What’s your favorite short story?
Hey guys ? I’m in need of short story recommendations. What’s your favorite short story?
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O. Henry’s Ransom of Red Chief. Actually, any O. Henry story.
Night Shift. Full Dark No Stars, both by Stephen King.
Stephen King wrote some excellent short stories
That was going to be my comment 🙂
I was going to say his story ‘N.’ from Just After Sunset, messed with my head for days after I read it. Absolutely brilliant.
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
9 Stories by JD Salinger (I hate Catcher in the Rye, but the stories are exemplary.)
Agreed on both counts. Franny and Zooey is a different thing, however. It’s a great favorite of mine. It’s quite heavy on the description, so not everyone’s taste.
I forgot about Franny and Zooey and completely agree. What a great writer.
Indeed. One I go back to and am never disappointed.
Diamond as Big as the Ritz, by F Scott Fitzgerald, the Christmas Memory by Truman Capote, plus anything from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami, Unaccustomed Earth and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz and Ayiti by Roxane Gay. Hard to turn down a good Bertie and Jeeves short story by Wodehouse too!
Also, if you like audio, try the Levar Barton reads podcast. A different short story each week, and I’ve loved all of them so far!
Yes! on the FSK story and any short story written by Capote!
Oh man that reminded me! Neil Gaiman also writes a mean short story!
The Nick Adams Stories by Hemingway
Stephen king’s shawshank redemption
The book Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is great if you’re into really dark stories.
To Build a Fire by Jack London
Did you know he wrote two versions of this story? One, for boys’ scouting magazines and such, with a happy ending. And the other, which most of us probably know, with the cold, bleak ending. That’s the way he was able to make a living by writing.
No, I did not. I will have to try and find the “Happy Ending” one.
Before I retired, I could have put my fingers on a copy of it like that. I don’t know where those files are now, if I even still have them, so Happy hunting. A Jack London scholar gave me mine.
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx…the movie was based on this short story and a lot had to be added.
Good shout. The whole collection, Close Range, is excellent. The Mud Below sticks in the mind but they’re all crackers. Also her collection Heartsongs is very good.
I love the collection of short stories entitled “London’s Glory” by Christopher Fowler.
I love Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever, and her Xingu is hilarious.
Chicxulub by T. C. Boyle.
Lydia Davis and Alice Munro write excellent stories.
P G Winehouse…. short story book called … the man with two left feet …. good fun read….
I just discovered flash fiction. Google it and you’ll get all kinds of stuff. The stories are like 2 pages.
Charles de Lint is always my go-to! The first collection of his that I read was Tapping the Dream Tree – urban fantasy centering around a fictional city in Canada with lots of the same characters. He’s also got lots of novels, too.
I also love Bradbury and Gamain, and Jhumpa Lahiri has a collection, Unaccustomed Earth, that I really enjoyed, too.
All Summer in a Day, Ray Bradbury or An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce
have you seen the movie on All Summer?
@Celina no! I didn’t know about it. How exciting!
@Travis https://youtu.be/iz05RhA9Cyw
I like Amanda Prowse short stories (not all of hers are) and a book called The Story, Love, Loss and the Lives of women, chosen by Victoria Hislop. Great to dip in and out of!
Following!
What You Make It, by Michael Marshall Smith, is my favourite short story collection. It’s like Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Clive Barker thrown in a blender.
Check out Roald Dahl’s short stories. Not for kids.
Seconded on both sentences! Henry Sugar was such an odd collection to read as a child, but a decade or so later: fantastic! I loved his curated selection of scary stories too!
My favourite is Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter!
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. It’s a collection of short stories. The last sentence in “The Third and Final Continent” is one of the best in modern literature.
??
Ooohhh….
I loved this collection of stories by Jhumpa Lahiri also.
Cathedral by Raymond Carver http://www.giuliotortello.it/ebook/cathedral.pdf
I enjoyed The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere: http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/02/the-water-that-falls-on-you-from-nowhere
Anything by Poe and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gillman (?), oh, and “The Scarlet Ibis.”
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the best!
big yes for Poe!
The Machine That Won the War by Isaac Asimov
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton.
Alice Munro has great short stories
The yellow wallpaper is very good.
I absolutely love the story, So Much Unfairness of Things.
O. Henry’s The Last Leaf, and any shirt story by F. Scott FItzgerald.
All Summer In a Day by Ray Bradbury or The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst.
