I must confess: not only am I guilty of judging a book by its cover, but I also gravitate towards short books whenever I roam Waterstones, on the hunt for a new excuse to procrastinate on my academic essays. This is not because I dislike reading: if I did, I would be pursuing a disastrously wrong degree as a Comparative Literature student. But something about stories that succeed at concentrating an emotional conflict, an outlook on life, or even an entire universe into such a compact frame is fascinating to me. While I recognise that brevity can sometimes come at the expense of worldbuilding and complex characters, there is something special about knowing that every word is essential and therefore carries significantly more weight than it would in a bulky 500-word tome.
Perhaps you are reading this article because one of your not-yet-tackled resolutions for this year is to get back into reading for fun – or maybe you’re just looking for a way to make the most of your precious Trinity study breaks without committing to Middlemarch. Either way, these recommendations, each under 150 pages long, are for you.
Why not try…
…a cornerstone of modern feminist literature
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
This novel is essential for anyone not yet convinced of Virginia Woolf’s experimental and incisive writing style. One of the feminist texts that has influenced me the most, A Room of One’s Own provides much to reflect on despite its length. In a semi-fictionalised setting, Woolf’s narrator presents the thesis that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”, and that creative autonomy and education are essential means of emancipation which women must grasp – no matter how fervently men may try to prevent them from doing so.
While A Room of One’s Own was originally presented as a pair of Cambridge lectures by Woolf in 1928, I can promise it does not read like to hear that it reads like any lecture you have attended. Woolf reveals the erasure of women from literary history, highlighting how women’s voices and perspectives are largely missing from scholarship. She suggests that they will continue to be left out unless women fight for the financial freedom and infrastructure necessary to create art – the impactful conclusion to an essay that I wish were not as relevant today as it unfortunately is.
…a meditation on the radicality of embracing the mundane
Convenience Store Woman (コンビニ人間) by Sayaka Murata
As a fan of Japanese contemporary novels, I cannot finish this list without gushing about one of them. Convenience Store Woman follows 36-year-old Furukura Keiko, who has happily worked as a clerk at the same small store ever since turning 18. Her family may urge her to get a “real job” and find a husband, but she enjoys the seemingly mundane, never-changing tasks: restocking shelves, greeting customers, advertising for seasonal products. These activities are all she needs to make her feel like a “normal cog in society”. Read as a biting satire of capitalism by some and as an acknowledgement of neurodivergence in the workplace by others, Convenience Store Woman presents an unusual approach to societal expectations.
Convenience Store Woman was the 2016 winner of the Akutagawa Prize, recipients of which are usually short novellas – making a list of Akutagawa prize winners translated into English the perfect place to search for fresh Japanese fiction that you can finish in a single day!
…an exploration of boundlessness in just 128 pages
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Orbital follows six astronauts through exactly 24 hours in space, circling Earth while conducting experiments in zero gravity and reporting back to a crew on the ground. This experience is both an ordinary work day and an inconceivable miracle to them – they witness continents stretching out below them, typhoons emerging, and auroras colouring the sky in ethereal light.
There is not much I can add to Greta Stone’s review of the 2023’s Booker Prize winner: Orbital is unique in how it captures the vastness of nature and human existence, not despite but because it is so short. Though Harvey’s writing comes across as laboured at times, this book helped me to ground myself and let go of my anxieties during an especially chaotic week in Hilary: I am one of 8 billion humans living on this earth, invisible even from the immediate orbit of Earth – how important can that essay crisis really be?
If you are the type to overthink and worry about grades, especially near the end of the academic year, I highly recommend sitting down at your favourite reading spot in Oxford with a copy of Orbital and forgetting all about the dread of upcoming exams or deadlines.