Are you thinking of tackling a classic book this summer?  Not quite ready for War and Peace or Middlemarch?  How about a short classic?  Check out one of those well-known books you’ve always meant to read!  And all are under 200 pages!

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

This best-selling sensation when first published in 1934, is still one of the best, most important, and most interesting crime novels in the canon.

 

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression — and a gateway into the work of  Steinbeck.

 

 

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Set among the bohemian bars and nightclubs of 1950s Paris, this groundbreaking novel about love and the fear of love is “a book that belongs in the top rank of fiction.”

 

 

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

The novel that first made Willa Cather famous–a powerfully mythic tale of the American frontier told through the life of one extraordinary woman.

 

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany’s. In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape–her poignancy, wit, and naïveté continue to charm.

 

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

The most widely read book in modern African literature tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a fearless Igbo warrior in Nigeria.

 

 

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

One of the most important and enduring works of the twentieth century.  A southern love story told with wit and pathos — perhaps one of the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the cannon of African-American literature.

 

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers.

 

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

The girls of Spark’s novel live in the May of Teck Club in London, disturbed but not destroyed by WWII—both the Club, that is, and the girls.