Books on the Nightstand discussion

I don't think anyone has mentioned Jhumpa Lahiri. She is one of my favorite all-time authors and her book, "The Interpreter of Maladies" won the Pulitzer-and it's a short story compilation.

I'd love it if there were some classics in there as well, like the aforementioned Salinger, O'Connor, Jackson. And I'm adding Willa Cather to the mix! :-)

One of the most powerful short stories I've ever read was "Everything in this Country Must" by Colum McCann. I nominate that for one of the monthly short stories.

Happy Holidaze, all!

When I was a kid in high school our English textbooks featured nothing but short stories. Many of the most famous writers were included in these books like O Henry,Saki and Hemingway. Later in life I visited writers like Clarke and Bradbury who made Sci Fi important to me using short stories. These stories are the backbone of literature and I could not do without them.Ger

If you are considering science fiction and/or fantasy short stories, I would suggest checking out the online magazine Lightspeed.

Most of their content is available online for free. They stagger the release dates of the short stories throughout the current month, but the archived short stories are free. They have some reprints and some original short stories, including some other work from Ken Liu. If you prefer to listen to the stories, they also do a nice fiction podcast.

The ebook version of the magazine has an exclusive novella, so you have to pay for that piece. Otherwise, the works on the site are free.

Chris wrote: "I don't think anyone has mentioned Jhumpa Lahiri. She is one of my favorite all-time authors and her book, "The Interpreter of Maladies" won the Pulitzer-and it's a short story compilation.


I LOVE Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories! Great idea. She takes my breath away...

Theres a great candidate for December here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1...

6 short stories by Charles Dickens, from Some Christmas Stories

I would also recommend Bitter Grounds by Neil Gaiman, which can be found here
http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/09/bi...

I wish I'd seen this earlier! So many great short stories out there. Here's a few of them.

"A Rose for Emily," William Faulkner
"Hills Like White Elephants," Hemingway
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Ambrose Bierce
"The Story of an Hour," Kate Chopin
"The Iguana," Isak Dinesen
"King of the Bingo Game," Ralph Ellison
"The Lottery," Shirley Jackson
"A Hunger Artist," Franz Kafka
"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," Ursula LeGuin
"Bartleby, the Scrivener," Melville
"The Management of Grief," Bharati Mukherjee
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Flannery O'Connor (also "Good Country People")
"A Worn Path," Eudora Welty
"Daisy Miller," Henry James (although this may be a novella)

I also recommend "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Plus there's Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Such great work out there! I'm looking forward to this challenge.

I was looking for a new practice for 2013...a short story a day!

It's coming together, folks! I think I have a plan. I hope to launch on Friday.

And I will adopt Jodi's suggestion of a short story per day for 2013 as a pesonal reading challenge. It's perfect. Thanks, Jodi!

P.A.F.P wrote: "I am very excited about the idea! I love short stories. I strongly encourage you to include a Kate Braverman story. While she has her own struggles as a person, her stories stay etched in your memory. Her story "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta", gorgeous and disturbing, is free on her website: http://www.katebraverman.com/talltale... ."

I don't know what the nature of "Ann's Short Story Challenge" will be (Will it be thematically constructed? Free form?) but I decided to hedge my bets on the short-a-day thing by reading "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta" last night. I've been thinking about it all day (You're right in that the story stays with you and that it is disturbing...) One of the questions, in many iterations, that I kept asking myself was "Why?": Why did the guy think that this was a good way to approach the woman? Why did she "acquiesce" insofar as she did? One answer that I came up with was based on his experience in Viet Nam, when he was shooting at targets on the ground. He had people and dogs in his sights. Once a shooter has a target in his sites, he pretty much owns everything in that circumscribed area. He has power over that target, the power of life and death; and the the target doesn't even know it. He owns the target. He set the woman in his metaphorical sights (ref the part about AIDS...) I'm not so clear on her motivations however. I've never really understood the passive feminine psyche and the story doesn't really give me enough to work with... Anyway, thank you for bringing "Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta" to my attention :-)

I will clarify, for Tanya and everyone else.

It's not a "challenge." Well, I mean, my story-a-day challenge is a challenge, but I am not necessarily telling you all to join me.

Rather, I'm looking at the "project" as a year-long exploration of short fiction, through stories, lit mags, discussion ...

My goal of Friday was probably too optimistic, considering today is Wednesday. I kind of thought I had most of a week. Will probably write the first post in Project Short Story this weekend.

Ann, are you going to be posting here, or on the blog? I want to make sure I'm keeping an eye on the right place.

Callie, it will mostly be blog posts, but I'm sure that the discussion will spill over to a section of this group that I create specifically for Project Short Story.

This sounds like an interesting idea. I look forward to Friday.

I'm thrilled to participate in Project Short Story. However, I am only going to commit to one short story per week, unless it's a really short one. I usually try to read a short story in between each novel. There are so many great ones out there - - I am going to try and expand my author selections based on the posts that will be here and on Ann's blog.