Remedy by Lorrie Moore is one of my favourites – not many short stories which I’d happily read and re-read. Story of Your LIfe by Ted Chiang is brilliant and the collection Some Rain Must Fall by Michel Faber has a few gems, that I know of so far! Whoever You Choose to Love by Colette Paul is also a beautiful collection and The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter is a modern classic
The Immortal Mortal
The Ransom of Red Chief by O Henry. I read it many years ago. It’s clever and funny.
Anything by Ray Bradbury
All of Summer in a Day <3
I’ll add another vote for Alice Monro
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/short-story-collections_n_6594614.html
From the very best book store in the country! http://www.powells.com/the-short-list
The Bedquilt by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
https://www.amazon.com/Cryptic-Best-Short-Fiction-McDevitt-ebook/dp/B003Y8XR5U/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1504744895&sr=8-16&keywords=jack+mcdevitt
Shell Collectors by Anthony Doerr
A good man is hard to find by Flannery O’Connor. And the collected works of Dorothy Parker.
I love Flannery O’Connor’s writing. Dorothy Parker, such a sharp intellect, a great wit, I’ve not read much of her besides quotes and such but there is a poem I love called Purposely Ungrammatical Love Song
@Colin Her book is called The Portable Dorothy Parker. I bought it on Amazon. I am fascinated by her, even though I might not have liked her in real life – she seemed a bit wild! I even went to the Algonquin Hotel to see the round table. What a thrill!
Salinger have been mentioned above. I would say any short stories collections by
-William Faulkner
-Virginia Woolf
-Katharine Mansfield
-Anton Chekov
-Franz Kafka
Colette!!! plus, Girls in their Summer Dresses, A Rose for Emily (and anything else by Eudora Welty, brilliant!)
yes, to all of these. My students always shivered at “Rose for Emily” and I have a nostalgic fondness for “Girls in their Summer Dresses”
“Patriotism” by Yukio Mishima
Andy Weir, who wrote “The Martian,” wrote pretty powerful short story called, “The Egg” http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
The Paper Menagerie
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24885533-the-paper-menagerie-and-other-stories
I don’t know about the ‘other stories,’ but The Paper Menagerie is fabulous.
Megan Teresa That’s how I heard about it! I listen to Levar’s podcast regularly. It’s absolutely fabulous, but you don’t have to take MY word for it…
Just about to mention LBR! I loved this episode!
Sleepy, by Anton Chekhov.
James Thurber
My favorites are the ones with the dogs and The Get Ready Man. These always make me laugh out loud. Also The Night The Ghost Got In.
Bartlett the Scrivener
ah, Bartleby. I understand his “I prefer not to” many days.
I named my cat, Bartleby ?
Gooseberries by Chekhov, The Dead, James Joyce, How Much Land Does A Man Need, Tolstoy…. anything by William Trevor or Kate Chopin. If you bought yourself Dubliners by James Joyce or 23 Tales by Tolstoy you’d gave a raft of great Tales at one go…
A good collection of short stories is Tales of American Life collated by Paul Austler. All written by regular people.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour”
“The Cask of Amontillado” by Poe.
All of Philip K Dick’s short stories are amazing!!!
The Swimmer by John Cheever. Fabulous , takes place in the 50s or early 60s. It was also made into a movie starring Burt Lancaster
Anything by Shirley Jackson. She wrote hysterical non-fiction pieces about raising her children. They’re in the collections Down Among the Savages and Raising Demons.
And second the recommendations for Nine Stories by Salinger and This is How you Lose Her by Junot Diaz. Beware: Both are intense in their own ways.
There’s a version of red riding hood written by James Thurber that is hilarious, surprise ending too!
Jefty Is Five by Harlan Ellison
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Both feminist piece and atmospheric ghost story.
The Visitor by Roald Dahl. Highly recommended.
Everything in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies.
Connie Willis often has an interesting take such as telling the Sleeping Beauty story from her father’s perspective.
Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth is a good read.
Following
Wendell Berry is a fine writer of short stories (and novels, and essays, and poetry). His collection That Distant Land gathers many of the Port William Membership stories. It’s a good place to start reading about Port William (I think he’s written 8 novels, 35 or 40 stories, and a couple of dozen poems about the people of that community). I find them compelling reading.
And, Olive Kittredge is a book of interrelated short stories, each about separate incidences in the life of the protagonist. When taken together they present an interesting character study that is fascinating. I loved this book.
It’s on my list.
Jess Walter We Live in Water: http://www.jesswalter.com/we_live_in_water__2013__120477.htm
I’ve heard most of Stephen Kings short stories are amazing.
“The Monkey’s Paw” by W W Jacobs.
Roald Dahl kiss kiss, although it is quite dark!
Anything by Donald Davis.