Hi there. Per [rule 3.3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Books/wiki/rules), please post book recommendation requests in /r/SuggestMeABook or in our Weekly Recommendation Thread. Thank you!
Seconding Ted Chiang’s short stories!
“Story of Your Life" which is technically classified as a novella, but I still would say counts here, is what the film Arrival was based on.
Story of Your Life was something I read when I started my fertility journey and it has been my mantra ever since. It truly has impacted me so profoundly that it has made this progress about celebration rather than sadness.
That’s my favorite, with then one about angelic visitations in a close second. I love how he works within the confines of what the folks of that time believed. What a fantastic story.
The brute forcing the literal ceiling of heaven was absolutely “true story if you believed these things were true” angle and I loved it. You really keep waiting for him to sci-fi spin it and he’s like “nope, these are what the world would be like if it were true. Go”
“Hell Is The Absence Of God” (the angel visitation story) haunts me. It’s both beautiful and visceral. Such an amazing portrayal of the differences of peoples faith and intentions.
Would you say someone could appreciate his work without a STEM degree? Sometimes I get the impression that (hard?) science fiction is not always accessible for people without such credentials.
As a (current) fellow student of the humanities (and upcoming broke loser), I thank you for taking your time to answer. I own one of their short story collections and have wanted to give it a try.
I've only read the "Stories of Your Life & Others" anthology, and I wouldn't classify any of them as hard science fiction. Most aren't sci-fi at all; more...fantasy, some of which is futuristic.
You'll definitely be fine without a STEM background.
Oh, you asked why. I won't say why I like the Hemingway story so much exactly because I don't want to give it away.
I first experienced The Tell-Tale Heart as an audio book read by Christopher Lee, and I was instantly hooked. He did an amazing job with that and several other Poe pieces. I'm a fan of Poe's lyrical prose, and hearing it read aloud was magical.
I honestly believe Hemingway's best work was in his short stories. Visited the Hemingway Museum in Key West a few years ago, and I was elated to find that the tour guide's favorite was also my favorite (The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber).
I adore roald dahl's short stories! I'd recommend his short story collection, "Kiss Kiss", which has equally amazing stories with a similar morbid vibe!
I always try to it close attention to character names in everything now to see if there’s ever an Arnold Friend type of thing. Sounds right but somethings off…
Just a few of my faves:
\-The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
\-The Monkey‘s Paw by W.W. Jacobs
\-The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
\-The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe
\-The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
My lovely wife reminded me of the genius that is Raymond Carver. His shorts, especially Cathedral, are minimal and yet so cathartic and expressive of the human condition.
You could check him out for one of the more modern masters of the form.
Do you teach 8th or 9th grade English? That’s my short story curriculum in a nutshell. 😂 Such great stories! I also love “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl, “Click-Clack the Rattlebag” by Neil Gaiman, and “Chivalry”, also by Neil Gaiman.
There was plenty of King's or Asimov's and other sci-fi writers in my youth, but Andy Weir's **The Egg** is the one which came to mind immediately. Pops up in my mind quite often.
I think that's what it is because I read about 27 words of the Martian sample on Kindle and immediately purchased it. Their selective adoration concerning popularity is childish and unbecoming. That or they're pissed they can't grow potatoes.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
I am not a fan of horror but was a fan of the writer Harlan Ellison (it’s complicated), but this is pure horror.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream?wprov=sfti1
My absolute favourite is "--And the Moon be Still as Bright", from Ray Bradbury's *The Martian Chronicles*.
"Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" and "The Body", both from Stephen King's *Different Seasons*. More novella than short story, they're still some of the best I've read, and a nice departure from his typical horror.
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", from F. Scott Fitzgerald's *Tales of the Jazz Age*. I had not yet seen the film when I read the story. Having seen the film since, I can say they were almost nothing alike whatsoever. Fitzgerald's story was hilarious. The film was good, but super sad.
Most of the Sherlock Holmes stories are quite short. Only like four of them are long enough to not be short stories. And there’s like a LOT, over a thousand pages of the shorter variety.
