Short Story Collections -- Year-long Group Reading!

Welcome to the Year-Long Group Thread for Short Stories!

This will be a spot where we can all drop by to make notes (recommendations?? warnings??) about short story collections, and try to work in some of those shorter reads that can so easily pass by the wayside as we pick up weightier reads.

There are so many great collections out there, I'll start by recommending a few of my favorite short story authors--here's hoping you guys start out by doing the same, and then we can go from there!

Some collections I'd recommend...

Horror/Sci-fi/Fantasy:
Twentieth Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman
The Illustarted Man by Ray Bradbury
Inflictions by John McIlveen
Everything's Eventual by Stephen King

General Fiction/Literary:
The Best Seats in the House and Other Stories by Keith Lee Morris
The Men of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
Brain Work by Michael Guista
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel

And for readers interested in atmosphere/place, Akashic Books has a Noir series of short stories for cities all over the world. I've only read a few, and some of the stories included are more 'noir' than others, but it can be fun to read stories of places you're familiar with :)

What about everyone else? Suggestions of favorites, recent or old?

THE LIST OF OUR COMPLETED BOOKS!!!

1. Tell Tale: Stories by Jeffrey Archer - MarthaJeanne (21) - general fiction - 4 stars
2. Baking with Kafka by Tom Gauld - Kac522 (29) - cartoons
3. Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 207 - MarthaJeanne (35) - sci-fi/fantasy - 1 star
4. The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling - cmbohn (37, 42) - general fiction
5. Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie - Kac522 (41) - mystery
6. Age of Perpetual Light by Josh Weil - LittleTaiko (44) - literary - 2 stars
7. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor - RidgewayGirl (45) - souther lit - 5 stars
8. The Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book - Leslie.98 (49) - fairy tales - meh/2.5 stars
9. Very Good, Jeeves! - Leslie.98 (55) - general fiction - 4 stars
10. The Whispered Tales of Graves by Cesar Aira - luvamystery65 (58) - general fiction - enjoyable but not for everyone
12. The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne Du Maurier - rabbitprincess (65) - dark general fiction - 4.5 stars
13. Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino - LittleTaiko (68) - literary fiction - 4 stars
14. ...alle Bitternis der Welt by Vsevolod Garsin - MissWatson (70) - war related fiction
15. To Cut a Long Story Short by Jeffrey Archer - MarthaJeanne (71) - mystery/thriller - 4 stars
16. The Ivory and the Horn by Charles de Lint - mathgirl40 (72) - fantasy - 4.5 stars
17. Aesop's Fables - narrated by Jonathan Kent - lumamystery65 (73) - fables - okay/3 stars
18. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander - Sallylou61 (77) - literary fiction - 3.5 stars
19. The Tales of Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah - Helenliz (80) - mystery stories - interesting, but a bit repetitive
20. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado - RidgewayGirl (81) - fairy-tale-ish - read like a collaboration of Angela Carter & Kelly Link
21. Six shorts 2017 : the finalists for the 2017 Sunday Times EFG Short Story - MarthaJeanne (84) - short short fiction - 2 stars (but the first was 'actually quite good')
22. The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: Volume 7 - Louis L'Amour - fuzzi (85) - westerns
23. Mary Russell's War by Laurie R King - cmbohn (86) - detective/Sherlock Holmes - disappointing
24. Eggs, Beans and Crumpets by PG Wodehouse - Helenliz (87) - lighthearted mystery
25. Tales of India: Folk Tales from Bengal, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu - MarthaJeanne (89) - Folk tales - 3.5*
26. Happiness, like Water by Chinelo Okparanta - Helenliz (90) - literary and illustrated, many dealing with domestic abuse - "unsettling"
27. In the Country: Stories by Mia Alvar - staci426 (91) - general fiction dealing with Filipino diaspora - "quite good"
28. The Man with Two Left Feet by PG Wodehouse - cmbohn (95) - lighthearted mystery - "fun, but not his best" 3*
29. Beasts and Queens by Susannah Rowntree - cmbohn (95) - fairy tales - "pretty good" 3*
30. The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes - LittleTaiko (97) - general/literary fiction - 'one of my favorites--did not disappoint'
31. Teen-Age Dog Stories by David Thomas - fuzzi (101) - mainstream/genre - 3*
32. Murder Under the Christmas Tree - Helenliz (103) - themed mystery collection - 'pretty good'
33. Last Writes by Catherine Aird - Helenliz (104) - mixed collection
34. Bon Voyage, Mr. President and Other Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Jackie_K. (105) - mainstream & magical realism - 3*
35. The Breaking Point by Daphne du Maurier - rabbitprincess (106) - 'Very good as always' - 4*
36. Von Selbstmördern, Engeln und anderen armen Teufeln (About Suicides, Angels and other Poor Devils) - MarthaJeanne (107) - general fiction - 4.5 stars, with lower score for one long story in the collection.
37. The Convict and Other Stories by James Lee Burk - Helenliz (112) - general fiction - "quite good with one real stand-out"
38. Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks - LittleTaiko (113) - general fiction featuring typewriters - "a pleasant collection"
39. Redeployment by Phil Klay - leslie.98 (114) - war stories - glad to have read it
40. You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld - RidgewayGirl (115) - "just excellent"
41. Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener - sallylou61 (116) - WWII - 3 stars
42. Wish I Was Here by Jackie Kay - Helenliz (118) - general fiction
43. Calypso by David Sedaris - LittleTaiko (123) - memoir - 'funny and poignant'
44. Complete Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton - rabbitprincess (128) - 4*
45. Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards - rabbit princess (128) - 3*
46. We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone by Ronald Malfi - sturlington (129) - horror - 3* - earlier stories in collection better than later ones
47. The Man in the Yellow Raft by C.S. Forester - rabbitprincess (133) - 3.5*
48. Bird in the House by Margaret Laurence - mathgirl40 (135) - general fiction - 4.5*
49. The Dark and Other Love Stories by Deborah Willis - mathgirl40 (135) - general fiction - 4.5*
50. The Best of Connie Willis by Connie Willis - MarthaJeanne (131, 136) - 5*
51. Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders - LittleTaiko (138) - dystopian - 2*
52. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado - sturlington (140) - literary/feminist fiction - 5*
53. Pistols for Two by Georgette Heyer - MarthaJeanne (141) - mystery
54. Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt - sturlington (144) - weird fiction - 4*
55. Märchen aus Österreich, a book of Austrian Fairy Tales - MarthaJeanne (145) - fairy tales--dark enough to not all be for children!
56. The Found and the Lost by Ursula K. Le Guin - MarthaJeanne (149) - fantasy - not as enjoyable as her other Earthsea tales
57. Reality, Reality by Jackie Kay - Helenliz (150) - "a really good collection"
58. The Well Ain't Try by Belinda Anderson - sallylou61 (152) - general fiction, humorous - 3*
59. Boule de suif et autres Nouvelles by Guy de Maupassant - MissWatson (153) - "bleak... but he can write"
60. Menschen im Krieg by Andreas Latzko - MissWatson (154) - WWI beyond the Western front - 4.5*
61. Dangerous Women by Gardner Dozois - staci426 (155) - "underwhelming"
62. The Rendezvous and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier - Helenliz (158) - mostly mysteries of some form
63. In Sunlight or in Shadow ed. by Lawrence Block - staci426 (160) - inspired by paintings - 4*
64. A Quiver Full of Arrows by Jeffrey Archer - MarthaJeanne (161) - 4.5*
65. Some Trick by Helen DeWitt - paperclypse (162) - "enjoyed it very much"
66. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter - Kristelh (164) - feminist fairytale retellings - 3.5*
67. Eight Ghosts - Helenliz (165) - ghost stories inspired by sites of English heritage
68. Pulse - Helenliz (165)
69. Natural Histories by Guadalupe Nette - luvamystery65 (167) - strange but brilliant, with plenty of animals
70. Alte Geschichten : Erzählungen - MarthaJeanne (171) - more character portraits than stories - 4*
71. Bibliomysteries - anthology - LittleTaiko (172) - mysteries - 'would definitely recommend'
72. River Teeth by David James Duncan - LittleTaiko (172) - 'so-so'
73. Strange Weather by Joe Hill - luvamystery65 (173) - suspense/horror - liked 3/4 novellas
74. Women Invite the Future (anthology) - MarthaJeanne (174) - weird science fiction - 3.5*
75. Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by P.D. James - sallylou61 (178) - murder mystery - 3.5*
76. Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories by L.M. Montgomery - rabbitprincess (179) - Christmas stories - sweet and sentimental
77. The Time Traveller's Almanac: Part II (anthology) - Helenliz (180) - science fiction/time travel - 3*
78. A Christmas Feast - MarthaJeanne (182) - very short fiction - 3.5*
79. Designs on Life by Elizabeth Ferrars - rabbitprincess (185) - mystery - 'a new vintage mystery author to search for!'
80. Sword of Ice: And Other Tales of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey - MarthaJeanne (188) - fantasy
81. How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers - MarthaJeanne (196) - literary fiction - 1*
82. Folktales from India - MarthaJeanne (199) - folktales - 4.5*
83. Saints and Sinners by Edna O'Brien - Helenliz (200) - 'enjoyable'
84. Suns in Glory by Mercedes Lackey - MarthaJeanne (203) - fantasy - 3*
85. Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant -sallylou61 (204) - general fiction - 3*
86. Stories from Other Places by Nicholas Shakespeare - MarthaJeanne (205) - general fiction - 4*
87. Echoes from the Macabre by Daphne du Maurier - Helenliz (207) - mystery/creepy
88. The Christmas Stocking and Other Stories - MarthaJeanne (208) - Christmas/holiday stories
89. Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams - staci426 - apocalyptic stories - 4*

