short essay about good books

Essays About Books: Top 5 Examples and Writing Prompts

Books open portals to new worlds and display new knowledge inspired by the old to the new. Here are some published essays about books and prompts you can use.

Books are a way for the past to teach the present and preserve the present for the future. Books come in all shapes and sizes. In addition, technology has improved the way books can be accessed, with eBooks and audiobooks that are more accessible and hassle-free.

No matter what genre, a book aids its readers in gaining valuable knowledge, improving vocabulary, and many more. Following are 5 essays with books as their subject:

Are you looking for writing applications to help you improve your essay? See the seven best essay writing apps to use.

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1. Why Are Books So Important in Our Life by Ankita Yadav

2. essay on books for students by kanak mishra, 3. listening to books by maggie gram, 4. short essay on books and reading by sastry, 5. long essay on books by ram, 1. do we still need libraries, 2. the names an author gives to their characters, 3. do you read or write, 4. your favorite book, 5. books and inspirations, 6. the book cover, 7. paper books vs. digital copies, 8. why read the book you hate, 9. the book is better than the movie, published essay on books.

“Books are the best companions in our life. They never leave us alone and are like our best friends.”

For Yadav, a book is someone’s best friend, guide, all-time teacher, and keeper of various information. The essay talks about how reading a physical book is better than watching movies or using modern technologies for entertainment and learning purposes. The author also believes that autobiography books of great people inspire students and motivate them to work hard to achieve their goals in life.

“Though the technology has so much changed that we can take information about anything through the internet… importance of books has not decreased…”

The writer describes books as the best option for self-learners. They don’t only note an issue, topic, or story but also put effort and emotions into their writing. Next, she discusses the types of books and their subcategories. Finally, she gives tips about finding a good book to read.

“The possibility of reading while also doing something else produces one of the stranger phenomenological characteristics of audio book reading: you can have a whole set of unrelated and real (if only partially attended) experiences while simultaneously experiencing a book.”

Gram’s primary focus in this essay is audiobooks, discussing their history and how audiobooks started. She also mentions how audiobooks help blind people who find it challenging to read braille books. The author also compares physical books and audiobooks to help the reader choose better for a long drive, house cleaning, or simply doing anything other than reading.

“Books are standing counsellors and preachers, always at hand and always neutral.”

Sastry considers novels the best option when one is tired and looking for healthy recreational activity. Still, the author didn’t forget the fact that reading history, science, religion, and other more “serious” books can also bring gratification to their readers. Books offer unlimited benefits if well used, but not when abused, and as the writer said, “no book can be good if studied negligently.”

“Books are important because they provide a few things that are key to an open and intelligent society.”

The essay is best to be read by students from classes 7 to 10, as it gives the simplest explanation of why it is vital to read a book during their spare time or extended holidays. Ram says people get inspired and receive life lessons by reading books. Reading classic and newer books with lots of words of wisdom and new ideas is better than wasting time and learning nothing.

Top 10 Writing Prompts on Essays About Books

Writing essays about books can be easy as many subtopics exist. However, it can also be challenging to pick a specific subcategory. To help you narrow it down, here are ten easy writing prompts that you can use.

Essays About Books: Do We Still Need Libraries?

Libraries help many people – from bibliophiles to job seekers and students. They offer free access to books, newspapers, and computers. But with modern devices making it easier to get information, are libraries still needed? Use this prompt to discuss the importance of libraries and the consequences if all of them close down.

Some authors like to give their characters very unusual names, such as “America Singer” from the book The Selection by Keira Cass. Do you think characters having strange names take away the reader’s attention to the plot? Does it make the book more interesting or odd? Suppose you are writing a story; how do you name the characters and why?

They say writers need readers and vice versa, but which role do you find more challenging? Is writing harder than finding the best book, story, and poetry to read?

Use this prompt to describe their roles and explain how readers and writers hold each other up.

There is always a unique book that one will never forget. What is your favorite book of all time, and why? Write an essay about why you consider that book your favorite. You can also persuade others to try to read it.

If you have more than one preference, describe them and tell the readers why you can’t choose between your favorite books. Check out these essays about literature .

Authors inspiring their readers to try something new by reading their book is not always intentional but usually happens. Have you ever experienced wanting to move to a new place or change career paths after reading something?

Use this prompt to share your experience and opinion on readers who make significant life changes because books and characters influence them in a story.

Have you ever gone to a bookshop to find a book recommended to you but didn’t buy or read it because of the cover? They said never judge a book by its cover. In this prompt, you can.

Share what you think the book is all about based on its cover. Then, make a follow-up writing if you were right or wrong after reading the book’s contents.

Studies confirmed more benefits to reading physical books than digital books, such as retaining information longer if read from a printed copy. Are you more of a traditional or modern reader? Use this prompt to explain your answer and briefly discuss the pros and cons of each type of book in your opinion.

Are you ever tasked to read a book you don’t like? Share your experience and tell the reader if you finished the book, learned anything from it, and what it feels like to force yourself to read a book you hate. You can also add if you come to like it in the end.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter is undisputedly one of the most popular books turned into movies. However, avid readers consider books better than movies because they can echo the main protagonist’s thoughts.

Do you have a favorite book adapted into a film? Did you like it? Write about what makes the movie version better or underwhelming. You can also include why movies are more limited than books.

Do you still feel like there is something wrong with your essay? Here is a guide about grammar and punctuation to help you.

If you still need help, our guide to grammar and syntax explains more.

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✍️Essay On Books: Free Samples for Students

Updated on
Nov 2, 2023

Books are considered human’s best friend. It has been an integral part of human society for ages and will continue to be a crucial part of human life. There are several categories of books, that offer us knowledge about specific fields. Words written in books serve as a source of knowledge, information, and entertainment , which are necessary for skill enhancement and polishing the language. Books are written in every language to fulfill the needs of people living in every region from villages to abroad. In this blog, you will get to know how to write an essay on books and we have also provided some sample essays on books for you. Keep Reading!

Table of Contents

1 Short Essay on Books
2 Essay on Books in 150 Words
3.1 Different Genres of Books
3.2 Benefits of Reading Books

Also Read: 15 Best-Selling Books of All Times

Short Essay on Books

Books are pages filled with ideas, thoughts, stories, imagination, and knowledge. Even after extreme advancements in technology , books continue to be cherished by humans. The reason behind that is the convenience and their appeal.

Given below are some short sample essays on books that will help school-going children and students:

Essay on Books in 150 Words

Books are considered true friends of humans, as they can teach us life lessons. Books are the repositories that impart wisdom and knowledge. From ancient times to today’s digital world, books have served as a source of inspiration, expanding the thought process and imparting education.

In schools, they teach us how reading books can shape our future and when a person grows, the impact of his learning through books is reflected in his lifestyle. In an era of mobile phones, smartphones, television, and laptops, we all still trust books. Books provide deep knowledge about any specific subject without any modifications.

Books possess the ability to ignite your imagination and take you to a completely different world. Some readers value books as humans, some highlight the important parts, some readers make collections of limited editions of books, and some even cherish the smell of old books. The cover and physical appearance of the books on the bookshelf reflect comfort.

Thus, books play an important role in everyone’s life. Nowadays movies are also directed based on famous books.

Essay on Books in 300 words

Books help mankind to evolve mentally. The thoughts of a person reflect his/her personality and the thoughts are developed based on your learning in life. As mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, books are considered the powerhouse of knowledge and information. The vintage look of the book adds charm to its appearance and such books attract the reader. Holding a book in hand, flipping pages while reading, using beautiful bookmarks in the book, and sensing the texture of pages can deeply imply a sensory effect on the readers.

Different Genres of Books

A book reader can enjoy a variety of genres of books. In spite of technological advancements in human life, thousands of books are released in the market. The budding writers also publish their books as they know the fact that good readers still prefer to read from books. If you do not want to purchase the hard copy of the book then, you can go for the online version.

Following are some of the genres of books:

Travel books- Such books tell the story and experience of travellers.
Motivational books- Like “Atomic Habits” are used to inspire and motivate people to adopt good habits in life.
Fictional books- Like “As You Like It” that represent literary fiction and play.
Novel- it comes under the most read books by the reader. Novels are the long work of narrative fiction framed in prose.

Benefits of Reading Books

There are many benefits of reading books. Books help to increase our vocabulary and enhance our knowledge of a variety of subjects. They also serve as a good source of entertainment during free time. It boosts the ability of the reader to think creatively. They help in improving the fluency and enhance the communication skills . Books are a great source of knowledge it would help us in public speaking , debates, quizzes, examinations, etc.

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Hi, I am Kajal, a pharmacy graduate, currently pursuing management and is an experienced content writer. I have 2-years of writing experience in Ed-tech (digital marketing) company. I am passionate towards writing blogs and am on the path of discovering true potential professionally in the field of content marketing. I am engaged in writing creative content for students which is simple yet creative and engaging and leaves an impact on the reader's mind.

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The 25 Greatest Essay Collections of All Time

Today marks the release of Aleksandar Hemon’s excellent book of personal essays, The Book of My Lives , which we loved, and which we’re convinced deserves a place in the literary canon. To that end, we were inspired to put together our list of the greatest essay collections of all time, from the classic to the contemporary, from the personal to the critical. In making our choices, we’ve steered away from posthumous omnibuses (Michel de Montaigne’s Complete Essays , the collected Orwell, etc.) and multi-author compilations, and given what might be undue weight to our favorite writers (as one does). After the jump, our picks for the 25 greatest essay collections of all time. Feel free to disagree with us, praise our intellect, or create an entirely new list in the comments.

The Book of My Lives , Aleksandar Hemon

Hemon’s memoir in essays is in turns wryly hilarious, intellectually searching, and deeply troubling. It’s the life story of a fascinating, quietly brilliant man, and it reads as such. For fans of chess and ill-advised theme parties and growing up more than once.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem , Joan Didion

Well, obviously. Didion’s extraordinary book of essays, expertly surveying both her native California in the 1960s and her own internal landscape with clear eyes and one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. This collection, her first, helped establish the idea of journalism as art, and continues to put wind in the sails of many writers after her, hoping to move in that Didion direction.

Pulphead , John Jeremiah Sullivan

This was one of those books that this writer deemed required reading for all immediate family and friends. Sullivan’s sharply observed essays take us from Christian rock festivals to underground caves to his own home, and introduce us to 19-century geniuses, imagined professors and Axl Rose. Smart, curious, and humane, this is everything an essay collection should be.

The Boys of My Youth , Jo Ann Beard

Another memoir-in-essays, or perhaps just a collection of personal narratives, Jo Ann Beard’s award-winning volume is a masterpiece. Not only does it include the luminous, emotionally destructive “The Fourth State of the Matter,” which we’ve already implored you to read , but also the incredible “Bulldozing the Baby,” which takes on a smaller tragedy: a three-year-old Beard’s separation from her doll Hal. “The gorgeous thing about Hal,” she tells us, “was that not only was he my friend, he was also my slave. I made the majority of our decisions, including the bathtub one, which in retrospect was the beginning of the end.”

Consider the Lobster , David Foster Wallace

This one’s another “duh” moment, at least if you’re a fan of the literary essay. One of the most brilliant essayists of all time, Wallace pushes the boundaries (of the form, of our patience, of his own brain) and comes back with a classic collection of writing on everything from John Updike to, well, lobsters. You’ll laugh out loud right before you rethink your whole life. And then repeat.

Notes of a Native Son , James Baldwin

Baldwin’s most influential work is a witty, passionate portrait of black life and social change in America in the 1940s and early 1950s. His essays, like so many of the greats’, are both incisive social critiques and rigorous investigations into the self, told with a perfect tension between humor and righteous fury.

Naked , David Sedaris

His essays often read more like short stories than they do social criticism (though there’s a healthy, if perhaps implied, dose of that slippery subject), but no one makes us laugh harder or longer. A genius of the form.

Against Interpretation , Susan Sontag

This collection, Sontag’s first, is a dazzling feat of intellectualism. Her essays dissect not only art but the way we think about art, imploring us to “reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it.” It also contains the brilliant “Notes on ‘Camp,'” one of our all-time favorites.

The Common Reader , Virginia Woolf

Woolf is a literary giant for a reason — she was as incisive and brilliant a critic as she was a novelist. These witty essays, written for the common reader (“He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole- a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing”), are as illuminating and engrossing as they were when they were written.

Teaching a Stone to Talk , Annie Dillard

This is Dillard’s only book of essays, but boy is it a blazingly good one. The slender volume, filled with examinations of nature both human and not, is deft of thought and tongue, and well worth anyone’s time. As the Chicago Sun-Times ‘s Edward Abbey gushed, “This little book is haloed and informed throughout by Dillard’s distinctive passion and intensity, a sort of intellectual radiance that reminds me both Thoreau and Emily Dickinson.”

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man , Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In this eloquent volume of essays, all but one of which were originally published in the New Yorker , Gates argues against the notion of the singularly representable “black man,” preferring to represent him in a myriad of diverse profiles, from James Baldwin to Colin Powell. Humane, incisive, and satisfyingly journalistic, Gates cobbles together the ultimate portrait of the 20th-century African-American male by refusing to cobble it together, and raises important questions about race and identity even as he entertains.

Otherwise Known As the Human Condition , Geoff Dyer

This book of essays, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the year of its publication, covers 25 years of the uncategorizable, inimitable Geoff Dyer’s work — casually erudite and yet liable to fascinate anyone wandering in the door, witty and breathing and full of truth. As Sam Lipsyte said, “You read Dyer for his caustic wit, of course, his exquisite and perceptive crankiness, and his deep and exciting intellectual connections, but from these enthralling rants and cultural investigations there finally emerges another Dyer, a generous seeker of human feeling and experience, a man perhaps closer than he thinks to what he believes his hero Camus achieved: ‘a heart free of bitterness.'”

Art and Ardor , Cynthia Ozick

Look, Cynthia Ozick is a genius. One of David Foster Wallace’s favorite writers, and one of ours, Ozick has no less than seven essay collections to her name, and we could have chosen any one of them, each sharper and more perfectly self-conscious than the last. This one, however, includes her stunner “A Drugstore in Winter,” which was chosen by Joyce Carol Oates for The Best American Essays of the Century , so we’ll go with it.

No More Nice Girls , Ellen Willis

The venerable Ellen Willis was the first pop music critic for The New Yorker , and a rollicking anti-authoritarian, feminist, all-around bad-ass woman who had a hell of a way with words. This collection examines the women’s movement, the plight of the aging radical, race relations, cultural politics, drugs, and Picasso. Among other things.

The War Against Cliché , Martin Amis

As you know if you’ve ever heard him talk , Martin Amis is not only a notorious grouch but a sharp critical mind, particularly when it comes to literature. That quality is on full display in this collection, which spans nearly 30 years and twice as many subjects, from Vladimir Nabokov (his hero) to chess to writing about sex. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that he’s a brilliant old grump.

Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories From History and the Arts , Clive James

James’s collection is a strange beast, not like any other essay collection on this list but its own breed. An encyclopedia of modern culture, the book collects 110 new biographical essays, which provide more than enough room for James to flex his formidable intellect and curiosity, as he wanders off on tangents, anecdotes, and cultural criticism. It’s not the only who’s who you need, but it’s a who’s who you need.

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman , Nora Ephron

Oh Nora, we miss you. Again, we could have picked any of her collections here — candid, hilarious, and willing to give it to you straight, she’s like a best friend and mentor in one, only much more interesting than any of either you’ve ever had.

Arguably , Christopher Hitchens

No matter what you think of his politics (or his rhetorical strategies), there’s no denying that Christopher Hitchens was one of the most brilliant minds — and one of the most brilliant debaters — of the century. In this collection, packed with cultural commentary, literary journalism, and political writing, he is at his liveliest, his funniest, his exactingly wittiest. He’s also just as caustic as ever.

The Solace of Open Spaces , Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich is a poet, and in this collection, you’ll know it. In 1976, she moved to Wyoming and became a cowherd, and nearly a decade later, she published this lovely, funny set of essays about rural life in the American West.”Keenly observed the world is transformed,” she writes. “The landscape is engorged with detail, every movement on it chillingly sharp. The air between people is charged. Days unfold, bathed in their own music. Nights become hallucinatory; dreams, prescient.”

The Braindead Megaphone , George Saunders

Saunders may be the man of the moment, but he’s been at work for a long while, and not only on his celebrated short stories. His single collection of essays applies the same humor and deliciously slant view to the real world — which manages to display nearly as much absurdity as one of his trademark stories.

Against Joie de Vivre , Phillip Lopate

“Over the years,” the title essay begins, “I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre , the knack of knowing how to live.” Lopate goes on to dissect, in pleasantly sardonic terms, the modern dinner party. Smart and thought-provoking throughout (and not as crotchety as all that), this collection is conversational but weighty, something to be discussed at length with friends at your next — oh well, you know.

Sex and the River Styx , Edward Hoagland

Edward Hoagland, who John Updike deemed “the best essayist of my generation,” has a long and storied career and a fat bibliography, so we hesitate to choose such a recent installment in the writer’s canon. Then again, Garrison Keillor thinks it’s his best yet , so perhaps we’re not far off. Hoagland is a great nature writer (name checked by many as the modern Thoreau) but in truth, he’s just as fascinated by humanity, musing that “human nature is interstitial with nature, and not to be shunned by a naturalist.” Elegant and thoughtful, Hoagland may warn us that he’s heading towards the River Styx, but we’ll hang on to him a while longer.

Changing My Mind , Zadie Smith

Smith may be best known for her novels (and she should be), but to our eyes she is also emerging as an excellent essayist in her own right, passionate and thoughtful. Plus, any essay collection that talks about Barack Obama via Pygmalion is a winner in our book.

My Misspent Youth , Meghan Daum

Like so many other writers on this list, Daum dives head first into the culture and comes up with meat in her mouth. Her voice is fresh and her narratives daring, honest and endlessly entertaining.

The White Album , Joan Didion

Yes, Joan Didion is on this list twice, because Joan Didion is the master of the modern essay, tearing at our assumptions and building our world in brisk, clever strokes. Deal.

40 Best Essays of All Time (Including Links & Writing Tips)

I had little money (buying forty collections of essays was out of the question) so I’ve found them online instead. I’ve hacked through piles of them, and finally, I’ve found the great ones. Now I want to share the whole list with you (with the addition of my notes about writing). Each item on the list has a direct link to the essay, so please click away and indulge yourself. Also, next to each essay, there’s an image of the book that contains the original work.

About this essay list:

40 best essays of all time (with links and writing tips), 1. david sedaris – laugh, kookaburra.

A great family drama takes place against the backdrop of the Australian wilderness. And the Kookaburra laughs… This is one of the top essays of the lot. It’s a great mixture of family reminiscences, travel writing, and advice on what’s most important in life. You’ll also learn an awful lot about the curious culture of the Aussies.

Writing tips from the essay:

2. charles d’ambrosio – documents, 3. e. b. white – once more to the lake, 4. zadie smith – fail better, 5. virginia woolf – death of the moth, 6. meghan daum – my misspent youth, 7. roger ebert – go gentle into that good night, 8. george orwell – shooting an elephant, 9. george orwell – a hanging, 10. christopher hitchens – assassins of the mind, 11. christopher hitchens – the new commandments, 12. phillip lopate – against joie de vivre, 13. philip larkin – the pleasure principle, 14. sigmund freud – thoughts for the times on war and death, 15. zadie smith – some notes on attunement.

“You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing” – Francis Dolarhyde. This one is about the elusiveness of change occurring within you. For Zadie, it was hard to attune to the vibes of Joni Mitchell – especially her Blue album. But eventually, she grew up to appreciate her genius, and all the other things changed as well. This top essay is all about the relationship between humans, and art. We shouldn’t like art because we’re supposed to. We should like it because it has an instantaneous, emotional effect on us. Although, according to Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in Léon, liking Beethoven is rather mandatory.

16. Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse

17. édouard levé – when i look at a strawberry, i think of a tongue, 18. gloria e. anzaldúa – how to tame a wild tongue, 19. kurt vonnegut – dispatch from a man without a country, 20. mary ruefle – on fear.

Most psychologists and gurus agree that fear is the greatest enemy of success or any creative activity. It’s programmed into our minds to keep us away from imaginary harm. Mary Ruefle takes on this basic human emotion with flair. She explores fear from so many angles (especially in the world of poetry-writing) that at the end of this personal essay, you will look at it, dissect it, untangle it, and hopefully be able to say “f**k you” the next time your brain is trying to stop you.

21. Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation

22. nora ephron – a few words about breasts, 23. carl sagan – does truth matter – science, pseudoscience, and civilization, 24. paul graham – how to do what you love, 25. john jeremiah sullivan – mister lytle, 26. joan didion – on self respect, 27. susan sontag – notes on camp, 28. ralph waldo emerson – self-reliance, 29. david foster wallace – consider the lobster, 30. david foster wallace – the nature of the fun.

The famous novelist and author of the most powerful commencement speech ever done is going to tell you about the joys and sorrows of writing a work of fiction. It’s like taking care of a mutant child that constantly oozes smelly liquids. But you love that child and you want others to love it too. It’s a very humorous account of what it means to be an author. If you ever plan to write a novel, you should read that one. And the story about the Chinese farmer is just priceless.

