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How to be well-read in no time: 40 short novels
How to be well-read in no time: 40 short novels is a list of books that provides a varied glimpse of the written style of many of the great authors. A concise selection, the titles can be worked through over a very short period, or, alternatively, they can be sandwiched between larger classics in an even more ambitious reading program. For further reading suggestions see our Top 100 Novels of All Time.
1. Slaughterhouse-Five
Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we fear most. More »
2. To the Lighthouse
Widely acclaimed since its first publication in 1927, Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’ is a novel whose overt simplicity of plot hides a complex mix of autobiographical detail, searching social questions and deep philosophical enigmas. The author’s innovative use of nonlinear plot, stream- … More »
3. The Metamorphosis
By Franz Kafka
It is one of the most memorable first lines in all of literature: “When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into some kind of monstrous vermin.” So begins Kafka’s famous short story, The Metamorphosis. Kafka considered publishing it with two of the … More »
4. Animal Farm
This is a classic tale of humanity awash in totalitarianism. A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. First published during the epoch of Stalinist Russia, today … More »
5. Of Mice And Men
Of Mice and Men is a novel written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in search of new job opportunities during the Great … More »
6. The Old Man and the Sea
The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far … More »
7. Waiting for the Barbarians
A modern classic, this early novel by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee centers on the crisis of conscience and morality of the Magistrate-a loyal servant of the Empire working in a tiny frontier town, doing his best to ignore an inevitable war with the “barbarians.” More »
8. A Christmas Carol
This new selection of Dickens’s Christmas writings confirms his lasting influence upon our idea of the Christmas spirit: that Christmas is a time for celebration, charity, and memory. In addition to the beloved A Christmas Carol, this volume includes such festive works as … More »
9. Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as … More »
10. The Stranger
By Albert Camus
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Albert Camus’s spare, laconic masterpiece about a Frenchman who murders an Arab in Algeria is famous for having diagnosed, with a clarity almost scientific, that condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. Possessing both the force of a … More »
11. As I Lay Dying
Long been recognized not only as one of William Faulkner’s greatest works, but also as the most accessible of his major novels. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1985 corrected text and is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. “Backgrounds and Contexts” is divided … More »
12. Invisible Cities
Imaginary conversations between Marco Polo and his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, conjure up cities of magical times. “Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant” (Gore Vidal). Translated … More »
13. Heart of Darkness
Dark allegory describes the narrator’s journey up the Congo River and his meeting with, and fascination by, Mr. Kurtz, a mysterious personage who dominates the unruly inhabitants of the region. Masterly blend of adventure, character development, psychological penetration. Considered by many Conrad’s finest, most enigmatic story. More »
14. The Quiet American
“I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused,” Graham Greene’s narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous “Quiet American” of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington … More »
15. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
By Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy’s most famous novella is an intense and moving examination of death and the possibilities of redemption, here in a powerful translation by the award-winning Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.Ivan Ilyich is a middle-aged man who has spent his life focused on his career as a bureaucrat and … More »
16. The Time Machine
By H. G. Wells
When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year a.d. 802,701, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realizes that these beautiful people are simply … More »
17. Darkness at Noon
Originally published in 1941, Arthur Koestler’s modern masterpiece, Darkness At Noon, is a powerful and haunting portrait of a Communist revolutionary caught in the vicious fray of the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s. During Stalin’s purges, Nicholas Rubashov, an aging revolutionary, is imprisoned and … More »
18. The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish … More »
19. Notes from the Underground
In 1864, just prior to the years in which he wrote his greatest novels—Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) penned the darkly fascinating Notes from the Underground. Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is … More »
20. The Picture of Dorian Gray
By Oscar Wilde
Since its first publication in 1890, Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has remained the subject of critical controversy. Acclaimed by some as an instructive moral tale, it has been denounced by others for its implicit immorality. After having his … More »
21. The Red Badge of Courage
ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP The story of a young soldier’s quest for manhood during the American Civil War. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author’s life and work … More »
