It takes a long time to read the Western literary canon so to get up to speed with one's literary education, it's nice to read the brief books first. I'm looking to compile a list of short texts that are essential reads. Here's what I have so far:

Various

• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• Qur'an
• Satyricon (originally longer but only fragments remain)
• The Tempest by Shakespeare

Eastern

Indian

• Bhagavad Gita
• Dhammapada
• Heart Sutra (should probably be read with commentary)

Chinese

• Dao de Djing
• The Art of War
• The Analects of Confucius
• The Secret of the Golden Flower

Japanese

• Essays in Idleness
• The Book of Five Rings
• Hojoki

Greek

• Hesiod: Theogony; Works and Days.
• Plato: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Gorgias.
• Enchiridion by Epictetus
• Plays in general (selection to be made later)

Selections from the Bible

Old Testament

• Genesis
• Exodus
• Job
• Ecclesiastes
• Jonah
• Malachi (an important early expression of Messianism)

New Testament

• Romans
• 1 Corinthians
• Galatians
• Ephesians
• Colossians
• 1 Thessalonians
• James
• Revelations

Modern Philosophy

• Meditations on First Philosophy by Descartes
• Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard
• Self-Reliance by Emerson
• Monadology by Leibniz
• Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by Kant
• Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by Hume

No Nietzsche on this list because his important works aren't brief enough. Ecce Homo points to his other works but has limited value by itself.

Modern Literary Fiction

• Notes from the Underground by Dostojevski
• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy
• The Metamorphosis by Kafka
• Camus: The Stranger, The Fall
• Animal Farm by Orwell
• A Clockwork Orange by Burgess
• Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck

I've tried to be selective as I'm not just trying to compile a list of all brief texts that are on some literature list or another, but really trying to stick to essential readings. If the list becomes too long then it in turn becomes a long undertaking.

So what would you add to this?