The 25 best short books

The 25 highest-ranked books of 200 pages or fewer in our ranking of 3,056, scored on how much readers love them, their prize, best-list and bestseller record, and current buzz. We rank 172 short books in all. How we rank

1
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
by Omar El Akkad · 2025
In October 2023, a few weeks into the bombardment of Gaza, novelist Omar El Akkad posted a single line that went viral and became this book's title.
Why it made the list
National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (2025)Goodreads Choice (nonfiction) finalist (2025)
90.5Must-Read Score
2
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
by C. S. Lewis · 1950
Sent to a professor's country house to escape the bombing of London, four siblings, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, discover a wardrobe that leads to Narnia, a magical land frozen in endless winter by the White Witch.
Why it made the list
TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsPBS Great American ReadBBC's The Big Read
90.3Must-Read Score
3
Things in Nature Merely Grow
Things in Nature Merely Grow
by Yiyun Li · 2025
Novelist Yiyun Li and her husband had two sons and lost them both to suicide: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, and James in 2024, at nineteen.
Why it made the list
Pulitzer Prize (Memoir) winner (2026)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (2025)Goodreads Choice (memoir autobiography) finalist (2025)
87.9Must-Read Score
4
The Little Prince
The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry · 1943
A pilot crashes in the Sahara and meets a strange young boy who says he's a prince from a tiny, distant asteroid, where he left behind a single rose.
Why it made the list
One of the best-selling books ever (about 200 million copies)PBS Great American ReadBBC's The Big ReadLe Monde's 100 Books of the Century
87.1Must-Read Score
5
A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own
by Virginia Woolf · 1929
In 1928, Virginia Woolf gave two lectures on women and fiction at the women's colleges of Cambridge, and turned them into this extended essay.
Why it made the list
Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
86.8Must-Read Score
6
The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
by William Strunk and E. B. White · 1918
William Strunk Jr.
Why it made the list
Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
86.3Must-Read Score
7
Charlotte's Web
Charlotte's Web
by E. B. White · 1952
Wilbur is the runt of a litter of pigs, saved from slaughter by a girl named Fern.
Why it made the list
One of the best-selling books ever (about 50 million copies)PBS Great American ReadBBC's The Big ReadTIME 100 Best Young-Adult Books
85.1Must-Read Score
8
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century
by Timothy Snyder · 2017
Historian Timothy Snyder, an expert on 20th-century Europe, draws twenty lessons from how democracies collapsed into fascism and communism.
Why it made the list
82 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2017
84.6Must-Read Score
9
All Systems Red
All Systems Red
by Martha Wells · 2017
In a future run by corporations, survey teams on distant planets come with a Company-supplied security android.
Why it made the list
Hugo Award winner (2021, for Network Effect)Nebula Award winner (2020, for Network Effect)Goodreads Choice (science fiction) finalist (2023, for System Collapse)Goodreads Choice (science fiction) finalist (2021, for Fugitive Telemetry)
84.4Must-Read Score
10
Citizen
Citizen
by Claudia Rankine · 2014
Claudia Rankine's book is part poetry, part essay and part art book, built from the small, daily moments in which race intrudes: a colleague's careless remark, a stranger who won't sit beside you on a train, a friend who calls you by the wrong name.
Why it made the list
NYT 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyGuardian 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
84.3Must-Read Score
11
The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time
by James Baldwin · 1963
James Baldwin's short book is made of two essays.
Why it made the list
#1 New York Times bestseller (12 weeks at #1)
83.9Must-Read Score
12
Ficciones
Ficciones
by Jorge Luis Borges · 1944
Jorge Luis Borges's collection of short stories reads like a set of puzzles and thought experiments.
Why it made the list
Bokklubben World Library (100 greatest books)Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
83.9Must-Read Score
13
Tuesdays with Morrie
Tuesdays with Morrie
by Mitch Albom · 1990
Sportswriter Mitch Albom hadn't spoken to his favorite college professor, Morrie Schwartz, in sixteen years when he saw him on television, dying of ALS.
Why it made the list
#1 New York Times bestseller (55 weeks at #1)
83.5Must-Read Score
14
The Lives of a Cell
The Lives of a Cell
by Lewis Thomas · 1974
Lewis Thomas, a physician and medical researcher, wrote a column called "Notes of a Biology Watcher" for the New England Journal of Medicine.
Why it made the list
National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1975)Modern Library 100 Best NonfictionTIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction
82.1Must-Read Score
15
Animal Farm
Animal Farm
by George Orwell · 1945
The animals of Manor Farm, inspired by an old boar's dream of freedom, rise up and drive out their drunken farmer, Mr.
Why it made the list
TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best NovelsBBC's The Big Read
80.9Must-Read Score
16
Hiroshima
Hiroshima
by John Hersey · 1946
John Hersey follows six people, a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon and a German Catholic priest, from 8:15 a.m.
Why it made the list
TIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
80.0Must-Read Score
17
Gypsy Ballads
Gypsy Ballads
by Federico García Lorca · 1928
Federico García Lorca's book of eighteen poems, published in 1928, sets the old Spanish ballad form in Andalusia, among the Romani people of the region.
Why it made the list
Bokklubben World Library (100 greatest books)Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century
79.6Must-Read Score
18
The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925
In the summer of 1922 Nick Carraway rents a small house on Long Island next door to the mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who throws enormous parties.
Why it made the list
One of the best-selling books ever (about 30 million copies)One of the ten best-selling books of 2013 (Publishers Weekly)TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best Novels
79.6Must-Read Score
19
Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions
Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions
by Valeria Luiselli · 2016
In 2015, Valeria Luiselli, a Mexican novelist living in New York, began volunteering as an interpreter in immigration court for children who had fled Central America alone.
Why it made the list
Guardian 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
79.5Must-Read Score
20
The Hill We Climb
The Hill We Climb
by Amanda Gorman · 2021
Amanda Gorman, at 22 the youngest inaugural poet in American history, read "The Hill We Climb" at President Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021, two weeks after the attack on the Capitol.
Why it made the list
#1 New York Times bestseller (2 weeks at #1)
79.1Must-Read Score
21
Six Easy Pieces
Six Easy Pieces
by Richard P. Feynman · 1994
In the early 1960s, Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, taught the introductory physics course at Caltech, and his lectures became one of the most famous physics textbooks ever.
Why it made the list
Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction
79.0Must-Read Score
22
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess · 1962
In a near-future Britain, fifteen-year-old Alex leads a gang of droogs through nights of ultraviolence, and loves Beethoven.
Why it made the list
TIME All-TIME 100 NovelsModern Library 100 Best NovelsGuardian 100 Best Novels in English
79.0Must-Read Score
23
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll · 1865
Bored on a riverbank, Alice follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit hole into Wonderland, where she grows and shrinks, meets the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, and the Queen of Hearts, who wants everyone's head cut off.
Why it made the list
One of the best-selling books ever (about 100 million copies)Guardian 100 Best Novels in EnglishBBC's The Big ReadTIME 100 Best Young-Adult Books
78.5Must-Read Score
24
A Grief Observed
A Grief Observed
by CS Lewis · 1961
In 1960 C.
Why it made the list
Guardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
78.4Must-Read Score
25
White Fragility
White Fragility
by Robin DiAngelo · 2018
Robin DiAngelo, a diversity trainer, describes how white people often react with defensiveness, anger, guilt or silence when racism is raised, and argues that these reactions, which she calls white fragility, protect racial inequality.
Why it made the list
#1 New York Times bestseller (2 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 2020 (Publishers Weekly)
78.4Must-Read Score