February might be the shortest month, but it could be one in which you read the most books within its bounds! How is that possible? Let February inspire the length of your books. Forget about Infinite Jest or Middlemarch—pick up a short book instead!

  
For feminist polemics, grab Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me and Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s We Should All Be Feminists.
 

          
Revisit (or become acquainted with) high school syllabus classics like Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Night by Elie Wiesel, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and Animal Farm by George Orwell.
 

     
Try a zany but devastating story like Nell Zink’s The Wallcreeper or Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation.
 

     
In the mood for genre bending and blending? Give Renata Adler’s Speedboat, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, or Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts a read.
 

Whether novellas, extended essays, or longer stories, these books hover around 200 pages or less and are easily digestible in one sitting. But short books don’t contain small ideas! A writer’s economy of words is often shown at its best in tiny texts. Slim books pack a punch!

What are your favorite short books?