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Short stories!


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I don't tend to read many short story collections for some reason :blush:

 

But those I have read and enjoyed are collections by Daphne du Maurier, Roald Dahl (especially his ghost stories), and Jeffrey Archer.

 

Also, very seasonal, The Christmas Books by Charles Dickens.

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I've started reading short stories over the last few years, and some of my favourite collection have been People I Wanted To Be by Gina Oscher, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li, but my absolute favourites have to be Love Begins In Winter and The Secret Lives of People In Love by Simon Van Booy, who writes exquisitely.

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I LOVE short stories. I enjoy them just as much as novels, sometimes maybe more.

 

Some of my fav's from the top of my head.

 

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (The queen of short stories, hands down)

No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July

Drown - Junot Diaz

Haunted - Chuck Palahniuk

Slut Lullabies - Gina Frangello

The Informers - Bret Ellis

The Acid House - Irvine Welsh

Tales of the White Hart - Arthur Clarke

Of Time and Stars - Arthur Clarke

The Complete Robot - Asimov

Minority Report - Phillip Dick

Everythings Eventual - Stephen King

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Martin, I love Tales from the White Hart too. :) In fact, I'm a big fan of all of Clarke's short stories.

 

Have you ever read anything by JG Ballard? Going by your favourite authors, he might be an author you'd like. He wrote a huge number of short stories and I have a beautiful volume containing them all but haven't managed to start reading it yet.

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Ballard? That the guy that wrote Crash? I've heard plenty but he's one I am yet to check out as of yet. Y'now how it is, sometimes you keep meaning to check out a guy but never get chance, Too many books on the TBR shelf you see.

 

Several people have recommended him to me now though. I must get round to it.

 

And yes, The White Hart is a wonderful little book. I have it signed by the big man Clarke himself. Probably the most valuable book in my collection.

Edited by wickedvoodoo
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Anything by Ray Bradbury.

 

Also...

 

Clive Barker's books of Blood.................Jaqueline Ess

Salinger's For Esme, with Love and Squalor....Title story

Anything by H.G Wells.........................Time Machine

Anything by Ramsey Campbell...................The Companion

Stephen King's Night Shift....................Night Surf

Anything by Hemingway

Anything by Roald Dahl

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Two shortstories that are so filled with tragedy and emotion are these;

Stig Dagerman - "To kill a child": Read it here

August Strindberg - "Half a Sheet of Foolscap": Read it here

 

 

Of Dagerman's shortstory:

The most famous of Dagerman’s short stories, “Att döda ett barn” (“To Kill A Child”), exemplified the strong influence of film on his writing. In image after image, it portrayed in riveting detail how a series of perfectly ordinary events can be a prologue to horror. (Wikipedia)

 

Strindberg's story is about a widdower remembering a whole life.

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Some good collections of short stories that stick in my mind are any by Stephen King, but especially Different Seasons. Ian Rankin did a collection of Inspector Rebus stories called A Good Hanging. This was my first Rebus book, and I devoured it! Also the Annie Proulx collection Close Range have some very good stories.

 

Ian

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Some of the best I've read lately are:

 

Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll edited by Lawrence Rogers

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunoskue Akutagawa

Still Life and Other Stories by Junzo Shono

Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edogawa Rampo

 

And right now I'm reading The Collected Stories of Colette.

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Thanks for your replies everyone. Some good stories/collections I've not heard of, will definitely be trying to get hold of some of them, especially Arthur C Clarke; always meant to get a hold of his stuff, even if I'm not a huge sci-fi fan.

Thanks Essiotrot for the Truman Capote suggestion; I haven't read anything by him, but saw the film with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and am certainly interested.

 

It is a shame though that so many people nowadays (particularly in the UK; less so in North America and Europe) don't like short stories. I can understand why some people want to sink their teeth into something more expansive, but I think short stories are so much fun purely because in their brevity they still manage to conjure up worlds and ideas just as important or enlightening as those in bigger books, but without all the extra padding that comes with novels. Even if they don't last as long, I find them just as memorable and effective.