I don't read a lot of short stories, but I have a few collections sitting on my shelves, so maybe this will be the inspiration to read some of them. I read two collections last year that I could recommend for horror story fans: Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, volumes one and two.

I have two short story collections on my radar this year: The Complete Father Brown, by G.K. Chesterton; and Designs on Life, by Elizabeth Ferrars. Looking forward to seeing what collections people read this year!

The illustrated man

Ones I read last year and enjoyed are

Fidelity : five stories
Swimmer among the stars
Unaccustomed Earth
Fresh Complaint
Teller of Tales
And thereby hangs a tale

My first short story book this will probably be

The best American science fiction and fantasy 2017

What do you guys think about keeping track of reads? I'd first thought of perhaps making a wiki, but now I'm not sure that makes sense. Maybe we should just all take turns numbering so that at the end of the year we know how many books the group completed? (i.e. one person writes #1 Title, another writes #2 title when they complete one, and so on and so forth) Or, I could create a master list, early in this thread, and just update it as folks note books they've read? Thoughts?

>5 whitewavedarling: I like the Master List idea, in case several people read the same volume.

I plan to read The Things They Carried. I hope to finish Flannery O'Connor's complete set, too.

I highly recommend The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen - it was one of my favorite reads from 2017.

I know I have a couple of mystery short story collections on my shelves that I'll get to this year. I also just picked up Her Body and Other Stories from the library and have the Tom Hanks collection, Uncommon Type as well.

For mystery lovers, I read Matchup edited by Lee Child last year , which are short stories by various mystery writers and am planning to read Faceoff edited by David Baldacci later this year which is similar.

ETA: I've never been much of a short story reader, but hope to do more this year.

My first collection of the year will be The Musical Brain and other stories by Cesar Aira.

The two I pick up over & over are Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House and Dorothy Parker's Complete Stories.

I also love Zenna Henderson's Holding Wonder & The Anything Box (hard to find but worth it if you like fantasy/sci-fi), Roald Dahl's Collected Stories, Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak!, Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch, Julie Orringer's How to Breathe Underwater, George Saunders's Tenth of December and the short stories of Stephen King, Etgar Keret, Jhumpa Lahiri & Truman Capote.

>10 madhatter22:, I forgot about Welcome to the Monkey House--I really like that one also!

My goal this year is to make sure I get to The Shell Collector--it's another collection by Anthony Doerr. I know most people know him for his novel All the Light We Cannot See, but I fell in love with his writing via the short stories in Memory Wall :)

Meanwhile, I do think maybe a complete master list would make the most sense, and I can keep it updated. Any objections to my just adding it to the bottom of the first message on this thread, and when I list each (read) work, I'll also list genre beside it, as well as stars if the lister noted how many they gave it? So at any time, we can go up there and see what the group has read, and how they (also listed) liked it?

I'm in!

As an FYI, Louis L'Amour may be best known for his westerns, but I think he excelled in the short story genre. He wrote adventure stories as well as historic novels.

There are any number of books containing his short stories, but my favorite has to be War Party. Yes, they are mostly "westerns", but don't let that put you off. I love his characters, including strong women.

>11 whitewavedarling: Sounds like a good plan to me! I'll be sure to stop by with my reviews/ratings when I finish a story collection.

So happy to see this thread! I have an LTER book that I have carried over from 2017 that will fit nicely here (once I read it, that is): The Whispered Tales of Graves Grove.

I've started reading Tell Tale. (Yes I know, but I had forgotten that I had the ebook on hold.) The first story is only 100 words, but is a good story. (There is also a 100 word introduction explaining how he came to write it.)

>8 dudes22:, both those collections sound interesting to me. I'm going to put them on my Wishlist now.

Just remembered that, in addition to the story collections I listed in >3 rabbitprincess:, I have the Bloody Scotland anthology on the TBR pile. This will really be the year of the short story for me!

>15 MarthaJeanne:, I love collections that include little notes about where the ideas came from! It's one of those things I love King for--every collection of short stories and novellas I've read by him yet, there are little notes like that. I think Gaiman included them in at least one of his collections that I read also, though I don't see them often as I'd like. I'll have to look up that collection you're speaking of now, no matter how short the stories!

>18 whitewavedarling: The other stories are longer and don't have notes. They are great stories, though. One of the collections I mentioned in >4 MarthaJeanne: was also by Jeffrey Archer. A good collection with notes is Confessions of a story-teller.

>19 MarthaJeanne:, Good to know! Either way, I haven't read him before and I do love good short stories, so I'll have to look him up.

I'm already taking a lot of book bullets from this thread :)

Finished Tell tale. The stories are great. However the final section of this already short book is advance chapters for a novel that will be coming out in the Fall. I gave it 4 stars. I considered dropping to 3 1/2 for padding it with advance chapters from an upcoming novel. But the stories really are very good.

ETA I consoled myself by borrowing his In the Eye of the Beholder from OverDrive. This is a single story from another collection. Excellent 4 1/2 stars.

>21 MarthaJeanne:, Thanks for starting us off!

Everyone, I started a list in the first message of this thread--it's got book title & author, reader, genre, and number of stars. I'll keep it updated as we go forward so it'll be there for fast reference :)

>22 whitewavedarling: Message links don't work for messages after the link.

>197 MarthaJeanne: BTW There has been a recent change.

>23 MarthaJeanne:, ah, okay lol. Thank you :) I'll change it to being your name, and put the message number in parentheses...

>10 madhatter22: I’ve got Zenna Henderson’s Ingathering on my shelf.

>22 whitewavedarling: - Thanks, Jennifer for doing that. It'll be nice to be able to easily get ideas for future reading.

ETA : I found another collection by Karen White Grand Central in my TBR but I'll be saving it for the Dec Color Cat.

>26 dudes22:, I've read Grand Central and thought it was pretty good. I gave it 4 stars.

>27 Roro8: - I'm glad to know that. I not much of a short story reader. Just about the time I get into the story, it's over :)

I was going through some boxes of books that hadn't gotten unpacked yet from the move and came across a few more short story collections. SO I have choices, but will probably read Grand Central first.

Tom Gauld, just finished his Baking with Kafka

Dropping a trail of breadcrumbs for this thread. Short stories haven't been something I have read a lot of, but that may be about to change. I used to listen to audiobooks in the car while driving (10 hours a week gets you through a pretty chunky book pretty quickly!). Now I've changed job, I'm commuting less, so don;t want to leave the best part of a week between chapters of a book. In which case I'm looking to listen to short stories, as they're probably more amenable to irregular listening than a novel. I can stop at the end of a story, and no have to remember where I'd got to when I next get in the car.

