for The Booker Prize, this tells the story of the Honeys’ descendants—castaways on Apple Island alongside eccentric neighbours, just off the coast of the United States, and how their way of life comes under threat. The prose is beautiful, with stark writing that describes the beautiful and ugly alike.

14. Looking for Alaska by John Green (221 pages). My first John Green book as a teenager, this captures wonderfully the impermanence and tragedy of youth. I read this while I had a crush on a boy who was moving far away, which is likely why it crystallised in my memory.

15. Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa (218 pages). Please read this. It is gentle, infused with sweet bean paste and doriyaki made by a man who grows to appreciate them both. It highlights how disabled people are often kept away from society, and also provides a lens on starting out in ignorance and growing into a wholesome acceptance and love.

16. Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang (217 pages). I loved this. It has deep descriptions of food, made all the more luxurious by its dystopian setting where most crops have died. In this regard, it is reminiscent of Butter (which is most certainly not a short read). It is grey with blinding flashes of white, but hope prevails. You may also like Zhang’s slightly longer How Much of These Hills Is Gold (288 pages), which was one of Obama’s favourite books of 2020.

17. Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi (213 pages). This Japanese bestseller is like a ticking time bomb, a guilty pleasure where Shibata’s subversion of society’s rigid expectations of women prevails.

18. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (213 pages). A teenage classic, with the benefit of being a Banned Book, if you fancy a bit of rebellion.

19. The View From Down Here: Life as a Young Disabled Woman by Lucy Webster (209 pages). Lucy’s memoir explores the cross-section of feminism and ableism, walking you through (pun intended) her life as a disabled woman. P.S. Lucy is a friend and very cool.

20. I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki and I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Se-hee Baek (both 208 pages). These record Se-hee’s conversations with her therapist as she removes between depression and hope. They make me feel less alone.

21. August Blue by Deborah Levy (208 pages). Adjacent to My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Sally Rooney.

Under 200 pages

1. The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa (198 pages). One for the book lovers.

2. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (198 pages). Dystopian, devoid of hope, yet with a strong undercurrent of innate human curiousity.

3. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (198 pages). I enjoyed this far more than Whereabouts, perhaps because Jhumpa’s writing lends itself to the short story format well. Here we examine specific slices of the human experience, and I particularly liked A Temporary Matter and The Treatment of Bibi Haldar.

4. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (197 pages). An Andalusian shepherd boy’s quest for treasure.

5. The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid (192 pages). A thought-provoking mirror for reality and race relations.

6. Heartburn by Nora Ephron (189 pages). A ‘thinly disguised’ account of Nora’s divorce, this had me hooked from the introduction before I even got to the book itself.

7. Minor Feelings: A Reckoning on Race and the Asian Condition by Cathy Park Hong (185 pages). This should be required reading.

8. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (182 pages). A youth classic chronicling a group of schoolboys stranded on an uncharted island.

9. Heaven by Mieko Kawakami (181 pages). I cared about the characters but not the story very much, I confess. Breasts and Eggs was more my preference, but I'm willing to blame this one on myself as school storylines aren't the most relatable for me.

10. How Ableism Fuels Racism: Dismantling the Hierarchy of Bodies in the Church by Lamar Hardwick (179 pages). The author of this non-fiction book, Lamar, is disabled, BAME, and Christian. It dives deeply into church history and law, highlighting ties with ableism and how the church can address it.

11. Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-Jin (176 pages). An interesting short book about the relationship between an ageing mother and gay daughter in Korea.

12. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo (175 pages). This is fiction, and yet it is not. The story is fiction, but as it follows three generations of women through Korea, it references real facts like the gender pay gap that make it a wonderful insight into womanhood in the country. It is reminiscent of Private Revolutions by Yuan Yang.

13. Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (160 pages). I read this in one Saturday, and it captures adolescence and its struggles nicely. It’s an easy read, and a quick way to get a shortlisted book for The Booker Prize on your list.

14. Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto (160 pages). This memoir is endlessly fascinating. Shoji does exactly as per the book’s title: he rents himself out to do nothing. He may sit with you while you file your taxes, accompany you to a ramen place you’re too afraid to eat alone at, but he won’t actively do anything. This results from his conception that he is not good at anything, therefore wants to do nothing so he can never disappoint anyone. But before we accuse him of giving up on life, it’s clear that he cares at the very least about the service he provides, and more so the people who request it.

15. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa (150 pages). The sequel is 176 pages. The comfort of books, family, and community to buoy you up.

Under 150 pages

1. Greek Lessons by Han Kang (149 pages). I need to read this again, perhaps after I (finally) read The Vegetarian, which just won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

2. Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion (149 pages). Joan is an icon, and this collection of her writing is a great place to start. I loved her ferocious description of her New York apartment—it reminded me of my love for my own little London home.

3. Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson (145 pages). Caleb could write anything and I would read it. I admit little memory of the story beyond the general premise, but the beautiful prose stays with me.

4. Animal Farm by George Orwell (129 pages). A classic dystopian book.

5. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (107 pages). A play rather than a book strictly, rich with human complexities.

6. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (107 pages). I breezed through this. The character arc is great, from Keiko initially being fine with her life, to giving in to societal pressure and conformity, to the end, which I won’t spoil. She is her own woman, and this book is a reminder to live life on your own terms.

Under 100 pages

1. Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai by Nina Mingya Powles (92 pages). Beautiful and comforting—I read it when I needed it most, in my favourite café. Nina folds in life, food, and family into this bite-sized piece.

2. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (89 pages). Oscar Wilde is a national treasure and this play, as always, is filled to the brim with wit.

3. Strangers on a Pier: Portrait of a Family by Tash Aw (58 pages). What does it mean to be a Malaysian who doesn’t quite fit in, yet deeply cares about the nation? Strangers is largely a conversation between Tash and his father, and I will return to it.

I hope my list of short books helps you finish your 2024 reading challenge. Comment to let me know if you read any of these, or if you have a short book to add to this list.