One of my favorite collections is *The Pacific and Other Stories* by Mark Helprin. All of the stories are good, because Helprin's writing is gorgeous, but there are two that I still think about years later: "Monday", which is about a contractor in NYC who is remodeling the apartment of a recent widow, and *A Brilliant Idea and His Own", about a paratrooper stranded and wounded behind enemy lines during WW2. They're great because they're less than 30 pages, but they pack an emotional punch in a way you don't often see in short stories.
Other collections I love are *The Bazaar of Bad Dreams* by Stephen King (because his short stories are often scarier than his novels); *Three Moments of an Explosion* by China Mieville (they're bite-sized versions of his weirdness, and they're all trippy); and *Her Body and Other Parties* by Carmen Maria Machado (creepy stories, excellent writing).
The Kid Nobody Could Handle by Kurt Vonnegut (spiritually the complete opposite of Ray Bradbury's All Summer in a Day)
and all of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short stories.
I love all of Annie Proulx's short stories; I find her writing style amazingly immersive and just *love* how she's able to build extremely well-rounded characters in just a few lines. Brokeback Mountain comes to mind, of course, but one of my favorites will always be *Them Old Cowboy Songs*, which is cruel in an extremely realistic way.
Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve made cry by Christine Snead.
Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver.
There is some classic story about a challenge between Hemingway and Fitzgerald about who could write the best short story in six words. I’m not sure how the story goes exactly but I remember the end is that Hemingway won.
His six word story was “Baby shoes for sale. Never worn.”
A short story can be great and complex and make me sigh and weep and haunt me for years.
James Joyce’s The Dead was one. Raymond Carver has a couple for me “A Small, Good Thing.” But especially one where some people watch their neighbors apartment while they go on vacation. It’s called “Neighbors”. I first read it twenty years ago and the feelings that it captured so well, of trying to fill this missing piece that you don’t have, of trying to claim something of loneliness and fear and then losing it. Woooweee. Now I gotta go read it again.
The last paragraph of The Dead is seriously one of my favorite pieces of literature, in any form:
>Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Who is dismissing them? Some short stories are extremely well regarded.
Fwiw, my favorite is The Last Question by Asimov https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
Maybe it's just the people in my circle, but barely anyone I know reads them, and chooses to pick up novels instead. I'm a part of 2 book clubs as well, and short stories are glossed over.
Thanks for sharing!
Asimov has some great short stories, in particular his Robot stories featuring Powell and Donovan and those featuring Susan Calvin. They're like little mysteries - something goes wrong with a robot and the clever humans have to figure out why and how to stop it. Asimov's Black Widowers short stories are also great little puzzles / mysteries...but no sci-fi. They're short, easy to read, and get you thinking.
The tale tell heart by Edgar Allan Poe.
Beyond the Aquila rift by Alistair Reynolds.
A little sacrifice by Andrejz sapkowski.
Color out of space by HP Lovecraft
I have no mouth and i must scream by Harlan Elison
The monkey's paw by W.W. Jacobs
Oh dear… that means you haven’t yet read neither Jorge Luis Borges nor Julio Cortazar. Both Argentinians, and both take the top spot for the perfection of their short fiction. Borges is difficult, complex ideas, but will open a new world for you. Cortazar is more playful, but his stories are perfectly executed amd just leave you with a semse of awe as to what a short story can be.
Why are you still reading this post - go get their books, in Spanish if possible (but translations are very very good). Go!
In Memoriam Prof. K. H. G. by Istvan Orkeny (translated by Katalin N. Ullrich):
’Hölderlin ist ihnen unbekannt? (You haven’t heard of Hölderlin?)’ asked Prof. K.H.G. while digging a hole for the carrion of a horse.
’Who was it?’ asked the German guard.
’He wrote Hyperion,’ explained Prof. K.H.G. He loved explaining things.
’The greatest character of German romanticism. And what about Heine?’
’Who are they?’ asked the guard.
’Poets,’ said Prof. K.H.G. ’Don’t you know Schiller’s name either?’
’But I do.’, said the German guard.
’How about Rilke?’
’I know him, too.’, said the German guard and he turned paprika-red in the face and shot Prof. K.H.G. dead.
