Any recommendations for Short Story writers or collections ? Alice Munroe is my favorite, but I'd like to find some others.
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Any recommendations for Short Story writers or collections ? Alice Munroe is my favorite, but I'd like to find some others.
Lotuslander, for some light reading you might try Heavenly Date: And Other Flirtations by Alexander McCall Smith. I read this not too long ago and it was offbeat and different. I don't usually read short stories (except for the usual Stephen King collections). The settings are European and African, and I always like to read about cultural differences.
Maybe I'm stuck on older literature, but I love to read stuff by the Fireside Poets and other writers before and slightly after that (realism, revolutionary, romantism, and early moderns).
Being a rabid Margaret Atwood fan, I highly recommend Bluebeard's Egg and Dancing Girls and other Stories :nod Have you ever read Dorothy Parker, Lotus? You might really enjoy her short story work, the 20's slang alone is quite entertaining.
AJane, one of my all time favorites is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. I've given copies of this for birthdays and Christmas and it always gets rave reviews.Quote:
Originally Posted by AJane
Dorothy Parker is great, too. So witty.
Four words: Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio. Though you might have read it already - it's pretty much a fixture in the American literary canon, and taught in high-school and uni classrooms all over the U.S.
And well, offhand, Chekhov's might also be a good place to start, though his reputation is primarily built upon his success as a playwright. And of that same time period (19th cent.), Maupassant. You know, "Boule de Suif" (Ball of Fat) and all those. Among the early European moderns, there's the slightly more obscure Isak Dinesen - you could try her collection Winter's Tale ("Sorrow-Acre" is particuarly haunting.)
Among the American moderns, I like Katherine Mansfield, Katherine Ann Porter, and Dorothy Parker for my women short story writers. If you're looking for a more earthy, "masculine" style, you could try Steinbeck's The Long Valley and The Red Pony, as well as Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Thomas Wolfe's From Death to Morning is beautiful stuff, too.
I also really like J.D. Salinger's short story, "To Esme - With Love and Squalor". :nod
I like girly type books, Hemingways way too butch for me, but thanks for all the advice!
:nod I do too, Nausi. I even sign off my letters that way sometimes, "With Love and Squalor"!Quote:
Originally Posted by nausicaa
Lotus, I really like David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest. You could try any of his short story collections: Girl with the Curious Hair or Interviews with Strange Men. He's got a new one out I haven't read yet, but am dying to, called Oblivion.
I loved Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies; it won the Pullitzer, so I guess I'm not the only one! :lol
One of all-time fave writers is Japanese master Harukami Murakami. He mostly write novels, but I always lend out my well-loved and worn-out copy of his short story collection The Elephant Vanishes as an introduction to his breadth of genius.
Let me know if you read any of these, and if you do, I hope you enjoy! :)
Ooh - that was a good one (I admit that only reason why I chose to read it in the first place was because I had also read the Series of Unfortunate Events books :blush).Quote:
Originally Posted by nausicaa
Haejin, I'm an adult and I loved the Lemony Snicket series. There's no shame in that! :lol
Is there? :peek