31. Margaret Atwood – Attitude

32. jo ann beard – the fourth state of matter, 33. terence mckenna – tryptamine hallucinogens and consciousness, 34. eudora welty – the little store, 35. john mcphee – the search for marvin gardens.

The Search for Marvin Gardens contains many layers of meaning. It’s a story about a Monopoly championship, but also, it’s the author’s search for the lost streets visible on the board of the famous board game. It also presents a historical perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, and on Atlantic City, which once was a lively place, and then, slowly declined, the streets filled with dirt and broken windows.

36. Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman

37. joan didion – on keeping a notebook, 38. joan didion – goodbye to all that, 39. george orwell – reflections on gandhi, 40. george orwell – politics and the english language, other essays you may find interesting, oliver sacks – on libraries, noam chomsky – the responsibility of intellectuals, sam harris – the riddle of the gun.

Sam Harris, now a famous philosopher and neuroscientist, takes on the problem of gun control in the United States. His thoughts are clear of prejudice. After reading this, you’ll appreciate the value of logical discourse overheated, irrational debate that more often than not has real implications on policy.

Tim Ferriss – Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

Edward said – reflections on exile, richard feynman – it’s as simple as one, two, three…, rabindranath tagore – the religion of the forest, richard dawkins – letter to his 10-year-old daughter.

Every father should be able to articulate his philosophy of life to his children. With this letter that’s similar to what you find in the Paris Review essays , the famed atheist and defender of reason, Richard Dawkins, does exactly that. It’s beautifully written and stresses the importance of looking at evidence when we’re trying to make sense of the world.

Albert Camus – The Minotaur (or, The Stop In Oran)

Koty neelis – 21 incredible life lessons from anthony bourdain, lucius annaeus seneca – on the shortness of life, bertrand russell – in praise of idleness, james baldwin – stranger in the village.

It’s an essay on the author’s experiences as an African-American in a Swiss village, exploring race, identity, and alienation while highlighting the complexities of racial dynamics and the quest for belonging.

Bonus – More writing tips from two great books

The sense of style – by steven pinker, on writing well – by william zinsser, now immerse yourself in the world of essays, rafal reyzer.

Hey there, welcome to my blog! I'm a full-time entrepreneur building two companies, a digital marketer, and a content creator with 10+ years of experience. I started RafalReyzer.com to provide you with great tools and strategies you can use to become a proficient digital marketer and achieve freedom through online creativity. My site is a one-stop shop for digital marketers, and content enthusiasts who want to be independent, earn more money, and create beautiful things. Explore my journey here , and don't miss out on my AI Marketing Mastery online course.

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by Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.

Essays Every High School Student Should Read

December 4, 2016 in Pedagogy

One of the most important goals of any English class should be to help students learn how to express themselves to an audience — how to tell their own stories, how to provide much-needed information, and how to convince others to see things from a different perspective.

Below are some essays students can read, not only to help them see how such writing is done in the real world, but also to learn more about the world around them.

[bctt tweet=”Need a #mentortext for student essays? Check out these exemplars for personal narrative, argumentative, and expository essay writing.”]

Note : This is a living list. I will continue adding to it as I find important essays and articles, and as my readers make suggestions.

If You Think Racism Doesn’t Exist by Jordan Womack | Lesson Plan

A 17-year-old Oklahoma author details incidents of discrimination he has faced within his own community. Brief, yet impactful, the author’s authenticity strikes readers at their core and naturally leads the audience to consider other perspectives.

Facebook hack ‘worse than when my house burned down’ says teacher by Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.

When a hacker destroyed my Facebook account and I couldn’t find a way to reach out to Facebook, I decided to use my story, voice, and platform to shed light on a situation faced by people around the world. This can serve as a mentor text for students writing personal narratives on shared experiences in the context of current events.

Letter from a Vietnamese to an Iraqi Refugee by Andrew Lam

Vietnamese lecturer, journalist, and author Andrew Lam offers advice in this letter to a young Iraqi refugee he sees in a photograph on the Internet.

Allowing Teenage Boys to Love Their Friends by Jan Hoffman

Learn why early and lifelong friendships are as vital for boys as they are for girls and what happens when those friendships are fractured.

Chris Cecil: Plagiarism Gets You Fired by Leonard Pitts Jr

The Miami Herald columnist and 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary winner castigates a Georgia newspaper editor for plagiarizing his work. This column would go great with this followup article from The Boston Globe: Ga. Editor is Fired for Lifting Columns .

Class Dismissed by Walter Kirn

The author of Lost in the Meritocracy postulates that getting rid of the high school senior year might be good for students.

Complaint Box | Packaging by Dylan Quinn

A high school junior complains about the impossible-to-open packaging faced by consumers of everything “from action figures to zip drives.”

Drowning in Dishes, but Finding a Home by Danial Adkison

In this 2014 essay, a teenager learns important lessons from his boss at Pizza Hut.

How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua

An American scholar of Chicana cultural theory discusses how she maintained her identity by refusing to submit to linguistic terrorism.

Humble Beast: Samaje Perine by John Rohde

The five-time Oklahoma Sportswriter of the Year features the University of Oklahoma’s running back.

In Praise of the F Word by Mary Sherry

An adult literacy program teacher argues that allowing students to fail will actually help them.

The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie

A Native American novelist recounts his experience loving reading and finally writing in spite of a culture that expected him to fail in the “non-Indian world” in order to be accepted.

Lane’s Legacy: One Final Ride by Keith Ryan Cartwright

A heartbreaking look back at the hours before and the circumstances surrounding Lane Frost’s untimely death, followed by reflections on his rise to fame — before and after death.

Learning to Read by Malcolm X

The 1960s Civil Rights leader writes about how educating himself in prison opened his mind and lead him to become one of the leading spokesmen for black separatism.

Learning to Read and Write by Frederick Douglass

A former slave born in 1818 discusses how he learned to read in spite of laws against teaching slaves and how reading opened his eyes to his “wretched condition, without remedy.”

Learning From Animal Friendships by Erica Goode

Scientists consider studying the phenomenon of cross-species animal friendships like the ones you see on YouTube.

Losing Everything, Except What Really Matters by Dan Barry

After a 2011 tornado destroys a house, but spares the family, a reporter writes about what’s important.

The Marked Woman by David Grann

How an Osage Indian family in Oklahoma became the prime target of one of the most sinister crimes in American history.

Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List by Lizette Alvarez

Read about what happens if you happen to share a name of a “suspicious person” on the U.S. No-Fly List.

Newly Homeless in Japan Re-Establish Order Amid Chaos by Michael Wines

After the tsunami that resulted in nuclear disaster in 2011, a reporter writes about the “quiet bravery in the face of tragedy” of the Japanese people.

No Ordinary Joe by Rick Reilly

Why in creation did American Football Conference’s 1981 best young running back Joe Delaney jump into that pit full of water that day, even though he couldn’t swim?

Politics and the English Language By George Orwell

Animal Farm and 1984 author, Orwell correlates the degradation of the English language into multi-syllabic drivel and the corruption of the American political process.

Serving in Florida by Barbara Ehrenreich

The Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America author tells about her experiences attempting to survive on income of low-paying jobs.

Starvation Under the Orange Trees by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck, who later authored the fictionalized account of Okies in California, The Grapes of Wrath, first wrote this essay documenting the starvation of migrant workers in California during the Great Depression.

To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This by Mandy Len Catron

Is falling in love really a random event, or can two people “love smarter?”

We’ll Go Forward from this Moment by Leonard Pitts

The 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary winner pens a column chronicling the toughness of the American family’s spirit in the face of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks. He wrote the column one day after the attacks.

What’s Wrong with Black English? by Rachel L. Jones

Jones, a student at Southern Illinois University in the 1980s, wrote this piece for Newsweek. In her essay, Jones adds her story and perspective to the debate over Black English.

Related topics: Mentor Texts , Teaching Writing

About the author

Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.

I am a secondary English Language Arts teacher, a University of Oklahoma student working on my doctorate in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum with an concentration in English Education and co-Editor of the Oklahoma English Journal. I am constantly seeking ways to amplify students' voices and choices.

A wonderful list of essays! I have neglected to teach essays as literature (only as student writing samples before we began work on an essay, after a novel). I’m looking forward to using these!

Thank you very much! I’d love to hear (or read) your feedback on the selections. Your input can help other teachers decide which essays to teach their students.

This list looks really great. Unfortunately, the first two links I chose were not working. One took me to a professors homepage and the other never opened.

Thank you for letting us know. I checked the “If you think racism doesn’t exist” went to the WordPress.com site where the author wrote his article and “Letter from a Vietnamese to an Iraqi Refugee” went to the Huffington Post article. Is it possible that your school web filter is blocking WordPress and Huffington Post?

Thank you for this. I am teaching a summer class that prepares 8th graders for high school essay writing. Trying to find a way to make it more creative and interesting, even interactive. I like the essays. If you have ideas about specific ways to use them, beyond reading and discussion, I would love to hear them.

You’re welcome! I think additional activities would depend on who your students are, their interests, and which essay(s) you plan to use. Perhaps if you join our RTE Facebook group and tell us about your kids and the essay you want to use, we can devise some activities to help them engage. Check us out here .

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100 Best Essays Books of All Time

We've researched and ranked the best essays books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more

Men Explain Things to Me

Rebecca Solnit | 5.00

Chelsea Handler Goes deep with statistics, personal stories, and others’ accounts of how brutal this world can be for women, the history of how we've been treated, and what it will take to change the conversation: MEN. We need them to be as outraged as we are and join our fight. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris | 4.96

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates | 4.94

Barack Obama The president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (Source)

Jack Dorsey Q: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! (Source)

Doug McMillon Here are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. (Source)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Joan Didion | 4.94

Peter Hessler I like Didion for her writing style and her control over her material, but also for the way in which she captures a historical moment. (Source)

Liz Lambert I love [this book] so much. (Source)

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 4.92

Bad Feminist

Roxane Gay | 4.88

Irina Nica It’s hard to pick an all-time favorite because, as time goes by and I grow older, my reading list becomes more “mature” and I find myself interested in new things. I probably have a personal favorite book for each stage of my life. Right now I’m absolutely blown away by everything Roxane Gay wrote, especially Bad Feminist. (Source)

Trick Mirror

Reflections on Self-Delusion

Jia Tolentino | 4.86

Lydia Polgreen This book is amazing and you should read it. https://t.co/pcbmYUR4QP (Source)

Maryanne Hobbs ⁦@jiatolentino⁩ hello Jia :) finding your perspectives in the new book fascinating and so resonant.. thank you 🌹 m/a..x https://t.co/BoNzB1BuDf (Source)

Yashar Ali . @jiatolentino’s fabulous book is one of President Obama’s favorite books of 2019 https://t.co/QHzZsHl2rF (Source)

Consider the Lobster

And Other Essays

David Foster Wallace | 4.85

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf | 4.75

Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim

David Sedaris | 4.73

Adam Kay @penceyprepmemes How about David Sedaris, for starters - "Dress your family in corduroy and denim" is an amazing book. (Source)

Don't have time to read the top Essays books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin | 4.69

Barack Obama Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads: Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Evan Osnos Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman Moral Man And Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr A Kind And Just Parent, William Ayers The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein Sapiens: A Brief History of... (Source)

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

David Sedaris | 4.67

David Sedaris | 4.63

David Blaine It’s hilarious. (Source)

The White Album

Joan Didion | 4.62

Dan Richards I feel Joan Didion is the patron saint of a maelstrom of culture and environment of a particular time. She is the great American road-trip writer, to my mind. She has that great widescreen filmic quality to her work. (Source)

Steven Amsterdam With her gaze on California of the late 60s and early 70s, Didion gives us the Black Panthers, Janis Joplin, Nancy Reagan, and the Manson follower Linda Kasabian. (Source)

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Essays and Arguments

David Foster Wallace | 4.61

Tressie McMillan Cottom | 4.60

Melissa Moore The best book I read this year was Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom. I read it twice and both times found it challenging and revelatory. (Source)

David Sedaris and Hachette Audi | 4.60

Sister Outsider

Essays and Speeches

Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke | 4.60

Bianca Belair For #BHM I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 26th Book: Sister Outsider By: Audre Lorde My first time reading anything by Audre Lorde. I am now really looking forward to reading more of her poems/writings. What she writes is important & timeless. https://t.co/dUDMcaAAbx (Source)

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

David Sedaris | 4.58

Austin Kleon I read this one, then I read his collected diaries, Theft By Finding, and then I read the visual compendium, which might have even been the most interesting of the three books, but I’m listing this one because it’s hilarious, although with the interstitial fiction bits, it’s sort of like one of those classic 90s hip-hop albums where you skip the “skit” tracks. (Source)

Notes from a Loud Woman

Lindy West | 4.56

Matt Mcgorry "Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman" by Lindy West @TheLindyWest # Lovvvvveeedddd, loved, loved, loved this book!!! West is a truly remarkable writer and her stories are beautifully poignant while dosed with her… https://t.co/nzJtXtOGTn (Source)

Shannon Coulter @JennLHaglund @tomi_adeyemi I love that feeling! Just finished the audiobook version of Shrill by Lindy West after _years_ of meaning to read it and that's the exact feeling it gave me. Give me your book recommendations! (Source)

The Collected Schizophrenias

Esmé Weijun Wang | 4.52

Tiny Beautiful Things

Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Cheryl Strayed | 4.49

Ryan Holiday It was wonderful to read these two provocative books of essays by two incredibly wise and compassionate women. Cheryl Strayed, also the author of Wild, was the anonymous columnist behind the online column, Dear Sugar and boy, are we better off for it. This is not a random smattering of advice. This book contains some of the most cogent insights on life, pain, loss, love, success, youth that I... (Source)

James Altucher Cheryl had an advice column called “Dear Sugar”. I was reading the column long before Oprah recommended “Wild” by Cheryl and then Wild became a movie and “Tiny Beautiful Things” (the collection of her advice column) became a book. She is so wise and compassionate. A modern saint. I used to do Q&A sessions on Twitter. I’d read her book beforehand to get inspiration about what true advice is. (Source)

We Were Eight Years in Power

An American Tragedy

Ta-Nehisi Coates | 4.47

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

Albert Camu | 4.47

David Heinemeier Hansson Camus’ philosophical exposition of absurdity, suicide in the face of meaninglessness, and other cherry topics that continue on from his fictional work in novels like The Stranger. It’s surprisingly readable, unlike many other mid 20th century philosophers, yet no less deep or pointy. It’s a great follow-up, as an original text, to that book The Age of Absurdity, I recommended last year. Still... (Source)

Kenan Malik The Myth of Sisyphus is a small work, but Camus’s meditation on faith and fate has personally been hugely important in developing my ideas. Writing in the embers of World War II, Camus confronts in The Myth of Sisyphus both the tragedy of recent history and what he sees as the absurdity of the human condition. There is, he observes, a chasm between the human need for meaning and what he calls... (Source)

The Penguin Essays Of George Orwell

George Orwell, Bernard Crick | 4.46

Peter Kellner George Orwell was not only an extraordinary writer but he also hated any form of cant. Some of his most widely read works such as 1984 and Animal Farm are an assault on the nastier, narrow-minded, dictatorial tendencies of the left, although Orwell was himself on the left. (Source)

The Opposite of Loneliness

Essays and Stories

Marina Keegan, Anne Fadiman | 4.46

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 4.45

The Tipping Point

How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.45

Kevin Rose Bunch of really good information in here on how to make ideas go viral. This could be good to apply to any kind of products or ideas you may have. Definitely, check out The Tipping Point, which is one of my favorites. (Source)

Seth Godin Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough insight was to focus on the micro-relationships between individuals, which helped organizations realize that it's not about the big ads and the huge charity balls... it's about setting the stage for the buzz to start. (Source)

Andy Stern I think that when we talk about making change, it is much more about macro change, like in policy. This book reminds you that at times when you're building big movements, or trying to elect significant decision-makers in politics, sometimes it's the little things that make a difference. Ever since the book was written, we've become very used to the idea of things going viral unexpectedly and then... (Source)

Selected Essays

Mary Oliver | 4.44

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

Samantha Irby | 4.44

Complete Essays

Michel de Montaigne, Charles Cotton | 4.42

Ryan Holiday There is plenty to study and see simply by looking inwards — maybe even an alarming amount. (Source)

Alain de Botton I’ve given quite a lot of copies of [this book] to people down the years. (Source)

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

Mindy Kaling | 4.42

Angela Kinsey .@mindykaling I am rereading your book and cracking up. I appreciate your chapter on The Office so much more now. But all of it is fantastic. Thanks for starting my day with laughter. You know I loves ya. ❤️ https://t.co/EB99xnyt0p (Source)

Yashar Ali Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from @mindykaling's book (even though I'm an early riser): “There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.” https://t.co/pS56bmyYjS (Source)

Not That Bad

Dispatches from Rape Culture

Roxane Gay, Brandon Taylor, et al | 4.40

Henry David Thoreau | 4.40

Laura Dassow Walls The book that we love as Walden began in the journal entries that he wrote starting with his first day at the pond. (Source)

Roman Krznaric In 1845 the American naturalist went out to live in the woods of Western Massachusetts. Thoreau was one of the great masters of the art of simple living. (Source)

John Kaag There’s this idea that philosophy can blend into memoir and that, ideally, philosophy, at its best, is to help us through the business of living with people, within communities. This is a point that Thoreau’s Walden gave to me, as a writer, and why I consider it so valuable for today. (Source)

Confessions of a Common Reader

Anne Fadiman | 4.40

I Feel Bad About My Neck

And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Nora Ephron | 4.39

Holidays on Ice

David Sedaris | 4.37

An American Lyric

Claudia Rankine | 4.36

Cheryl Strayed A really important book for us to be reading right now. (Source)

Jeremy Noel-Tod Obviously, it’s been admired and acclaimed, but I do feel the general reception of it has underplayed its artfulness. Its technical subtlety and overall arrangement has been neglected, because it has been classified as a kind of documentary work. (Source)

Christopher Hitchens | 4.36

Le Grove @billysubway Hitchens book under your arm. I’m reading Arguably. When he’s at his best, he is a savage. Unbelievable prose. (Source)

Notes of a Native Son

James Baldwin | 4.35

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks | 4.34

Suzanne O'Sullivan I didn’t choose neurology because of it but the way Oliver Sacks writes about neurology is very compelling. (Source)

Tanya Byron This is a seminal book that anyone who wants to work in mental health should read. It is a charming and gentle and also an honest exposé of what can happen to us when our mental health is compromised for whatever reason. (Source)

Bradley Voytek I can’t imagine one day waking up and not knowing who my wife is, or seeing my wife and thinking that she was replaced by some sort of clone or robot. But that could happen to any of us. (Source)

The Empathy Exams

Leslie Jamison | 4.33

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Ann Patchett | 4.31

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

A Low Culture Manifesto

Chuck Klosterman | 4.30

Karen Pfaff Manganillo Never have I read a book that I said “this is so perfect, amazing, hilarious, he’s thinking what I’m thinking (in a much more thought out and cool way)”. (Source)

Bird By Bird

Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Anne Lamott | 4.29

Susan Cain I love [this book]. Such a good book. (Source)

Timothy Ferriss Bird by Bird is one of my absolute favorite books, and I gift it to everybody, which I should probably also give to startup founders, quite frankly. A lot of the lessons are the same. But you can get to your destination, even though you can only see 20 feet in front of you. (Source)

Ryan Holiday It was wonderful to read these two provocative books of essays by two incredibly wise and compassionate women. [...] Anne Lamott’s book is ostensibly about the art of writing, but really it too is about life and how to tackle the problems, temptations and opportunities life throws at us. Both will make you think and both made me a better person this year. (Source)

Zadie Smith | 4.29

Barack Obama As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.28

Sam Freedman @mrianleslie (Also I agree What the Dog Saw is his best book). (Source)

The Witches Are Coming

Lindy West | 4.27

Against Interpretation and Other Essays

Susan Sontag | 4.25

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

Alexander Chee | 4.25

Eula Biss Alex Chee explores the realm of the real with extraordinarily beautiful essays. Being real here is an ambition, a haunting, an impossibility, and an illusion. What passes for real, his essays suggest, becomes real, just as life becomes art and art, pursued this fully, becomes a life. (Source)

Changing My Mind

Occasional Essays

Zadie Smith | 4.25

Barrel Fever

David Sedaris | 4.24

Chelsea Handler [The author] is fucking hilarious and there's nothing I prefer to do more than laugh. If this book doesn't make you laugh, I'll refund you the money. (Source)

The Fire This Time

A New Generation Speaks About Race

Jesmyn Ward | 4.24

Why Not Me?