OK, for this short story challenge, hmm, project, perhaps, journey, I must suggest some Jill McCorkle!

I'm looking forward to reading some short stories too. Though with my other reading challenge I have set for myself: Baker's Dozen each of fiction and non-fiction...not counting the selections of my 2 book groups each month. I think I'll only aim for one short story a week. One a day seems like a superhero challenge! :)

One more thing I wanted to mention about the short story idea ... I'm going to try and pull my short stories from a variety of sources, including magazines (like "Sun", "New Yorker", "The Atlantic", etc.), books of an author's short stories, anthologies, Kindle singles, as well as classics and any other sources people might recommend.

Katie wrote: "I think I'll only aim for one short story a week. One a day seems like a superhero challenge! :) "

Pamela wrote: "One more thing I wanted to mention about the short story idea ... I'm going to try and pull my short stories from a variety of sources, including magazines (like "Sun", "New Yorker", "The Atlantic"..."

We haven't see Ann's Short Story Project yet, but yeah, I'm going to go for one/week as well. I was just asking DH if we still had an e-subscription to the New Yorker and YAY! We do! So between the New Yorker and a couple of short collections that I have, I'll probably be in good shape:-)

What do you know, I made my self-imposed Friday deadline:
http://booksonthenightstand.com/2013/...

Just read "Introducing Project Short Story". Awesome project! I am in.
Ann, thank you for your time, energy, and Brilliant idea for a great project. You and Michael ROCk.

Ann wrote: "What do you know, I made my self-imposed Friday deadline:
http://booksonthenightstand.com/2013/..."

Congratulations! But when don't you make deadlines?

Aw, thanks.
Linda, you don't want to know...

Looks fabulous! I like the combination of read-together and read-alone. I have so many (6, 12, more?) short story collections that are unread. Many that I HAVE read and loved, too. But now I'm excited to get at the undiscovered ones.

"Here" by Richard McGuire. A short story in comics form. When I read it in the late eighties in Raw Magazine I found it to be incredibly profound and moving. All six pages of it can be found, well, here:

http://thecomicsbureau.co.uk/2009/11/...

"Restaurant" by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder from Mad (back when it was a comic book). Six pages of some of the funniest social satire you'll ever read:

http://ethunter1.blogspot.com/2011/08...

"Master Race" from EC Comics' Impact by Bernard Krigstein. A masterpiece of comics storytelling:

http://spaceintext.wordpress.com/2010...

Thanks, Eric. I was looking for something similar. If you have a few more (any contemporary?) would love to use in a blog post.

,
These are excellent books of short stories about China ... she has written one novel
also an excellent read

Thanks, Eric. This is something very new to me.

I just read about the new George Saunders collection of short stories - - coming out today, called "Tenth of December". It sounds fascinating, can't wait to get my hands on it!

Love love love this idea, Ann. I think Munro should definitely be in the mix. Checkov, too.

I must speak up one more time for all Southern women and mention LEE SMITH.

Susan wrote: "I must speak up one more time for all Southern women and mention LEE SMITH."

I didn't know Lee Smith wrote short stories--I read Oral History for a class and LOVED it. Sold my class copy back, but regretted doing so, so I bought another copy.

Jena wrote: "Susan wrote: "I must speak up one more time for all Southern women and mention LEE SMITH."

I didn't know Lee Smith wrote short stories--I read Oral History for a class and LOVED it. Sold my class ..."

Oh yeah, she's a master. Her last book, in fact, was a collection of short stories.

There a lots of audio short stories here:-)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/serie...

I really strongly recommend "Emergency" by Denis Johnson.

Pamela wrote: "I just read about the new George Saunders collection of short stories - - coming out today, called "Tenth of December". It sounds fascinating, can't wait to get my hands on it!
[bookcover:Tenth of..."

I just started the George Saunders book, and (yahoo!) I'm going to hear him speak tonight. The first 2 stories pack a powerful punch. I'm very impressed.

I'm also listening to the audible version of The performance and the writing are absolutely top rate.

I just listened to the episode in which listeners call in to share their opinions about short stories and promote favorite collections. I, too would recommend Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I also wanted to invite people to join my Facebook forum where I read and review an on-line short story every day in 2013. I was inspired to learn more about on-line literary journals and chose this project to give me a focus. I provide links to contemporary and classic stories, as well as highlight flash fiction (super short stories). If you're not on Facebook, you can find the short reviews and links on my blog Rigmarole.
Hope you'll join in.

http://jpaloni.wordpress.com/365-stor...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/14486...

Hi Jodi. I love what you are doing with the daily free online short story and review. I joined Rigmarole and can't wait for tomorrow mornings email! Thank you.

Stacie

Stacie, thanks for joining. I will look for you there. I am really enjoying getting to know a variety of writers and stories. Feel free to make comments and offer opinions. I'd love to have more discussion.