Sorted after counting, never before
Shortest books
The quickest reads in the collection. Topped by The Cask of Amontillado at 2,340 words.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·50 of 683 measured texts ranked·REVIEWED JUL 2026
The first fifty, measured
| # | Book | Author | books | Reading time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Cask of Amontillado | Poe, Edgar Allan | 2,340 words | 9 min |
| 2 | Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases | Kleiser, Grenville | 2,682 words | 11 min |
| 3 | The Missing Will | Christie, Agatha | 3,234 words | 13 min |
| 4 | The Damned Thing | Bierce, Ambrose | 3,268 words | 13 min |
| 5 | Color Images from Mars Rovers | Webster, Bob | 3,350 words | 13 min |
| 6 | A Modest Proposal | Swift, Jonathan | 3,417 words | 14 min |
| 7 | The Undersea Tube | Hansen, L. Taylor (Lucile Taylor) | 4,337 words | 17 min |
| 8 | The Hunter's Lodge Case | Christie, Agatha | 4,339 words | 17 min |
| 9 | The Plymouth Express Affair | Christie, Agatha | 4,831 words | 19 min |
| 10 | Sonnets from the Portuguese | Browning, Elizabeth Barrett | 5,513 words | 22 min |
| 11 | Songs of Innocence and of Experience | Blake, William | 5,551 words | 22 min |
| 12 | The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn | Henry VIII, King of England | 5,766 words | 23 min |
| 13 | The magnificent possession | Asimov, Isaac | 6,079 words | 24 min |
| 14 | The Yellow Wallpaper | Gilman, Charlotte Perkins | 6,147 words | 25 min |
| 15 | Erotica Romana | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von | 6,746 words | 27 min |
| 16 | Wizard | Janifer, Laurence M. | 7,323 words | 29 min |
| 17 | The Ambulance Made Two Trips | Leinster, Murray | 7,726 words | 31 min |
| 18 | Simple Sabotage Field Manual | United States. Office of Strategic Services | 8,925 words | 36 min |
| 19 | The Big Fix | Smith, George O. (George Oliver) | 9,180 words | 37 min |
| 20 | The silent Baltic | Knox, Marcus | 9,374 words | 37 min |
| 21 | The Satyricon — Volume 05 | Petronius Arbiter | 9,933 words | 40 min |
| 22 | A Martian Odyssey | Weinbaum, Stanley G. (Stanley Grauman) | 10,192 words | 41 min |
| 23 | The Enchiridion | Epictetus | 10,773 words | 43 min |
| 24 | The Shunned House | Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips) | 10,784 words | 43 min |
| 25 | "And That's How It Was, Officer" | Sholto, Ralph | 11,220 words | 45 min |
| 26 | The Misplaced Battleship | Harrison, Harry | 11,243 words | 45 min |
| 27 | The call of Cthulhu | Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips) | 11,890 words | 48 min |
| 28 | Shadows in the Moonlight | Howard, Robert E. (Robert Ervin) | 12,130 words | 49 min |
| 29 | Shadows in Zamboula | Howard, Robert E. (Robert Ervin) | 12,165 words | 49 min |
| 30 | The Legend of Sleepy Hollow | Irving, Washington | 12,229 words | 49 min |
| 31 | A Pickle for the Knowing Ones | Dexter, Timothy | 12,527 words | 50 min |
| 32 | Rizal's own story of his life | Rizal, José | 12,651 words | 51 min |
| 33 | Lysistrata | Aristophanes | 14,486 words | 58 min |
| 34 | The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan | Ashford, Daisy | 14,891 words | 1h 00m |
| 35 | The Lovers Assistant | Fielding, Henry | 16,190 words | 1h 05m |
| 36 | Apology | Plato | 16,193 words | 1h 05m |
| 37 | Jewels of Gwahlur | Howard, Robert E. (Robert Ervin) | 17,227 words | 1h 09m |
| 38 | The Dunwich horror | Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips) | 17,318 words | 1h 09m |
| 39 | A Midsummer Night's Dream | Shakespeare, William | 17,331 words | 1h 09m |
| 40 | The Ballad of the White Horse | Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) | 17,499 words | 1h 10m |
| 41 | Shakespeare's Sonnets | Shakespeare, William | 17,677 words | 1h 11m |
| 42 | De Profundis | Wilde, Oscar | 17,729 words | 1h 11m |
| 43 | Oedipus King of Thebes | Sophocles | 18,228 words | 1h 13m |
| 44 | Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson | Rowlandson, Mary White | 20,169 words | 1h 21m |
| 45 | The Importance of Being Earnest | Wilde, Oscar | 20,631 words | 1h 23m |
| 46 | Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 | Various | 20,748 words | 1h 23m |
| 47 | The Battle of the Strong | Parker, Gilbert | 20,947 words | 1h 24m |
| 48 | 1066 and all that | Sellar, Walter Carruthers | 21,329 words | 1h 25m |
| 49 | At the Sign of the Cat and Racket | Balzac, Honoré de | 21,465 words | 1h 26m |
| 50 | The Great God Pan | Machen, Arthur | 21,734 words | 1h 27m |
Ranked over the 683 texts measured here, not over everything ever printed — a ranking is only as wide as its shelf. The whole shelf, A to Z.