>29 kac522:, What did you think of it? Something you'd recommend or give stars to?

>30 Helenliz:, That argument might have just convinced me to give audiobooks a shot! I normally don't have the patience to listen to anything but music because I simply get distracted and wander off into my own head or whatever my hands are doing (which is always something), but I can see myself being able to listen to an occasional short story while exercising or traveling when I don't have the eye-energy to read...

I've been tempted to try audio books because others here seem to like them a lot, but I never have for various reasons. But a short story collection might be just the way to try it.

I just discovered this thread! I read a few stories from Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales while waiting for my library book, The Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book (the American title of Angela Carter's The Virago Book of Fairy Tales).

>33 leslie.98:, Welcome! Did you like the short stories?

The best American science fiction and fantasy 2017
I assume there must have been some good science fiction stories written in the USA in 2016, but they aren't in this book. *

I'm planning to read a collection of Charles de Lint's short stories, The Ivory and the Horn, next month for the SFFKIT and I hope to get to Margaret Laurence's collection A Bird in the House later this year.

Two of the best short-story collections I've read in the past few years are The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra and All Saints by K. D. Miller. The latter is, in my opinion, especially underrated and doesn't deserve its obscure status.

Just finished The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling. This was the Dover thrift edition with five short stories.

>36 mathgirl40: I loved the Tsar of Love and Techno so definitely need to check out All Saints since you recommend it.

>34 whitewavedarling: I ended up only reading 4 of the stories for now & it was a mixed bag. Hawthorne's style is not what I prefer but I did like "The Vision in the Fountain" very much.

>36 mathgirl40: I enjoyed The Ivory and the Horn and it is one of those collections in which the stories gain from being read together. It is time for me to explore some more of de Lint's Newford series!

>37 cmbohn: I liked that but it is even better in the Sean Connery/Michael Caine movie!

I am now reading Angela Carter's The Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book (which is the American title of The Virago Book of Fairy Tales). I like the fact that the stories are from all over the globe but must admit that the overall impression so far (about halfway through) is that Carter chose stories with an emphasis on women who manage to trick men (whether or not the men deserved it).

>35 MarthaJeanne:, I've also found that those best-of collections can be disappointing :( It sometimes feels like editors are too busy trying to figure out a variety that will appeal to the masses to find really distinctive stories, or else that they choose variations on the same type of story over and over again, so that they get repetitive... ah well. I'll remember not to pick that particular one up.

>37 cmbohn:, what did you think of the collection? Kipling is one of those authors I keep meaning to get to, and I never quite get around to him, though I feel like I should...

>39 leslie.98:, ah, okay :) I loved the stories I read by him long, long ago, but then again, I like most anything that's dark when it comes to short story form, and his were some of the few dark stories they actually gave us in high school!

Tonight I finished Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie. Fourteen short stories from her early years. I liked these stories because the solutions are generally shorter and simpler and easier to follow, even though I couldn't solve them, to be sure!

39- I haven't seen the movie, but I will have to look for it.

40- I really enjoyed it. It was only 5 stories, so if you could locate a copy it would be a great way to see what you think. Kipling is one of my favorites.

If someone wants a taste of Rudyard Kipling in short story form, why not read Just So Stories? I loved them as a child, but have enjoyed reading them as an adult...especially "The Cat That Walked By Himself".

I've started reading more short story collections after thinking that I wasn't really a short story kind of reader. Turns out the ones I don't like are the more literary types of stories, which is unfortunately what the collection I just read was like. The Perpetual Age of Light was just a bit too strange and unfocused for my personal tastes. Too many times I'd start a story and be confused as to who was narrating and what on earth they were talking about. There were a couple that I liked, but overall it just fell flat for me. 2 stars

I'm a huge fan of short stories, but I read far too few of them. That said, I did just finish A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor. The entire collection gets a rarely bestowed five stars from me. I highly recommend the title story -- it's a hammer and it's genuinely brilliant.

>45 RidgewayGirl:, That's one of my favorites!

>45 RidgewayGirl: That's a story I first read over 25 years ago in college, and it still sticks with me to this day.

I can't believe I have never read any Flannery O'Connor until now. I mean, this book has been sitting on my shelf unread since 2011. I'm going to read more of her and also, once again, make a firm resolution to read more short stories.

I have finished The Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book and my overall impression is meh -- it was okay but I prefer the fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson or the brothers Grimm...

I think that my next book of short stories will either be a Wodehouse or a mystery collection (maybe John Thorndyke's Cases which will work for February's AlphaKIT).

>48 RidgewayGirl:, If you liked the title story, 'A Good Man is Hard to Find', you should try out her short novel Wise Blood--it's dark, but it's also well, wonderful in the same kind of way that that story is!

>50 whitewavedarling: Oh, I plan to read all the O'Connor I can find. I'm on a Southern Lit kick anyway.

It seems like I read that story back in school, but I don't remember a thing about it now. Maybe I should give her a try again?

>52 cmbohn:, It's one of the only short stories I actually remember reading in high school--and honestly, I don't know what they thought made sense about giving that to high schoolers--but I didn't actually appreciate it or enjoy it till I read it in graduate school.

>48 RidgewayGirl: I don't know when I bought Flannery O'Connor's Complete Stories but I haven't read it yet and I've had it at least since I joined LT in 2009. (Before that I'd worked for Borders for 10 years and I really wish now that I'd kept the price stickers on all the books I bought b/c they had the date the book was received, which would usually give me a decent idea of when I'd bought it.)
I've read a few stories from it but I'd like to read them all this year.

I gave in to impulse and decided to listen to the audiobook of Very Good, Jeeves!, one of the first short story collections in the Jeeves & Wooster series. Jonathan Cecil is a delight to listen to in the Wodehouse books & this one is no exception.

I finished The Whispered Tales of Graves Grove by J.S. Bailey et al Overall, I like the result achieved with this anthology where the editors create the setting and a short backstory and let the individual authors loose to create away.

I am enjoying the short mystery stories in John Thorndyke's Cases.

And I have started the audiobook of Norse Mythology

I finished The Musical Brain and other stories by Cesar Aira. Aira is a rambler, but if you hang on the stories pay off. He starts the story one way and then goes out of context. Not sometimes, all the time. It's well done, but his style of writing may not be for everyone.

>58 luvamystery65:, what did you think of it? Let me know, and I'll add it to the mystery list in the first thread, and make it clear whether you're recommend it or no :)

>59 whitewavedarling: Edited my post

>60 luvamystery65: :)

I am currently enjoying another collection of Wodehouse short stories, Plum Pie, and have just started Moonlight and Vines by Charles de Lint, a set of Newford short stories, for this month's urban fantasy SFFKit.

>62 leslie.98: Your 2nd choice would also fit ColorCAT because vines are green.

>63 luvamystery65: Oh, good catch! Thanks :)

I finished The Birds and Other Stories, by Daphne du Maurier. 4.5 stars (one of the stories went on a bit long for me). The title story I was reading for the second time, having first read it in audio, and once again it was chilling and perfect.

>65 rabbitprincess: That was a good collection. It convinced me to give du Maurier another try. I loved The Apple Tree. So perfectly creepy.

>65 rabbitprincess: That sounds good - I do like du Maurier but have never read any of her short stories. Taking a BB...

I picked up Marcovaldo by Italo Calvino this weekend since it fit the ColorCAT - Brown. It was a fun collection of stories featuring Marcovaldo, a well-meaning but sometimes inept man trying to take care of his family while constantly being distracted by his love of nature. Each story is from a different season and they cover a few years of his life. I gave it four stars.

I'm half way through The Tales of Max Carrados by Ernest Brammah and narrated by Stephen Fry. They are OK in short doses. It gets a little repetitive about his lack of sight. Also I'm slightly sceptical about his abilities, things like how he seems to look when someone points, he reads normal text by running his hands over it. It was published at the same time as Sherlock Holmes in the same magazine. I think that Holmes is the better read.