Mindy Kaling | 4.24

The View from the Cheap Seats

Selected Nonfiction

Neil Gaiman | 4.24

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

Sloane Crosley | 4.24

The Intelligent Investor

The Classic Text on Value Investing

Benjamin Graham | 4.23

Warren Buffett To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. This book precisely and clearly prescribes the proper framework. You must provide the emotional discipline. (Source)

Kevin Rose The foundation for investing. A lot of people have used this as their guide to getting into investment, basic strategies. Actually Warren Buffett cites this as the book that got him into investing and he says that principles he learned here helped him to become a great investor. Highly recommend this book. It’s a great way understand what’s going on and how to evaluate different companies out... (Source)

John Kay The idea is that you look at the underlying value of the company’s activities instead of relying on market gossip. (Source)

Tell Me How It Ends

An Essay in Forty Questions

Valeria Luiselli | 4.23

Tina Fey | 4.22

Sheryl Sandberg I absolutely loved Tina Fey's "Bossypants" and didn't want it to end. It's hilarious as well as important. Not only was I laughing on every page, but I was nodding along, highlighting and dog-earing like crazy. [...] It is so, so good. As a young girl, I was labeled bossy, too, so as a former - O.K., current - bossypants, I am grateful to Tina for being outspoken, unapologetic and hysterically... (Source)

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Hanif Abdurraqib, Dr. Eve L. Ewing | 4.22

Saadia Muzaffar Man, this is such an amazing book of essays. Meditations on music and musicians and their moments and meaning-making. @NifMuhammad's mindworks are a gift. Go find it. (thank you @asad_ch!) https://t.co/htSueYYBUT (Source)

This Is Water

Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

David Foster Wallace | 4.21

John Jeremiah Sullivan | 4.21

Greil Marcus This is a new book by a writer in his mid-thirties, about all kinds of things. A lot of it is about the South, some of it is autobiographical, there is a long and quite wonderful piece about going to a Christian music camp. (Source)

The Mother of All Questions

Rebecca Solnit | 4.20

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Sarah Vowell, Katherine Streeter | 4.20

Essays of E.B. White

E. B. White | 4.19

Adam Gopnik White, for me, is the great maker of the New Yorker style. Though it seems self-serving for me to say it, I think that style was the next step in the creation of the essay tone. One of the things White does is use a lot of the habits of the American newspaper in his essays. He is a genuinely simple, spare, understated writer. In the presence of White, even writers as inspired as Woolf and... (Source)

A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Rebecca Solnit | 4.19

A Man Without a Country

Kurt Vonnegut | 4.18

No Time to Spare

Thinking About What Matters

Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler | 4.17

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Annie Dillard | 4.16

Laura Dassow Walls She’s enacting Thoreau, but in a 20th-century context: she takes on quantum physics, the latest research on DNA and the nature of life. (Source)

Sara Maitland This book, which won the Pulitzer literature prize when it was released, is the most beautiful book about the wild. (Source)

Maggie Nelson | 4.14

Furiously Happy

A Funny Book About Horrible Things

Jenny Lawson | 4.13

Women & Power

A Manifesto

Mary Beard | 4.13

Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Timothy Snyder | 4.12

George Saunders Please read this book. So smart, so timely. (Source)

Tom Holland "There isn’t a page of this magnificent book that does not contain some fascinating detail and the narrative is held together with a novelist’s eye for character and theme." #Dominion https://t.co/FESSNxVDLC (Source)

Maya Wiley Prof. Tim Snyder, author of “In Tyranny” reminded us in that important little book that we must protect our institutions. #DOJ is one of our most important in gov’t for the rule of law. This is our collective house & #Barr should be evicted. https://t.co/PPxM9IMQUm (Source)

Small Wonder

Barbara Kingsolver | 4.11

The Source of Self-Regard

Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

Toni Morrison | 4.11

Hyperbole and a Half

Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

Allie Brosh | 4.11

Bill Gates While she self-deprecatingly depicts herself in words and art as an odd outsider, we can all relate to her struggles. Rather than laughing at her, you laugh with her. It is no hyperbole to say I love her approach -- looking, listening, and describing with the observational skills of a scientist, the creativity of an artist, and the wit of a comedian. (Source)

Samantha Irby | 4.10

Both Flesh and Not

David Foster Wallace | 4.10

David Papineau People can learn to do amazing things with their bodies, and people start honing and developing these skills as an end in itself, a very natural thing for humans to do. (Source)

So Sad Today

Personal Essays

Melissa Broder | 4.10

Hope in the Dark

Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

Rebecca Solnit | 4.09

Prem Panicker @sanjayen This is from an essay Solnit wrote to introduce the updated version of her book Hope In The Dark. Anything Solnit is brilliant; at times like these, she is the North Star. (Source)

The Faraway Nearby

How to Be Alone

Jonathan Franzen | 4.08

Regarding the Pain of Others

Susan Sontag | 4.08

The Essays of Warren Buffett

Lessons for Corporate America, Fifth Edition

Lawrence A. Cunningham and Warren E. Buffett | 4.08

One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

Scaachi Koul | 4.07

Amy Poehler | 4.06

The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois | 4.05

Barack Obama According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, these titles are among his most influential forever favorites: Moby Dick, Herman Melville Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch Gilead, Marylinne Robinson Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton Souls of Black... (Source)

In Praise of Shadows

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki | 4.05

Kyle Chayka Tanizaki is mourning what has been paved over, which is the old Japanese aesthetic of darkness, of softness, of appreciating the imperfect—rather than the cold, glossy surfaces of industrialized modernity that the West had brought to Japan at that moment. For me, that’s really valuable, because it does preserve a different way of looking at the world. (Source)

Ways of Seeing

John Berger | 4.04

Robert Jones He’s a Marxist and says that the role of publicity or branding is to make people marginally dissatisfied with their current way of life. (Source)

David McCammon Ways of Seeing goes beyond photography and will continue to develop your language around images. (Source)

John Harrison (Eton College) You have to understand the Marxist interpretation of art; it is absolutely fundamental to the way that art history departments now study the material. Then you have to critique it, because we’ve moved on from the 1970s and the collapse of Marxism in most of the world shows—amongst other things—that the model was flawed. But it’s still a very good book to read, for a teenager especially. (Source)

Tackling the Texas Essays

Efficient Preparation for the Texas Bar Exam

Catherine Martin Christopher | 4.04

The Book of Delights

Ross Gay | 4.04

Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis | 4.04

Anoop Anthony "Mere Christianity" is first and foremost a rational book — it is in many ways the opposite of a traditional religious tome. Lewis, who was once an atheist, has been on both sides of the table, and he approaches the notion of God with accessible, clear thinking. The book reveals that experiencing God doesn't have to be a mystical exercise; God can be a concrete and logical conclusion. Lewis was... (Source)

I Remember Nothing

and Other Reflections

Nora Ephron | 4.04

On Photography

Susan Sontag | 4.03

Susan Bordo Sontag was the first to make the claim, which at the time was very controversial, that photography is misleading and seductive because it looks like reality but is in fact highly selective. (Source)

Notes from No Man's Land

American Essays

Eula Biss | 4.03

The Doors of Perception

Heaven and Hell (Thinking Classics)

Aldous Huxley, Robbie McCallum | 4.03

Michelle Rodriguez Aldous Huxley on Technodictators https://t.co/RDyX70lnZz via @YouTube ‘Doors of Perception’ is a great book entry level to hallucinogenics (Source)

Auston Bunsen I also really loved “The doors of perception” by Aldous Huxley. (Source)

Dr. Andrew Weil Came first [in terms of my interests]. (Source)

The Geek Feminist Revolution

Kameron Hurley | 4.02

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20 short novels you can read in one day

BY Anne Bogel
IN Book Lists , Books & Reading , Reading Challenge

Why we read short books

We all struggle with our reading sometimes. Whether difficult personal circumstances have killed your focus or lovely weather means you’re spending more time outside. Sometimes what we need is to build a little momentum in our reading life. And nothing helps build good reading momentum than short books.

This ISN’T cheating! You’re still reading an entire book whether it’s technically a short story, novella, or just a short novel (as many classics are). If your reading life needs a little boost this list of short novels is for you. Not only can they help you get your reading routine back on track, but these are great stories where the brevity often adds to the poignency.

We already have a stellar list of life-changing nonfiction books you can read in a day , so today we’re focusing on fiction.

What qualifies as a short novel

Essay and poetry collections are usually on the slimmer side, but we’re looking for fiction here. And while many young adult books come in on the shorter end, I’m mostly recommending adult books. Page counts vary but most of these run 200 pages or less, and deliver a lot of bang for the buck. (A few books push closer to the 300-page mark. I included these if the book has small pages, a large font, or tons of white space that make them quick reads.)

Depending on your reading speed, several of these books you can read in day. While you can knock one off in an afternoon, you will think about these books for weeks, months, even years after you put it down.

I’d love to hear when you reach for a short book and which novels YOU would add to this list, in the comments section.

And now, 20 of the best short books you can read in a day

Miss pettigrew lives for a day.

Author: Winifred Watson

I’ll bet you weren’t assigned this delightfully breezy Cinderella-ish story set in 1930s Britain back in English class. When a placement agency sends unemployed Miss Pettigrew to the wrong address, she spends the best day of her life with a glamorous nightclub singer, extricating her hour by hour from one scrape after another. Overall a fun, frothy fairy tale—but heads up for some unpleasantly dated stereotypes. 256 pages

Convenience Store Woman

Author: Sayaka Murata

This quirky little book is a 2018 Summer Reading Guide pick, and is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Keiko was an uncommon child with worried parents until she takes on a job in a convenience store. They relax that she’s found a pleasant and predictable routine while at university. But eighteen years later, she is still working her low-level job, and doesn’t understand why society expects more from her than that. In fact, she doesn’t seem to understand society’s expectations—or how to conform to them—at all. PIck this up and spend your afternoon immersed in Japanese—and convenience store—culture. 176 pages

Mrs. Dalloway

Author: Virginia Woolf

In this slim novel, Woolf weaves together two seemingly unrelated storylines: one following Mrs Dalloway, an upper class woman preparing to host a dinner party, and the other her “double,” a shell-shocked WWI vet contemplating suicide. Woolf used stream-of-consciousness style to explore the inner workings of the mind; this pioneering technique had a lasting effect on fiction as we know it. I read this myself for a past Reading Challenge , having previously read A Room of One’s Own but none of Virginia Woolf’s novels. 194 pages

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Author: Shirley Jackson

I didn’t hear of this short 1962 novel until a few years ago, since readers with great and diverse tastes kept recommending it. Not so long ago there were seven Blackwoods, but four of them dropped dead from arsenic poisoning several years ago and how that happened remains a mystery. Read it during daylight hours: its themes of family secrets, hateful neighbors, and mysterious deaths aren’t the stuff of bedtime reading. It’s not exactly scary, but Jackson is sure good at infusing a story with a creepy atmosphere—and the audio version sure makes it come alive. 162 pages

The Uncommon Reader

Author: Alan Bennett

When an unnamed (but not well-disguised) Queen goes for a walk, her corgis stray into a bookmobile library parked near the Palace, so she feels obligated to take a book to be polite. The Queen finds a newfound obsession with reading—so much so that she begins to neglect her duties as monarch. You can read this one in a few hours, but the power of reading to transform even the most uncommon of lives and the numerous book recommendations (from Jean Genet to Ivy Compton-Burnett to the classics) will stay with you much longer. Truly a must-read for any bibliophile. 126 pages

The Outsiders

Author: SE Hinton

This was a summer reading pick for my then 13-year-old, and he asked me to read it, too. This American classic is about a group of kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Oklahoma, and I’ve heard it compared to West Side Story. Unbelievably, Hinton wrote this when she was just 16, and it was published when she was 18. You could also read this title for the category “a book that’s been banned at some point.” 220 pages

The Sense of an Ending

Author: Julian Barnes

I finally read this 2011 Man Booker Prize winner a couple of years ago, in a single sitting on the couch on a Sunday afternoon. Structured as a love triangle, present day events force our narrator to reflect on events from his past, events that had been long settled in his mind. But as he begins to investigate what happened back then, he starts to wonder: did he really grasp what was happening back then? Or was he merely choosing to cast himself in the best possible light? This book, which the New York Times calls “powerfully compact,” is the kind that stands up to—and benefits from—repeated re-readings. 162 pages

Vinegar Girl

Author: Anne Tyler

Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew has been adapted for everything from film to opera to ballet to musical theater. Both Kiss Me, Kate and the 90s high school movie 10 Things I Hate About You (LOVE it) are based on the play. Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler brings a witty contemporary retelling for the Hogarth Shakespeare series. This one’s on my TBR largely because of NPR, who calls this a “screwball of manners, more sweet than acidic, that actually channels Jane Austen more than Shakespeare.” 242 pages

What I Saw And How I Lied

Author: Judy Blundell

This was a dark kind of fun, easy to read and hard to put down, about a 15-year-old girl who gets mixed up in a decidedly grown-up brew of love, prejudice, and tragedy when her family moves to Palm Beach post-WWII. We read this for a spring Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club pick and talked with author Judy Blundell. which only deepened my appreciation for a terrific story, tight, atmospheric, and heavily inspired by noir film classics. Stylish and thought-provoking; a 2008 National Book Award winner for Young People’s Literature. 284 pages

News of the World: A Novel

Author: Paulette Jiles

I loved this short novel about two unlikely companions because it reminded me of favorites like Lonesome Dove , These Is My Words , and—perhaps surprisingly—The Road. A Western for readers who (think they) don’t like Westerns, featuring intriguing characters, improbable friendships, strong women, and difficult choices. 229 pages

Interpreter of Maladies

Author: Jhumpa Lahiri

This slim volume of short stories was breathtaking. Lahiri’s characters tenuously navigate the divide between their old world and their new, and taken together, the collection highlights myriad aspects of the immigrant experience. Lahiri’s gift is to turn ordinary experiences into moments fraught with meaning, and she does it over and over in this Pulitzer-winning collection. (I loved this on audio, and it’s less than 6 hours in that format.) 209 pages

The Vegetarian: A Novel

Author: Han Kang

Following a terrifying nightmare, a South Korean woman trashes all the meat in the house and announces she’s now a vegetarian—an unconventional choice in a culture in which such choices sit on a spectrum between unsettling and downright alarming. Critics describe this novel as “Kafka-esque”, and reader friends with great taste have said this strange (and sometimes disturbing) story delivers a unique and absorbing reading experience. Originally written in Korean, this could also stand in for your book in translation category. 194 pages

Fahrenheit 451

Author: Ray Bradbury

Bradbury’s slim sci-fi/fantasy novel revolves around a fireman who hates his job, set in the saddest of dystopian settings: a future with no books. Firemen start the fires in Bradbury’s future, because their job is to destroy any and all books as they are found. The book has been repeatedly banned over the years, which is ironic, given that the book itself is about book-banning. Definitely It’s a classic, but it’s not remotely boring , and too short not to cross off your list. 119 pages

Our Souls at Night

Author: Kent Haruf

It took me a while to finally read Kent Haruf, but I’m so glad I did: he’s an excellent choice for readers who love Wallace Stegner, Wendell Berry, and Marilynne Robinson, as I do. This is definitely one of those books where the flap copy doesn’t do it justice; in this case, it just sounds strange. I found this up-close look at an unlikely relationship between two long-time acquaintances in small-town Colorado completely absorbing. Listen to me recommend this book in Episode 84 of What Should I Read Next? to Shawn Smucker. 193 pages

Every Heart a Doorway

Author: Seanan McGuire

At Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children, children have a habit of stumbling into other worlds. Imagine Alice in Wonderland, but instead of one wonderland, there are hundreds—and once you visit another world, you’ll never be the same. Part fantasy, part mystery, part fairy tale (of the dark and creepy variety). NPR calls this “A mini-masterpiece of portal fantasy — a jewel of a book that deserves to be shelved with Lewis Carroll’s and C. S. Lewis’ classics” The impressive awards list for this includes the Alex Award, Hugo award, and Nebula award. 174 pages

The All of It

Author: Jeannette Haien

I just read this on vacation, at the urging of Ian Cron , who recommended it when we recorded a future episode of What Should I Read Next? (Coming soon!) First, the backstory: this 1986 novel never got the audience it deserved—until Ann Patchett fell in love with it 25-ish years later, and lobbied for its republication. Now, the book itself: on his deathbed, an Irish man confesses to his priest that he and his longtime “wife” were never married. He dies before he’s able to reveal the details. Over the course of several days, the wife explains their story to the priest—and the implications for both of them are enormous. 162 pages

Dept. of Speculation

Author: Jenny Offill

I debated including this one, because I had mixed feelings about it—but it’s undoubtably interesting, and so many readers LOVED it—plus I read it myself in a single afternoon. This is a portrait of a once-happy marriage that has lost its way, written in spare prose, with nameless characters referred to only as “the wife” and “the husband.” Sometimes lyrical, sometimes philosophical, sometimes experimental to the point of feeling confusing. Definitely one to discuss with your fellow readers. 194 pages

The House on Mango Street

Author: Sandra Cisneros

This modern classic is a coming-of-age almost-memoir of a young Latina girl, Esperanza Cordero, who is inventing the woman she will grow up to be. The story unfolds as a series of vignettes—some joyful, some heartbreaking—that draw the reader deep into her Hispanic Chicago neighborhood. Esperanza’s observations feel at once highly specific and incredibly universal, as she reflects on growing up on Mango Street, and how she eventually wants to leave. 130 pages

The Great Gatsby

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald’s classic was the topic of my first high school term paper—and despite that, I still love it. This classic American novel captures the Jazz Age in all its decadence and excess, while weaving a wistful story of love and loss, told by Nick Carraway—but can we really trust his version of the tale? Fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby has built a mansion on Long Island Sound for the sole purpose of wooing and winning his lost love Daisy Buchanan, who married another man while Gatsby was serving overseas. 180 pages

Absent in the Spring

Author: Agatha Christie

This is a different sort of Agatha Christie novel, written under her pseudonym Mary Westmacott, that’s complicated, witty, twisty and suspenseful in ways that have nothing to do with crime. The title comes from a Shakespeare sonnet; the novel itself is a character study, about a woman who begins to reassess her life after finding herself alone for the first time—and is none too easy with what she sees. Christie claimed to have written this novel in an incredible three days. 192 pages

What short novels are catching your eye on this list, and what would you add to it? And—just for fun—what’s the longest book you’ve read in a single day?

P.S. Here are two other posts with short books: 20 life-changing nonfiction books you can read in a day , and 15 terrific audiobooks you can listen to in 6-ish hours or less .

85 comments

I read 84, Charing Cross Road for this category and it was so delightful. I think Chimamanda Adichie’s two books (booklets?) about feminism could be good choices also.

I love 84, Charing Cross Road! I felt like the author was describing my ideal trip to England down to the last detail

Absolutely, 84, Charing Cross Road!

Binti! If you like weird SF, or just want to dip your toes in with an award-winning, “own voices” title by a woman of color, this is a quick read. Like most SF, no need to worry if you don’t follow every detail of the unfamiliar setting.

Loved Binti!

Exit West, by Moshin Hamid! About 200 page with lots of breaks and wide margins 🙂 A lovely, quick read.

I read Agatha Christie’s autobiography a few years back and promptly bought her Mary Westmacott novels (all in one volume)…then never read them! Absent in the Spring is the reason I bought them. You’ve inspired me to get reading. Thanks!

I love this category. It enables you to pick up something you may not normally read because the commitment is not as high as a 500 page novel. Also, if it is one you really love you can easily read it multiple times. I really enjoyed We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Three of my all time favorites are short reads; Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and A River Runs Through it by Norman Maclean.

A must read for this list is “The Buddha In The Attic” by Jullie Otsuka. It has a unique writing style as is in First Person Collective without identifying the person talking. A bit difficult at first but you soon get a feel for the different voices. At 144 pages, it is a quick read, but, oh, so interesting. The story of Japanese women bought to San Francisco as “picture brides.” Tracing their adventures from their boat journey, arrival in America, and follows their new lives, filled with hope, dreams, trials, tribulations, hardships and heartbreak. First published in 2011 Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award For Fiction National Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist A New York Times Notable Book

I enjoyed Joan Didion’s South and West. A super quick read about her time in the South and in California. The essays are all excerpts from her notebooks during her travels. I also loved 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff.

I read Convenience Store Woman this week and found it charming and quirky. It was a quick read and I’m thinking about it every day since I read it.

I’m waiting on that book from the library! I figured that it would be good since it’s on the summer reading list, but now I’m more excited. I really enjoy books that I can’t stop thinking about after I read them.

I am thrilled you have The Outsiders on here. I just reread it and it is still a fantastic read. I plan on picking up Convenience Store Woman simply because my 18 year old daughter has loved the Japanese language and culture for years, just finished her fifth year of studying the language, and it sounds like a fun read for both of us. I also want to read The Uncommon Reader.

I’m reading Of Mice and Men.

Yes! I just read this, and it’s such a wonderful short novel. I thought it was written so well.

Uh… I didn’t realize I was responding to a comment and post from 2018.

For the category I read The Penderwicks but am so intrigued by many of these.

News of the World is SO GOOD! My favorite book so far this year!

Both of Backman’s novellas can be read in one day or one sitting…..”And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer” And “Deal of a Lifetime”

I’ve read 7 of these books….and want to read the rest!!!! There goes the TBR list again!?

I loved reading The Silent Gondoliers by William Goldman. I picked it up because I loved The Princess Bride, and I wasn’t the least bit disappointed by the goofiness and heart.

I think Nutshell by Ian McEwan can be read in a day. It took me a few to read it, but only because I didn’t have the time to just sit down and power through! It’s an interesting premise too, and a nice twist on a Shakespeare classic.

I’m going to add quite a few of these to my too long TBR list. I’d recommend any of Laurie Colwin’s novels or short story collections for this category. Her novels are light but definitely have substance. And they are all short enough to read in one day.

Read Convenience Store woman last weekend. Am still unsure what I think of it! Quirky for sure.

Have read House on Mango Street also.

