We’ve all said it. This summer, between your Google internship, going to the gym every day and finally starting that soon-to-be-classic online comic, you are going to start reading for pleasure again. After nine months of poring over chem textbooks and poli sci essays, you finally have time to settle down and read a novel for pleasure. But the sad truth is: Once you give a busy Stanford student three months of time to himself, chances are he’s going to get even busier.

So here are five short novels (most under 200 pages) to fill up the literary cracks of your summer. Whether you’re frantically checking titles off of your 50-books-a-year New Year’s resolution or just looking for something to pass the time during a long flight, these can be devoured in two or three sittings and will almost definitely leave you satisfied.

1: A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway, 191 pg. Nuts to Old Man and the Sea. Of Hemingway’s shorter works, this is the funniest and the most undeniably Hem. The posthumously released novella describes his lean and happy years as an ex-pat in Paris, and features a cast of unbelievable cultural cameos (James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound) all situated in Hemingway’s clean, muscular prose. An absolute must-read if you’re going abroad next fall or if you want to know why F. Scott Fitzgerald was the worst road-trip buddy ever.

2: Confessions of Max Tivoli, Andrew Sean Greer, 264 pg. The story follows Max Tivoli who, due to some sci-fi-esque medical disorder, is born as a child who looks like an old man and, as he ages mentally, grows physically younger. It’s set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, and Tivoli’s attempts to fit in with uptight societal values while concealing his “monstrosity” are as compelling as they are heart-breaking. In spite of its sci-fi and historical bents, though, the novel is ultimately an insightful and deeply melancholy look at universal themes like betrayal, obsession and the intoxication of first love. Trust me, in 80 years college students are going to be studying this book.

3: The Dog of the Marriage: Stories, Amy Hempel, 160 pg. Reading a short story by Amy Hempel is like eating a meal of only appetizers and dessert: You get right down to nothing but the good stuff. This collection of haunting and moving stories is a departure from her usual comedic style, and every word seems carefully chosen to get right to the piece’s essence. One of the best is “The Uninvited,” a tense piece about a 50-year-old woman waiting for the results of a pregnancy test; the potential father is either her husband or her rapist. The different stories create a world that is lonely and anguished, but marked by moments of beauty.

4: Vanishing Point, David Markson, 191 pg. This novel’s experimental form isn’t for everyone, but if you’re interested in cultural scandal and the writing process, it’s worth a read. The book is written in an aggressively anti-novelistic format: It’s essentially a long list of two- to five-line quotations and anecdotes about famous writers and artists (did you know Brahms was a blond and TS Eliot was afraid of cows?), which a fictional Author is trying to weave into a book. It’s abstract and self-referential, but Markson skillfully weaves everything together and reveals much about the Author on the way.

5: Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis, 176 pg. The story is told by a narrator who is living inside the body of kindly old doctor Ted Friendly, watching Friendly’s life play out in reverse. Literally, imagine watching a VHS in rewind. For 80 years. The narrator describes a world where garbage trucks give people trash and where doctors rip open stitches and put bullets into their patients’ bodies. Don’t be fooled by the book’s slenderness: When I read it, it almost broke my brain. But the backwards device doesn’t feel gimmicky or wear thin, and ends up making an interesting statement on morality and consciousness.