I made a very pleasant discovery with ...alle Bitternis der Welt, the collected stories of Vsevolod Garšin. Written in the 1880s, they are mostly sad and reflective. His experiences as a volunteer in the Russian-Turkish War permeate everything. Surprisingly modern, too.

To cut a long story short **** is another excellent collection by Jeffrey Archer.

I finished The Ivory and the Horn by Charles de Lint and liked it very much. I'm currently reading another collection of short stories, which is my local science-fiction and fantasy club's current selection: Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond.

Listened to Aesop's Fables narrated by Jonathon Kent. It was okay. I remember many of these from my childhood, but it was nice to have a listen to them in one collection.

>73 luvamystery65: I read Aesop's Fables a few years ago - like you, I remembered many of them from childhood but it also reminded me of the segment in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, Fractured Fairy Tales!

>74 leslie.98: I prefer Fractured Fairy Tales, ha!

I am starting Improper Stories by Saki -- I love the humor in his short stories!

I just read What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank by Nathan Englander for my book club. These short stories all feature Jewish themes; I would have understood them better if I was more familiar with Jewish culture. I was impressed with how different the stories are. "Everything I Know about My Family on My Mother's Side" is a very interesting piece of writing, being 63 numbered thoughts; I'm not sure I would call it a story.

3.5 stars

>77 sallylou61:, Have you read For the Relief of Unbearable Urges? It's his first story collection, and it's one of my favorite collections. On a timely note, I'm at a writing conference now and going tomorrow to hear him read, and I'm so excited!!!

>78 whitewavedarling: . No, this is the first book I have read by Englander. It sounds as if he is getting around this month. He is going to be the featured luncheon speaker at the upcoming Virginia Festival of the Book later this month. Also, as part of the Festival, he will be speaking at our local branch library. What We Talk About ... Anne Frank is our regional library's "Same Page" program of encouraging the whole community to read and discuss a single book. It is replacing The Big Read for which our library did not receive a grant this year (and thus cannot participate in that program).

Finished The Tales of Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah. They are set over a range of time frames, the latest being likely in the late 1910s, likely after 1916.
Max has murky origins that are never quite explained, and is blind. Again, cause unknown. This does pose an interesting challenge to a detective, one would have thought. And some of the ways he overcomes that lack are interesting and inventive. Although I'm not sure he could necessarily read text by running his fingers over it. Maybe if it were heavily embossed that would seem possible but reading the newspaper that way strikes me as a little unlikely.
They get a bit repetitive, you are reminded several times in each story that Max is blind. It got a bit wearing. However they are interesting enough, especially when well spaced out.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado was an excellent and weird collection of short stories. There's a fairy tale/nothing is as it seems thread running through all of them, and they read as though Angela Carter and Kelly Link collaborated.

>81 RidgewayGirl: An article about The Husband Stitch was just discussed at https://www.librarything.com/topic/220307#6406146 ff. I read that story, and have no desire to read any more. Too weird for me.

>81 RidgewayGirl: bb taken!

Six shorts 2017 : the finalists for the 2017 Sunday Times EFG Short Story… **
The first story, by Kathleen Alcott was actually quite good.

I forgot to let you know I'd read The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: Volume 7:

Good solid collection of the author's frontier stories with the emphasis on westerns. None of those added to this volume appeared to have been included just to "pad" the collection. And for those who are fans of the Ward McQueen/Tumbling K stories, you'll be pleased to find at the end six tales about him and Kim Sartain.

Mary Russell's War by Laurie R King
Short stories

A disappointing collection. I did read the whole thing, but only a couple of the stories were worth the time, and I think I had read them before. One of them features a missing Sherlock Holmes who is apparently 135years old. WTH? King explains by saying that Holmes can never really die, but hey, when did he become a vampire? Don't spend money 💰 on this one, but if you want to get it from the library, that's up to you.

ETA - Holmes did NOT become a vampire, I'm just wondering how else you could explain his longevity.

Eggs, Beans and Crumpets is a collection of short stories by PG Wodehouse.

Listened to this in the car, a series of short stories. They feature Bingo Little, who is a Drones Ckub colleague of Bertie Wooster, but these aren't Jeeves & Wooster stories. They are narrated by an unnamed fellow member of the club. To be honets, I thought these the weakest of the lot. The Mr Mulliner story was good (I like the way the listeners in the pub are identified by their drinks, not by mane), as were the 3 Ukridge stories. These last 3 were probably the most successful, in terms of story and the narrrator, they seemed to mesh well together. It's the usual story, not enough money and loosing the girl features heavily. Nothing to get too serious about, they're lighthearted fun.

I started reading The Menace From Earth and discovered it's a short story collection from Robert Heinlein. I'm not sure yet how I'll like it, only am about halfway through the first story.

Tales of India : Folk Tales from Bengal, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu I hadn't heard these before, but they are typical folk tales, nicely retold. This was apparently a March ER book. I got it from OverDrive. ***1/2 The eBook had some problems, as words with unusual characters were not formatted correctly.

Finished Happiness, like Water a series of short stories by a young Nigerian female writer. They are vividly drawn pictures, but I have to note that a number of them feature domestic abuse (both physical and emotional). I don't know if that is the writer's experience, or is representative of a Nigerian cultural norm. Either way, I found it unsettling.

>90 Helenliz: I just finished a novel by the same author, Under the Udala Trees, and was thinking about trying her short story collection as well. I really enjoyed the novel, it did not feature the domestic violence like you mentioned in the stories.

I did also finish a different short story collection which was also quite good, In the Country: Stories by Mia Alvar. This collection of stories deals with the Filipino diaspora.

I'm adding SO many bbs to my long TBR list based on this group :) For anyone not paying attention, the group has listed 27 read books now. At this rate, we'll make it to a 100 short story collections in 2018!

I am reading some more Thorndyke mystery short stories in The Singing Bone.

I finished two collections lately, The Man with Two Left Feet by PG Wodehouse and A Fairy Tale Retold by Susannah Rowntree.

I finished two collections lately, The Man with Two Left Feet by PG Wodehouse and Beasts and Queens by Susannah Rowntree.

The Wodehouse was fun, but not his best. The fairy tales were pretty good. I have them both 3/5 stars.

I concur with >95 cmbohn: about The Man with Two Left Feet - agreeable but not his best. Plum Pie is a much better collection.

>92 whitewavedarling: - I can't believe we've read that many so far - very impressive.

I have one more to add to the list - The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes. He's one of my favorite authors and this collection did not disappoint. It's eleven stories that deal with aging. Maybe not the most uplifting topic but I thought they were well done.

I've begun the massive collection of T C Boyle's Stories and will be reading them for some time.

Thanks for the recommendation, Leslie! I will look for that one.

>97 LittleTaiko:, I know! We're on track to read more than a hundred this year :)

>98 RidgewayGirl:, I'll be curious to hear what you think of his short stories. I finally got around to reading one of his novels this year, and still really haven't decided what I think of it, though I do want to read more of him.

I finished another last night, Teen-Age Dog Stories, edited by David Thomas:

I have found that short story collections can be a mixed bag of good, mediocre, and awful tales, but Teen-Age Dog Stories was a pleasant exception to my usual experience with the genre. A couple of the stories included were old favorites from familiar authors, but the others were good enough to make me want to look up other works by their authors. Don't let the title dissuade you from trying this book: the stories within are not juvenile, include more adult themes, though never in a graphic manner.

Looking for a Y title for the AlphaKIT, I stumbled upon another short story collection by Wodehouse: Young Men in Spats. I love Jonathan Cecil's narration of Wodehouse so I look forward to starting this in a day or two!

Slightly unseasonably, I read Murder under the Christmas Tree, as it was a series of short stories and that format works well when travelling.
All pretty good. Some I'd read before, others were new to me. Pretty good collection, all in all.

I listened to Last Writes by Catherine Aird. Not read anything by her. It's a mixture of a collection. not all mysteries, some are more puzzles or physiological stories, almost morality plays. A few of the stories are real dazzlers (the woman on holiday and the divorcee particularly tickled me). There are some that are set in the same location and feature the a common character or two. Of these, those featuring Henry Fyle in the foreign office in the late 30s were most enjoyable. They usually start with him phoning to visit his sister Wendy in the country for a few days. And he turns up with a puzzle that Wendy solves with some particular insight.