22. The Catcher in the Rye
Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger’s New Yorker stories–particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme With Love and Squalor–will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children. The hero-narrator of The Catcher in … More »
23. Fathers and Sons
When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle’s discomfort, by a strange friend “who doesn’t acknowledge any authorities, who doesn’t accept a single principle on faith.” Turgenev’s masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when … More »
24. Siddhartha
By Herman Hesse
This classic novel of self-discovery has inspired generations of seekers. With parallels to the enlightenment of the Buddha, Hesse’s Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin’s quest for the ultimate reality. His quest takes him from the extremes of indulgent sensuality to the rigors of ascetism and … More »
25. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson’s short novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, first published in 1886, became an instant classic, a Gothic horror originating in a feverish nightmare whose hallucinatory setting in the back streets of London gripped a nation mesmerized by crime and violence. Its revelatory ending … More »
26. The Turn of the Screw
By Henry James
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition brings together one of literature’s most famous ghost stories and one of Henry James’s most unusual novellas. In The Turn of the Screw, a governess is haunted by ghosts from her young charges past; Virginia Woolf said of this masterpiece of psychological … More »
27. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Since childhood, Kusama has been afflicted with a condition that makes her see spots, which means she sees the world in a surreal, almost hallucinogenic way that sits very well with the ‘Wonderland of Alice’. She is fascinated by childhood and the way adults have the ability, at … More »
28. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
By Mark Twain
Climb aboard the raft with Huck and Jim and drift away from the “sivilized” life and into a world of adventure, excitement, danger, and self-discovery. Huck’s shrewd and humorous narrative is complemented by lyrical descriptions of the Mississippi valley and a sparkling cast of memorable characters. More »
29. The Sorrows of Young Werther
One of the world’s first best-sellers, this tragic masterpiece attained an instant and lasting success upon its 1774 publication. A sensitive exploration of the mind of a young artist, the tale addresses age-old questions — the meaning of love, of death, and the possibility of redemption — in … More »
30. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
By Muriel Spark
At the staid Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher extraordinaire Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with … More »
31. Candide
By Voltaire
Candide is the most famous of Voltaire’s “philosophical tales,” in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. … More »
32. Lord of the Flies
The classic novel by William GoldingWith a new Introduction by Stephen King”To me Lord of the Flies has always represented what novels are for, what makes them indispensable.” -Stephen KingGolding’s classic, startling, and perennially bestselling portrait of human nature remains as provocative today as when it … More »
33. Silas Marner
By George Eliot
Falsely accused, cut off from his past, Silas the weaver is reduced to a spider-like existence, endlessly weaving his web and hoarding his gold. Meanwhile, Godfrey Cass, son of the squire, contracts a secret marriage. While the village celebrates Christmas and New Year, two apparently inexplicable events occur. … More »
34. The Immoralist
By Andre Gide
‘To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom’ – Andre Gide. Michel had been a blindfold scholar until, newly married, he contracted tuberculosis. His will to recover brings self-discovery and the growing desire to rebel against … More »
35. Therese Raquin
By Emile Zola
In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Thérèse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband’s earthy friend Laurent, but their … More »
36. Cain
“Suitably disturbing—and a pleasure to read.” — The ScotsmanIn this, his last novel, José Saramago daringly reimagines the characters and narratives of the Old Testament, recalling his provocative The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. His tale runs from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten … More »
37. Jamilia
“The most beautiful love story in the world.”—Louis AragonThe Second World War is raging, and Jamilia’s husband is off fighting at the front. Accompanied by Daniyar, a sullen newcomer who was wounded on the battlefield, Jamilia spends her days hauling sacks of grain from the threshing floor to … More »
38. Live and Remember
First published in Russian in 1974, Live and Remember was immediately hailed by Soviet critics as a superb if atypical example of war literature and a moving depiction of the degradation and ultimate damnation of a frontline deserter. The novel tells the story of a Siberian peasant who … More »
39. Death in Venice
By Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann is widely acknowledged as the greatest German novelist of this century. His 1912 novella Death in Venice is the most frequently read example of Mann’s early work. Clayton Koelb’s masterful translation improves upon its predecessors in two ways: it renders Mann into American (not British) English, … More »
40. Into the Wild
By Jon Krakauer
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the … More »
Michael Bradley - Time Traveler 