7 classic books you can read in a weekend

“A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers,” writes journalist and author Italo Calvino. However, even in his influential essay praising the value of these works, Calvino readily admits that it is challenging to get around to actually reading them.

The stated reasons can be as diverse as the classics themselves, but they boil down to the simple fact that we rarely give ourselves the time to sit with the classics and find our rhythm. The very notion, Calvino points out, “seems to be at odds with our pace of life, which does not tolerate long stretches of time, or the space for humanist otium.”

Lacking those, too many people forgo the classics — or even the pleasures of reading entirely. 

If you’re looking to return to the classics or even for that initial spark, finding the time and the space will likely be the pressure point. As such, a shorter book can not only make the leap feel less daunting but also help you build the momentum and habit to tackle those heavier tomes later on. 

To help, we’ve put together a list of classics you can read in a weekend.  

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella contains more personalities than its dualistic subject. Widely regarded as a Victorian masterpiece today, it was initially sold as a cheap “penny dreadful” for a single shilling. Its plot beats feel straight out of a detective mystery, but it can’t really be read as one today since the reveal is so well-known. (Even if you’ve never picked up the book, you know what your coworker means when she whispers about your boss’s “real Jekyll and Hyde personality.”)

But as Calvino notes, a classic is a book where “the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them,” and that’s certainly true for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The story follows neither titular character, but instead Gabriel Utterson, a lawyer who was once a close friend of Jekyll’s. When rumors begin to spread of Jekyll’s peculiar behavior and his association with the unsavory Hyde, Utterson fears his friend is being blackmailed. He sets out to free Jekyll from Hyde’s influence, only to discover the tragic downfall of the once respected gentleman.

While a straightforward tale on the surface, Jekyll and Hyde is ultimately an inkblot test in narrative form. Readers have defined it not just by the framework of a detective story but also as an allegory, fable, and ghost story. They have also drawn themes from the text as diverse as addiction, Freudian analysis, social Darwinism, classism, and sexual repression (particularly concerning the criminalization of homosexuality in Stevenson’s day).

At around 50 pages, it’s well worth an evening to discover what you may see.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Leo Tolstoy is a writer with several classics to his name. His most famous novels are War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878), both widely praised for their exquisite characters and explorations of concepts such as love, loyalty, and society. They are also famously long reads — stories that you’ll want to set aside a good chunk of time and really get to know.

Readers who want to explore Tolstoy’s work but do not want to dedicate half a year to the endeavor are still in luck. The Russian author also penned a dozen novellas during his life, and his 1886 novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, is easily as deserving of the status “classic” as his more epic works.

It tells the story of, well, the death of Ivan Ilyich Golovin, an official in the Court of Justice whose life was “most simple and commonplace — and most horrifying.” After Ivan falls while hanging curtains, he begins to feel a constant pain in his side. The pain is revealed to be a terminal ailment — the nature of which is never revealed — which leads Ivan to a slow, excruciating death.

Any plot summary of the novella will obscure its touching meditation on the dominance of death over life and what it means to live properly in the face of that inevitability. The marks of high society that Ivan sought so fervently during his life — a well-respected job, an impressive home, and those damned curtains — melt away as his pain and existential despair build, and Ivan comes to realize that an authentic life is one filled with compassion and connection in our shared humanity.

But unlike Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghostly revelation, which comes when the crotchety character can still act upon it, Ivan’s comes too late to share, giving Tolstoy’s tale a more existential edge. (Though, if you want your classic weekend to end on a more uplifting note, Dickens’s Christmas classic is a short read, too.)

The Pearl

Like Tolstoy, John Steinbeck’s bibliography is chockablock with classics worth a read. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is widely held to be a masterpiece of American literature, and any discussion of East of Eden (1952) will be honor-bound to include the phrase “magnum opus” in its opening remarks. Unfortunately for our purposes, they are also chonky cinder blocks that require more than a weekend to properly digest.

Thankfully, again like Tolstoy, Steinbeck penned many shorter novels and novellas worthy of the title “classic,” and my personal favorite of these is his 1947 novella, The Pearl.

The Pearl tells the story of Kino, a poor pearl diver living off the coast of Baja with his cherished wife and infant son. One day, his son is stung by a scorpion, and a desperate Kino dives for oysters to earn enough to cover the treatment costs. He finds “the Pearl of the World,” a perfect gem that will not only cover the treatment costs but, Kino hopes, offer him the chance to provide his family with the life they deserve.

The tale that follows explores themes of greed, family, prejudice, and corruption. Steinbeck ties these themes together with a musical motif, employing melodic language to express Kino’s emotional world and his relationships with others. Like a rondo, the refrain of family alternates with the contrasting themes, ultimately building to its chilling coda.

Other great options for readers looking to enjoy a weekend with Steinbeck include The Red Pony (1933), Of Mice and Men (1937), and Cannery Row (1945). If you’re looking for rich symbolism, downtrodden protagonists, and explorations of injustice, you can’t go wrong with any of these.