I've not been contributing to this thread (short stories not really my bag), but just noting that I have just finished Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Bon Voyage, Mr President and Other Stories, one of the little Penguin 60 books published in the mid-90s to celebrate their 60 years of publishing. It features 4 short stories - the first one, which gives the collection its title, is by far the longest, taking up about half the book, about a deposed Latin American/Carribean president anonymously seeking medical treatment in Geneva, where he is discovered by a fellow exiled countryman who happens to work in the hospital. Only the final one (a mere 4 pages) features the magical realism for which Marquez is famous. I think my favourite was the third one, about a woman who is accidentally admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Spain. I can't say I warmed to any of the characters, and wouldn't rush to read any of his longer works, but the writing was great, not a word out of place (credit to the unnamed translator too for that). 3/5.

Earlier this month I read another Daphne du Maurier collection: The Breaking Point. Very good as always. "The Blue Lenses" and "The Menace" were my favourite stories.

Von Selbstmördern, Engeln und anderen armen Teufeln (About Suicides, Angels and other Poor Devils)
This is a book mostly of very short stories that remind me of O. Henry and de Maupasant. There is usually a clever twist, and if the characters aren't really developed, well, what do you expect in 4 or 5 pages. The book finishes with a longer story - 50 pages. There is one twist after another, but still no character development. The shorts get ****1/2 from me, which I have left on the book, but the longer story only **.

Like all such collections, it would be better read one story at a time, rather than all at once. I would be very surprised if this has been translated into English.

>107 MarthaJeanne: I don't usually enjoy short story collections but I happen to have several unread, so I'm trying this--reading one at a time, just dipping in now and again, instead of trying to read the whole thing at once, as I would a novel. I'm finding this approach more satisfying with the individual reads, although slow-going to complete the whole book. Also there have been a couple of stories that just didn't work, so I stopped reading them and selected another one without feeling the guilt of not completing.

>108 sturlington: Harder to do that with library books.

>109 MarthaJeanne: Agreed. I tend to buy short story collections but not read them.

I've started The Found and the Lost. Ursula Le Guin is a wonderful writer, and this collection of 'novellas' promoses to be very interesting. So far I've only read the first.

I finished The Convict and other stories. All set in, or with characters from, what I think of as backwater southern America it is not exactly a cheery selection. They're all set in or after war, with a character who either has flaws, or who id facing a word that is flawed. I thought it quite a good collection, with one real stand out.

I know it is a small thing, but the way that the audio was presented was really helpful. It was 1 CD with one story and 4 CD each with 2 stories. No having to change CD mid story, which gets really annoying It is only a small thing, but, you know, the small things make all the difference.

I've been reading Tom Hank's Uncommon Type off and on for the last couple of months and finished it today. A pleasant collection of stories that all feature a typewriter in some way.

I listened to the audiobook of Redeployment which turned out to be short stories about soldiers & veterans of the Iraqi war (and a few about Afghanistan). Klay does a good job illustrating why some opt to redeploy even though they hated being in Iraq; how the experience created a barrier between the returning soldier & his friends and loved ones at home that is difficult to breach even in the best of circumstances.

I am not generally a fan of war stories and would never have read this if I hadn't gotten it as a free giveaway from Penguin Random House Audio. However, I am glad now that I did read it as I feel that I have a (slightly) better understanding of some of the difficulties these vets face.

I recently finished You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld, which was just excellent.

I'm now reading Lauren Groff's Florida, which is also really good.

For the Pacific Ocean square of BingoDOG I read James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific. I particularly enjoyed the stories relating to the musical South Pacific such as "Our Heroine" featuring Nellie Forbush and Emile De Becque, "Fo' Dolla'" featuring Bloody Mary, Lt. Cable, and Liat, and "Those Who Fraternize" featuring four of Emile De Becque's daughters. In the book De Becque has eight daughters by at least three different women, none of whom he married instead of a daughter and son as in the musical. Other characters from the musical also appear various stories in the book. I found the last story in the book "A Cemetery at Hoga Point" in which the narrator talks to one of the two Negro caretakers about the men buried very moving. Not surprisingly, many of the stories are about the military and the men's lives; as a whole, I did not find these stories as interesting.

World War II

3 stars

For those looking to try some new Scottish mystery authors, the Bloody Scotland collection edited by Lin Anderson is very good.

Recently finished Wish I was Here.

This collection of short stories are all about love, and mainly about loosing it. Noticeable that the majority deal with a lesbian relationship, which certainly allows a different take from the "oh, he's left me" style of love. Some of them grabbed me more than others, in some of them there's a sense of what happened next being a mystery - leaving Hamish & Don on a mountain in Scotland has to the be ultimate in cliff-hangers - which feels like there is unfinished business there. The other thing that dawned on me is that most of these tales are about a longer-standing relationship, some of them had been a couple for 10 to 15 years before we hear about them, this isn't the usual young love, this is a more mature, more settled kind of affection that is being turned on its head. Maybe that increases the surprise at the breakup at all.
The writing is at times stark and at others lyrical. I believe she also writes poetry and in the rhythm of some of the sentences, that really comes out, she has a ear for a turn of phrase, that is for sure.
It's not always a very hopeful set of stories, in some of them you wonder how the narrator will extricate themselves from their situation. Yet, bizarrely, the one that I found most hopeful was the one about the man whose wife has left him and he's decided to commit suicide. Something in the fact that he wants to do it without it looking like suicide and by doing so starts to pull his life together makes me think that he, of anyone in the book, will make it through and out the other side of the breakup slough of despond.

>118 Helenliz: Sounds interesting, but the touchstone goes to a DVD.

>119 MarthaJeanne: - sorry, sorted now.
I tend to forget that there may be other items with the same name and that it isn't psychic enough to know which item I'm thinking of!

I often wish it would automatically pick the one I have open in another tab, but it's not that smart.

The book I finished today has the title Ma. That was a hassle to look through. I found a combining opportunity before I found my book.

I'm working on Tom Hank's Uncommon type. So far, as an author, Tom Hanks is a very good actor.

Had a wonderful time reading Calypso the latest from David Sedaris. It was a funny and poignant collection of stories about his family.

>122 MarthaJeanne: Not going to finish it. **

>124 MarthaJeanne: - Aw, that's too bad, I liked the stories overall. Some of the ones towards the end were his strongest. I especially enjoyed how he had several stories about the same group of friends sprinkled throughout the book. The first one with the friends I didn't necessarily like but by the end I liked seeing what they were up to. Though I agree he's a better actor than author. :)

Quite outside of the silly typewriter gag, there are little things. It took me several pages into the first story to figure out that the narrator was a man. Someone goes shopping with friend Anna in my experience is usually a woman. And all the stories I read are just so exaggerated. That first one goes from good friends with no sexual tension to a wild affair and back in three weeks. A story about Christmas Eve morphs into war flashbacks, and suddenly the main character is missing a leg. The schedule for an actor on a publicity tour. Sorry, I don't believe several 16+ hour days in a row with only a 5 minute break. Not if the actors are supposed to be presentable. I wasted enough time on the book to get to page 145. I haven't come across even one character that I care about. By this point if I don't want to pick the book up and see what he is going to write next, reading further is probably not going make me change my opinion.

To be totally fair, I should add that right now I'm going through a bad patch, and books have to grab me through some pretty bad pain. However, both Niemals Indien, travel essays about India and Revolution (Ackroyd), a fairly serious history of England in the 18th century are succeeding.

I'm so enjoying catching up on this thread :)

We're at 43 books now, and I figure I'll continue this into a new thread when we get to 50, and draw notice to 4 and 5 star reads. Most of the books in the top post's list don't have ratings, but if you want to glance at the books you've read there, you can let me know if you want me to add a 4-5 star rating and make sure they carry into recommendations on the next thread!

I'll post the whole list there, too, but with it getting so long, I thought it might make sense to draw attention to particular ones. Or should I just bold those strongest rated ones, rather than making a new list? Any thoughts?

Good idea to draw attention to the highest-rated ones, whether by bolding or some other means.