Not a genre you normally write about and not one I normally read but…I read Sackett last year and LOVED it! My dad has always loved westerns so I grew up with them on the television much of the time but I’d never read a true “western” book. Am glad I read it. It’s short too, so definitely can be read in a day.

I loved News of the World – it was an impulse buy at the bookstore ($3?). It wasn’t the type of book I usually go for but I figured that It’s not like I was spending a lot on it. It was well worth it.

I’m not sure the longest I’ve read in a day. I read fast and tend to read until I finish even if that means my family has to find their own food for dinner. I know I read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 8 hours. It was right after it came out. I was in college that year and was supposed to be studying for a chemistry test. I picked up the book for a study break and couldn’t put it down. The funny part? I actually got a higher grade on that test than any other test in that class.

I also read A Conjuring of Light by Victoria Schwab in a day. (600-something pages) It was like being sucked into this dreamlike state for hours on end. When I finished, it took time to figure out where I was and if what I just experienced was real or not.

I LOVE that I can just come to your site on any given time and discover new things to read – thanks for this post!

The longest book I read in a day was the final Harry Potter -Deathly Hallows. I was so worried about spoilers that I swore I wouldn’t leave the house, watch TV, or go on the internet until I had finished it. I read it all the day it came out.

I read What Alice Forgot (476 pages according to Goodreads) as well as a few other early Liane Moriarty novels in a single day. Recently, I read The Book of Essie in two days, but only because I didn’t start early enough in the day. Once I got into it, I really couldn’t put it down! I highly recommend that novel! And since I listen at double speed, I have listened to quite a number of books in a day, if I take the time.

I love so many of these, both on the list and in the comments! I really love 84, Charing Cross Road and Housekeeping. The Vegetarian was a strange one…..

I’m a big fan of Charlie Lovett’s books, and his Further Adventures of Ebeneezer Scrooge would be great for this – 106 pages including the Afterword/Author’s note. Coraline by Neil Gaiman is also a fun one especially at Halloween. And if anyone has never read The Little Prince, read it!!! 🙂 (it’s also great for a book in translation).

My favorite read in one day book is The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller. LOVED IT!

My last read was “A World Lost” by Wendell Berry. Loved it, and a short read, 150pgs I think. It’s one of his Port William fiction about the death of Andy Catlett.

Last summer as we were driving to the beach for our vacation I turned the last page of Our Souls at Night and was fighting tears. My husband thought it was bc I was emotional about getting back to the beach (my fave place in the world!). I let him think that. 🙂 I love that book so much– it’s short but it packs a punch!

I love that book so much. Have you read Kent Haruf’s trilogy? The titles are Plainsong, Eventide and Benediction. I adore all three. They are quiet novels which pull you in with their authentic characters.

My pick to add to this list is Let the Hurricane Roar by Rose Wilder Lane. It’s a wonderfully concise adult version of the Little House books (written before the Little House books).

So many good picks on this list, I think I’m going to start with Absent in the Spring.

I just put in a request for We Have Always Lived in the Castle at my library. Looking forward to reading it.

You got me! Just added The Uncommon Reader, Vinegar Girl, and Convenience Store Woman to my library holds!

The Uncommon Reader is one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy it as much I did.

Thanks for this great list! I recommend Paul Gallico’s Snow Goose – I think the move Dunkirk was loosely based on this

Funny – 4 of these books were required reading for my kids in middle school and/or high school! Outsiders/Gatsby = middle school, Fahrenheit 451 = middle school and high school (different kids, same district), The House on Mango Street = high school.

For this category, I picked a book I *could* read in a day (213 pages)—except my life is super busy right now, so it’s taken me a lot longer than it usually would 😉 I picked Jane and Prudence, by Barbara Pym. I’ve never read any of her books before, but I’m loving this one! It feels cozy, if that makes sense. I feel like I’m in a small English village with the characters, and I love that feeling of being transported into the world of the novel.

That totally works! I hope you enjoy the Pym.

There are several of my favourite books here including Mrs Dalloway, and I have just reread Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Reading a book in a day is a slightly strange category for a reader, as I would say that most books can be read in a day if you are completely enthralled and determined to finish it. x

My TBR pile wasn’t out of control enough and then I read this post!! I love a good recommendation. Thank you!

Oh gosh, there’s *no* way I could have read Mrs Dalloway in a day! I’m generally a pretty swift reader, but I found myself having to read Woolf’s sentences and paragraphs a few times each, to try and discern their meaning. It took me longer to read Mrs Dalloway than it did Crime & Punishment! hahahaha. Some other great recommendations on this list, though!!

I’ve never wanted to read I Have Always Lived in a Castle before because I thought it was sort of horror/paranormal (why?? I have no idea!!)…but your description makes me want to try it! Especially now knowing how short it is. I haven’t read a good short book in awhile and could use one.

Some others I love: All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg, Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong, Reunion by Hannah Pittard, My Name is Lucy Barton, and The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips (super weird, but I HAD to figure out what was going on), and The Wife by Meg Wolitzer (maybe my favorite of the bunch).

Listen to Me by Hannah Pittard is also short. I read Goodbye, Vitamin recently and really enjoyed it – good call.

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I love this list. I remember a few years ago you pointed out that I tend to favor shorter novels, which I hadn’t even realized. 😉

I just read MOST of Convenience Store Woman yesterday! While waiting in line at the BMV which wasn’t pleasant but a good book (that I could get through quick) made it better!

Oh goodness, I’m thrilled and also horrified you could practically finish a book while waiting there!

Great list!!! I Adored Our Souls at Night–it was my favorite book of that year. Even the movie was good! I also loved Uncommon Reader, News of the World, Mango Street, Gatsby. I have Miss Pettigrew to read soon, want to read Convenience Store Woman. Vinegar Girl disappointed. Mrs D put me to sleep. A few other super-short reads: Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt, My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith (this is a stand-alone novella).

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If I were on your podcast, Dept. of Speculation would be on my list of three books I loved. I’m glad you included it. I highly recommend it; if you don’t like it, it’s a day out of your life, but if you do it has the potential to be one of your lifetime favorites.

Having said that, my book club hated it. I think they found the main character annoying. I loved the voice. I just looked for a quote, but there are too many to choose from. Just give it a try.

That’s so interesting about your book club’s reaction to the book! Was it at least a good book club discussion?

I loved Dept of Speculation! Loved the writing style.

The Old Man and the Sea is about 125 pages long, an excellent read.

Probably not going to be a popular choice here, but Anthem by Ayn Rand is a great afternoon read. Short, chilling, & stays with you forever.

I would definitely add Animal Farm by George Orwell to this list. It’s just under 200 pages and impossible to put down.

I read The Crossover by Kwame Alexander. It’s geared for middle grade readers and is told in prose. Beautiful little book, and only 240 pages, but due to the poetry, reads super fast.

I would add one book to this awesome list: Textbook Amy Krause Rosenthal. It’s experimental, a little odd, but so heartwarming and fantastic. You can definitely read it in an afternoon.

I didn’t set out to read An American Marriage in a single day, but that definitely happened last week. I strongly recommend it. I can’t stop thinking about it.

And the next day, I read the YA novel Saints & Misfits in about 8 (often interrupted) hours. I would recommend it for readers who like YA. If you don’t like YA, this one probably won’t change your mind, but it’s sort of refreshing for the genre in the sense that it focuses on an American Muslim heroine dealing with big-deal issues like sexual assault while also exploring interfaith dating, bullying, and family changes. Because of the main character’s faith, the romance in this novel is relatively innocent and comes down to a question of the standards she will hold for herself and the vision she has for her future.

As a teacher, a lot of my books are read in 1-2 days during the summer. Those same books would take me a week or more to read during the school year, when I’m busy, work too many hours, and am too mentally exhausted to process words at the end of a day.

I just finished What I Saw and How I Lied, thanks to this post, and loved it! Thank you! I’d really like to add two books to this list. The first is Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan. It’s a short novel about the staff of a Red Lobster on the night before the restaurant shuts down for good. The second is Kent Haruf’s beautiful novel Our Souls at Night. It was Haruf’s final book, a brief novel that had stayed with me. It’s much better than the movie, but the way! Happy reading!

Just realized Our Souls at Night is on the list! Sorry!

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. Don’t read the book flap, don’t watch the movie, don’t read any reviews – just read the book. The less you know in advance, the more you will find it heartbreaking, devastating and absolutely unforgettable.

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AddSpy of the First Personby Sam Shepard. It was his last bit of writing and published after his death. It was made up of short little vignettes that really stayed with me

Demian by Herman Hesse is another fast read.

187 books in 1 year?! It took me 34 years to get to 1000.

I would add The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain. I’ve read this book many times because it is very short and a very delicious read.

Agreed! I just read The Red Notebook a fortnight ago and found it so enchanting and quirky; no-one approaches the French for whimsy, with every mystery a possibility and opportunity.

The premise of the novel (woman loses handbag – man finds handbag – man decides to track down woman using the contents of the handbag as clues) is also good for figuring out if you and your partner think the same. My then boyfriend thought it sounded creepy; I thought it was charming!

Heavens, I’m trying to bump my page count up over 20 500 this year, but all these short and sweet recommended reads will be great ‘palate cleansers’ between big books. My TBR pile has become a tower since I read your book and discovered your blog, Anne!

Here’s some more from my own read shelves (surprisingly, many classics; who says they need to be bricks to pack a punch?):

The Time Machine – H.G. Wells (118p) The Outsider – Albert Camus (119p) Siddhartha – Herman Hesse (121p) Anima Farm – George Orwell (122p) Night – Elie Wiesel (126p) The Lilies of the Field – William Edmund Barrett (127p) The Children of Green Knowe – L.M. Boston (128p) Bambert’s Book of Missing Stories – Reinhardt Jung (128p) The Turn of the Screw – Henry James (131p) Summer Crossing – Truman Capote (142p) The Longest Memory – Fred d’Aguiar (144p) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn (182p) And anything written by Roald Dahl; The Witches (208p) and Matilda (240p) are my favourites.

Graphic novels also make a great day read, but they deserve a post all their own!

No one ever mentions Seize the Day (Saul Bellows). I read it in my last year in undergraduate and I couldn’t put it down. About 130 pages, I think, and it’s riveting.

You can read A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens in one day. You can read THE BIG WAVE by Pearl S. Buck in one day.

Great list! Poonachi is a recommendation that I’d like to make. It is a sharp critique of the patriarchal nature of the Indian society but narrated through a tiny black goat.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38318462-poonachi

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 274 pp Who Moved My Cheese 94 pp

Thank you Anne for the list I loved it <3. I will include it to my TBR!

Sleepwalkers by Joginder Paul: a slim book about the Partition of India, and the psyche’s refusal to come to terms with it and live a divided, schizophrenic existence. A deeply moving piece of fiction that feels real even as it weaves through history and the surreal.

Have you read Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka? If so, did you like it? If not, it’s a short read and I found it to be beautifully written.

An Elderly Lady Must Not be Crossed pulls you right in and doesn’t let go until 2.5 hrs later.

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I was hoping to find some generally accepted criteria for story length. Yours are confusing. For example, what word length constitutes a short story vs. a novella? According to your ranges, a work could be either, since you state that a short story is from 1,000 to 10,000 words long (that’s quite a range!) and that a novella is 10,000 words to 40,000 words long. If a story is 10,000 words in length, according to your criteria, it could be both a short story AND a novella! Even more mysteriously, you leave a 10,000-word range of ambiguity between the novella, which, you say, ends at 40,000 words, and the novel, which, you say, begins at 50,000 words. What kind of story occupies a word length BETWEEN 40,000 and 40,999 words?

I am reading “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan, over the Bank Holiday weekend. 110 pages. Nominated for the 2022 Booker Prize and on the best-sellers list in Ireland since its publication in 2022 40 pages in and loving it.

I was going to mention Keegan’s “Foster,” which is emotionally gripping and easily readable in a day.

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Summer Reader Poll 2019: Funny Books

We did it for the lols: 100 favorite funny books.

Petra Mayer

Illustration of a woman laughing while reading a book.

The news cycle is driving us to the edge of madness, so why not switch off, unplug and pick up a book? We know you could use a laugh right now — and luckily, several thousand of you told us all about the books, stories and poems that make you laugh .

We took your votes (more than 7,000 of them!) and with the help of our panel of expert judges — people so cool and so hilarious I'm surprised they even talked to me — created this list of 100 reads designed to make you laugh out loud. Want slice-of-life essays? Loopy poetry? Surreal one-panel cartoons? Blackly comic novels? Texts from famous literary figures? Scroll down — we've got it all.

As with all our reader polls, this is a curated list and not a straight-up popularity contest; you'll see that the books are grouped into categories rather than ranked from one to 100.

Summer Reader Poll 2018: Horror

Click if you dare: 100 favorite horror stories.

Summer Reader Poll 2017: Comics And Graphic Novels

Let's get graphic: 100 favorite comics and graphic novels.

And, as always, there are a few things that didn't make the list — surprisingly, Shakespeare didn't get enough votes to make it to the semifinals, and our judges decided the immortal Bard of Avon didn't exactly need our help to find new readers. (But read some Shakespeare anyhow, just for the scorching burns in Much Ado About Nothing .) Then there were books that didn't quite stand the test of time, or were so new we couldn't tell whether they'd stand up.

Some of the authors on this list are incredibly popular, and you voted them in over and over again (three guesses as to whom, and the first two don't count, David Sedaris). Because space is limited, we try to hold each author to one spot on the list, but there are some exceptions — in 2015, for the romance poll, we created the Nora Roberts Rule . We've applied it somewhat ... flexibly, but it generally means that each year, one particularly beloved or prolific author gets two spots on the list. This year, we used it for an actual Nora, Nora Ephron, which our judges thought was the perfect application.

And speaking of our judges, you will find a couple of their works on the list this year — we don't let judges vote for their own work, but readers loved Samantha Irby's We Are Never Meeting In Real Life and Guy Branum's My Life as a Goddess , so the panel agreed they should stay.

Laughter is the best medicine, or so we hear — so read two (heck, read three) and call us in the morning!

To make navigating the list a little easier, click these links to get to each category: Memoirs , Essays , Comics & Cartoons , Novels , Fantasy & Science Fiction , Nonfiction , Kids' Books & YA , Poetry , Classics , Short Stories and ... Deep Thoughts (no, really, just Deep Thoughts . We couldn't figure out where else to put it).

Born A Crime

by Trevor Noah

Daily Show host Trevor Noah was born in South Africa in 1984, to a white father and a black mother — against the law under the apartheid system. In this memoir, by turns funny and wrenching, he describes the lengths his parents went to keep him safe and hidden from the authorities. "I think it set me up for where I am now in life," he told NPR's Renee Montagne in 2016 . "More of my comedy and my showbiz, and that feeling came for me partly from my mother, came for me from the world that I lived in."

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Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

by Hunter S. Thompson

We put this in the Memoirs section because Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo are, more or less, based on Hunter S. Thompson and his buddy Oscar Zeta Acosta ... but one category can't really contain this drug-addled desert odyssey. "If you're gonna take a road trip and you're gonna do it by car, I'm sad to say that the best you can hope for is for yours to be the second-greatest of all time," says our critic Jason Sheehan . "Why? Because Hunter Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta have already taken the top slot and will hold it forever."

by Tina Fey

Reading Tina Fey's delightful memoir is like eating a bucket of movie popcorn — you can't stop until you get to the bottom. But unlike a bucket of movie popcorn, Bossypants will leave you light and happy and wishing you were at least a tenth as cool as Tina Fey. (And yes, of course, there's also lots about actually being a boss on the sets of Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock .)

Funny In Farsi

by Firoozeh Dumas

When Firoozeh Dumas moved to America as a child, she knew exactly seven words of English — the names of seven colors. (Her father had taught English in Iran, but as it turned out, he wasn't that great at speaking American.) Funny in Farsi is a charming chronicle of her family's encounters with American culture, from her mother's fondness for The Price is Right to the true meaning of "elbow grease."

I Feel Bad About My Neck

by Nora Ephron

A few years ago when we did the romance poll, our judges created the Nora Roberts Rule : Normally, an author gets only one slot in the final list, but someone as legendary as Ms. Roberts can have two (she got in as herself and as her pen name, J.D. Robb). We applied that rule again this year to another Nora — Nora Ephron, because we couldn't decide between this candid, rueful, hilarious collection of essays on aging as a woman and her scathing autobiographical novel Heartburn, which you'll see farther along in the list.

Wishful Drinking

by Carrie Fisher

Oh, Carrie Fisher. We miss you so much. Luckily, Fisher's words are still here for us — Wishful Drinking, adapted from her autobiographical stage show, is a painfully funny, unsparing account of her childhood as Hollywood royalty; her own ascent to fame, far too young, with Star Wars; and marrying (and divorcing) Paul Simon. What's it like to have your parents' marriage broken up by Elizabeth Taylor? And to have your own action figure at the age of 19? Fisher lays it all out.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened

by Jenny Lawson

Jenny Lawson kicks off this memoir with a story about how, at the age of 3, she allegedly almost set her family's apartment on fire by shoving a broom into the furnace and then waving it, aflame, around her head. And things don't get any less weird from there — in fact, Lawson says she has spent her whole life being pigeonholed as "that weird girl." Is it a little embellished? Yes. (Lawson herself calls it "a mostly true memoir" on the cover.) Is it hilarious? Also yes, even when Lawson is recounting the more painful parts of her life.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

by Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling's combination memoir, advice column and Hollywood tour is irreverent and eminently relatable — from her childhood struggles with weight and popularity to her eventual career breakthrough. But the most resonant part is her description of herself as a teenage comedy nerd breaking away from a familiar childhood clique to write sketches and film clips with a new friend who actually appreciated the glories of Wayne's World and Monty Python's Flying Circus .

My Life As A Goddess

by Guy Branum

"Guy Branum's collection of essays isn't just a hilarious memoir — though don't get me wrong, it is VERY much that," says Pop Culture Happy Hour's Glen Weldon. "It's a call to arms, a stirring, touching, beautifully written manifesto for queer self-made autodidacts everywhere — anyone who has failed to see themselves reflected in popular culture and knew that meant the culture had to change, not them. The searing insight with which he dissects his late father's love of the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, for example, will have you reassessing fathers, sons, violence, masculinity and — not for nothing — the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ."

Priestdaddy

by Patricia Lockwood

Patricia Lockwood grew up with a Catholic priest for a father (he had originally been a Lutheran, and kept his wife and family through a special Vatican dispensation) who converted onboard a submarine during a showing of The Exorcist. Her memoir is part freewheeling family portrait and part scathing, ribald critique of the Church and its predatory, controlling men — our critic Annalisa Quinn calls the book " antic, deadpan, heartbreaking — and so, so gross ."

Running With Scissors

by Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs' darkly comic memoir chronicles his childhood as the son of alcoholic, troubled parents who eventually sent him to live in the chaotic household of a psychiatrist he describes as almost like a cult leader. Both his family and that of the doctor have challenged his account — but as long as you're not holding to journalistic standards of truth, Running With Scissors is a wild ride of a read, by turns disgusting, upsetting and hilarious.

Life Among The Savages

by Shirley Jackson

Sure, everyone knows Shirley Jackson as the queen of chills — find me someone who claims to not have read "The Lottery" and I'll find you a liar. But Jackson had another life as a humorist, whose wry, detailed observations about her family and their small Vermont town — originally published in women's magazines — share a little bit of that edge, that darkness that makes her horror writing so powerful.

The Last Black Unicorn

by Tiffany Haddish

"I just kept pushing," comedian Tiffany Haddish told NPR in 2017 , "because I know what I'm supposed to do here on this Earth." The Last Black Unicorn is her account of what she had to keep pushing through on her way to success — including an abusive marriage, years in foster care and, ultimately, the challenge from a social worker that put her on the path to a career in comedy. Haddish herself says she couldn't mine her marriage for laughs, but the rest of the book is honest, funny and, in the end, inspiring.

Ayoade On Ayoade

by Richard Ayoade

British actor and filmmaker Richard Ayoade — The IT Crowd 's beloved, awkward Moss — began directing music videos in 2007 and made his full-length directorial debut with Submarine in 2010. Mix that love of film with his comedic chops and you get Ayoade on Ayoade, an extremely loosely autobiographical series of essays (and silly footnotes) in which he interviews himself about his career as a filmmaker and the movies that shaped him. Did I mention the footnotes?

by Amy Poehler

Amy Poehler takes off her wigs and costumes and steps out of character for her memoir, Yes Please — a decision she says was difficult . But it's fun getting closer to the real Poehler in this funny, eclectic, somewhat scattershot book and discovering the thought process behind some of her most indelible characters.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

by Sloane Crosley

If David Sedaris thinks you're funny, you're probably pretty funny — and he has called Sloane Crosley "perfectly, relentlessly funny." I Was Told There'd Be Cake is her debut collection, and it introduces her as an original yet definitely relatable voice. Who among us, after all, hasn't worried about dying suddenly and having friends and family discover something embarrassing — like a stash of toy ponies under the sink — while cleaning out our stuff?

Me Talk Pretty One Day

by David Sedaris

Everybody has a favorite David Sedaris collection. Many champion his early fiction/memoir-hybrid stuff like Barrel Fever and Naked, but in Me Talk Pretty, the hilarious essayist mines his real life — strip-mines it, in some cases — and the result feels richer, truer. In the first half, he selects moments from his childhood as well as his life as a writer in New York City for gentle (and not-so-gentle) (and often self-) mockery. In the second half, Sedaris manages to write about moving to a country house in France with his lover in a way that's so fresh and funny we somehow get over our seething jealousy.

