Pressed for time? 20 brilliant books you can read in a day

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/jul/11/pressed-for-time-20-brilliant-books-you-can-read-in-a-day

Pressed for time? 20 brilliant books you can read in a day

From novels by James Baldwin and Han Kang to a guide to quantum physics – a former Booker prize judge recommends immersive one-sitting wonders

Chris Power
Sat 11 Jul 2026 04.00 EDT

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Booker judging aside, everyone’s time feels squeezed. The Booker prizes recently published research co-authored by the Reading Agency that reported 35% of readers struggle to finish books. The publisher Vintage describes its new collection of “short masterpieces” – by writers including Nella Larsen, Ursula K Le Guin, Toni Morrison and Fyodor Dostoevsky – as books that fit “contemporary reading lives”. And it’s true that if you pick a book of the appropriate dimensions and take the right precautions (phone in another room, don’t answer the door), reading a book in a day becomes a real possibility – particularly with summer holidays coming up.

But what to choose? That’s where this list comes in. It’s a personal selection, not a comprehensive one. And I’ve omitted some great but perhaps overfamiliar candidates – Heart of Darkness, The Great Gatsby, Ethan Frome. But all these books, familiar or not, are worth a day of your time.

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