I rated The Breaking Point four stars; forgot to mention it earlier :)

I've re-read The Complete Father Brown, by G.K. Chesterton (4 stars) and just finished Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards (3 stars).

I'm working on several short story collections in fits and starts, but I finished my first one for the year: We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone by Ronald Malfi, a collection of horror stories.

I don't read a lot of single-author short story collections because I invariably find them uneven. They would always be much stronger if the editor would cut the number of stories by half, leaving only the strongest stories. Malfi's best stories come mostly at the beginning of this collection, and the opener, "The Dinner Party," is a finely crafted shocker that sets up strong expectations for what follows. Malfi is at his best when he leads you down one path and then takes a sudden unexpected turn, like a knife twist in the gut, such as in "The Jumping Sharks of Dyer Island" and "The Glad Street Angel." Many of his stories are unsettling and throw the reader off-kilter but in a good way; see "Knocking" and "The Housewarming." But with the exception of the squirm-inducing "Discussions Concerning the Ingestion of Living Insects" toward the end of the collection, the stories in the latter half of the book fall flat. If this collection had been half as long, I would have easily given it five stars. As it is, I rated this three stars.

>128 rabbitprincess:, awesome :)

>129 sturlington:, I'm sorry the second half of the book fell short--I'd been looking forward to that one. At least the first half was that strong, though; it's nice to know that going into it, too. Maybe I'll read it from back to front story-wise so it goes uphill instead of down :)

I'm working on The Best by Connie Willis right now. One problem with single author collections is often that after three or four good stories they start all sounding very similar. Connie Willis' stories are quite varied. Of course the fact that each story won either a Hugo or a Nebula doesn't hurt.

>131 MarthaJeanne:, I feel like that a lot of the time also. Not always, but it happens a lot with mainstream/literary collections especially.

Just finished *another* short story collection: The Man in the Yellow Raft, by C.S. Forester. All of these stories are set in the Pacific theatre of operations during WW2, and most feature the American destroyer USS Boon. The stories may have been a bit technical for my heatwave-fried brain, but there were a few stories with clever twists that I enjoyed. 3.5/5.

>131 MarthaJeanne: The story Even the Queen gets about ten stars from me. (It apparently got both a Hugo and a Nebula.) Males types may not get it, but I would guess that most women would enjoy it.

And anyone who has ever sung in a choir will enjoy All seated on the Ground

I finished a classic CanLit collection, A Bird in the House by Margaret Laurence, which is set in small-town Manitoba and has some autobiographical elements.

I also finished The Dark and Other Love Stories by Deborah Willis, a recently published collection that examines the theme of love in some unusual situations. I especially liked a story about a pot dealer whose girlfriend competes for a spot on a Mars mission in a reality show.

I gave both books 4.5 stars each. While reading The Dark and Other Love Stories, I wondered if Laurence's writing influenced Willis, but then I read an interview in which Willis cites Alice Munro as a primary influence.

>134 MarthaJeanne: I'll have to make a note of that one. I loved the Connie Willis novels that I've read.

>131 MarthaJeanne: Then I get to the end of the last story, and find a note from the editor that as a special treat (!?!?!) she as added in three of Willis's speeches. Well guess what. The speeches are in five star territory as well. The best of Connie Willis gets five stars from me. I found the stories consistantly good, but very different, so that reading them together was not a problem.

>136 MarthaJeanne:, That's great to hear! It's nice that they added the nonfiction, as well, and that they lived up to the stories--that's so rare.

And, that brings us to 50 short story collections read this year! I was going to continue this into a new thread when we reached 50 books or the halfway point in the year, whichever came second, but it looks like we don't have enough messages for that since I'm not seeing the option.

In any case, I've gone back to the first message and bolded all of the books with 4-5 star ratings, as well as a few where folks didn't list the number of stars they gave, but certainly made it sound like at least a 4 star read! If you see any mistakes or want me to add a rating for one of the books you read, just let me know :)

I have one more to add though sadly it is definitely not a 4 or 5 star book. I finished Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders and did not really enjoy it at all. There was one story that wasn't too bad but the rest were too dark for my personal taste, but then again I'm not much of a dystopian fan. I'd give it more of a 2 star rating.

>138 LittleTaiko:, I have yet to read something by him that makes me understand how widely I hear him praised. I remain on the look-out, but...?

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado has turned the oppressions that women face in our society into literal horrors. Each story in this collection is surprising, provocative, often darkly funny, and different from the one that came before. And at eight stories, this collection is the perfect length. I started off listening to the audiobook, but halfway through the third story, I bought a paper copy because I knew I would want to read these stories again and again. The strongest story is the opener, "The Husband Stitch," which uses urban legends to illustrate how men try to entirely possess women, allowing them nothing that is theirs alone. And the final story, "Difficult at Parties," moved me to tears. This book will definitely find a place in my favorite reads of the year, I'm sure. (5*)

Pistols for two
I'm a big Georgette Heyer fan, and reread her books often. I like the novels better, I think. You get longer to enjoy the characters. But these stories are also old friends. She is regnancy romance at its best, and indeed most other regnancy romance disappoints if you know Heyer's books.

>141 MarthaJeanne: Another Heyer fan here! It has been years since I read those short stories - maybe it is time to reread them :-)

>141 MarthaJeanne: I'm reading all her romances in publication order, only 25 or so before I get to that one!

Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt is a nicely curated collection of weird stories. With only eleven stories, this collection is an ideal length, and each story is distinct from the others. Wehunt's stories are weird, atmospheric, disturbing rather than scary, with an Appalachian flavor. Yet even though they deal with bizarre subjects--a man changing into a swan, a mountain that bleeds, women falling from the sky--the underlying themes are very familiar, dealing with such core human experiences as loss, grief, longing, and loneliness, and I think that's what grounds these stories. Wehunt also includes brief story notes, which I always appreciate; I like to know what inspired short stories and why they were written. 4 stars

Does this count here? I just finished Märchen aus Österreich. a book of Austrian Fairy Tales. As with Grimm, there are several in here that you would not want to read to children. Several are variations on well-known fairy tales. I gave it three stars.

>145 MarthaJeanne: In my opinion, of course it counts here! Isn't it surprising how dark some of the original fairy tales were?

I read All Cats Are Gray, a sci fi short story by Andre Norton, a new-to-me author. I just downloaded the (free) single story from Project Gutenberg because it fit this month's ColorCAT but now I have a new author whose books I need to seek out :)

>146 leslie.98: 'Ghost' stories to tell by the fire side. Certainly they were never meant to be just for children. What hit me in this collection is how often the king offers his daughter's hand to whomever for whatever without any care for her opinion. The worst was one where the king took the babies from his wife, said he was having them killed, verbally abused her, then sent her back to her poor (ie no money) parents, calls her back to serve as a servant in his palace. Finally when the two children are grown he admits that they are still alive, applauds his wife for being obediant and true in spite of everything, and they all live happily ever after.

>147 leslie.98: I haven't read a lot of her books, but I have enjoyed what I have read. I'll look this one up.
ETA, yes, Good story of its type. Most notably for Science Fiction in the 50s - The main character is female. As one reviewer puts it, 'a smart, capable, unattractive female'. We forget how exceptional that was. Gutenberg has several more of her stories as well.

I just finished The found and the lost ****

This is a collection of novellas, some of which might qualify as long short stories, others are longer. I like most of her work, but don't really find the ones set in Earthsea appealling. The last story in here, Paradises Lost is one of the longest, but also one of the best.

I had this from OverDrive, and didn't finish in my first borrowing period, and there were holds on it, so I read it in two batches.

Just finished Reality, Reality by Jackie Kay. A really good collection, again. All narrated in the female voice, I listened to this and the audio book was narrated by 4 or 5 different women, taking stories in turn. It worked really well. The one about the woman starting on her diet was absolute genius.

MarthaJeanne, fairy tales definitely count! I enjoyed catching up with all of your reading, too :)

>144 sturlington:, I'm going to have to look that one up sooner than later...

The Well Ain't Dry Yet by Belinda Anderson. This is an interesting although uneven collection of stories about people of various ages and races in West Virginia. The stories "Reunion" and "Picasso's Cat" (in which a cat locks the owner of a car out of his car) are humorous although I would not call this a humorous book. 3 stars

Boule de suif et autres nouvelles by Guy de Maupassant. Very bleak outlook on life, but he can write.