Assassination Vacation

by Sarah Vowell

Sarah Vowell walks the reader through the first three U.S. presidential assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley), but make no mistake: This is no whistle-stop tour. Vowell, in her sardonic but never caustic way, grounds us firmly in the era in question while never missing an opportunity to draw trenchant parallels to our own. She visits gravesites and ghoulish medical museums, but the book doesn't seem so much death-obsessed as death-charmed. You'll come away wanting to trace her steps to the Washington, D.C., boardinghouse where the Lincoln assassins met and plotted, which is now, as she notes, a karaoke restaurant serving better-than-average bubble tea.

by David Rakoff

Readers voted in almost every book David Rakoff ever wrote, but our judges agreed that Half Empty — in which he writes about the power of what he calls "defensive pessimism," or assuming the worst — was, in fact, the best. "I can see a great beauty in acknowledging the fact that the world is dark," Rakoff told NPR's Linda Wertheimer in 2010. While writing the book, he learned he had the cancer that would eventually kill him, but as he put it in another interview , with defensive pessimism, "you imagine the worst-case scenario you can and you go through it step by step, and you dismantle those things and you manage your anxiety about it."

Cool, Calm, And Contentious

by Merrill Markoe

Merrill Markoe has won multiple Emmy Awards for her work as a writer on Late Night with David Letterman, but she is less well-known than a lot of the other funny women on this list. (On her website, she claims to be "haunted by the fear that the creation of 'Stupid Pet Tricks' was going to be the only thing that would appear in her obituary.") So pick up this volume of essays and start getting to know Markoe — we promise, she's really funny.

We Are Never Meeting In Real Life

by Samantha Irby

Readers loved this painfully relatable collection of essays from poll judge Samantha Irby, and rightfully so — you may cringe occasionally as you read, but it'll be because you know you've done exactly what Irby is describing in such droll, deadpan fashion. Also, her cat, Helen Keller, is one of the greatest comic creations of all time.

If Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries What Am I Doing In The Pits

by Erma Bombeck

Erma Bombeck was an American humorist who, yes, captured the travails of suburban life and homemaking in the pages of newspapers and women's magazines — as well as weekly segments on Good Morning America for over a decade. But she was also a consummate prose stylist. You can't read a Bombeck essay without hearing the weary affection behind every withering observation and her clear-eyed charm that never devolved to familiar clichés. This collection of essays finds her at the very top of her game as a voice for millions of Americans who were beginning to realize that the American dream was one that came with its share of night terrors.

You Can't Touch My Hair

by Phoebe Robinson

Phoebe Robinson is one-half of the awesome podcast 2 Dope Queens and a fierce voice for diversity in comedy . Her debut essay collection is about black hair, yes, but also about what it's like to be the one black friend in your group ("Hint," she writes, "it's annoying"), what it's like to be black in general ("very cool and awesome and also annoying") and, as she puts it, "all the stuff that makes some dude on the Internet call me a 'See You Next Tuesday.' " You should also check out her follow-up collection, Everything's Trash, But It's Okay.

I Can't Date Jesus

by Michael Arceneaux

Writer Michael Arceneaux grew up black, gay and Catholic in Houston, an experience he chronicles in this eloquent, honest — and extremely funny — essay collection. He told Fresh Air's Terry Gross that his very religious mother hated the book's title, but it actually came from a conversation they had. "I know that you're born gay. I know that you can't help it. But if you have sex and get hit by a bus, I don't know where you're going to go," his mother told him — to which he replied, "Well, girl, I can't date Jesus."

The Awkward Thoughts Of W. Kamau Bell

by W. Kamau Bell

Comedian W. Kamau Bell says he has spent most of his life feeling awkward — growing up tall, but not an athlete, interested in comedy but feeling out of place in comedy clubs. He writes about that, along with race relations, intersectionality, politics and being a blerd (a black nerd) in this conversational collection that will leave you feeling like you've spent the afternoon with a very funny and definitely smarter-than-you friend.

One Day We'll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter

by Scaachi Koul

Scaachi Koul grew up in Canada the child of Indian immigrants, an experience she draws on in this sharp-edged collection of essays. Koul takes on some tough subjects — privilege, gender roles, online abuse and all the things that have made her miserable — but she manages to wring laughs out of it all.

So Sad Today

by Melissa Broder

Writer Melissa Broder started the @sosadtoday Twitter account in 2012 to deal with a merciless cycle of panic attacks and anxiety that went on and on. Which doesn't sound like great material for comedy, but sometimes the only way out of unhappiness is to make fun of it. As she puts it in the introduction to this collection, based on those darkly funny tweets, "There aren't that many ways to find comfort in this world. We must take it where we can get it, even in the darkest, most disgusting places."

The Fran Lebowitz Reader

by Fran Lebowitz

Collecting her bestsellers Metropolitan Life and Social Studies, this indispensable volume of Fran Lebowitz's essays transports the reader to a place (New York City) and a time (late '70s-early '80s) with uncanny specificity. Lebowitz writes lean but compact prose as effortless as it is ruthless. You could bounce a quarter off every blistering sentence, every scalding take (her ferocious defense of smoking in restaurants, for example) and come away with your eyebrows happily singed. They call her the modern-day Dorothy Parker, but there's a generation of contemporary writers who'd kill to be called the heir apparent to Fran Lebowitz.

The Misadventures Of Awkward Black Girl

by Issa Rae

Our judges and you, the readers, were unanimous in wanting to see Issa Rae's debut collection on this list. Named after her hit Web comedy series — but written in her own voice, rather than that of her character in the show — it's a winningly deadpan account of all the awkward, frustrating and embarrassing moments that helped shape her (as well as a guide to navigating any awkward situations you might find yourself in). Also, Rae had a great conversation with our own Michel Martin about the Web series, which you can check out here .

Vacationland

by John Hodgman

John Hodgman wrote his first few books in a voice one might call "Erudite, Condescending Polymath," but with 2011's That is All, he began to drop that pose and let notes of searching melancholy enter the mix. That process continued apace with this, his fourth book, a collection of essays built from his life as a writer, husband, father, friend, homeowner, full-time Yankee and part-time Mainer. He's as funny and charming as ever here, but he is also more worried, more doubtful, shuffling off the carapace of intellectual swagger to expose something more raw and relatable.

You'll Grow Out Of It

by Jessi Klein

In this collection, comedy writer Jessi Klein — she won an Emmy as the head writer for Inside Amy Schumer — considers everything from life as a tomboy to her philosophical objections to baths ("I feel like getting in the bath is a kind of surrender to the idea that we can't really make it on land," she writes). Poll judge Aparna Nancherla says Klein "is an absolute genius at taking an experience she's had and making it universally relatable using the most delightful imagery you would have never thought of, but is, in fact, the perfect and only description."

Comics And Cartoons

by Noelle Stevenson

Noelle Stevenson's breakout graphic novel about a charming shape-shifter who apprentices herself to the local villain starts as a lighthearted comic fantasy — and blossoms into a morally and emotionally complex (but still funny) story about good and evil, love and friendship and betrayal. Our critic Tasha Robinson calls it "a perpetual surprise ... still puckish even when it turns grim, but for something that starts out so lighthearted and silly, it's astonishingly intense."

Hark! A Vagrant

by Kate Beaton

History and literature (even Canadian history and literature) were never more fun than in Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant. Beaton's loose, rubbery and incredibly expressive renderings of the Kennedy family, Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, and Odysseus encountering Sirens posing with Facebook duck lips will make you laugh for sure — and you might even learn something. (For example, she was way ahead of the rest of us on Rosalind Franklin .)

Almost Completely Baxter

by Glen Baxter and Marlin Canasteen

Glen Baxter is British, something that isn't immediately apparent in his masterful drawings of cowboys holding each other at gunpoint over a shirtful of kumquats or a strange speech balloon. And if that previous sentence went in a direction you didn't exactly expect, so do Baxter's surreally deadpan one-panel cartoons, each with a caption like "Hubert gazed on in awe at the morsel" or "The concept of the dimmer switch had yet to reach the Lazy K bunkhouse."

The Complete Far Side

by Gary Larson

If you grew up in the '80s, Gary Larson's laconic cows and chickens, befuddled scientists, aliens and ever present women in cat's-eye glasses were an indelible part of your cultural landscape. Or if you were my dad, you bought yourself a Far Side cartoon-a-day calendar every year, carefully saved your favorite jokes, wrapped them up and gave them to yourself at Christmas so you could savor them all again (Jane Goodall, that tramp!).

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

by Roz Chast

Cartoonist Roz Chast turns her pen on herself in this painfully funny account of taking care of her aging parents after they became incapable of living alone. Chast's jittery, wordy style is perfect for depicting the indignities of age as they affected her overbearing mother and her gentle, unassuming father — who referred to each other unironically as "soul mates" and who, in Chast's words, "aside from WWII, work, illness and going to the bathroom ... did everything together."

The Great Outdoor Fight

by Chris Onstad

Chris Onstad's resonantly weird comic about anthropomorphic animals doesn't really have an ongoing story, but it does have a few standout arcs — including this one, about the legendary, 3,000-man Great Outdoor Fight. Ray Smuckles — nominally a cat — discovers that his dad, Ramses, won the 1973 fight, so he is determined to repeat the feat with the help of his best friend, Roast Beef. But things go sideways when Ray realizes he is going to have to beat Beef to win. Onstad's art is spare at best, but his cats (and otters and robots) speak with a kind of poetry that'll stick in your head long after you close the book.

Woman World

by Aminder Dhaliwal

There are grim, dystopian visions of what life would be like if one gender went missing — think Y: The Last Man — and then there's Aminder Dhaliwal's gently goofy Woman World . Human males are mysteriously extinct in her world, and the women really aren't all that worked up about it. Our critic Etelka Lehoczky says their comfortable, uninhibited, matter-of-fact (and occasionally nude) lives make for a " remarkably sly and devastating critique of patriarchy ."

Hyperbole And A Half

by Allie Brosh

Allie Brosh adapted her deranged but deep blog into this book, which collects her bright, crude and incredibly quotable comics about All The Things , from grammar peeves and depression to the unholy power of a little kid's dinosaur costume. She described it to Fresh Air's Terry Gross as "stand-up comedy in book form," adding that her signature style — tubular bodies, shark-fin hair and mismatched goggle eyes — is "what I'm like when I view myself. I am this crude absurd little thing, this squiggly little thing on the inside."

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (Comics)

by Ryan North and Erica Henderson

Eats nuts, kicks butts! Ryan North and Erica Henderson reboot one of the weirder Marvel heroes as a bubbly, irrepressible computer science major who relies just as much on her STEM chops as on her ability to communicate with squirrels in defeating the bad guys. The marginalia — including footnotes and imaginary social media chats between SG and other Marvel characters — are almost as fun as the main story.

The Essential Calvin And Hobbes

by Bill Watterson

A boy, his stuffed tiger, some tuna sandwiches and a really useful cardboard box — cartoonist Bill Watterson didn't need much to spin this heartfelt, gloriously loopy paean to childhood (and childhood imagination). Watterson stopped drawing the strip more than 20 years ago (sob!) but luckily we still have The Essential Calvin and Hobbes. It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy ... let's go exploring!

Trust No Aunty

by Maria Qamar

Artist Maria Qamar — known on Instagram as hatecopy — turned her online work into this bright, satirical pop art-inflected tribute to the overbearing "aunties" who meddle in her life. "An aunty is any older woman who thinks she knows what's best for you," Qamar told NPR . "My mom's family is huge, so I have a million aunties."

Bridget Jones's Diary

by Helen Fielding

"V. v. good!" as Bridget Jones herself would say. Helen Fielding's messy, relatable heroine is an icon of chick lit — and really, literature in general. Follow along with Bridget Jones for a tumultuous year of too many cigarettes, too many alcohol units consumed, three colorful best friends and the one and only Mr. Mark Darcy.

A Confederacy Of Dunces

by John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole's singular novel is the kind of book you'll finish, put down, and instantly pick up to read again — though you may feel a little weird spending so much time with Toole's belching, bellowing protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly as he torments his long-suffering mother, attempts (with comic lack of success) new jobs, and lolls in bed with his Big Chief tablets full of ramblings about medieval history. The city of New Orleans is almost as much of a character as Reilly is; Toole's rendering of street life, local characters and accents brings it blazing off the page.

by Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller's masterpiece captures the brutal absurdity of war by building absurdity into the prose itself ("The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him"). Structurally innovative and blisteringly funny in its indictment of humanity in general and the military in particular, Heller's novel became a phenomenon, and its title, referring to a military diktat that a soldier cannot claim insanity to avoid flying missions, because asking not to fly proves one sane, entered the lexicon as a means to describe, broadly, a no-win situation.

French Exit

by Patrick Dewitt

To make a "French exit" means to leave without saying goodbye — and in the case of "moneyed, striking" widow Frances Price, to ditch Manhattan for Paris, along with her lumpish, loyal son and geriatric cat in order to avoid looming penury and scandal. "All good things must end," says Frances at the start of the book — so savor Patrick DeWitt's mix of understatement and over-frankness while it lasts.

Crazy Rich Asians

by Kevin Kwan

Kevin Kwan's tale of love complicated by absurd amounts of money is as fizzy as a flute of Champagne sipped in a super-deluxe first-class cabin. As far as NYU professor Rachel Chu knows, her boyfriend, Nick Young, is reasonably well-off. But when she agrees to spend the summer with him back home in Singapore, she discovers his family owns half the island — and everyone's got their knives out for the nobody from New York.

Dear Committee Members

by Julie Schumacher

Julie Schumacher's epistolary novel is a little bit unusual — instead of recording a correspondence between writers, the story here unfolds through an increasingly unhinged series of letters from one man, a disaffected creative writing professor who's got no problem writing incredibly insulting letters of "recommendation" for his students. "He is the sort of rageful person who you feel yourself to be, before the superego takes over and tells you, 'Don't say that,' " Schumacher told NPR in 2014 .

High Fidelity

by Nick Hornby

Rob, the ostensible hero of Nick Hornby's brilliantly incisive comic novel, is not just a bad boyfriend — though he is very much that — he's a bad nerd. He's the kind of obsessive who's not content to love what he loves — in his case, music. No, he and his co-workers at his London record shop insist on reducing music to an endless series of lists to be memorized, categorized, cross-referenced and, mostly, used as a cudgel to lord their expertise over others. Years before nerd culture became inescapable, Hornby had captured something essential about the contemporary male — how fear of intimacy inspires a fondness for arcana, and the corresponding conviction that personal taste is a reliable arbiter of worth.

The Princess Bride

by William Goldman

If you've only seen the movie version of The Princess Bride, you're in for a treat (not to denigrate the movie, which is pretty much the most quotable movie of all time). All your favorite characters have complex, well-rounded backstories. And William Goldman's original framing device is much funnier and more elaborate than the movie's simple storytime — Goldman claims to be searching for the book his father read to him as a child, only to discover that the real book is excruciatingly boring and his father was only reading him the good parts (not a spoiler, I promise). And in the interest of not spoiling things, we won't talk about how different the ending is ...

What happens when a power couple short-circuits? Nora Ephron's autobiographical novel about the collapse of her high-profile marriage to reporter Carl Bernstein is filled with righteous fury, though it's filtered through Ephron's gimlet eye for the perfect, cutting detail. Her novelistic stand-in is a food writer, so she includes several recipes that send up the prose style of those we would nowadays call foodies, even as they underscore Ephron's tart-tongued ambivalence about being treated as a "woman writer."

Big Trouble

by Dave Barry

We love Dave Barry for his gently humorous approach to real life — but poll voters also loved his debut novel, a comic thriller about a truly catastrophic chain of events set off when a dumb kid with a watergun gets mixed up in an actual assassination attempt. In his foreword, Barry refers to the novel as part of the "Bunch of South Florida Wackos" genre, so fans of Carl Hiaasen will definitely get a bang out of Big Trouble.

In God We Trust

by Jean Shepherd

If you've ever seen a leg lamp in a basement rec room, or triple-dog-dared a friend to do something stupid, you've experienced the comic legacy (har har) of Jean Shepherd, whose affectionately ironic stories about his Depression-era Indiana childhood were eventually made into the cult movie A Christmas Story . (Interestingly enough, a lot of them were originally published in Playboy magazine — but you can find them in this handy-dandy compilation and its follow-up volume, Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories. )

by Christopher Moore

What if Jesus Christ knew kung fu? That's the after-midnight dorm room musing at the heart of Christopher Moore's novel about the parts of Jesus' life that aren't detailed in the Bible. He is born and laid in the manger, sure — and then the next time we see him, he's in his 30s and kicking money-changers out of the Temple. So what was he doing all those years? Enter "Levi who is called Biff," resurrected by the angels after two millennia to tell the story of his adventures with his childhood best friend — including a trip to China to study martial arts.

Jitterbug Perfume

by Tom Robbins

Dueling perfumers! Ancient Eurasia! A multidimensional quest for immortality! Pan, the goat-god! Characters named Wiggs Dannyboy and Bingo Pajama! Welcome to Tom Robbins' sprawling, sexy cult novel (are there any Tom Robbins novels that cannot be said to be cult novels?). Jitterbug Perfume . Every Robbins novel has its devotees, but Jitterbug matches the author's gift for hilarious wordplay with his ability to spin disparate plot threads that ultimately weave together in surprising but hugely satisfying ways.

Daisy Fay And The Miracle Man

by Fannie Flagg

We thought the Fannie Flagg book that might end up on this list would be Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe — but readers went for Flagg's first novel, about irreverent almost-sixth-grader Daisy Fay Harper and her life on Mississippi's Gulf Coast during the 1950s. (The title comes from Daisy's ne'er-do-well dad, who concocts a get-rich-quick scheme with a local preacher to milk the faithful for money by pretending to raise Daisy from the dead.)

by Andrew Sean Greer

"Andrew Sean Greer's Pulitzer-winning comic novel about a middle-aged gay man on a round-the-world trip is light in tone but never slight in impact," says our own Glen Weldon. "The narrator observes the absent-minded Arthur Less' sexual and logistical perambulations with an artisanal blend of exasperation and affection, only occasionally granting us access to the wider, deeper story Less is running away from. As funny as it is, it's achingly poignant about what's been lost — an entire generation of gay men who aren't around to model what aging can look like. All that, plus a final image that leaves you gasping — and grinning."

The Sellout

by Paul Beatty

Paul Beatty was the first American to win the Man Booker Prize, for his blistering satire The Sellout . It's the story of an African American man who ends up being tried in court for reintroducing segregation in his hometown, and even owning a slave — a terrible transgression in our supposedly post-racial era. Our critic Michael Schaub calls it a comic masterpiece and also "one of the smartest and most honest reflections on race and identity in America in a very long time."

Made For Love

by Alissa Nutting

Alissa Nutting's wild ride of a novel is set in Florida (where else) and begins with the protagonist rolling up at her father's trailer only to find he's living with a sex doll. Named Diane. "It's absolutely ridiculous but also FULL OF JOKES, and the characters are fully realized and hilarious," says poll judge Samantha Irby. "There's dolphin romance and a lifelike sex doll and robots!! It's perfect."

My Sister, The Serial Killer

by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Korede, the protagonist in Oyinkan Braithwaite's debut novel, is tired. Tired of cleaning up the bloody crime scenes after her beautiful sister Ayoola murders yet another boyfriend. Korede knows she has to stop her sister, but she can't quite bear to see her get caught. Our critic Annalisa Quinn praises Braithwaite's " vicious, delicious deadpan " that borrows from soap operas as much as it does from Hitchcock.

The World According To Garp

by John Irving

"In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases." That's the famous last line of John Irving's novel — a sprawling, darkly funny family saga about a moderately successful writer, his uncompromisingly feminist mother (who turns out to be much more successful with her own writing), and the strange but winning community that forms around them.

Nobody's Fool

by Richard Russo

Richard Russo's sprawling, irascibly funny novel invites us to eavesdrop on the townsfolk of the less-than-idealized upstate New York village of North Bath — once a posh spa resort, and now home to a motley assortment of down-on-their-luck locals. And there's none more motley or luckless than Donald "Sully" Sullivan, a wisecracking, 60-year-old, bandy-legged old cuss who clings to a rootless existence "divorced from his own wife, carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, estranged from his son, devoid of self-knowledge, badly crippled and virtually unemployable — all of which he stubbornly confused with independence." Russo's prose and dialogue crackle with dry, mordant wit.

by Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen was all over the poll results, but we went with Skinny Dip, a classic that packs in everything you want from Hiaasen: crooked businessmen, crooked scientists (crooked everyone, really), an attempted murder gone flamboyantly wrong, colorfully bizarre supporting characters (also crooked) and exotic animals, all stewing in the swampy Florida heat.

The Wangs Vs. The World

by Jade Chang

The Wangs — the titular family in Jade Chang's debut novel — are having a bad year. Financial disaster has left them destitute, and they're on an epic cross-country road trip from their lost mansion in California to a new life crowded into the remaining family home in the Catskills. Critic Jason Heller says "their madcap trip serves as a travelogue of American weirdness, from desolate sands of the Mojave desert to the breakfast buffets of the Deep South."