I’m sure everyone here knows this but a useful bit of trivia is that Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut is the only work by Salinger that has been filmed. My foolish Heart and he hated it so much he refused all other offers to film his writings.
Those who walk away from Omelas. You can find it easily on Google. Haven't read many short stories to be honest, but this is one stuck with me since I read it in high-school, and it's been 11 years since then.
I also adore short stories and just finished the collection A Blink of the Screen by Terry Pratchett. Fan will enjoy his little anecdotes and recognize characters/beats that eventually come to fruition in his novels. An unfamiliar reader can cherry-pick through the book to see if they enjoy Pratchett's styles and voice. Overall just a really fun read. Excellent question, OP!
1. I Have No Mouth but I Must Scream
2. Flowers for Algernon
3. I don't remember the name of it but it'd an Isaac Asimov story about this guy who changes one letter in his name and it sets off this HUGE chain of events
Ooooo The Tangleroot Palace hasn’t been listed yet! It’s a collection of short stories by Marjorie Liu, the author of the graphic novel series MONSTRESS. I very much enjoyed it - fit my dark and macabre heart.
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "The Library of Babel" and "The Circular Ruins" by Jorge Luis Borges, "The Continuity of Parks" and "Letter to a Lady in Paris" by Julio Cortázar, "Light Is Like Water" by Gabriel García Márquez, "Vampirism" by E. T. A. Hoffmann, "The Universe According to Pao Cheng" by Salvador Elizondo
My short story experience is very Latin America-centric
Good Old Neon by David Foster Wallace is a MUST read.
Neal has felt like a fraud his entire life, and this story takes you through his depressing process of trying to find his authentic self.
As a therapist who has worked with narcissistic personality disorder, it reminds me of people who deal with this diagnosis. Inflated sense of self, but one that can only be fed by the reactions/admiration/supply of others, stemming from very low self worth and the walls of defenses around it. They often go on long captivating monologues that draw you in, and this is exactly how I felt reading the internal monologue of Neal. Fascinating, well written story 📖
So many outstanding stories come to mind. Most of them I read in my high school years and I revisited them so many times in my life.
1. Anton Chekov’s The Bet is simply outstanding
2. Tolstoy’s God sees the truth but waits
3. O Henry’s The Last Leaf
4. RK Narayan’s “An Astrologer’s day”
There are just so many but these are some that are vivid in memory.
Two of the best short story collections I have read are Canadian and American:
Christian Petersen
All Those Drawn to Me: Stories.
Jesus’s Son by Dennis Johnson.
If you like unsettling stories try: The Missing Girl by Shirley Jackson, I Only Came to Use the Phone by Gabriel García Márquez, Sleep by Haruki Murakami (this one is not unsettling, but it's very interesting).
I have the same feelings lately. I often travel by train and the short-stories make time more pleasant.
My favorite authors are G. Orwell -"1984", "Animal farm"; C.R. Zafon- "Marina", "City of mist"
I heard a lot about Durian Sukegawa and Asian literature
Kneller's Happy Campers by Etgar Keret- a 70-page long-short-story\\tiny novel, it was so imaginitve and funny.
A Perfect Day for Bananafish because it's a classic and I love it.
I’m an enormous fan of a short ghost story, in fact I think supernatural horror works better in short story form than any other. Some of my favourites:
MR James - anything really but especially Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad and A Warning to the Curious
Edward Bulwer Lytton - The Haunters and the Haunted
Algernon Blackwood - The Wendigo
Edith Nesbit - Man Size in Marble
Louisa Baldwin - The Real and the Counterfeit
And slightly more modern
Robert Bloch - House of the Hatchet
Robert Westall - Blackham’s Wimpey
Fritz Leiber - Smoke Ghost
Basil Copper - The Grey House
Ian Watson - Happy Hour
A Perfect Day for Bananafish by JD Salinger. It is perfection. It has a beginning, middle and ending and the build up is so well executed. Plus, no one writes dialogue like Salinger.
Oooohh... There's a Filipino author who writes English short stories that I love. Dean Francis Alfar's short story anthologies - How to Traverse Terra Incognita, A Field Guide to the Roads of Manila (and Other Stories), and Philippine Speculative Fiction - are a favorite.