Another book of novellas finished: Menschen im Krieg by Andreas Latzko. Written in a furious, feverish rage at the waste of lives.

I finished the underwhelming collection Dangerous Women edited by Gardner Dozois. This was a huge collection, over 32 hours on the audio, with multiple genres (historical, sci fi, fantasy, mystery) of stories with a "dangerous woman" central to the story. There were no real stand out stories here for me and I did not finish three of them.

Dipping into Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr.

This is a big book. Category: feminist science fiction. I started off by reading The Screwfly Solution, a chilling story about femicide that made NPR's 100 Best Horror Stories list. Followed that up with almost its opposite: Houston, Houston, Do You Read? -- like Herland in space but with a darker underbelly.

I will continue to dip into this from time to time. The writing is very good, the themes thought-provoking, but I don't like reading a mass of short stories by one author all at once, as they tend to blend into one another.

I'm reading Some Trick: Thirteen Stories by Helen DeWitt and it's odd and interesting so far.

I finished listening to The Rendezvous and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier. They are wide range, most of them containing some form of mystery. These vary from a detective type mystery to ones containing a supernatural element. They tend to contain a twist, some of which you see coming, others are less obvious.

I listened to this narrated by Edward da Souza, who has a very pleasant reading voice.

I didn't read the whole thing, but I did dip into Night Shift by Stephen King for an upcoming book club meeting. This would be a reread.

For me, this collection of early King stories doesn't hold up as well as the stories in Skeleton Crew. A lot of these stories are overly familiar from their movie adaptations and seem gimmicky now. There are a few that bear up to rereading, though, notably, "I Am the Doorway" and "I Know What You Need." I also enjoyed "Night Surf," a sort-of forerunner to The Stand, which is one of my all-time favorite King novels.

I just finished an interesting collection, In Sunlight or In Shadow edited by Lawrence Block. Each story was inspired by one of Edward Hopper's paintings. Some of the authors included in the collection are Stephen King, Lawrence Block, Megan Abbott, Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child. My favorite from the collection was probably, Block's Autumn at the Automat inspired by the painting Automat. I wasn't familiar with Hopper's artwork, other than his painting Nighthawks, but I really like it and really enjoyed this collection. The one negative was with the audio edition, it did not mention which painting was being used for each story. Sometimes audio books will have a digital PDF that you can download as well with illustrations and things, this audio would have benefited from that. I ended up borrowing the ebook edition from the library as well as the audio so I knew what the paitings were. I give this collection 4*.

A Quiver Full of Arrows Jeffrey Archer does it again. ****1/2

I just finished read Some Trick by Helen DeWitt. Enjoyed it very much!

>162 paperclypse: Some trick

I read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. I rated it 3.5 stars. These are Gothic, fairy tale retellings with a feminist twist. Not your grandchild's stories.

Finished Eight Ghosts, a book of 8 stories by different authirs, each inspired by one of the sites held by Englsih Heritage. The one I liked most was probably the most traditional ghost story in there. This isn't really my thing. I enjoyed the afterwards, containing a brief history of the ghost story as a literature form and the survey of some English Heritage sites that are reputed to be haunted.

Also finished listening to Pulse. I liked the related stories at Phil & Joanna's, where conversation between 3 couples was reproduced, with all its great meaning and compete tosh in equal measure. But I can quite get that this would not be everyone's cup of tea. The last and titular story was the most intense, with a man reviewing his failed marriage in light of his parents sucessful marriage and failing health.

Hey everyone!

I Just got caught up on updating the list :) Finally, LT is giving me the option of continuing the thread in a new topic--I'd planned on doing it when we reached 50, but it wasn't allowing me to! I'll plan on doing it this weekend when I have a bit more time, and I'll re-list in the top message the books that have gotten 4-5 stars. If you want to add a high star rating to something you've read that you didn't rate, let me know and I can adjust the list. Otherwise, just expect a new thread and a shorter list of highlights this weekend!

Hope everyone's having a great week :)

I read Natural Histories by Guadalupe Nettel. She is fast becoming a favorite of mine. These are five tales with the theme of animals. It's really about people, but the animals make the tales very interesting. She has written stories like this before, published in Granta. She is a bit strange but very brilliant. When asked who were influences she said Papa Kafka and Tia Virginia (Woolf). I hope more of her work gets translated.

>166 whitewavedarling: I forgot to mention it in my post #154, but I rated this 4.5. Absolutely recommended for people who want to read about WWI beyond the Western front.

I have enjoyed Jeffrey Archer's short stories so much this year that I decided to check out his longer prose. I am currently on the fourth book (of seven) in the Clifton Chronicles. I am happy to report that he is as good at keeping interest up over a long story as he is at satisfying on the shorter scale. Of course he keeps you wanting more by ending each book at a cliff hanger, so if you try this it is probably a good idea to take up finished series rather than ones still in progress.

>168 MissWatson:, Got it!! Thanks :)

>169 MarthaJeanne:, That's exciting :) There are so many authors whose short stories I love, but whose long works don't measure up, or vice versa. It's always great to hear of authors who are amazing at both forms.

Alte Geschichten : Erzählungen ****

More portraits of women and their relationships than stories. Depressing, but very well written.

I've actually just finished two completely different short story collections. The first was Bibliomysteries a collection of book themed mysteries commissioned by Otto Penzler the owner of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. This was a really strong collection that I enjoyed. There were a couple of misfires but overall I would definitely recommend.

The other set was River Teeth by David James Duncan which just so-so for me. I can tell that he's a really good writer, in fact The River Why was one of my favorite reads from last year. Somehow these stories just didn't work for me. A whole lot of words that just didn't seem to go anywhere.

Finished Strange Weather by Joe Hill. A collection of four novellas. I liked 3 out of the 4. The third story Aloft, was just bizarre. The last story was the best one in my opinion.

Just read Women invent the future. ***1/3 This is a very short anthology of weird Science fiction stories (and a poem) written by women. It's big draw is that you can download it for free.

I'm listening to The Time Traveller's Almanac: Part II and have to ask a bizarre question, what is it with time travel and sex. Not terribly good sex either. A couple of the stories have taken this approach and it's a very odd fit, imo. Not sure the first thing I'd want to do having travelled back in time is get it on with someone. Maybe that's why we've not yet heard a lot about it being possible, everyone who gets it right can't be bothered to come back & tell us about it.

>175 Helenliz: Ha! I know, talk about misplaced priorities! For me my #1 time travel destination would be the Cavern Club to see the Beatles just before they made it big. I always say time travel is the only way I'll ever get to see Paul McCartney in concert.

An Eligible Boy came up in other reading I was doing, and I found it online. Science fiction based on bad gender ratios in India and artificial intelligence in the soap opera business. Not sure how I feel about it.

I just read Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by P.D. James. I think that this is the first time I have read murder short stories; most of my reading of mysteries has been novels. The stories all had different characters. None of the perpetrators were punished, and most of the murders were just talked about with very little description of the violence involved; there was very little blood and gore. Some of the stories had surprise endings. This collection was published posthumously although all of the stories had been previously published. Two stories were Christmas stories.

3.5 stars

I've been on a short story kick lately, it seems. Earlier in the week I read Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories, by L.M. Montgomery, which was very sweet and sentimental, and today I've been reading the much less sentimental Florida, by Lauren Groff.

I finished The Time Travellers Almanac: Part II on audiobook.

This is a real mixture of stories, some dating back a long way, others far more recent. Like any colleciton, there are stories that are good and those that are a lot less good.
The good:
The butterfly effect - I knew the term, but this is the tale form which the term originates. By going back in time and stepping on a butterfly the outcome of the recent US presidential election is reversed and the tone of politics is much impaired. All in all the new winner sounded a lot like Trump, so all we now need the planet to do is invent a time machine, so back in time, step on a butterfly and all will be well...
Enoch Soames - time travel as part of a pact with the devil that, clearly, doesn;t turn out for the best. Excellent twist on a story. I was intrigued that the point he went forward to was the reading room of the British Museum in 1997. If it had been a few years later and it would have moved!

