Short Stories

[GetHappy]

I am after a few short stories to read.

Can anyone recommend some. i enjoy all different types of books so any topic is fine

Thanks in advance

Joanne Harris's Jigs and Reels is rather good. She has written a second volume called A Cat, a Hat and a Piece of String.

Kazuo Ishiguro has a collection called Nocturne, which I read recently, Colm Toibin's The Empty Family is good too. Edna O'Brien has written quite a few short stories too.

I love J. G. Ballard's short stories. War Fever is a great collection and the stories are really clever. I have also really enjoyed Carol Shield's short story collection, Alice Munro and Peter Carey's short stories. I'm a big short story fan and I find they stay with me longer than novels. There's a real craft to writing them.

I am teaching Katherine Mansfield's short stories at the moment and had forgotten how beautifully written they are.

A completely different breed of short story is the collection entitled The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter - dark versions of fairy tales.

I love Oscar Wilde's short stories.

My 'junk food' short story writer is Stephen King: he has a real gift for it.

Katherine Mansfield definitely. What age group are you teaching Katherine Mansfield to?

I like Jean Rhys too, but she is not at all cheerful.

Stephen King on short stories - I love this quotation:

…most of you have forgotten the real pleasures of the short story. Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair. I can remember commuting between Maine and Pittsburgh during the making of Creepshow, and going mostly by car…. I had a reading of The Thorn Birds, by Colleen McCullough, on eight cassette tapes, and for a space of about five weeks I wasn’t even having an affair with that novel; I felt married to it….

A short story is a different thing altogether–a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger. That is not, of course, the same thing as an affair or a marriage, but kisses can be sweet, and their very brevity forms their own attraction.

I'm teaching her to the L6 as one of the many texts needed for the IB Higher English course! Am contemplating whether to use her for A Level coursework as well.

Chekhov short stories - Penguin Classics translation. Fab.

God yes Chekhov. And Maupassant. And John Cheever.

The Year's Best Fantasy And Horror series edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling has some cracking stories in it. They've edited other anthologies together as well, which are worth looking at too.

I'm not a great lover of short stories, but The Go-Away Bird by Muriel Spark contains some real gems. I re-read them from time to time and enjoy them without fail. "The Black Madonna" and "You Should have Seen the Mess" are two of the best in the collection.

Alice Munro.

I agree, Optimist. I love this thread. Good job I've lost my kindle or I would be ordering wildly right now.

Oh I love this thread. I would highly recommend Helen Simpson for contemporary British short stories. My absolute favourite writer is Lorrie Moore. Her short story You're Ugly, Too is simply brilliant!

I haven't read them in a long time, but I remember really liking Ruth Rendell's short stories.

Saki is brilliant. Some of his stories are a bit too of-their-time to make massive sense, but some are sublime in a very dark way - Sredni Vashtar, Tobermory, Esme, Gabriel-Ernest, The Lumber Room, The Open Window, The Reticence of Lady Anne, Laura... You can probably get most of them free on Kindle (or Kindle app)

Graham Greene's short stories are fab. I love the collection 'May we Borrow your Husband?'

Tove Jansson has a couple of short story collections - Art in Nature being one of them, Travelling Light another I think? I love her writing, it's beautiful.

I love George Saunders and Junot Diaz. Both are quite funny but with real depth.

I just finished a collection of Roald Dahl short stories, really enjoyable.

Alice Munro - beautiful stories.

DH Lawrence wrote some wonderful short stories, also Somerset Maugham.

A E Coppard - a fofgotten author but a wonderful writer of short stories.

And Saki - for a bit of fun.

forgotten

And here is the link I forgot:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._Coppard

Have you tried anything by Robert Shearman?

His stories are slightly odd, almost normal but with a little surreal twist to them. His first book is called Tiny Deaths and his second was Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical.

He's an excellent writer and well worth a look at.

Otherwise, as others have said, Stephen King's short stories are usually wonderful.

Kate Atkinson did a book of short stories called Not The End Of The World that were each slightly connected but all very different.