Fantasy And Science Fiction

Discworld (series).

by Terry Pratchett

There are almost as many ways to read Terry Pratchett's classic comic fantasy series as there are volumes in it. Do you prefer witches? Specifically, badass teenage witches? Perhaps you're more the type for wizards? Bumbling guardsmen? Charismatic swindlers? Death personified (and his pale steed Binky)? Or maybe a stand-alone adventure (seriously, read Monstrous Regiment )? There's one thing most Pratchett fans agree on — skip the first two books, and if you must start at the beginning, go with Equal Rites, which introduces one of Pratchett's most iconic characters: the formidable witch Granny Weatherwax.

The Tough Guide To Fantasyland

by Diana Wynne Jones

Diana Wynne Jones starts with the idea that every single fantasy narrative is set in one place, called "Fantasyland," and follows it to the furthest reaches of absurdity in this mock travel guide. If, while on your Tour of Fantasyland, you need help decoding a Small Ambiguous Confrontation, figuring out whether a brown-haired person with silver eyes is Good or Evil or deciding what to order at an Inn (the answer is nothing, because Inns serve only Stew and Beer), the Tough Guide is an indispensable companion — far more useful than the Bard, Female Mercenary or Unpleasant Stranger that Management may have added to your party.

To Say Nothing Of The Dog

by Connie Willis

If time travel really existed, it seems obvious that historians would have a go at it. Connie Willis imagines just that in To Say Nothing of the Dog — a romp between centuries that kicks off when a time-traveling Oxford researcher accidentally brings something back from the Victorian era, prompting a mad scramble to prevent the timeline from disruption. The title is a reference to Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 comic travelogue, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), which you'll find in the Classics section of this list. And yes, there is a boat and a thoroughly delightful dog.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (Series)

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

by Douglas Adams

Do you know where your towel is? Are you prepared for the horrors of Vogon poetry? Do you know how to fly? (It's easy: Just throw yourself at the ground, and miss.) Douglas Adams' spacefaring epic about a bumbling, bathrobe-wearing human and his hitchhiking alien friend has warped the minds of countless impressionable baby nerds. Adams' voice and his comic sensibility were sui generis; lots of authors have tried to imitate him over the decades, and lots of authors have failed. Don't forget your Babel fish.

Thursday Next (Series)

by Jasper Fforde

If you've ever talked about diving into a book, getting lost in a book or wishing you could visit your favorite literary character in person, Jasper Fforde's delightfully surreal Thursday Next series is for you. Thursday herself is a literary detective in an alternate 1980s England where the Crimean War never ended, dodos have been reverse-engineered out of extinction and the BookWorld is as real as the world outside your door — and just as prone to crime and mischief (just ask all the Shakespeare forgers and Dickens thieves).

A Walk In The Woods

by Bill Bryson

In all of his books, Bill Bryson skillfully and hilariously mixes exhaustive scholarship with personal, and often ruefully self-deprecating, anecdotes. Never more so, perhaps, than in A Walk In The Woods , about his many abortive attempts to hike the Appalachian Trail. Whether he's supplying the reader with useful information about the behavior and habitat of black bears, or describing in painful detail how woefully unprepared he found himself for the challenge before him, Bryson is an indispensable guide to both the eccentrics, and the ecology, of the AT.

How To Weep In Public

by Jacqueline Novak

Jacqueline Novak's combination memoir and advice book is a brilliant read for anyone who has depression — and anyone wanting to learn more about it. It's the darkest of dark humor (check out the chapter about the joys crying on your cat), written by someone who knows that when you're down in the dumps, lying on the floor is great because at least you can't fall any further.

The New Joys Of Yiddish

by Leo Rosten and Lawrence Bush

"No dictionary has ever taken so much pride or pleasure in exploring a language," says poll judge Guy Branum. "From the nuances of the many words for penis and prostitute to the use of classic jokes to illustrate definitions, it's bound to leave you farmisht, verklempt and occasionally farblondjet. " And, I might add — a lebn af dayn kopf!

by Lindy West

Sometimes it seems like any woman who speaks up in public gets tagged as "shrill." Writer Lindy West embraces the label in this memoir — now a very funny TV show — about life as a loud, fat woman who refuses to comply with the demands society places on women's bodies and voices — and not only survives, but thrives.

How To Be A Woman

by Caitlin Moran

Part memoir and part banners-on-the-barricades defense of feminism, Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman is packed with funny, provocative observations on what it's like to be a woman today. "People get really scared when women reclaim words, talk about themselves honestly and also make jokes because it's a really unstoppable combination," Moran told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 2012. "It's part of the reason why I decided to use humor in my book because it's kind of hard to argue with someone who's making you laugh."

by Mary Roach

Morbidly fascinating and cringingly funny, Mary Roach's dissection (heh) of humanity's use of cadavers in science and medicine is enlivened (sorry) by her cheery enthusiasm for the subject and her deft ability to explain, say, the process of decomposition in hilarious, disgusting detail — and utter clarity. The book touches on issues of morality, ethics and spirituality, but never gets bogged down in them, buoyed by a sincere fondness for the wonders of science.

Kids' Books And YA

Sal & gabi break the universe.

by Carlos Hernandez

Gabi Real just knows Sal Vidon is the one who planted a raw chicken in a bully's locker, but how? Sal is an amateur magician, true — but beyond that, he has a truly arcane skill: He can open holes in the space-time continuum and pull out all kinds of things, including alternate versions of his deceased mother. Quantum high jinks, a wonderful team of friends and descriptions of incredibly delicious Cuban food make this a delightful read, though you may be hungry afterward.

Sideways Stories From Wayside School

by Louis Sachar

Wayside School was supposed to have 30 classrooms in a row, all on one floor. But instead, it was built with 30 classrooms all on top of each other in a teetering tower full of terribly cute children and extremely odd teachers. (Watch out for Mrs. Gorf — you don't want to be turned into an apple!) OK, the children are pretty odd, too, (especially Leslie, who tries to sell her own toes) but extremely entertaining.

The Phantom Tollbooth

by Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer

Join Milo and Tock the Watchdog on a road trip through the Kingdom of Wisdom in search of the exiled princesses Rhyme and Reason — with stops along the way to jump to Conclusions, get stalled out in the Doldrums and tangle with short Officer Shrift. Norton Juster's classic takes every figure of speech you can imagine and makes them gloriously literal — you'll never look at a square meal the same way again.

Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging

by Louise Rennison

Fourteen-year-old Georgia Nicolson is a comic creation right up there with her spiritual older sister, Bridget Jones. Angus is her cat — who keeps trying to eat the poodle next door. And thongs? "They just go up your bum, as far as I can tell." Georgia's sometimes minute-to-minute chronicle of the indignities of life with embarrassing parents and a toddler sister is a comic delight. Yes, the book is full of snarky British slang, but author Louise Rennison has thoughtfully included a glossary at the back of the book for us Yanks.

The Stinky Cheese Man And Other Fairly Stupid Tales

by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

Writer Jon Scieszka and illustrator Lane Smith's picture book riffs on classic kids' tales such as "Chicken Little" and "The Gingerbread Man" but outfits them with a knowing, smart-alecky, meta-fictional attitude. The narrator admonishes one character for trying to start her story on the inside cover of the book; other characters get flattened when the Table of Contents collapses on them. Lane Smith's gorgeously grotesque art lends the book a disquietingly surreal feeling while driving home the humor. There have been plenty of children's books that delight in fracturing classic fairy tales, but none of them is this gleefully, and thoroughly, weird.

Where The Sidewalk Ends

by Shel Silverstein

Every kid should have copies of Shel Silverstein's poetry books, A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends — but every discerning kid knows that Sidewalk is the superior of the two, because it has "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout," ol' man Simon in his garden full of diamonds and, of course, the terrible Boa Constrictor. (Oh, heck, it's up to my neck!) Silverstein's Ralph-Steadman-for-kids illustrations are just the icing on the kingly cake.

Archy And Mehitabel

by Don Marquis

Archy, a free verse poet reincarnated as a cockroach, lives in a newspaper office and spends his evenings jumping on the keys of a typewriter to bang out, yes, free verse descriptions of the critters he encounters every day — including, most memorably, Mehitabel the alley cat, who claims to have once been Cleopatra. Get the edition illustrated by Krazy Kat creator George Herriman, for maximum cat-and-cockroach glee.

The Best Of Ogden Nash

by Ogden Nash and Linell Nash Smith

"Being a Great Bad Poet is actually super hard," says poll judge Alexandra Petri, but Ogden Nash is one of the best. His loopy abuses of rhyme and meter swing so far out that they come back around to greatness, and this collection brings together a feast of his greatest. It's an easy read, too, since so many of his poems are bite-size. Always remember: "If called by a panther/Don't anther."

by Aristophanes

The great-great-we're-not-counting-all-the-greats granddaddy of all the works on this list. Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes sends up the intellectual fashions of Athens in this work, thought to have been produced for the stage around 423 B.C. Aristophanes doesn't pull any punches — in fact, he was so mean about his contemporary Socrates, depicting him as a fraud and mocking his famed teaching style, that Plato indirectly blamed him for Socrates' trial and execution. Spicy!

Jeeves And Wooster (Series)

by P. G. Wodehouse

Apparently, there are people in America who don't know that House star Hugh Laurie was once a comic actor. Which is a shame, because he is the perfect embodiment of upper-class nitwit Bertie Wooster in the '90s TV adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse's classic novels. Wooster and his impossibly competent butler, Jeeves, exist in a lovely, unmoored England with a vaguely 1920s feel, untroubled by anything more than unpleasant aunts, finicky fiancées and hapless friends. Carry on, Jeeves!

by Voltaire

Voltaire coined the term "best of all possible worlds" in this scabrous 1759 satire on optimism and disillusionment. Candide himself is a cheerful young man whose at first uncomplicated life goes as wrong as it possibly can, leading him — eventually — to reject his tutor's stubborn insistence that all is for the best. Though it was banned for blasphemy (among other sins) shortly after its publication, it's never been out of print since, and it's considered one of the most influential works in Western literature.

Cold Comfort Farm

by Stella Gibbons

There's something nasty in the woodshed! Sophisticated city girl Flora Poste finds herself an orphan at the age of 19, so she decides to move in with her rural relatives, the doom-and-gloom Starkadders — including Aunt Ada Doom, a recluse ever since her woodshed encounter at the age of 2 — and takes it upon herself to improve their lives. Our favorite librarian, Nancy Pearl, calls it " a deliciously entertaining read ." The movie's pretty great, too.

Pride And Prejudice

by Jane Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen was plenty funny even without zombies or secret diaries (or Bridget Jones's Diary — which you'll find elsewhere on this list). If you can read about Mrs. Bennet's nerves, or Mary's purse-lipped piety, or Kitty and Lydia's antics without cracking a smile, you're more sour a soul than Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Roughing It

by Mark Twain

Sure, we know Mark Twain as a writer and a humorist — but as a young man he went west and tried his hand at prospecting in the wilds of Nevada, alongside his good friend Calvin Higbie (the book is inscribed to Higbie, in honor of "the Curious Time When We Two WERE MILLIONAIRES FOR TEN DAYS" after finding and losing an ill-fated gold claim). It's not quite fact and not quite fiction — rather, it's a glorious tall tale of misadventures in a place long gone.

Importance Of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

Few people have contributed as many bons mots to English literature as Oscar Wilde, and a lot of them are in his most popular play, about two Victorian louts who are anything but earnest in their endless attempts to wiggle out of the era's stifling social strictures. Wilde's writing is like a good cocktail: tart, refreshing and complex — and liable to leave you a little giddy.

The Loved One

by Evelyn Waugh

Personally, as a journalist (says Petra), I was hoping readers would vote in Evelyn Waugh's wicked journalism satire Scoop — but no, you guys preferred The Loved One, his savage take on death, American style. Waugh had visited Hollywood in 1947, and while he had no truck with the big studios or their interest in his work, he found great inspiration in the famous Forest Lawn cemetery (Bette Davis is buried there!) and its team of morticians.

by Kingsley Amis

Kingsley Amis' biting satire of college life follows the unfortunate Jim Dixon, a junior medieval history professor at a middle-of-nowhere university who has to put up with all kinds of indignities. Amis was swapping letters and jokes and rants about the world in general with his friend the poet Philip Larkin as he wrote it (in fact, Jim Dixon is based partly on Larkin), so if you don't know Larkin's bitter gem " This Be the Verse ," go read it now and you'll get an idea of where their heads were at. Just be ready for a little profanity.

The Portable Dorothy Parker

by Dorothy Parker and Marion Meade

If Dorothy Parker isn't already the voice of your inner monologue, you can carry her around in book form with The Portable Dorothy Parker, which collects favorite stories like "The Big Blonde," her magazine writings and criticism, and, of course, her eminently quotable poetry, which though dark, delicately skirts the edge of utter hopelessness ("you might as well live").

Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog)

Three Men in a Boat; Three Men on the Bummel

by Jerome K. Jerome and Geoffrey Harvey

"I did not intend to write a funny book at first," Jerome K. Jerome (and yes, that is his name) once said. Apparently, he intended this comic travelogue to be an actual travel guide for people considering boating expeditions along the Thames — but the characters, based on Jerome and his friends, quickly took over. (We regret to inform you that Montmorency, the excellent dog, is entirely fictional.) Jerome made comic hay out of the most mundane things, like weather, boats and English food — keep an eye out for the episode of the canned pineapple!

The Pursuit Of Love

by Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford was a journalist, novelist and part of the notorious "Bright Young Things" who ruled London's social scene between the wars. Our judge Guy Branum picked The Pursuit of Love, Mitford's lightly fictionalized memoir of her aristocratic British childhood and her famous (and sometimes infamous) sisters. "The book delights in cruel wit and endless scandal," he says — and if you enjoy The Pursuit of Love, there are two more books featuring the same characters.

My Life and Hard Times

by James Thurber

No list of funny books would be complete without writer and cartoonist James Thurber, one of the finest American humorists of the 20th century. Lots of readers voted in his story " The Night the Bed Fell ," a confection of chaos that only tangentially concerns the actual bed — but we thought we'd give you more Thurber, so here's the book that contains that story, his illustrated account of growing up in Columbus, Ohio, with a family of peerless eccentrics and a rather put-upon bull terrier.

The Benchley Roundup

by Robert Benchley and Nathaniel Benchley

Humorist and occasional actor Robert Benchley held down one curve of the famed Algonquin Round Table (along with Dorothy Parker, whom you'll find elsewhere on this list), and this collection, curated by his son Nathaniel, rounds up (har har) some of his most timeless pieces on everything from Shakespeare to football. As our poll judge Alexandra Petri says, "You gotta have Benchley! He's a funnier Thurber!"

Short Stories

Texts from jane eyre.

by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

You KNOW, you just know that if Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester could text, he'd be bombarding her with florid all-caps inanities — and that she would shut him down demurely. "JANE I BOUGHT YOU A DRESS MADE OF TEN THOUSAND PEARLS AS A BRIDAL PRESENT." "where on earth would I wear that." But honestly, the best part of this entirely delightful book is Daniel Mallory Ortberg's impression of Emily Dickinson, whose fractured phrases are already text perfect.

"Victory Lap"

by George Saunders

"Victory Lap" is part of George Saunders' acclaimed collection Tenth of December, which you should also read. But start with this story (conveniently, the first one in the book), which veers from uneasily charming to bleakly funny to black as night, right before it whacks you in the head with a precious, expensive geode; those stars you're seeing are a tiny sparkle of hope.

Deep Thoughts

by Jack Handey

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it." We had to end the list with Jack Handey's little nuggets of absurdity, so cue the sunset backdrop and the easy-listening music, and remember that rain means God is crying — probably because of something you did.

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The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020

Featuring zadie smith, helen macdonald, claudia rankine, samantha irby, and more.

Zadie Smith’s Intimations , Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights , Claudia Rankine’s Just Us , and Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You all feature among the Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020.

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (Grove)

18 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

Read Helen Macdonald on Sherlock Holmes, Ursula Le Guin, and hating On the Road here

“A former historian of science, Macdonald is as captivated by the everyday (ants, bird’s nests) as she is by the extraordinary (glowworms, total solar eclipses), and her writing often closes the distance between the two … Always, the author pushes through the gloom to look beyond herself, beyond all people, to ‘rejoice in the complexity of things’ and to see what science has to show us: ‘that we are living in an exquisitely complicated world that is not all about us’ … The climate crisis shadows these essays. Macdonald is not, however, given to sounding dire, all-caps warnings … For all its elegiac sentences and gray moods, Vesper Flights is a book of tremendous purpose. Throughout these essays, Macdonald revisits the idea that as a writer it is her responsibility to take stock of what’s happening to the natural world and to convey the value of the living things within it.”

–Jake Cline ( The Washington Post )

2. Intimations by Zadie Smith (Penguin)

13 Rave • 7 Positive • 3 Mixed

Listen to Zadie Smith read from Intimations here

“Smith…is a spectacular essayist—even better, I’d say, than as a novelist … Smith…get[s] at something universal, the suspicion that has infiltrated our interactions even with those we want to think we know. This is the essential job of the essayist: to explore not our innocence but our complicity. I want to say this works because Smith doesn’t take herself too seriously, but that’s not accurate. More to the point, she is willing to expose the tangle of feelings the pandemic has provoked. And this may seem a small thing, but it’s essential: I never doubt her voice on the page … Her offhandedness, at first, feels out of step with a moment in which we are desperate to feel that whatever something we are trying to do matters. But it also describes that moment perfectly … Here we see the kind of devastating self-exposure that the essay, as a form, requires—the realization of how limited we are even in the best of times, and how bereft in the worst.”

–David L. Ulin ( The Los Angeles Times )

3. Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf)

11 Rave • 6 Positive • 5 Mixed

Read an excerpt from Just Us here

“ Just Us is about intimacy. Rankine is making an appeal for real closeness. She’s advocating for candor as the pathway to achieving universal humanity and authentic love … Rankine is vulnerable, too. In ‘lemonade,’ an essay about how race and racism affect her interracial marriage, Rankine models the openness she hopes to inspire. ‘lemonade’ is hard to handle. It’s naked and confessional, deeply moving and, ultimately, inspirational … Just Us , as a book, is inventive … Claudia Rankine may be the most human human I’ve ever encountered. Her inner machinations and relentless questioning would exhaust most people. Her labor should be less necessary, of course.”

–Michael Kleber-Diggs ( The Star Tribune )

4. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (One World)

7 Rave • 10 Positive • 2 Mixed

Listen to an interview with Cathy Park Hong here

“Hong’s metaphors are crafted with stinging care. To be Asian-American, she suggests, is to be tasked with making an injury inaccessible to the body that has been injured … I read Minor Feelings in a fugue of enveloping recognition and distancing flinch … The question of lovability, and desirability, is freighted for Asian men and Asian women in very different ways—and Minor Feelings serves as a case study in how a feminist point of view can both deepen an inquiry and widen its resonances to something like universality … Hong reframes the quandary of negotiating dominance and submission—of desiring dominance, of hating the terms of that dominance, of submitting in the hopes of achieving some facsimile of dominance anyway—as a capitalist dilemma … Hong is writing in agonized pursuit of a liberation that doesn’t look white—a new sound, a new affect, a new consciousness—and the result feels like what she was waiting for. Her book is a reminder that we can be, and maybe have to be, what others are waiting for, too.”

–Jia Tolentino ( The New Yorker )

5. World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Milkweed Editions)

11 Rave • 3 Positive

Read an excerpt from World of Wonders here

“In beautifully illustrated essays, poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil writes of exotic flora and fauna and her family, and why they are all of one piece … In days of old, books about nature were often as treasured for their illustrations as they were for their words. World of Wonders, American poet and teacher Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s prose ode to her muses in the natural world, is a throwback that way. Its words are beautiful, but its cover and interior illustrations by Fumi Mini Nakamura may well be what first moves you to pick it up in a bookstore or online … The book’s magic lies in Nezhukumatathil’s ability to blend personal and natural history, to compress into each brief essay the relationship between a biographical passage from her own family and the life trajectory of a particular plant or animal … Her kaleidoscopic observations pay off in these thoughtful, nuanced, surprise-filled essays.”

–Pamela Miller ( The Star Tribune )

6. Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby (Vintage)

10 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

Watch an interview with Samantha Irby here

“Haphazard and aimless as she claims to be, Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You is purposefully hilarious, real, and full of medicine for living with our culture’s contradictory messages. From relationship advice she wasn’t asked for to surrendering her cell phone as dinner etiquette, Irby is wholly unpretentious as she opines about the unspoken expectations of adulting. Her essays poke holes and luxuriate in the weirdness of modern society … If anyone whose life is being made into a television show could continue to keep it real for her blog reading fans, it’s Irby. She proves we can still trust her authenticity not just through her questionable taste in music and descriptions of incredibly bloody periods, but through her willingness to demystify what happens in any privileged room she finds herself in … Irby defines professional lingo and describes the mundane details of exclusive industries in anecdotes that are not only entertaining but powerfully demystifying. Irby’s closeness to financial and physical precariousness combined with her willingness to enter situations she feels unprepared for make us loyal to her—she again proves herself to be a trustworthy and admirable narrator who readers will hold fast to through anything at all.”

