The Reading Room
Short Novels to Finish Before the Holidays Get Loud
Early November is the last stretch when a weekend can still belong to you. After that, the calendar fills with travel, dinners, school programs and relatives asking what you want this year. If you want to finish a book before the noise starts, pick a short one. Not necessarily a light one. Short.
Each of the four below is a short novel (some people would call a couple of them novellas, and we won't argue) that a steady reader can finish in a weekend, often in one long afternoon. We read every one cover to cover. Not all of them are for you, so each entry says who should pass.
Four short novels worth the last quiet weekend
Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan
In a small Irish town in the weeks before Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant with a wife and daughters, makes a delivery to the local convent and sees something he can't put out of his mind. That's the setup. The rest of the book is about what a careful, decent man does with what he's seen, and what it might cost him.
It is very short and very controlled. Keegan doesn't waste a sentence, and the Christmas setting makes it the obvious seasonal pick without making it cheerful. The history underneath it is grim, handled quietly.
Read it if you like restraint, small towns, and books where the big moment is a decision. It also works well for a group, because everyone actually finishes it.
Skip it if you need plot momentum to keep turning pages, or if you were hoping for holiday warmth. This is a Christmas book in the way a cold morning is a Christmas morning.
Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson
Robert Grainier is a laborer in the American West in the early twentieth century, working railroad and logging crews, and the book follows his life across decades in very few pages. It moves the way memory does: jumps, odd details, stretches of plain work, and some moments that are frankly strange.
Read it if you live somewhere with mountains and long winters and like fiction that takes that landscape seriously. It reads a little like a folk tale someone half remembers, and readers who like that quality tend to love it.
Skip it if you want a clear arc with a beginning, middle and payoff. The strangeness is the point, and if it annoys you on the first few pages it will keep annoying you.
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman on a long unlucky streak, rows out alone into the Gulf Stream and hooks an enormous marlin. Most of the book is the two of them, and his stubbornness about not letting go.
Read it if you were assigned it in school and resented it. It reads differently once you've had a few years of doing hard things nobody watched you do. It's also a good pick if you like books about work and endurance with almost no talking.
Skip it if Hemingway's plain, repetitive sentences grate on you. They don't change here, and there are a lot of them.
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
George and Lennie, two migrant ranch workers in Depression-era California, arrive at a new job carrying a shared dream of a small place of their own. George is quick and small; Lennie is huge, strong and childlike. It's built almost like a play, with a handful of settings and a lot of dialogue, and it moves fast.
Read it if you want a book that will hit hard and give you something to argue about over dinner. It's one of the best short novels for a conversation, because readers rarely agree on what they'd have done.
Skip it if you only half remember it from school and the half you remember is the ending. Rereading is worth it, but you won't be surprised.
Match the book to the weekend you actually have
| Book | Mood | Pace | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small Things Like These | Quiet, wintry, morally tense | Slow and exact | One afternoon, or a small club |
| Train Dreams | Elegiac, strange, Western | Drifting, episodic | A solo reader who likes oddness |
| The Old Man and the Sea | Stubborn, spare, physical | Steady, repetitive on purpose | A reread you were owed |
| Of Mice and Men | Warm, then devastating | Fast, dialogue-heavy | Reading with someone and arguing after |
If this, then that
- If you want something seasonal that isn't sugary, then read Small Things Like These.
- If you want the West, big country and a little weirdness, then read Train Dreams.
- If you want a book about stubbornness and doing the work anyway, then read The Old Man and the Sea.
- If you want to feel something and talk about it with someone, then read Of Mice and Men.
- If you have exactly one afternoon and no more, then start with Keegan.
- If you want comfort and none of these sound like it, then skip all four and ask us for something gentler.
Use the short ones to start something bigger
Short novels are the easiest way to get a reluctant group reading again. Nobody falls behind, nobody skims, and the conversation starts from the same page. If you're thinking of a holiday club or a workplace one, Douglas County Libraries lists its book club kits in its catalog, and the Denver Public Library catalog will show you what's on the shelf before you commit a group to it.
They also make good gifts, because a short book is a book someone will actually open in late December. If you'd like a person to pick for you, our reading consultations, curated lists, hosted book clubs and gift stacks all start from the same place: what you finished, what you quit, and why.
The verdict
Read Small Things Like These first; it's the best fit for the season and the easiest to finish. Read Of Mice and Men if you have someone to talk to afterward. Train Dreams and The Old Man and the Sea are for specific readers, and you probably already know if you're one of them.
Start a reading request with the last three books you finished and one you quit, and we'll tell you which short novel to read before the holidays get loud.