The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson is a master of suspenseful tales, and this 1959 novel is perhaps her greatest achievement in the unsettling. It is undoubtedly the most highly regarded haunted house story. Writers as diverse as Stephen King, Damon Knight, Dan Simmons, and Carmen Maria Machado have sung its praises as one of the scariest stories ever told. 

I added the “perhaps”  above only because some Jackson fans would give the nod to We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) — though, you can’t go wrong adding either to your home library.

Hill House tells the story of Eleanor Vance, an introverted young woman who is resentful of having to care for her disabled mother. She is invited by a paranormal investigator to join a research group spending the summer in Hill House to study the supernatural. The group encounters many frightening and potentially paranormal events. But it is open to interpretation whether these are ghostly hauntings, Eleanor’s latent psychic powers, or simply manifestations of the group’s own psychological hang-ups.

Jackson builds the suspense through incredibly vivid imagery and explorations of themes such as family, isolation, freedom, and dissociation. Hill House even sports one of my favorite opening paragraphs to any novel (the first two sentences of which are quoted above). 

Again, some readers would give the nod to We Have Always Lived in the Castle, but for me, Hill House is the clear winner here.

Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982

Let’s return to Calvino for a moment. In his essay, he notes that his use of the term classic makes “no distinction in terms of antiquity, style or authority.” Ancient or modern, well-respected or relatively unknown, a classic rings out with a personal resonance. Your idea of a classic may be different from other readers, but it is ultimately a book to which “you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even opposition to it.”

This definition certainly applies to the works of Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s national poet. Throughout his career as a writer and advocate for Palestinian independence, he resolutely criticized Israel for its treatment of the Palestinian people. At the same time, he was critical of Hamas as a dangerous “Taliban-type” group and once described the infighting between it and Fatah as “a public attempt at suicide in the streets.”

His 1987 prose poem, Memory for Forgetfulness, takes place during the 1982 shelling of Beirut, using the narrator’s personal experiences of fear and isolation as a stand-in for the historical experiences of the Palestinian people. In true Darwish fashion, the long poem is rich with symbolism that explores themes of death, life, and memory’s relationship to place, identity, and history. Even something as simple as a morning cup of coffee becomes an intricate exploration of individuality.

But while it’s tempting to view Darwish solely as a political emblem — a tendency he found constraining — to do so does a disservice to his works. Like any classic, Memory for Forgetfulness speaks as much to timeless human experiences as it does to the realities of living through the siege of Beirut. That its political motives are no less a memory today than they were in 1987 is a sad truth we all must struggle with.

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories

Sandra Cisneros is best known for her 1984 novel, The House on Mango Street, a story told through a series of vignettes that focus on Chicago native Esperanza Cordero. It can easily be read in a weekend, too. Still, I went with the author’s 1991 short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, because it houses one of my favorite short stories.

No, it’s not the headlining act — though “Woman Hollering Creek” is a brilliant tale that explores domestic abuse through the lens of a Mexican folktale. It is “Eleven,” a short story about a young girl who experiences an embarrassing moment in school on her eleventh birthday. 

While the plot is simple, Cisneros elevates the material with prose that pitch-perfectly captures the voice of a child. She transports you back to your grade-school classroom in a way that only the best writers can, and even the most jaded of adults will feel their inner-11-year-olds tremble with shared grief as a simple red sweater becomes a marker for how unfair and indifferent the world can be — especially when the teacher would rather move on to math problem number four.

The other stories in the collection equally display Cisneros’s skills as a writer and her ability to weave themes of class, personal expression, femininity in male-dominated societies, and identity on the borderlands of culture seamlessly into her tales.

Cosmicomics

Of course, I couldn’t end the list without mentioning one of Calvino’s own classics. Cosmicomics is his 1965 short story collection. Told from the perspective of the mysterious cosmic entity Qfwfq, each story is based on a scientific phenomenon that Calvino layers with fantastical elements to create a surreal, fable-like tale.

For instance, the collection’s first entry, “The Distance of the Moon”, takes the idea that the Moon once revolved much closer to the Earth and uses that as a foundation for a story of lovers who leap between the two satellites. But despite his cosmic playground, Calvino uses his stories to look at concepts much closer to home, such as memory, language, and, of course, storytelling.

Doesn’t sound like your thing? No worries. Calvino has several other classic works to consider, including Invisible Cities and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. In fact, if none of the books on this list so far have enticed you, that’s okay, too. 

As Calvino reminds us, no one is required to read these, or any classic, out of a sense of duty or obligation. You don’t need to check them off some arbitrary must-read-before-you-die list or to join the league of well-read citizens. A classic will only become your classic if you read it because you want to. It should be pursued as a joyful and enriching experience, in and of itself.

“The classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them,” Calvino writes, adding, “but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.”

Maybe that’s this weekend. Maybe next. Either way, these books, and many others, will be waiting for you when you’re ready.