–Molly Thornton ( Lambda Literary )

7. Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing (W. W. Norton & Company)

5 Rave • 10 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan

“Yes, you’re in for a treat … There are few voices that we can reliably read widely these days, but I would read Laing writing about proverbial paint drying (the collection is in fact quite paint-heavy), just as soon as I would read her write about the Grenfell Tower fire, The Fire This Time , or a refugee’s experience in England, The Abandoned Person’s Tale , all of which are included in Funny Weather … Laing’s knowledge of her subjects is encyclopaedic, her awe is infectious, and her critical eye is reminiscent of the critic and author James Wood … She is to the art world what David Attenborough is to nature: a worthy guide with both a macro and micro vision, fluent in her chosen tongue and always full of empathy and awe.”

–Mia Colleran ( The Irish Times )

8. Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami (Pantheon)

6 Rave • 7 Positive • 1 Mixed • 2 Pan

“A] searing look at the struggle for all Americans to achieve liberty and equality. Lalami eloquently tacks between her experiences as an immigrant to this country and the history of U.S. attempts to exclude different categories of people from the full benefits of citizenship … Lalami offers a fresh perspective on the double consciousness of the immigrant … Conditional citizenship is still conferred on people of color, women, immigrants, religious minorities, even those living in poverty, and Lalami’s insight in showing the subtle and overt ways discrimination operates in so many facets of life is one of this book’s major strengths.”

–Rachel Newcomb ( The Washington Post )

9. This is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah (University of Georgia Press)

7 Rave • 2 Positive

Watch an interview with Sejal Shah here

“Shah brings important, refreshing, and depressing observations about what it means to have dark skin and an ‘exotic’ name, when the only country you’ve ever lived in is America … The essays in this slim volume are engaging and thought-provoking … The essays are well-crafted with varying forms that should inspire and enlighten other essayists … A particularly delightful chapter is the last, called ‘Voice Texting with My Mother,’ which is, in fact, written in texts … Shah’s thoughts on heritage and belonging are important and interesting.”

–Martha Anne Toll ( NPR )

10. Having and Being Had by Eula Biss (Riverhead)

5 Rave • 4 Positive • 4 Mixed

Read Eula Biss on the anticapitalist origins of Monopoly here

“… enthralling … Her allusive blend of autobiography and criticism may remind some of The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, a friend whose name pops up in the text alongside those of other artists and intellectuals who have influenced her work. And yet, line for line, her epigrammatic style perhaps most recalls that of Emily Dickinson in its radical compression of images and ideas into a few chiseled lines … Biss wears her erudition lightly … she’s really funny, with a barbed but understated wit … Keenly aware of her privilege as a white, well-educated woman who has benefited from a wide network of family and friends, Biss has written a book that is, in effect, the opposite of capitalism in its willingness to acknowledge that everything she’s accomplished rests on the labor of others.”

–Ann Levin ( Associated Press )

The Book Marks System: RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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18 Essay-Length Short Memoirs to Read Online on Your Lunch Break

We scoured collections, magazines, and online journals to bring you the 18 best short memoir examples you can read over your lunch break.

Emily Polson

Emily Polson is a freelance writer and publishing assistant at Simon & Schuster. Originally from central Iowa, she studied English and creative writing at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to a small Basque village to teach English to trilingual teenagers. Now living in Brooklyn, she can often be found meandering through Prospect Park listening to a good audiobook. Twitter: @emilycpolson | https://emilycpolson.wordpress.com/

View All posts by Emily Polson

I love memoirs and essays, so the genre of essay-length short memoirs is one of my favorites. I love delving into the details of other people’s lives. The length allows me to read broadly on a whim with minimal commitment. In roughly 5–30 minutes, I can consume a complete morsel of literature, which always leaves me happier than the same amount of time spent doom-scrolling through my various social news feeds.

What are short memoirs?

What exactly are short memoirs? I define them as essay-length works that weave together life experiences around a central theme. You see examples of short memoirs all the time on sites like Buzzfeed and The New York Times . Others are stand-alone pieces published in essay collections.

Memoir essays were my gateway into reading full-length memoirs. It was not until I took a college class on creative nonfiction that I realized memoirs were not just autobiographies of people with exciting lives. Anyone with any amount of life experience can write a memoir—no dramatic childhood or odd-defying life accomplishments required. A short memoir might be an account of a single, life-changing event, or it may be reflection on a period of growth or transition.

Of course, when a young adult tells people she likes writing creative nonfiction—not journalism or technical writing—she hears a lot of, “You’re too young to write a memoir!” and “What could someone your age possibly have to write about?!” As Flannery O’Connor put it, however, “The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can’t make something out of a little experience, you probably won’t be able to make it out of a lot. The writer’s business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.”

Memoir essay examples

As the lit magazine Creative Nonfiction puts it, personal essays are just “True stories, well told.” And everyone has life stories worth telling.

Here are a few of my favorite memoir examples that are essay length.

SHORT MEMOIRS ABOUT GROWING UP

Scaachi koul, “there’s no recipe for growing up”.

In this delightful essay, Koul talks about trying to learn the secrets of her mother’s Kashmiri cooking after growing up a first-generation American. The story is full of vivid descriptions and anecdotal details that capture something so specific it transcends to the realm of universal. It’s smart, it’s funny, and it’ll break your heart a little as Koul describes “trying to find my mom at the bottom of a 20-quart pot.”

ASHLEY C. FORD, “THE YEAR I GREW WILDLY WHILE MEN LOOKED ON”

This memoir essay is for all the girls who went through puberty early in a world that sexualizes children’s bodies. Ford weaves together her experiences of feeling at odds with her body, of being seen as a “distraction” to adult men, of being Black and fatherless and hungry for love. She writes, “It was evident that who I was inside, who I wanted to be, didn’t match the intentions of my body. Outside, there was no little girl to be loved innocently. My body was a barrier.”

Kaveh Akbar, “How I Found Poetry in Childhood Prayer”

Akbar writes intense, searing poetry, but this personal essay contextualizes one of his sweetest poems, “Learning to Pray,” which is cradled in the middle of it. He describes how he fell in love with the movement, the language, and the ceremony of his Muslim family’s nightly prayers. Even though he didn’t (and doesn’t) speak Arabic, Akbar points to the musicality of these phonetically-learned hymns as “the bedrock upon which I’ve built my understanding of poetry as a craft and as a meditative practice.” Reading this essay made me want to reread his debut poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf , all over again.

JIA TOLENTINO, “LOSING RELIGION AND FINDING ECSTASY IN HOUSTON”

New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino grew up attending a Houston megachurch she referred to as “the Repentagon.” In this personal essay, she describes vivid childhood memories of her time there, discussing how some of the very things she learned from the church contributed to her growing ambivalence toward it and its often hypocritical congregants. “Christianity formed my deepest instincts,” she writes, “and I have been walking away from it for half my life.” As the essay title suggests, this walking away coincided with her early experiences taking MDMA, which offered an uncanny similarity to her experience of religious devotion.

funny short memoirs

Patricia lockwood, “insane after coronavirus”.

Author Patricia Lockwood caught COVID-19 in early March 2020. In addition to her physical symptoms, she chronicled the bizarre delusions she experienced while society also collectively operated under the delusion that this whole thing would blow over quickly. Lockwood has a preternatural ability to inject humor into any situation, even the dire ones, by highlighting choice absurdities. This is a rare piece of pandemic writing that will make you laugh instead of cry–unless it makes you cry from laughing.

Harrison Scott Key, “My Dad Tried to Kill Me with an Alligator”

This personal essay is a tongue-in-cheek story about the author’s run-in with an alligator on the Pearl River in Mississippi. Looking back on the event as an adult, Key considers his father’s tendencies in light of his own, now that he himself is a dad. He explores this relationship further in his book-length memoir, The World’s Largest Man , but this humorous essay stands on its own. (I also had the pleasure of hearing him read this aloud during my school’s homecoming weekend, as Key is an alumnus of my alma mater.)

David Sedaris, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”

Sedaris’s humor is in a league of its own, and he’s at his best in the title essay from Me Talk Pretty One Day . In it, he manages to capture the linguistic hilarities that ensue when you combine a sarcastic, middle-aged French student with a snarky French teacher.

SAMANTHA IRBY, “THE WORST FRIEND DATE I EVER HAD”

Samantha Irby is one of my favorite humorists writing today, and this short memoir essay about the difficulty of making friends as an adult is a great introduction to her. Be prepared for secondhand cringe when you reach the infamous moment she asks a waiter, “Are you familiar with my work?” After reading this essay, you’ll want to be, so check out Wow, No Thank You . next.

Bill Bryson, “Coming Home”

Bryson has the sly, subtle humor that only comes from Americans who have spent considerable time living among dry-humored Brits. In “Coming Home,” he talks about the strange sensation of returning to America after spending his first twenty years of adulthood in England. This personal essay is the first in a book-length work called I’m a Stranger Here Myself , in which Bryson revisits American things that feel like novelties to outsiders and the odd former expat like himself.

Thought-provoking Short memoirs

Tommy orange, “how native american is native american enough”.

Many people claim some percentage of Indigenous ancestry, but how much is enough to “count”? Novelist Tommy Orange–author of There There –deconstructs this concept, discussing his relationship to his Native father, his Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, and his son, who will not be considered “Native enough” to join him as an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. “ How come math isn’t taught with stakes?” he asks in this short memoir full of lingering questions that will challenge the way you think about heritage.

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, “I Had a Stroke at 33”

Lee’s story is interesting not just because she had a stroke at such a young age, but because of how she recounts an experience that was characterized by forgetting. She says that after her stroke, “For a month, every moment of the day was like the moment upon wakening before you figure out where you are, what time it is.” With this personal essay, she draws readers into that fragmented headspace, then weaves something coherent and beautiful from it.

Kyoko Mori, “A Difficult Balance: Am I a Writer or a Teacher?”

In this refreshing essay, Mori discusses balancing “the double calling” of being a writer and a teacher. She admits that teaching felt antithetical to her sense of self when she started out in a classroom of apathetic college freshmen. When she found her way into teaching an MFA program, however, she discovered that fostering a sanctuary for others’ words and ideas felt closer to a “calling.” While in some ways this makes the balance of shifting personas easier, she says it creates a different kind of dread: “Teaching, if it becomes more than a job, might swallow me whole and leave nothing for my life as a writer.” This memoir essay is honest, well-structured, and layered with plenty of anecdotal details to draw in the reader.

Alex Tizon, “My Family’s Slave”

In this heartbreaking essay, Tizon pays tribute to the memory of Lola, the domestic slave who raised him and his siblings. His family brought her with them when they emigrated to America from the Philippines. He talks about the circumstances that led to Lola’s enslavement, the injustice she endured throughout her life, and his own horror at realizing the truth about her role in his family as he grew up. While the story is sad enough to make you cry, there are small moments of hope and redemption. Alex discusses what he tried to do for Lola as an adult and how, upon her death, he traveled to her family’s village to return her ashes.

Classic short memoirs

James baldwin, “notes of a native son”.

This memoir essay comes from Baldwin’s collection of the same name. In it, he focuses on his relationship with his father, who died when Baldwin was 19. He also wrestles with growing up black in a time of segregation, touching on the historical treatment of black soldiers and the Harlem Riot of 1943. His vivid descriptions and honest narration draw you into his transition between frustration, hatred, confusion, despair, and resilience.

JOAN DIDION, “GOODBYE TO ALL THAT”

Didion is one of the foremost literary memoirists of the twentieth century, combining journalistic precision with self-aware introspection. In “Goodbye to All That,” Didion recounts moving to New York as a naïve 20-year-old and leaving as a disillusioned 28-year-old. She captures the mystical awe with which outsiders view the Big Apple, reflecting on her youthful perspective that life was still limitless, “that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.” This essay concludes her masterful collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem .

Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”

This is the title essay from O’Brien’s collection, The Things They Carried . It’s technically labeled a work of fiction, but because the themes and anecdotes are pulled from O’Brien’s own experience in the Vietnam War, it blurs the lines between fact and fiction enough to be included here. (I’m admittedly predisposed to this classification because a college writing professor of mine included it on our creative nonfiction syllabus.) The essay paints an intimate portrait of a group of soldiers by listing the things they each carry with them, both physical and metaphorical. It contains one of my favorite lines in all of literature: “They all carried ghosts.”

Multi-Media Short Memoirs

Allie brosh, “richard”.

In this blog post/webcomic, Allie Brosh tells the hilarious story about the time as a child that she, 1) realized neighbors exist, and 2) repeatedly snuck into her neighbor’s house, took his things, and ultimately kidnapped his cat. Her signature comic style drives home the humor in a way that will split your sides. The essay is an excerpt from Brosh’s second book, Solutions and Other Problems , but the web version includes bonus photos and backstory. For even more Allie classics, check out “Adventures in Depression” and “Depression Part Two.”

George Watsky, “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight”

Watsky is a rapper and spoken word poet who built his following on YouTube. Before he made it big, however, he spent five years performing for groups of college students across the Midwest. “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight!” traces that soul-crushing monotony while telling a compelling story about trying to connect with people despite such transience. It’s the most interesting essay about boredom you’ll ever read, or in this case watch—he filmed a short film version of the essay for his YouTube channel. Like his music, Watsky’s personal essays are vulnerable, honest, and crude, and the whole collection, How to Ruin Everything , is worth reading.

If you’re looking for even more short memoirs, keep an eye on these pages from Literary Hub , Buzzfeed , and Creative Nonfiction . You can also delve into these 25 nonfiction essays you can read online and these 100 must-read essay collections . Also be sure to check out the “Our Reading Lives” tag right here on Book Riot, where you’ll find short memoirs like “Searching for Little Free Libraries as a Way to Say Goodbye” and “How I Overcame My Fear of Reading Contemporary Poets.”

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Best Short Stories and Collections Everyone Should Read

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Blog – Posted on Sunday, Jun 17

Best short stories and collections everyone should read.

If you are on the lookout for great storytelling but don’t want to commit to a full-length novel, then short story collections are the answer. Whether it’s just before bed, during your commute, or waiting to see your doctor, small chunks of time are perfect for reading short stories.

Here we have gathered thirty-one of the best short stories and collections , from all sorts of backgrounds and sources, to help you grow your “To Be Read” pile.

For your convenience, we've divided this post into two parts: 1. the ten best free short stories to read right now , and 2. best short story collections. Feel free to jump to the section that you prefer!

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great short stories out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized short story recommendation 😉

Which short story should you read next?

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Free Short Stories to Read Right Now

These individual short stories are the best of the best — and the even better news is that they're available for free online for you to peruse. From classics published in the 1900s to a short story that exploded in late 2017, here are ten of the greatest free short stories for you to read.

1. “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl

While not exactly a philosophical or political tale like our first two examples, this twisty short story from Dahl does delve into some shady moral territory. We are introduced to Mary Maloney: a loving wife and dedicated homemaker. In just a few short paragraphs describing how she welcomes her husband home, Dahl makes us sympathize with Mary — before a rash act turns her life upside down and takes the reader with her on a dark journey.

For those who haven’t read it, we won’t spoil the rest. However, it’s safe to say that Dahl serves up a fiendish twist on a platter.

2. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

A perennial feature in many a high school syllabus, Shirley Jackson’s best-known short story clinically details an unusual ritual that takes place in a small town. There’s not exactly a lot of plot to spoil in The Lottery — but within a few short pages, Jackson manages to represent the mob mentality that can drive reasonable people to commit heinous acts.

3. “How to Become a Writer” by Lorrie Moore

Told in the second person point of view , this story from Moore’s debut anthology Self-Help takes an honest look at the inner life of a struggling artist. Through the use of an unusual POV, the author manages to turn her reader into a confidante — making it abundantly clear that the ‘you’ the narrator is speaking about is actually herself.

This story is a standout, but the entire collection is well worth a read for its insight, humor, and disregard for literary norms.

4. “Cat Person” by Kristen Roupenian

In the Social Media Age, no short story has gone viral the way this New Yorker contribution from Roupenian has. Arriving at the height of #MeToo, it begins with 20-year-old Margot embarking on the early stages of flirtation with an older man, Robert. As she gets to know more about this man (as well as filling in the gaps with her imagination), the power dynamic in their relationship starts to fluctuate.

Lauded for its portrayal of Margot’s inner life and the fears many modern women face when it comes to dating, it also has its fair share of detractors — many are critical of the central character, some are downright outraged by the story’s success. Still, this story undeniably struck a chord with the reading public, and will likely remain relevant for some time.

5. “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver

First published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1981, “Cathedral” is today known as one of Raymond Carver’s finest works. When it opens, we meet a narrator whose wife is expecting a visit from an old friend, a blind man. Dissatisfied and distrusting of people not like him, our narrator struggles to connect until the blind man asks him to describe a cathedral to him.

“Cathedral” is one of Carver’s own personal favorites, and deservedly so. His characteristic minimalist style is devastating as the story builds up to a shattering moment of emotional truth — an ultimate reminder that no-one else can capture the quiet sadness of working-class people like him.

6. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor

Innocuously titled, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is nevertheless Flannery O’Connor’s bleakest — and most famous — work. It begins unassumingly with a Southern family who’s planning to go on a road trip. Yet the journey is rudely interrupted when their car overturns on an abandoned dirt road — and they are met by an enigmatic group of three men, coming up over the far hill.

This short story inspired some strong reactions from the public upon publication — and the conversation continues today as to its frank depiction of the nature of good and evil. Again, we won’t spoil anything for you, except to say that “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is well worth your time.

7. “Symbols and Signs” by Vladimir Nabokov

The famous author of Lolita wrote “Signs and Symbols” in 1948. Its premise is seemingly simple: an elderly couple visits their mentally ill son in the sanatorium in America. Yet their background and trials come into sharp focus as the story develops, until an explosive ending disrupts everyone’s peace of mind.

As you might expect, the somber “Symbols and Signs” diverges sharply from Lolita in terms of both tone and subject — but its ending will keep you awake at night thinking about its implications.

8. “Sticks” by George Saunders

Not so much a short story as it is flash fiction, “Sticks” is written from the perspective of a young man whose father has an unusual habit: dressing up a crucifix that’s built of out a metal pole in the yard. One of America’s greatest living short story writers, George Saunders explained: "For two years I'd been driving past a house like the one in the story, imagining the owner as a man more joyful and self-possessed and less self-conscious than myself. Then one day I got sick of him and invented his opposite, and there was the story."

The result is a masterful piece of fiction that builds something out of seemingly nothing — all in the space of only two paragraphs.

9. “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury

If there’s anyone who you can trust to deliver thought-provoking, terrifying science fiction on the regular, it’s Ray Bradbury. In “The Veldt,” George and Lydia Hadley have bought an automated house that comes with a “nursey,” or a virtual reality room. Worried about the nursery’s effect on the kids, George and Lydia think about turning off the nursey — but the problem is that their children are obsessed with it.

As an ominously prescient prediction of the downside of technology, “The Veldt” is a short and shining example of how Ray Bradbury was an author before his time.

10. “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes

In this classic short story, we are privy to the journals of Charlie Gordon, a cleaner with an IQ of 68. ("I reely wantd to lern I wantid it more even then pepul who are smarter even then me. All my life I wantid to be smart and not dumb.”) Charlie’s luck changes when he is selected for an experiment that purports to turn him into a genius — but everything that goes up must come down in the end.

“Flowers for Algernon” won the Hugo Award in 1960 for its groundbreaking presentation. Heartbreaking and rich with subtle poignance, it is likely to remain a staple for centuries to come.

Best Short Story Collections to Devour

If you'd like many short stories at your fingertips all at once, short story collections are where you should look. Here, we've collected 21 of the best short story collections — along with the standout story in each volume.

11. A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

Standout Story: “A Manual for Cleaning Women”

12. Blow-up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar

Standout Story: “House Taken Over”

13. Drifting House by Krys Lee

Standout Story: “Drifting House”

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14. Dubliners by James Joyce

Standout Story: “The Dead”

15. Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales by Stephen King

Standout Story: “Riding the Bullet”

16. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

Standout Story: “The Garden of Forking Paths”

17. Florida by Lauren Groff

Standout Story: “Above and Below”

18. Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman

Standout Story: “The Flints of Memory Lane”

19. Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl

Standout Story: “The Pig”

20. Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

Standout Story: “Samsa in Love”

21. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger

Standout Story: “For Esme - With Love and Squalor”

22. Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Standout Story: “In a Bamboo Grove”

23. Runaway by Alice Munro

Standout Story: “Runaway”

24. Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel García Márquez

Standout Story: “The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow”

25. The Collected Stories by Grace Paley

Standout Story: “A Man Told Me the Story of His Life”

26. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway

Standout Story: “Hills Like White Elephants”

27. The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor

Standout Story: “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

28. The Essential Tales of Chekhov by Anton Chekhov

Standout Story: “The Lady with the Dog”

29. The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Standout Story: “I’d Love You to Want Me”

30. The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Standout Story: “The Thing Around Your Neck”

31. The Youngest Doll by Rosario Ferré

Standout Story: “When Women Love Men”

Ready to write your own short story? Check out these short story ideas for all your inspiration needs.

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Essay on Books for Students and Children

500 Words Essay on Books

Books are referred to as a man’s best friend . They are very beneficial for mankind and have helped it evolve. There is a powerhouse of information and knowledge. Books offer us so many things without asking for anything in return. Books leave a deep impact on us and are responsible for uplifting our mood.

