Jumpstart Your 2025 Reading Log with These Short Books
Searching for a way to jumpstart your 2025 reading challenge log? Look no further. I’ve got eight fantastic short books in a variety of genres and styles that are sure to give your reading log a boost.
Maybe you’re reading this in January, when you’re fresh off your New Year’s resolution and determined to read more than you did last year. Maybe you’ve stumbled upon it later in the year, when you’ve fallen off the reading wagon and need a little help to get back on track. Whatever the case, I’ve got you covered.
No matter what you like to read, you’ll find something to love here. I’ve included two memoirs, three speculative novellas, two works of literary fiction, and an unconventional poetry collection—any of which will make a great addition to this year’s TBR.
Each of these books comes highly recommended by critics and readers alike. They may not be viral on TikTok, but they’re beloved. Best of all, these titles are all relatively new, which means they probably won’t be rereads for you. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
Keep scrolling to check out the short books that will help you jumpstart your reading log.
Jumpstart Your 2025 Reading Log with These Short Books
Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford (224 pages)
Ashley C. Ford spent most of her life idolizing her incarcerated father, who wrote her kind letters from prison. She wasn’t sure why he was jailed, but she was sure that he loved her. It’s not until her father was set to be released that Ford began to look into why he’d spent nearly her whole life separated from her. She details her relationships with both parents in this poignant, coming-of-age memoir.
The White Book by Han Kang (160 pages)
From 2024 Nobel Laureate Han Kang comes The White Book: the story of one unnamed author’s pursuit of making peace with her sister’s untimely death. In a series of interconnected stories, all focused around the color white, the writer ruminates on grief and loss, presence and absence, permanence and transcience.
The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo (153 pages)
Billed as “equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood-soaked revenge, all set in 1920s Appalachia,” Lee Mandelo’s The Woods All Black is the story of a trans man, Leslie, who comes to the doctorless hamlet of Spar Creek to administer vaccines and care for the sick in the aftermath of World War I. There, he meets Stevie, an androgynous and angry teenager targeted by the local church as an incorrigible tomboy. But there’s something evil lurking beneath Spar Creek’s home-grown atmosphere, and maybe even something monstrous.
The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed (160 pages)
Years ago, Veris Thorn rescued a child from the magical, untamed forest known as the Elmever. Now, she’s been tasked to return by none other than the foreign Tyrant who rules over the land, whose two young children have disappeared. She has only one day to complete her task; stay any longer, and the Elmever will claim her as its own. If she fails, she faces a grisly fate outside the forest. What choice does she have but to try?
Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (179 pages)
Suyi Davies Okungbowa imagines life after a drastic sea level rise in Lost Ark Dreaming. Here, West Africa has been transformed into five colossal towers, where the surviving poor live below sea level and the rich enjoy the sunny floors above. In this stratified society, three people are forced to band together when a monstrous force from the Atlantic threatens life as they know it.
Falling Back in Love with Being Human by Kai Cheng Thom (176 pages)
What do you do when your faith in humanity is shattered? If you’re Kai Cheng Thom, you write letters. The result is this poetic collection about loving the deeply unlovable parts and wholes of our society, including the transphobes and racists who hate Thom and people like her for who they are.
Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener (192 pages)
In 1878, an Austrian Jewish explorer placed a Peruvian baby up for exhibit in a human zoo at a European expo. More than a century later, a young Peruvian woman bearing his last name visits his collection in a museum and sees herself in the “exotic” works on display. For a woman who has just lost her father and discovered the second family he nurtured in secret, it’s the final straw. She digs into her great-great-grandfather’s legacy and attempts to unwind its complex tangles, in Undiscovered.
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher (240 pages)
The unnamed Palestinian woman at the heart of Yasmin Zaher’s novel was supposed to inherit $28 million. Due to the stipulations of her father’s will, however, she’s left to live on an allowance overseen by her brother. You wouldn’t know that from the way she dresses, however, and neither would the women she cons out of their Birkin bags to resell. But when she becomes obsessed with cleanliness and purity, her past and present collide.
Looking for more quick reads? Check out these sci-fi novellas and these books with short chapters that will keep you turning the pages all night long.