Two practical notes. First, slim volumes are where cheap editions show their age fastest — if you are giving several, buy one good copy rather than four that fall apart. Second, everything here is out of copyright, which means a good edition costs the same as a bad one and the difference is in the paper.
The last row of this list is the one to use in mid-December: a short book needs no shipping if you send an ebook instead, and every title here is free to read on this site tonight.
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Thirty-odd pages, and the most discussed short story in American literature. Fits any stocking, and starts a conversation the recipient will still be having in February.
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A slim novel that invented time travel as a plot device. The rare stocking filler that is also a genuinely important book.
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Wilde's fairy tales, written for his own sons. Short, beautiful and quietly devastating; the best gift here for a child who reads above their age.
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A novella everyone thinks they know. Small enough for a cracker, strange enough to be worth the second read.
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Under a hundred pages of Henry James, which is the right amount of Henry James for most readers. A good office gift: short, respectable, and not obviously a classic.
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One poem in a slim illustrated volume, and the most reliable small gift on this list. Buy the edition with Doré's engravings if you can find it.
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A hundred pages that carry more weight than most trilogies. For the colleague who reads on planes.
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Kipling's invented origin myths, best read aloud, and the only book here that works for a four-year-old and a forty-year-old on the same evening.
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A play in three acts, sold as a slim paperback, and the funniest thing on this site. The one to give when you do not know the person well.
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A short thriller that reads in an evening and has never been out of print. The safest emergency present in this whole section.
Buying for a reader rather than a stocking? Gifts for book lovers has the editions people keep; short classics has the ones they will actually finish.
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