Lists

Short reads: popular books under 200 pages

100 of the most-read books on Open Library that you can finish in an afternoon or two.

Book	Author	Median pages	Reading time	Editions
The Alchemist	Paulo Coelho	198	3 h 29 min	21
The Art of War	孙武 (Sun Tzu)	70	1 h 21 min	413
Animal Farm	George Orwell	119	2 h 06 min	109
Le Petit Prince	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	96	1 h 42 min	72
Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury	172	3 h 02 min	54
Charlotte's Web	E. B. White	184	3 h 15 min	60
No Longer Human	太宰治	177	3 h 07 min	9
Man's Search for Meaning	Viktor Emil Frankl	165	3 h 11 min	43
Metamorphosis	Franz Kafka	78	1 h 22 min	91
The Richest Man in Babylon	George S. Clason	114	2 h 12 min	89
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	182	3 h 12 min	183
L’étranger	Albert Camus	127	2 h 14 min	89
Romeo and Juliet	William Shakespeare	191	3 h 22 min	409
Coraline	Neil Gaiman	182	3 h 12 min	17
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Roald Dahl	162	2 h 51 min	54
Of Mice and Men	John Steinbeck	118	2 h 05 min	86
The Old Man and the Sea	Ernest Hemingway	127	2 h 14 min	47
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll	130	2 h 18 min	595
The Four Agreements	Don Miguel Ruiz	168	3 h 14 min	5
Kama Sutra	Vatsyāyana	186	3 h 35 min	173
The Outsiders	S. E. Hinton	192	3 h 23 min	15
Hatchet	Gary Paulsen	195	3 h 26 min	28
The Prince	Niccolò Machiavelli	148	2 h 37 min	180
Things Fall Apart	Chinua Achebe	192	3 h 23 min	40
The Invisible Man	H. G. Wells	178	3 h 08 min	191
Tuesdays with Morrie	Mitch Albom	192	3 h 42 min	16
Eat That Frog!	Brian Tracy	129	2 h 29 min	9
Games People Play	Eric Berne	192	3 h 23 min	17
The Time Machine	H. G. Wells	122	2 h 09 min	175
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe	C. S. Lewis	186	3 h 17 min	51
A Child Called "it"	David J. Pelzer	163	3 h 08 min	14
Slaughterhouse-Five	Kurt Vonnegut	186	3 h 17 min	36
Who Moved My Cheese?	Spencer Johnson	94	1 h 39 min	7
The Very Hungry Caterpillar	Eric Carle	25	26 min	31
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Robert Louis Stevenson	132	2 h 20 min	107
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz	L. Frank Baum	159	2 h 48 min	361
James and the Giant Peach	Roald Dahl	144	2 h 32 min	27
Speak	Laurie Halse Anderson	197	3 h 28 min	11
Rich Dad, Poor Dad for Teens	Robert T. Kiyosaki	132	2 h 33 min	5
Fantastic Mr Fox	Roald Dahl	90	1 h 35 min	21
The Cat in the Hat	Dr. Seuss	63	1 h 07 min	20
Macbeth	William Shakespeare	140	2 h 28 min	595
Guess How Much I Love You	Sam McBratney	32	34 min	33
As a Man Thinketh	James Allen	44	51 min	434
Heart of Darkness	Joseph Conrad	144	2 h 32 min	151
Siddhartha	Hermann Hesse	139	2 h 27 min	58
Green Eggs and Ham	Dr. Seuss	62	1 h 06 min	18
Because of Winn-Dixie	Kate DiCamillo	182	3 h 12 min	9
Number the Stars	Lois Lowry	138	2 h 25 min	10
The Art of Loving	Erich Fromm	133	2 h 34 min	29
Maus I	Art Spiegelman	159	3 h 04 min	16
A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess	188	3 h 19 min	44
Gorin No Sho	Miyamoto Musashi	107	2 h 04 min	43
Notes from the Underground	Fiódor Dostoievski	145	2 h 33 min	151
Where the Wild Things Are	Maurice Sendak	42	44 min	19
A Wizard of Earthsea	Ursula K. Le Guin	197	3 h 28 min	19
The Gruffalo	Julia Donaldson	32	34 min	13
Leonardo	Leonardo da Vinci	168	3 h 14 min	22
The Communist manifesto	Karl Marx	88	1 h 42 min	146
A Christmas Carol	Charles Dickens	114	2 h 01 min	521
The Science of Getting Rich, Or, Financial Success Through Creative Thought	Wallace D. Wattles	103	1 h 59 min	84
A Midsummer Night's Dream	William Shakespeare	128	2 h 28 min	437
Push	Sapphire	192	3 h 23 min	5
The Bad Beginning	Lemony Snicket	165	2 h 55 min	16
The Magician's Nephew	C. S. Lewis	186	3 h 17 min	33
The Call of the Wild	Jack London	128	2 h 28 min	206
Tao te Ching	老子	114	2 h 12 min	277
Stellaluna	Janell Cannon	47	50 min	6
Mere Christianity	C. S. Lewis	190	3 h 39 min	38
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?	Bill Martin Jr.	28	30 min	21
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret	Judy Blume	149	2 h 38 min	23
Beyond Good and Evil	Friedrich Nietzsche	180	3 h 28 min	165
Flatland	Edwin Abbott Abbott	116	2 h 03 min	111
Goodnight Moon	Margaret Wise Brown	32	34 min	34
A Study in Scarlet	Arthur Conan Doyle	162	2 h 51 min	126
Go Ask Alice	Beatrice Sparks	180	3 h 11 min	16
The Bluest Eye	Toni Morrison	172	3 h 02 min	22
The Yellow Wallpaper	Charlotte Perkins Gilman	34	36 min	285
The Adventures of Captain Underpants	Dav Pilkey	136	2 h 24 min	12
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark	Alvin Schwartz	111	1 h 57 min	9
The Crucible	Arthur Miller	147	2 h 35 min	32
Sula	Toni Morrison	174	3 h 04 min	20
The Twits	Roald Dahl	80	1 h 25 min	25
Carmilla	Sheridan Le Fanu	82	1 h 27 min	191
Welcome to Dead House	Robert Lawrence Stine	144	2 h 32 min	11
The Tale of Peter Rabbit	Beatrix Potter	29	31 min	35
Peter Pan	J. M. Barrie	200	3 h 32 min	108
Night	Elie Wiesel	126	2 h 26 min	17
A Room of One's Own	Virginia Woolf	132	2 h 33 min	60
The Giving Tree	Shel Silverstein	57	1 h	11
Julius Caesar	William Shakespeare	138	2 h 26 min	555
The art of money getting, or, Golden rules for money getting	P. T. Barnum	54	1 h 02 min	148
La Chute	Albert Camus	147	2 h 35 min	39
The Tempest	William Shakespeare	145	2 h 48 min	321
Death of a Salesman	Arthur Miller	139	2 h 27 min	32
Winnie-the-Pooh	A. A. Milne	160	2 h 49 min	50
My Side of the Mountain	Jean Craighead George	177	3 h 07 min	18
Naruto 01	Masashi Kishimoto	192	3 h 23 min	8
Demian	Hermann Hesse	171	3 h 01 min	29
Bridge to Terabithia	Katherine Paterson	146	2 h 34 min	24

Data: Open Library monthly data dumps (works, editions, authors, reading log, ratings) (Open Library / Internet Archive); How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate (Marc Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language 109 (2019)).