Five Book Recommendations Under 300 Pages

If you are looking for books that will not be a huge time commitment, look no further!

I personally love to read shorter books, because sometimes big books feel like a drag to get through. I know a lot of other people who feel the same way.

I have compiled five books of varying genres, all under 300 pages. There should be a little something for everyone here!

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Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

Genre(s): Poetry

My rating: 5 stars

Description via The Storygraph: “The highly anticipated collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean Vuong

How else do we return to ourselves but to fold

The page so it points to the good part

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.”

Why I Recommend This: This is my favorite poetry collection of all time. Vuong could publish his grocery lists, and I would eat that up.

This collection tackles grief, queerness, and otherness in such a way that it leaves an ache in your gut. I cannot use enough words to describe how important Ocean Vuong is to me, his writing but also just him existing.

I highly recommend listening to the audiobook of this collection, as Vuong narrates it himself.

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Genre(s): Horror, Thriller

My rating: 4.75 stars

Description via The Storygraph: “Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.

Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it's time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children's trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?

Interweaving past and present, Bird Box is a snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.”

Why I Recommend This: I had a really great time reading this. While I do wish it felt a bit more dangerous and had a bit more gore, overall it was an incredible psychological horror/thriller. It is creepy and ominous and keeps you on your toes.

You also get a deep dive into grief and the lengths mothers will go to protect their children.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Genre(s): Memoir

My rating: 5 stars

Description via The Storygraph: “In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming.

And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope--the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman--through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.

Machado's dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.”

Why I Recommend This: This book is SO important to read.

It digs into intimate partner violence in a queer relationship, and how the world expects queer couples to be put together and healthy, and even how the queer community negates and attempts to explain away domestic violence in our communities. While understandable due to the vilification of queerness in society, it also places a lot of blame and guilt on survivors and victims.

Machado is unflinchingly honest, and her writing is visceral and poetic while remaining accessible. As a domestic violence survivor myself, this book felt so important, and I encourage everyone to read it.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Genre(s): Mystery, Thriller

My rating: 4 stars

Description via The Storygraph: “Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims--a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story--and survive this homecoming.”

Why I Recommend This: While this is not my favorite thriller by a long shot, I can totally see why people enjoy this book. It is dark, ominous and full of twists.

I will say, I am not the biggest fan of the self harm representation in this book, but have heard others have found it great, so take that with a grain of salt.

There is a reason Flynn is one of the biggest names in thrillers, and I would overall recommend this book, and it is a nice, short read.

A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers

Genre(s): Contemporary Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Thriller

My rating: 4.25 stars

Description via The Storygraph: “Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.

But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.

A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world's most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.”

Why I Recommend This: While I definitely have critiques on this book, I will say overall the writing is phenomenal.

The way this book describes food seems to be divisive amongst readers, but I really enjoyed it, as someone with a special interest in cooking. If you don’t like foodie culture, this is not the book for you.

This is gross and at times incredibly graphic, but it is about cannibalism so what else would you expect? This reads like a memoir and while it is under 300 pages, it is fairly dense. I would still recommend it as a short read, but if you aren’t a fan of very descriptive and at times indulgent writing, this would not be the book for you.

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Have you read any of these books? Do you have any short reads you would recommend? Let me know in the comments!