50 greatest novels under 200 pages.
How many of these have you read? You can also includes ones you own or don’t but have read a bit of them even if you didn’t finish or other books by these authors you either finished or dipped into.
First, some definitions. Everything below is a “novella” which is something between a short story and a novel. A novella runs from 75-200 pages. Everything under that is either a short story or a novelette.
Short story (minus novelette): 1-75 pages.
Novelette: 30-75 pages.
Short story: 1-30 pages.
The term novelette is not used much, and putting the novelette
Both James Joyce’s The Dead and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis are considered short stories. Both are very long short stories. The Dead is 73 pages and Metamorphosis is 70 pages. I’ve read both of them. You really need to read Metamorphosis. It’s an ultimate classic.
There are some books you just need to read if you want to be considered an “elevated” individual, that is, someone who is not like everyone else and who is a bit above the middling masses, classy and sophisticated. You only need to read a few of these books, or even one. Barring that, you need at least to have heard of them.
If you haven’t even heard of the classics in your native language, that is pretty damn pathetic. Nevertheless, it’s typical for young people in our modern era, but that doesn’t mean you should be one of them. If you want nothing more than to be one of the middling masses, what the Hell are you doing on this website? We aren’t called Beyond Highbrow for nothing, you know! Sure, if that’s not you, you can stay, but this website definitely has a certain type of reader in mind.
I’ve read seven of 50 or 15
I’ve also read some of seven of the books below, which means anywhere from 2-40 pages, so I guess that counts for something.
I have also read other works from the authors below: 13 novels, one short story collection, four short stories, and an essay. I’ve also dipped into 19 other works these authors have written. I’ve read anywhere from 2-40 pages of these books. I own 14 of the works below, both listed and other works by the author.
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men: Read it and saw the movie. Watch it! Read The Grapes of Wrath (Read it!), Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat. Own The Long Valley and read a few pages of it.
George Orwell, Animal Farm: Read. Read it! Read Killing an Elephant and own Homage to Catalonia, read a few pages.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Read. Good book!
James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice: Own, read a few pages. Also own Past All Dishonor and read a few pages of that too.
Albert Camus, The Stranger: Read. You really might want to read this book! Also read a short story.
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo: Read.
Italo Calvino, The Cloven Viscount: Haven’t read.
Kate Chopin, The Awakening: Haven’t read. Don’t know the author well.
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Haven’t read. Read a bit of War and Peace though (15 pages).
Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar: Haven’t read. I have read A Confederate General in Big Sur, Trout Fishing in America, and a few pages of Willard and His Bowling Trophies. First two books are incredible!
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: Haven’t read and I’m not familiar with the author, though I’ve heard of the book.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice: Haven’t read. Saw the movie. Watch it!
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle: Own, read a few pages. Read The Lottery. Read it now!
Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man: Haven’t read.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground: Read 20 pages. Read 40 pages of The Adolescent, 15 pages of The Brothers Karamazov, and a couple of pages of Crime and Punishment, the latter two of which I own. So I’ve read 75-80 pages of him, though I haven’t finished a book yet.
Anna Kavan, Ice: Haven’t read. Don’t know much about the author.
Jean Toomer, Cane: Haven’t read.
J. G. Ballard, The Drowned World: Haven’t read.
Knut Hamsun, Hunger: Haven’t read.
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room: Read some of his nonfiction.
Willa Cather, O Pioneers!: Haven’t read.
Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse: Haven’t read.
Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor: Own, read a few pages. Read Moby Dick. Read it if you can handle it!
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49: Read. Also read Slow Learner, most of his unpublished nonfiction and book reviews, V., Gravity’s Rainbow, and Vineland, which I also own. Read Gravity’s Rainbow if you can handle it!
Franz Kafka, The Trial: Own, read 40 pages. Also read Metamorphosis. Read it!
Kenzaburo Oe, A Personal Matter: Haven’t read. Heard of the author but not the book.
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood: Haven’t read.
Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country: Haven’t read.
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea: Own, read a few pages.
George Eliot, Silas Marner: Haven’t read.
Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means: Haven’t read.
Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten: Haven’t read. Read a couple of his poems.
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s: Haven’t read. Read two early novels: Other Voices, Other Rooms and The Grass Harp. Incredible books. Own In Cold Blood, read a few pages.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart: Haven’t read.
Leonard Gardner, Fat City: Read 10 pages.
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn: Haven’t read. Never heard of the book.
Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go: Haven’t read.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby: Read. Excellent, read it! Also read a short story and own Tender Is the Night, read a few pages of it.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin: Haven’t read. Read Lolita and Bend Sinister (own the latter), a couple of short stories: If In Aleppo Once…and First Love, and a few pages of Notes on Literature, which I own. Read Lolita!
Charles Portis, Norwood: Haven’t read. Don’t know the author well.
Philip K. Dick, Ubik: Haven’t read.
Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart: Haven’t read.
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange: Haven’t read. Saw the movie though. Watch it!
Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead: Read 10 pages of this and another one of her books.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God: Haven’t read.
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome: Haven’t read. Own The Age of Innocence, read a few pages.
Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock: Haven’t read. Heard of the book but not the author.
Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop: Haven’t read.
Read Gatsby in school. Of Mice and Men was a good film. A Clockwork Orange had nice boob shots in it.
Recent show I watched is The Queens Gambit. A female Bobby Fischer story. I recommend it and it’s not anti-Russian. Been pondering the Russian vs the American take on chess competitions. Chess is more of a group effort in Russia. I’ve been a bit chess-obsessed lately. I own some books on unique sets. I ruined a computer trying to download a book about this stuff. I especially like the Isle of Lewis style.
I’m glad you read Gatsby! I’m actually proud of you for doing this. Of Mice and Men and A Clockwork Orange are great movies!
I know nothing of The Queen’s Gambit. I generally don’t watch regular TV shows, though I will admit that there is some good stuff on there, or there used to be anyway. I’m not up on the modern shows, but I imagine there’s still some good stuff on there. Everything’s going reality now, and it’s all a bit weird to me. Like everyone’s getting their 15 minutes of fame somehow. For some reason, it all feels odd to me. Not sure why.
That’s how I feel about tik-tok. Anyone can be famous now.
Capote had an IQ of 215 as a child. Of course with Breakfast at Tiffany’s, one thinks of Audrey Hepburn.
215! Jesus.
Well those are childhood IQ scores and it is possible due to the nature of the scoring to get a score that high as a child. However, everyone with a score like that or higher will see their IQ decline considerably in adulthood, though they will still be wicked smart, almost surely with IQ’s of 160+. Marilyn Von Sant is one of those who got a crazy high IQ score as a girl, and it went down a lot in adulthood.