5 Classic Novels You Can Finish in a Weekend and Still Think About on Monday

A short novel can take up very little of your Sunday and a surprising amount of your Monday. You might find yourself thinking about the moment a fisherman decides how far out to sea to go, or wondering why a woman tells us so much about an old friend while revealing so little about herself.

These five short classics run from 112 to 160 pages in the editions listed below. If you want a good argument for Monday, start with Passing. If you want a story you can sink into on a quiet Sunday morning, take The Old Man and the Sea.

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Page counts are for the linked editions and may include introductions or other extra material.

1. Passing by Nella Larsen

Irene Redfield runs into her childhood friend Clare Kendry by chance. Both are Black women who can pass as white, but Clare has built a life in which her white husband believes she is white. Clare wants to reconnect with the Black community she left behind, and Irene finds her presence increasingly difficult to explain, even to herself.

Part of the pleasure of reading Larsen is noticing when Irene sounds most certain. The closer she gets to telling us exactly what Clare wants, the more interesting it becomes to ask how she could possibly know. Irene’s judgments reveal how fiercely she guards her own sense of safety and respectability. The last pages give you a reason to revisit those earlier judgments.

The Monday question. When Irene judges Clare, what is she protecting in her own life?

Find Passing in the Penguin Vitae edition on Amazon.

2. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

George Milton and Lennie Small travel together looking for ranch work in Depression-era California. They dream of earning enough to buy a little place of their own. Lennie loves hearing George tell him what it will be like, down to the rabbits he hopes to tend.

That repeated story is the detail I’d pay attention to. For two men who can lose a job and a place to sleep in the same afternoon, telling the story is one thing they can do for each other right now. When another ranch worker sees a way to help pay for the place, the dream briefly becomes a plan. That shift gives the book much of its ache.

The Monday question. What changes between George and Lennie when their story about the farm starts to sound possible?

Find the Penguin paperback of Of Mice and Men on Amazon.

3. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

After 84 days without catching a fish, an aging Cuban fisherman named Santiago heads far out into the Gulf Stream and hooks an enormous marlin. The action narrows to a man, a fish and a line that Santiago has to hold even as his body begins to give out.

The longer Santiago spends with the marlin, the more respect and affection he feels for it. That makes the struggle stranger than a straightforward contest. He still means to catch the fish, and he understands more clearly what the effort asks of them both. When the book returns to shore, the question of what Santiago can show for his work feels small beside everything that happened out there.

The Monday question. Where would you draw the line between persistence and going too far?

Find the Scribner paperback of The Old Man and the Sea on Amazon. Read the Books of Brilliance review of The Old Man and the Sea.

4. Animal Farm by George Orwell

The animals overthrow the farmer and put their new principles on the barn wall. They intend to run the farm together, but the pigs gradually take control. Soon the other animals are trying to reconcile what they remember about the rebellion with what they’re told it was always supposed to mean.

Watch how often the pigs appeal to the animals’ bad memories. A new line of paint can settle an argument when the written rules carry more authority than anyone’s recollection. Orwell makes that process especially painful through Boxer, whose instinct when the farm goes wrong is to give it more of his labor.

The Monday question. Who could have challenged the first changes to the rules, and what would it have cost them?

Find the Plume paperback of Animal Farm on Amazon.

5. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

A Victorian inventor travels to the year 802,701, where he meets the Eloi, who spend their days above ground, and discovers the Morlocks, who live below. When his machine disappears, figuring out how this world works becomes a matter of getting home.

The Time Traveller keeps revising his theory about how the two groups came to live as they do. Those revisions are as interesting as the machine itself. He expects the future to tell him something about progress, but the picture he pieces together keeps turning on an old question about who does the work that allows others to live comfortably. Wells gives you enough room to wonder how much the traveller understands and how much he’s guessing.

The Monday question. What does the Time Traveller’s first impression of the Eloi reveal about what he expected progress to look like?

Find the Penguin Classics paperback of The Time Machine on Amazon.

If you’ve read one of these before, a weekend reread might be the better pick. Try Animal Farm again and see how early the rules start to bend. Or reopen Passing and pay attention to the first moment you take Irene at her word.

Find your next read in our guide to 13 popular classic books.

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