But then, admittedly, I have quite a short attention span, so that probably plays a large part in my enjoyment of them too. :tongue:

 

Jim

Anyone wanting an action packed short story, do check out William Trevor.

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These are some of my favourite short stories. It’s quite a long list but I love short stories – I think the form is a unique art, different from the novel, not just shorter. To me the following are all beautiful, full of pathos and emotional resonance. They are unforgettable, and I will return to them again and again throughout my life:


Miss Brill, by Katherine Mansfield; American Horse, by Louise Erdritch; If you Sing Like that for Me, by Akhil Harma; A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett; To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing; House Opposite, by R K Narayan;
I Stand Here Ironing, by Tillie Olsen; The Chrysanthemums, by John Steinbeck; The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Leo Tolstoy; Everyday Use, by Alice Walker; Disappearing, by Monica Wood; The Rocking Horse by D.H. Lawrence; About Love, and The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov; The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogal; He’s at the Office, by Allan Gurganus; Everything Stuck to Him, by Raymond Carver.


I have many more favourites by the above authors. I also enjoy Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King.
 

Edited by Brook
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These are some of my favourite short stories. It’s quite a long list but I love short stories – I think the form is a unique art, different from the novel, not just shorter. To me the following are all beautiful, full of pathos and emotional resonance. They are unforgettable, and I will return to them again and again throughout my life:

 

Miss Brill, by Katherine Mansfield; American Horse, by Louise Erdritch; If you Sing Like that for Me, by Akhil Harma; A White Heron by Sarah Orne Jewett; To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing; House Opposite, by R K Narayan;

I Stand Here Ironing, by Tillie Olsen; The Chrysanthemums, by John Steinbeck; The Death of Ivan Ilyich, by Leo Tolstoy; Everyday Use, by Alice Walker; Disappearing, by Monica Wood; The Rocking Horse by D.H. Lawrence; About Love, and The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov; The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogal; He’s at the Office, by Allan Gurganus; Everything Stuck to Him, by Raymond Carver.

 

I have many more favourites by the above authors. I also enjoy Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King.

 

I've read several of these stories.  One of my favourite stories by Katherine Mansfield is The Tiredness of Rosabel.  I also like O. Henry with his surprise endings.  The Rocking Horse by D. H. Lawrence is amazing.  I haven't read American Horse by Louise Erdrich, but I like her writing and would like to read more of her work, including her short stories.

 

Currently, I'm reading a collection of stories by Yiyun Li (A Thousand Years of Good Prayers).

Edited by Verna
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So! I looked back several pages in this forum but couldn't find any threads about short stories. Just wondered if anyone here had any favourite short stories or favourite short story collections?

 

Some of my favourites:

 

The Library of Babel - Jorge Luis Borges

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius - Jorge Luis Borges

Axolotl - Julio Cortazar

The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allen Poe

The Masque of the Red Death - Edgar Allen Poe

A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia - Viktor Pelevin

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog - O. Henry

Voice - Margaret Atwood

 

Jim

I love these two. Poe is a great short story writer in my opinion. I also liked Damon and Pythias (I think that's what it's called) not sure who it's by. There are some others I've read and enjoyed, but I can't remember the names. 

 

Sherlock Holmes is definitely in my TBR pile and I have a book of the first 49 short stories of Hemingway that I'm hoping I'll read sometime this year. 

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I cannot express why I love short stories but just the thought of them makes me smile, I am constantly on the look out for interesting collections to read and it is not because I do not like reading long stories because I read and enjoy both equally. Many short stories even consisting of only 3 pages can be more magical and memorable than a 1000 page book, that's depending on the author's talent ofcourse. :smile2:

I agree and one of those stories for me was A Good Man is Hard to Find-Flannery O' Connor.

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