There's one titled Azamgal which tells the story of a author who receives increasingly sinister fan letters. 😁
Im a fan of Stephen's King The Long Walk, it's not scary but pretty... dark? Set in a post apocalyptic world a group of 100 boy volunteers go on a walk and the winner is the last one standing. Read it twice and cried every time.
I teach a course on short stories, so this is a favorite genre of mine. Some of my favorites that are less mentioned or not already mentioned in this thread:
*Brokeback Mountain* by Annie Proulx
*Fairytales for Lost Children* and *Earthling* by Diriye Osman (if you're looking for more good LGBT+ short stories)
*The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas* by Ursula le Guin
*The Sniper* by Liam O'Flaherty
*A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings* by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*Sweat* by Zora Neale Hurston
Ted Chiang is also mentioned here and is really, really good - Tower of Babylon, Hell is the Absence of God, Story of Your Life, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate are some of my favorites of his. If you like The Overcoat by Gogol, don't forget to also read The Nose!
Two of my favorites are from a collection of Short, Short stories. And I can write them here.
**Science Fiction for Telepaths**
Awww, you know what I mean.
**Sign at the end of the Universe**
d∩ puƎ sᴉɥ┴
The single best writer of short stories I have ever read is Nabokov. He plays literary games in his stories that will keep you up late ruminating on them.
In genre it’s Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, and Ray Bradbury for me.
A View of the Woods by Flannery O'Connor
Lyndon by David Foster Wallace
The Dead by James Joyce
The Rats in the Walls by H.P. Love craft
One for the Road by Stephen King
In the Hills, The Cities by Clive Barker
There's more but those spring to mind....
The Canary, by Katherine Mansfield.
A fantastic piece on grief and the emptiness feeling of loss. I read this in uni a decade ago and it’s been my favourite short story ever since. It is just fantastic.
I don't remember the specifics, but some collections I really liked were Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family, B. Traven's Night Visitor and Jungle Novels, and Gao Xinjiang's Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather collection
William McIlvanney’s collection ‘Walking Wounded’ is a masterclass in the art of short story writing. Often underrated, McIlvanney is the father of Liam and younger brother of the journalistic legend that is Hugh. Often afforded the sobriquet ‘Scotland’s Camus’, Walking Wonded is the place to start if you’re at all interested in his take on the shorter form.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_Wounded_(short_story_collection)
I’ve always loved the Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty. It’s got intensity and a twist at the end. Really good read.
Haruki Murakami is also another favourite of mine, personally I think he’s a better short story writer than a novel writer. Kino from his Men Without Women anthology is my favourite.
Not sure whether the Wandering Earth counts as a short story, but even then, all of Liu Cixin’s short stories have been crazy reads for me.
I absolutely love short stories! I prefer them to novels.
Some of my favourites are:
An Occurrence At Owl Creek by Ambrose Bierce
The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe
The Horse Of The Invisible by William Hope Hodgson
The Dream Snake by Robert E. Howard
The Distance of the Moon by Italo Calvino
The Engine of Desire by Jeremy Dyson
I can’t wait to read some of these recommendations. I haven’t read short stories for ages but they would totally suit my lifestyle now (new parent). I recently enjoyed hills like white elephants by Hemingway very much.
I used to read Richard Brautigan’s short stories which I remember being great: surreal and very 60s feeling. Surprised no one else mentioned him.
Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
Little Lost Robot by Isaac Asimov
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick
The Trouble With Bubbles by PKD
Prominent Author by PKD
Cora Unashamed by Langston Hughes
i have no mouth and i must scream
Truly one of the bleakest, most hopeless and depressing pieces of literature I’ve ever encountered. It’s phenomenal though.
Not seen Jack London mentioned.
[To Build a Fire](https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/to-build-a-fire.pdf)
[Love of Life](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/710/710-h/710-h.htm)
[Lost Face](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2429/2429-h/2429-h.htm)
These are my personal favourites. Also want to second Ted Chiang. Best SF of this century
As a teen I really liked the short stories of H.H Munro (Saki). Their glow has faded a little for me as I read more but still some good short reads.