This is why we suggest children read books from an early age to gain knowledge. The best part about books is that there are various types of books. One can read any type to gain different types of knowledge. Reading must be done by people of all ages. It not only widens our thinking but also enhances our vocabulary.

Different Genres of Books

There are different genres of books available for book readers. Every day, thousands of books are released in the market ranging from travel books to fictional books. We can pick any book of our interest to expand our knowledge and enjoy the reading experience.

Firstly, we have travel books, which tell us about the experience of various travelers. They introduce us to different places in the world without moving from our place. It gives us traveling tips which we can use in the future. Then, we have history books which state historical events. They teach about the eras and how people lived in times gone by.

Furthermore, we have technology books that teach us about technological developments and different equipment. You can also read fashion and lifestyle books to get up to date with the latest trends in the fashion industry.

Most importantly, there are self-help books and motivational books . These books help in the personality development of an individual. They inspire us to do well in life and also bring a positive change in ourselves. Finally, we have fictional books. They are based on the writer’s imagination and help us in enhancing our imagination too. They are very entertaining and keep us intrigued until the very end.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Benefits of Reading Books

There are not one but various advantages of reading books. To begin with, it improves our knowledge on a variety of subjects. Moreover, it makes us wiser. When we learn different things, we learn to deal with them differently too. Similarly, books also keep us entertained. They kill our boredom and give us great company when we are alone.

Furthermore, books help us to recognize our areas of interest. They also determine our career choice to a great extent. Most importantly, books improve our vocabulary . We learn new words from it and that widens our vocabulary. In addition, books boost our creativity. They help us discover a completely new side.

In other words, books make us more fluent in languages. They enhance our writing skills too. Plus, we become more confident after the knowledge of books. They help us in debating, public speaking , quizzes and more.

In short, books give us a newer perspective and gives us a deeper understanding of things. It impacts our personality positively as well. Thus, we see how books provide us with so many benefits. We should encourage everyone to read more books and useless phones.

FAQs on Books

Q.1 State the different genres of books.

A.1 Books come in different genres. Some of them are travel books, history books, technology books, fashion and lifestyle books, self-help books, motivational books, and fictional books.

Q.2 Why are books important?

A.2 Books are of great importance to mankind. They enhance our knowledge and vocabulary. They keep us entertained and also widen our perspective. This, in turn, makes us more confident and wise.

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'She wanted to live a good life': Parents of Indian doctor raped and murdered on night shift

The rape and murder of a trainee doctor in India’s Kolkata city earlier this month has sparked massive outrage in the country, with tens of thousands of people protesting on the streets, demanding justice. BBC Hindi spoke to the doctor’s parents who remember their daughter as a clever, young woman who wanted to lead a good life and take care of her family.

All names and details of the family have been removed as Indian laws prohibit identifying a rape victim or her family.

"Please make sure dad takes his medicines on time. Don't worry about me."

This was the last thing the 31-year-old doctor said to her mother, hours before she was brutally assaulted in a hospital where she worked.

“The next day, we tried reaching her but the phone kept ringing," the mother told the BBC at their family home in a narrow alley, a few kilometres from Kolkata.

The same morning, the doctor’s partially-clothed body was discovered in the seminar hall, bearing extensive injuries. A hospital volunteer worker has been arrested in connection with the crime.

The incident has sparked massive outrage across the country, with protests in several major cities. At the weekend, doctors across hospitals in India observed a nation-wide strike called by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), with only emergency services available at major hospitals.

The family say they feel hollowed out by their loss.

“At the age of 62, all my dreams have been shattered," her father told the BBC.

Since their daughter's horrific murder, their house, located in a respectable neighbourhood, has become the focus of intense media scrutiny.

Behind a police barricade stand dozens of journalists and camera crew, hoping to capture the parents in case they step out.

A group of 10 to 15 police officers perpetually stand guard to ensure the cameras do not take photos of the victim's house.

Getty Images Women hold lit candles as they take part in a vigil named 'Reclaim the Night' on 15 August in Kolkata

The crime took place on the night of 9 August, when the woman, who was a junior doctor at the city's RG Kar Medical College, had gone to a seminar room to rest after a gruelling 36-hour shift.

Her parents remembered how the young doctor, their only child, was a passionate student who worked extremely hard to become a doctor.

“We come from a lower middle-class background and built everything on our own. When she was little, we struggled financially," said the father, who is a tailor.

The living room where he sat was cluttered with tools from his profession - a sewing machine, spools of thread and a heavy iron. There were scraps of fabrics scattered on the floor.

There were times when the family did not have money to even buy pomegranates, their daughter's favourite fruit, he continued.

"But she could never bring herself to ask for anything for herself."

“People would say, ‘You can’t make your daughter a doctor'. But my daughter proved everyone wrong and got admission in a government-run medical college," he added, breaking down. A relative tried to console him.

The mother recalled how her daughter would write in her diary every night before going to bed.

“She wrote that she wanted to win a gold medal for her medical degree. She wanted to lead a good life and take care of us too,” she said softly.

And she did.

The father, who is a high blood-pressure patient, said their daughter always made sure he took his medicines on time.

“Once I ran out of medicine and thought I’d just buy it the next day. But she found out, and even though it was around 10 or 11pm at night, she said no-one will eat until the medicine is here,” he said.

“That’s how she was - she never let me worry about anything."

Her mother listened intently, her hands repeatedly touching a gold bangle on her wrist - a bangle she had bought with her daughter.

Getty Images Resident doctors shout slogans protesting in front of the Health Ministry in Delhi, demanding justice for the doctor from Kolkata's RG Kar Hospital, on 19 August, 2024

The parents said their daughter’s marriage had almost been finalised. "But she would tell us not to worry and say she would continue to take care of all our expenses even after marriage," the father said.

As he spoke those words, the mother began to weep, her soft sobs echoing in the background.

Occasionally, her eyes would wander to the staircase, leading up to their daughter's room.

The door has remained shut since 10 August and the parents have not set foot there since the news of her death.

They say they still can't believe that something "so barbaric" could happen to their daughter at her workplace.

"The hospital should be a safe place," the father said.

Violence against women is a major issue in India - an average of 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022, according to government data.

The parents said their daughter’s death had brought back memories of a 2012 case when a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern was gang-raped on a moving bus in capital Delhi. Her injuries were fatal.

Following the assault - which made global headlines and led to weeks of protests - India tightened laws against sexual violence.

But reported cases of sexual assault have gone up and access to justice still remains a challenge for women.

Last week, thousands participated in a Reclaim the Night march held in Kolkata to demand safety for women across the country.

The doctor’s case has also put a spotlight on challenges faced by healthcare workers, who have demanded a thorough and impartial investigation into the murder and a federal law to protect them - especially women - at work.

Federal Health Minister JP Nadda has assured doctors that he will bring in strict measures to ensure better safety in their professional environments.

But for the parents of the doctor, it's too little too late.

“We want the harshest punishment for the culprit," the father said.

“Our state, our country and the whole world is asking for justice for our daughter."

Raped Indian doctor's colleague speaks of trauma and pain

Protest at indian railway station over alleged abuse of girls, india gang rape victim's death sparks outrage, the rape victim’s mum fighting for india’s daughters, what do delhi rape hangings mean for women.

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‘A Lot of Us Are Gone’: How the Push to Diversify Publishing Fell Short

Lisa Lucas was among the big hires meant to shake up the industry. Her departure, alongside other prominent Black editors and executives, has led some to question publishers’ pledge to diversify.

Share full article

A black and white photo showing Lisa Lucas in her garden at home in Brooklyn.

By Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth Harris

When Lisa Lucas was hired in the summer of 2020 to take a big job at the country’s largest book publisher, there was a sense that things were finally starting to change in what has long been an overwhelmingly white industry.

Lucas, who became the publisher of Pantheon and Schocken, imprints within Penguin Random House, was an unusual choice for the job. Executives in the book business often spend decades working their way up the ranks. While Lucas was a well-known figure in the literary world — she had previously been the executive director of the National Book Foundation, which administers the National Book Awards — she had never worked in corporate publishing.

Lucas’s hiring was written up in major news outlets as evidence that publishers were committed to diversifying. As the first Black person to run Pantheon in its 80-year history, and one of the few Black women to head a major publishing division, she faced enormous pressure. Not only did she need to learn quickly on the job and succeed as a publisher, she was also saddled with expectations that she would help drive change at a moment when publishers faced calls to diversify their catalogs and companies.

“There’s pressure on you when you’re one of few,” Lucas said in an interview this summer. “That was a lot to lay on me.”

This May, Lucas was abruptly let go , informed of her firing just a few hours before it became public. The news stunned some in the literary world who saw Lucas, 44, as a tastemaker and rising talent, and as someone who could help discover and champion writers of color.

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Key things to know about U.S. election polling in 2024

Conceptual image of an oversized voting ballot box in a large crowd of people with shallow depth of field

Confidence in U.S. public opinion polling was shaken by errors in 2016 and 2020. In both years’ general elections, many polls underestimated the strength of Republican candidates, including Donald Trump. These errors laid bare some real limitations of polling.

In the midterms that followed those elections, polling performed better . But many Americans remain skeptical that it can paint an accurate portrait of the public’s political preferences.

Restoring people’s confidence in polling is an important goal, because robust and independent public polling has a critical role to play in a democratic society. It gathers and publishes information about the well-being of the public and about citizens’ views on major issues. And it provides an important counterweight to people in power, or those seeking power, when they make claims about “what the people want.”

The challenges facing polling are undeniable. In addition to the longstanding issues of rising nonresponse and cost, summer 2024 brought extraordinary events that transformed the presidential race . The good news is that people with deep knowledge of polling are working hard to fix the problems exposed in 2016 and 2020, experimenting with more data sources and interview approaches than ever before. Still, polls are more useful to the public if people have realistic expectations about what surveys can do well – and what they cannot.

With that in mind, here are some key points to know about polling heading into this year’s presidential election.

Probability sampling (or “random sampling”). This refers to a polling method in which survey participants are recruited using random sampling from a database or list that includes nearly everyone in the population. The pollster selects the sample. The survey is not open for anyone who wants to sign up.

Online opt-in polling (or “nonprobability sampling”). These polls are recruited using a variety of methods that are sometimes referred to as “convenience sampling.” Respondents come from a variety of online sources such as ads on social media or search engines, websites offering rewards in exchange for survey participation, or self-enrollment. Unlike surveys with probability samples, people can volunteer to participate in opt-in surveys.

Nonresponse and nonresponse bias. Nonresponse is when someone sampled for a survey does not participate. Nonresponse bias occurs when the pattern of nonresponse leads to error in a poll estimate. For example, college graduates are more likely than those without a degree to participate in surveys, leading to the potential that the share of college graduates in the resulting sample will be too high.

Mode of interview. This refers to the format in which respondents are presented with and respond to survey questions. The most common modes are online, live telephone, text message and paper. Some polls use more than one mode.

Weighting. This is a statistical procedure pollsters perform to make their survey align with the broader population on key characteristics like age, race, etc. For example, if a survey has too many college graduates compared with their share in the population, people without a college degree are “weighted up” to match the proper share.

How are election polls being conducted?

Pollsters are making changes in response to the problems in previous elections. As a result, polling is different today than in 2016. Most U.S. polling organizations that conducted and publicly released national surveys in both 2016 and 2022 (61%) used methods in 2022 that differed from what they used in 2016 . And change has continued since 2022.

A sand chart showing that, as the number of public pollsters in the U.S. has grown, survey methods have become more diverse.

One change is that the number of active polling organizations has grown significantly, indicating that there are fewer barriers to entry into the polling field. The number of organizations that conduct national election polls more than doubled between 2000 and 2022.

This growth has been driven largely by pollsters using inexpensive opt-in sampling methods. But previous Pew Research Center analyses have demonstrated how surveys that use nonprobability sampling may have errors twice as large , on average, as those that use probability sampling.

The second change is that many of the more prominent polling organizations that use probability sampling – including Pew Research Center – have shifted from conducting polls primarily by telephone to using online methods, or some combination of online, mail and telephone. The result is that polling methodologies are far more diverse now than in the past.

(For more about how public opinion polling works, including a chapter on election polls, read our short online course on public opinion polling basics .)

All good polling relies on statistical adjustment called “weighting,” which makes sure that the survey sample aligns with the broader population on key characteristics. Historically, public opinion researchers have adjusted their data using a core set of demographic variables to correct imbalances between the survey sample and the population.

But there is a growing realization among survey researchers that weighting a poll on just a few variables like age, race and gender is insufficient for getting accurate results. Some groups of people – such as older adults and college graduates – are more likely to take surveys, which can lead to errors that are too sizable for a simple three- or four-variable adjustment to work well. Adjusting on more variables produces more accurate results, according to Center studies in 2016 and 2018 .

A number of pollsters have taken this lesson to heart. For example, recent high-quality polls by Gallup and The New York Times/Siena College adjusted on eight and 12 variables, respectively. Our own polls typically adjust on 12 variables . In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be necessary to have that much intervention by the pollster. But the real world of survey research is not perfect.

Predicting who will vote is critical – and difficult. Preelection polls face one crucial challenge that routine opinion polls do not: determining who of the people surveyed will actually cast a ballot.

Roughly a third of eligible Americans do not vote in presidential elections , despite the enormous attention paid to these contests. Determining who will abstain is difficult because people can’t perfectly predict their future behavior – and because many people feel social pressure to say they’ll vote even if it’s unlikely.

No one knows the profile of voters ahead of Election Day. We can’t know for sure whether young people will turn out in greater numbers than usual, or whether key racial or ethnic groups will do so. This means pollsters are left to make educated guesses about turnout, often using a mix of historical data and current measures of voting enthusiasm. This is very different from routine opinion polls, which mostly do not ask about people’s future intentions.

When major news breaks, a poll’s timing can matter. Public opinion on most issues is remarkably stable, so you don’t necessarily need a recent poll about an issue to get a sense of what people think about it. But dramatic events can and do change public opinion , especially when people are first learning about a new topic. For example, polls this summer saw notable changes in voter attitudes following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. Polls taken immediately after a major event may pick up a shift in public opinion, but those shifts are sometimes short-lived. Polls fielded weeks or months later are what allow us to see whether an event has had a long-term impact on the public’s psyche.

How accurate are polls?

The answer to this question depends on what you want polls to do. Polls are used for all kinds of purposes in addition to showing who’s ahead and who’s behind in a campaign. Fair or not, however, the accuracy of election polling is usually judged by how closely the polls matched the outcome of the election.

A diverging bar chart showing polling errors in U.S. presidential elections.

By this standard, polling in 2016 and 2020 performed poorly. In both years, state polling was characterized by serious errors. National polling did reasonably well in 2016 but faltered in 2020.

In 2020, a post-election review of polling by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) found that “the 2020 polls featured polling error of an unusual magnitude: It was the highest in 40 years for the national popular vote and the highest in at least 20 years for state-level estimates of the vote in presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial contests.”

How big were the errors? Polls conducted in the last two weeks before the election suggested that Biden’s margin over Trump was nearly twice as large as it ended up being in the final national vote tally.

Errors of this size make it difficult to be confident about who is leading if the election is closely contested, as many U.S. elections are .

Pollsters are rightly working to improve the accuracy of their polls. But even an error of 4 or 5 percentage points isn’t too concerning if the purpose of the poll is to describe whether the public has favorable or unfavorable opinions about candidates , or to show which issues matter to which voters. And on questions that gauge where people stand on issues, we usually want to know broadly where the public stands. We don’t necessarily need to know the precise share of Americans who say, for example, that climate change is mostly caused by human activity. Even judged by its performance in recent elections, polling can still provide a faithful picture of public sentiment on the important issues of the day.

The 2022 midterms saw generally accurate polling, despite a wave of partisan polls predicting a broad Republican victory. In fact, FiveThirtyEight found that “polls were more accurate in 2022 than in any cycle since at least 1998, with almost no bias toward either party.” Moreover, a handful of contrarian polls that predicted a 2022 “red wave” largely washed out when the votes were tallied. In sum, if we focus on polling in the most recent national election, there’s plenty of reason to be encouraged.

Compared with other elections in the past 20 years, polls have been less accurate when Donald Trump is on the ballot. Preelection surveys suffered from large errors – especially at the state level – in 2016 and 2020, when Trump was standing for election. But they performed reasonably well in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, when he was not.

During the 2016 campaign, observers speculated about the possibility that Trump supporters might be less willing to express their support to a pollster – a phenomenon sometimes described as the “shy Trump effect.” But a committee of polling experts evaluated five different tests of the “shy Trump” theory and turned up little to no evidence for each one . Later, Pew Research Center and, in a separate test, a researcher from Yale also found little to no evidence in support of the claim.

Instead, two other explanations are more likely. One is about the difficulty of estimating who will turn out to vote. Research has found that Trump is popular among people who tend to sit out midterms but turn out for him in presidential election years. Since pollsters often use past turnout to predict who will vote, it can be difficult to anticipate when irregular voters will actually show up.

The other explanation is that Republicans in the Trump era have become a little less likely than Democrats to participate in polls . Pollsters call this “partisan nonresponse bias.” Surprisingly, polls historically have not shown any particular pattern of favoring one side or the other. The errors that favored Democratic candidates in the past eight years may be a result of the growth of political polarization, along with declining trust among conservatives in news organizations and other institutions that conduct polls.

Whatever the cause, the fact that Trump is again the nominee of the Republican Party means that pollsters must be especially careful to make sure all segments of the population are properly represented in surveys.

The real margin of error is often about double the one reported. A typical election poll sample of about 1,000 people has a margin of sampling error that’s about plus or minus 3 percentage points. That number expresses the uncertainty that results from taking a sample of the population rather than interviewing everyone . Random samples are likely to differ a little from the population just by chance, in the same way that the quality of your hand in a card game varies from one deal to the next.

A table showing that sampling error is not the only kind of polling error.

The problem is that sampling error is not the only kind of error that affects a poll. Those other kinds of error, in fact, can be as large or larger than sampling error. Consequently, the reported margin of error can lead people to think that polls are more accurate than they really are.

There are three other, equally important sources of error in polling: noncoverage error , where not all the target population has a chance of being sampled; nonresponse error, where certain groups of people may be less likely to participate; and measurement error, where people may not properly understand the questions or misreport their opinions. Not only does the margin of error fail to account for those other sources of potential error, putting a number only on sampling error implies to the public that other kinds of error do not exist.

Several recent studies show that the average total error in a poll estimate may be closer to twice as large as that implied by a typical margin of sampling error. This hidden error underscores the fact that polls may not be precise enough to call the winner in a close election.

Other important things to remember

Transparency in how a poll was conducted is associated with better accuracy . The polling industry has several platforms and initiatives aimed at promoting transparency in survey methodology. These include AAPOR’s transparency initiative and the Roper Center archive . Polling organizations that participate in these organizations have less error, on average, than those that don’t participate, an analysis by FiveThirtyEight found .

Participation in these transparency efforts does not guarantee that a poll is rigorous, but it is undoubtedly a positive signal. Transparency in polling means disclosing essential information, including the poll’s sponsor, the data collection firm, where and how participants were selected, modes of interview, field dates, sample size, question wording, and weighting procedures.

There is evidence that when the public is told that a candidate is extremely likely to win, some people may be less likely to vote . Following the 2016 election, many people wondered whether the pervasive forecasts that seemed to all but guarantee a Hillary Clinton victory – two modelers put her chances at 99% – led some would-be voters to conclude that the race was effectively over and that their vote would not make a difference. There is scientific research to back up that claim: A team of researchers found experimental evidence that when people have high confidence that one candidate will win, they are less likely to vote. This helps explain why some polling analysts say elections should be covered using traditional polling estimates and margins of error rather than speculative win probabilities (also known as “probabilistic forecasts”).

National polls tell us what the entire public thinks about the presidential candidates, but the outcome of the election is determined state by state in the Electoral College . The 2000 and 2016 presidential elections demonstrated a difficult truth: The candidate with the largest share of support among all voters in the United States sometimes loses the election. In those two elections, the national popular vote winners (Al Gore and Hillary Clinton) lost the election in the Electoral College (to George W. Bush and Donald Trump). In recent years, analysts have shown that Republican candidates do somewhat better in the Electoral College than in the popular vote because every state gets three electoral votes regardless of population – and many less-populated states are rural and more Republican.

For some, this raises the question: What is the use of national polls if they don’t tell us who is likely to win the presidency? In fact, national polls try to gauge the opinions of all Americans, regardless of whether they live in a battleground state like Pennsylvania, a reliably red state like Idaho or a reliably blue state like Rhode Island. In short, national polls tell us what the entire citizenry is thinking. Polls that focus only on the competitive states run the risk of giving too little attention to the needs and views of the vast majority of Americans who live in uncompetitive states – about 80%.

Fortunately, this is not how most pollsters view the world . As the noted political scientist Sidney Verba explained, “Surveys produce just what democracy is supposed to produce – equal representation of all citizens.”

Survey Methods
Trust, Facts & Democracy
Voter Files

Scott Keeter is a senior survey advisor at Pew Research Center .

Courtney Kennedy is Vice President of Methods and Innovation at Pew Research Center .

How do people in the U.S. take Pew Research Center surveys, anyway?

How public polling has changed in the 21st century, what 2020’s election poll errors tell us about the accuracy of issue polling, a field guide to polling: election 2020 edition, methods 101: how is polling done around the world, most popular.

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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