5 Very Short Reads to Expand Your Literary World Before 2025

Bold, thought-provoking, and genuinely pleasurable books for your end-of-year list, from criticism to fiction. All under 170 pages.

Pleasure, as I see it, is the art of being there—a surrender to something that pulls you out of yourself. You sink into a couch, a blanket draped over your New England-cold legs, sipping cheap coffee from a mug you bought for your dad two Christmases ago. You’re a bit disappointed he doesn’t use it all that much when you aren’t here, but you’re glad to claim it again every six months. You open your Kindle (because the gifts took up too much space in your carry-on suitcase and you hate traveling with heavy books).

The quiet, in-between time stretching from Thanksgiving to New Year’s feels like the perfect window for reading. I can get myself to get through nearly any type of book during this time: commercial, literary, critical. The best reads for this period, though, are the ones that open up like a poem, not a project—timely, economical, and a little ridiculous in the way the holidays seem to demand (or perhaps, defy).

Here are five books that do exactly that. I’ve picked them off of my own shelf of 2024 favorites, so I hope you will enjoy them in this precious week we have before the new year.

The Pleasure of the Text
Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Miller (67 pages)

This is not a book. It’s an act of seduction. Barthes asks us what we’re doing when we read, but he doesn’t really want our answer—he’s busy answering it for us, wrapping his questions in velvet, unfolding the act of reading as something that happens in the body. It’s not about understanding a text, he says; it’s about desiring it. You’ll certainly want a pen or pencil in hand while reading this. Barthes will tease you, smite you, and then slip right by you.

The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (96 pages)

When I was eight, I dismissed this book as nonsense—a pilot, a fox, stars, sheep? Surely, my very practical mind had more important things to deal with. But with every reread as an adult, The Little Prince transforms. What is essential is invisible to the eye. It’s a short, tender parable that speaks softly yet cuts sharply, a reminder of everything we lose—and sometimes find again—as we grow up. I keep it close: on my shelf, on my desk, even as my iPad wallpaper—a quiet touchstone for the truths we so often forget.

Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan (128 pages)

This is what the holidays feel like: dark evenings, soft lights, a quiet snowfall outside the window. Keegan’s novella is set during Christmastime in 1980s Ireland, and it’s a story about kindness—how it happens and why it matters. I won’t spoil the plot, but I will tell you this: it left me sitting in silence for a long time after I closed it.

The Argonauts
Maggie Nelson (160 pages)

Nelson’s books feel like walking into a room you’ve never been in before but immediately recognize. This one is about love, identity, family, queerness—and, as always with Nelson, about language. It’s a narrative braided with theory, the kind of beautiful, painful writing that makes you question the line between memoir and criticism. My favorite writer, writing about everything that matters.

I’m not sure why they went with such a spooky cover for this book. But the again, who isn’t a little scared of a woman with the audacity?

I Await the Devil’s Coming
Mary MacLane (162 pages)

MacLane’s writing feels like holding a live wire—raw, immediate, electric. She wrote this at 19, in 1902, and it’s still more audacious than most books published today. She describes herself as a genius, a philosopher, a woman waiting for the devil to claim her—and you believe her. Every word drips with longing and defiance—and every single great thought I’ve had about writing or reading or being in the last year is at the credit of MacLane.

BONUS: A River Runs Through It
Norman Maclean (161 pages)

I haven’t read this one yet, but it’s waiting for me. A story about fly fishing, yes, but also about the affections and troubles of the heart. I know next to nothing about fishing, but I know more than I would like to about the ache of connection, the way a river never flows the same way twice. I’ll be starting this one today.

SECOND BONUS: Lucinella
Lore Segal (160 pages)

Another one that’s waiting for me. Segal’s novella is supposed to be sly, funny, glittering—about writers and their messy lives. The kind of book you laugh with, a little wryly, but also find yourself in. I like the sound of that.

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Pick one, or two, or all of them. Let them carry you somewhere else before the year ends. Perhaps I’ll see you there.

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season!