A couple take you back into history, which is an intriguing thought, with the history being quite convincing. Fire Watch was probably the most convicing of this type.

The bad: Why there is the need to travel back in time and have sex, I reallly don't know. The story where a 40 year old, desparate to change his present, goes back to teach himself at 21 some lessons, ends up swopping lives and having sex with his 20 year old girlfriend is, frankly, dreadful, the ick factor taking over everything.

This isn't my usual type of reading material, I'm not a huge fan of science fiction, too much of it, I fear, sacrifices sience for fiction. However, in this colleciton there are certainly some authors I will consider looking out more of. A mixed bag rating of 3 stars, some much better, some should be avoided

Candlelight at Christmas is a single short story. **** Fun, Christmasy. Fforde is a reliable UK chick lit author. I saw both this and a Christmas anthology in my library's OverDrive catalogue, so I indulged.

A Christmas feast ***1/2 Most of these are very short.

>175 Helenliz:, >176 rabbitprincess:, Agreed! A bizarre question, but I totally get it. I remember looking forward to A Door into Summer for ages, it had been recommended by so many folks, and then the whole sex/romance element toward the end threw me off to the extent that it kind of ruined the book for me. I had a hard time thinking about it without that casting a shadow over the whole book :( It does seem to come up a lot, to the extent that it's almost expected.

I remember maybe two years ago, I edited a time travel novel (which I almost never do, they're such headaches!), and finally had to ask the author why he'd included sex. He wasn't incredibly good at writing it, and I really like his writing normally (which is why I'd agreed to edit the book to begin with since I normally avoid time travel). He told me he thought it was expected in the genre!!! I honestly can't remember if he decided to keep it or not, but that's never quite left my head.

An update: We're at 78 books!!! It looks like there are about 20 of us who've been participating in this thread, so maybe we'll end up at 100? It'll be a race to get there if we do, but we just might :) I've got one book I'm reading now, and one more planned for December...

>184 whitewavedarling: reminded me that I read another short story collection last week: Designs on Life, by Elizabeth Ferrars. I have a new vintage mystery author to search for at secondhand shops and book sales :)

I certainly intended to participate and I have managed even one book yet. I can't believe how the year has gotten away from me. Somehow I'm way behind in my reading goal in general. But I have taken some BBs from the books mentioned here.

>186 dudes22:, This year really has flown by. I've definitely taken some bbs also, so it's good to hear I'm not the only one!

I have decided to reread all the Valdemar anthologies. (https://www.librarything.com/series/Valdemar+%3A+Anthologies)

I started with Sword of Ice. Apparently I read this 5 1/2 years ago, but none of the stories felt familiar.

>188 MarthaJeanne:, It's funny how that happens. I haven't tried re-reading anything from only five years ago, but I re-read a book this year that I'd read maybe 10 years ago, and couldn't remember any of it! One of the few downfalls of reading so much, I suppose :)

I'm not pretending that this is great literature, but you'd think that there would be just a hint here or there that my eyes had seen it before. Oh, well, just that much more fun to the series, I guess.

I’ve enjoyed this thread more than I thought I would. I’ve read more short stories than I thought I would and have been exposed to other options that I hope to read someday.

Is this something we can continue for 2019?

>191 LittleTaiko: I second this idea

>191 LittleTaiko: and >192 luvamystery65:, I'm so glad you guys have enjoyed it as much as I have!!! And to think, I was nervous about proposing it last year because I wasn't sure anyone would be interested :)

I'm glad to set up a thread and keep it going, and would love to--especially since there are suggestions from this year I want to remember to get to sooner than later, and because I didn't get around to reading anywhere near so many as I meant to!

>193 whitewavedarling: I'd certainly join in a repeat of this thread next year. I've already read a couple of new reads from other people's suggestions here. It's always useful to hear what other people are reading and to explore new ideas myself.

Nice to know that others are thinking the same way I am.

I thought I would try something with more literary merit than the last few, so I started Dave Eggers' How we are Hungry. These prose pieces vary greatly in length. From one or two pages to over twenty. They seem more like writing exercises than stories. Most are missing beginning, end and/or plot. I think I would prefer those elements to literary merit.

Well, I finished it. *

>23 MarthaJeanne: in a recent change, links forward work now. Might make life easier next year.

>196 MarthaJeanne:, I have yet to try his short works--I've read some of his longer ones, and found them sort of hit and miss. I either love them or hate them! Still, I had the luck to sit and have dinner with Eggers one night, and he was such a great, fun guy that I think I'll eventually read everything he writes at some point or another :)

Folktales from India is much better collection than the one I read earlier this year. The editor decided not to arrange them in groups by topic but rather to create several sections and keep each section varied. Knowing that the next tale will be very different from the one you just read makes it easy to keep reading. The endnotes include information matching the stories to indexing schemes for those who want to explore how stories relate to others around the world. They certainly do - several times I recognized stories I read as a child although all the detals were changed. ****1/2

Saints and Sinners by Edna O'Brien. This was enjoyable in a slightly understated, mildly melancholic kind of way. I listened to it in the car, all narrated by a beautiful Irish accent.

>199 MarthaJeanne:, I'm going to have to look that one up--bb taken!

I had such good intentions at the beginning of the year to increase the amount of short stories I read. And instead I haven't even read one. I do have a couple already plugged into my challenge for next year, so maybe I'll be better next year. BUt I have enjoyed reading and making notes of ones that sounded good.

Sun in glory (>188 MarthaJeanne:) ***

Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant. These stories were written by Ms. Gallant, a Canadian, while she lived in Paris, where she lived most of her adult life. Some of the stories are set in Paris but others are set elsewhere in Europe. The stories emphasize place or a feeling of belonging (or not); many of the characters are displaced in some aspect. As a whole I enjoyed the shorter stories more than the longer ones; several of the stories were around 40 pages long.

3 stars

I'm nearly done with Stories from other places. It also has two 40 page stories. And one that is 100 pages. Not short. However there are also stories in the 15-25 page range. I'm enjoying it. Several stories sort of fade out, leaving you to imagine the exact way the story works itself out. I'm surprised how well he makes that work. 'The Death of Murat' is really missing the end, but somehow I didn't feel left hanging. It is clear what is going to happen, and somehow I don't need to actually read it.

Of course, with a name like Shakespeare, the author has a lot to live up to. The stories do have very different locations. This is a solid four stars.

ETA: Finished.

I'll be reading The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and Other Stories, by Agatha Christie, as a seasonal treat.

Finished Echoes from the Macabre by Daphne du Maurier. % short stories, each with an undercurrent of menace about them. Glad I listened to them in the safety of my car, and not in a dark house, with the wind whistling in the trees...

The Christmas stocking and other stories ***1/2

This was just about the right thing to read on Christmas Eve between coughing attacks. I had already read two of the stories.

>207 Helenliz: I loved du Maurier's short story The Apple Tree. It was very creepy. It's in the same collection as The Birds. What an imagination!

Single story Fetching Raymond **** This was an ebook. Rather weird story, but well written.

Pathways is the Valdemar anthology that I recently bought. I enjoy them. If you aren't a Valdemar groupy, you probably wouldn't.

My mind didn't want to concentrate on a full novel, so I finished out the year with a short story collection: Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams, 4*. Overall, this was a pretty good collection of apocalyptic & post-apocalyptic stories. The collection included some great names in the genre: George R. R. Martin, Paolo Bacigalupi, Seanan McGuire, Hugh Howey, Robert Silverberg, Cory Doctorow. I need to find the first edition now. This was a good way to end out the year with stories about the end of the world.

Hey everyone,

Just dropping in to let you know that I haven't forgotten about this thread or my promise to set up one for 2019; it's just been a crazy start to the new year on my end, and I came back from vacation with lots of work piling up. I plan to get to it this weekend.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year, Everyone!!!

>214 whitewavedarling: Happy new year! :)

>214 whitewavedarling: Woot! Happy New Year

>214 whitewavedarling: Excellent! I will look forward to discovering and sharing more short story collections in 2019.

Here it is! https://www.librarything.com/topic/301994