By Daria Vasina

Page count has never dictated my reading choices, but I must admit – I have a soft spot for longer reads. There’s something reassuring about returning to a familiar story and characters day after day over several weeks. But when I recently mentioned to friends that I’d just started a 750-page literary novel (Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise), they wished me luck – as if I were about to run a marathon. That’s when it became clear: my love of thick books places me in a minority.

Book lengths are declining. Readers are perhaps rejecting long books because they are considered challenging and time-consuming: reading them can feel like a commitment rather than a hobby. In comparison, short books feel more approachable and, as a result, are gaining popularity. Is there any appeal beyond their accessibility? Or have modern audiences simply grown too restless for anything over 200 pages?

Modern Content Consumption

Our media consumption habits are somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, our attention spans have shortened dramatically: from 150 seconds between switching tasks on a device in 2004 to just 47 seconds in 2023. Poor work-life balance, social media and the stress of current events have all been blamed for this shift in how we consume content. Given the sustained concentration literature requires, it’s unsurprising that our reading preferences have changed.

On the other hand, while we struggle to concentrate, we also crave more content than ever. Living in a binge culture has trained us to expect all media to be on-demand and instantly gratifying. Streaming an entire TV series over a weekend isn’t really a problem – waiting until the next night, let alone next week, for a new episode is.

On top of that, we are pushing ourselves to fit more content into less time. It’s not just uni lecture recordings I listen to at double speed – I do it with podcasts and YouTube videos too. Better to squeeze in two during a 30-minute lunch break than just one, right? With so much material available, it can feel like we have to sample as much of it as possible. Our focus is becoming less about what we consume and more about how much we consume.

Why are Short Books so Popular?

Slim volumes fit perfectly into this fast-paced contemporary mindset. They demand brief focus, less effort and their finales are just a few hours away.

Short books feel finishable. Though I love a long book, I still check the page count before diving into the first chapter. There’s comfort in knowing when the story ends – it’s like being able to see the destination you’re walking towards. Finishing a book, especially a literary or experimental one, can be a real confidence boost. It’s no surprise that we’re starting to view shorter works as both more accessible and more rewarding.

There’s another advantage to the short forms: they deliver concentrated emotions. They hit fast, their intensity packed firmly into every paragraph rather than spread across hundreds of pages. Han Kang’s poetic, haunting and often extremely unsettling works left me completely undone for that very reason. But impact doesn’t have to come from shock or discomfort. It can be the heartwarming – or heartbreaking – sentimentality of Japanese ‘comfort’ novels, or the loneliness and melancholy at the core of Dostoevsky’s White Nights, a recent BookTok hit. These titles prove that shorter books can resonate deeply and stay with readers long after the final page.

The Highs and Lows of Book Length

Longer books definitely feel riskier to read. They can take months to finish and, by the time you reach the end, your world (or your taste in literature) might have changed entirely. Getting stuck midway, without the satisfaction of finishing, feels like a waste of precious time. And spending weeks on a book only to realise it’s not really your thing? That’s even worse. In our always-rushed, always-busy culture, it’s only natural to wonder if such a risk is worth it.

I’d argue yes. What makes long books risky also makes them exceptionally rewarding. They have room to explore events, characters and ideas with more complexity than short books. Some stories simply need space: Ulysses experiments with style and structure, and the character arcs in Anna Karenina would be impossible to depict in a shorter format. Entire genres thrive on length, fantasy being the clearest example. After all, a full world can’t be built in just 200 pages. No wonder epic fantasy and romantasy novels like Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm (almost 550 pages!) escaped the unhappy fate of some lengthy literary works and still dominates bestseller lists.

Diving in to Longer Stories

Long books can give us thematic depth, fascinating worlds, dozens of characters to love (or hate) in a single text, and yes – the occasional book hangover. This isn’t to say they are better than short ones – only that they deserve to be given a go.

Breaking the text into manageable bits, reading at a pace that works for you or simply giving yourself permission to take your time can really help, and a good book will always reward the effort. And if you’re lucky enough to find your perfect reading match, it’ll never feel too long. A thousand pages? When the story’s gripping enough, you’ll wish there were a thousand more.

---

Daria is a Publishing and Communications graduate and a freelance editor. Her reading list is in a constant state of negotiation between brain-rot sports romances and highbrow literary fiction.

Cover image is by freddie marriage on Unsplash