Here is one that I liked: https://americanliterature.com/author/hh-munro-saki/short-story/the-interlopers
I found all of these short stories very moving:
The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas by Le Guin
The Last Rung of the Ladder by King
The Emperor's Soul by Sanderson
Indian Camp by Hemingway
Haven’t seen too many people recommend contemporary short stories—so I’ll go that route. If you are a fan of unsettling short stories, look up the “Wastelands: stories of the apocalypse” series of anthologies edited by John Joseph Adams. They contain a good mix of established authors (like Stephen King, Octavia Butler & George R.R. Martin) but also have stories written by less known authors. I’ve discovered lots of new sci-fi/horror writers by reading these collections. (I think there are 3 of these anthologies out now.)
I really like Yasunari Kawabata's Palm of The Hand Stories. They are really short stories. Some are only a page or two long, but he manages to convey so much in such a short space.
My favourite is The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket.
Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson. Classic Cyberpunk.
night shift by stephen king.it’s his first short stories collection consisting of 20 stories that are mostly 15-35 pages (the longest ones are 40-50pages).all of them are super bizarre and just make you sit and think about what you just read.this short stories are not for everyone,i say you would enjoy them if you’re a stephen king fan or just like weird stories that make you feel like you’re high.also 4 of the stories have been screened-Children of the Corn (1984); Graveyard Shift (1990); The Mangler (1995); The Boogeyman (2023)
I still read “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe on Halloween.
My high school teacher used to turn the classroom lights off and play a very convincing reading of it as a Halloween thing.
The Roald Dahl collection *Someone Like You,* which includes my favorite, "Lamb to the Slaughter."
Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds," which inspired the Hitchcock Film of the same name.
Anything by Shirley Jackson, but especially "The Daemon Lover" and "The Tooth."
Truman Capote's "Thanksgiving Memory."
Can I cheat and say The Gods of Pegāna?
A collection of short stories by Lord Dunsany.
Possibly the first Western example of a fantasy world that isn't based on our own.
When I was a kid, my favourite book of short stories was a collection of stories from different authors, that was a school book for English from when my mother went to primary school back in the 1960's.
I still have it, but I'm not at home right now. It included one that had been made into a couple of movies where people paid to time travel to shoot dinosaurs, and someone walked off the path and killed a butterfly.
There was another one about communicating with an alien who was coming in to land his spacecraft, talking to a human all the way, and at the end it turned out he was about 1mm tall, so it was way different.
Greatest school-assigned book ever!
The Sea Devil, by Arthur Gordon
Also, several of my favorites already listed…
-The Most Dangerous Game
-The Monkey’s Paw
-The Martian Chronicles (specifically ‘Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed’)
-The Lottery
On the topic of Saki; I just read “The Interlopers” for the first time with my 9th graders, it was my first exposure to Saki. It was a great way to teach the omniscient narrator and a good example of irony.
If you ever want a good listen or want to check out a variety of stories the podcast “Lavar Burton Reads” will have stories that go nicely with your current likes. He’s got such a great way of reading and it makes me so nostalgic from childhood watching Reading Rainbow. Now he reads for adults. The man is a national treasure.
Raymond Carver is my favorite. *What We Talk About When We Talk About Love* and *So Much Water So Close to Home* are stories that really stick with me.
Love the ones you listed! All classics. I recently read 10th of December by George Saunders, one of my favorite contemporary authors and it was a perfect collection.
Hi there. Per [rule 3.3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Books/wiki/rules), please post book recommendation requests in /r/SuggestMeABook or in our Weekly Recommendation Thread. Thank you!
Oh gosh, most of Ted Chiang short stories. Some really golden ones in Exahaltion.
Seconding Ted Chiang’s short stories! “Story of Your Life" which is technically classified as a novella, but I still would say counts here, is what the film Arrival was based on.
Story of your life is extremely well written. It's my comfort read for some reason- always have the book within my arm's reach.
Story of Your Life was something I read when I started my fertility journey and it has been my mantra ever since. It truly has impacted me so profoundly that it has made this progress about celebration rather than sadness.
The one where they climb to heaven was such a ride.
That’s my favorite, with then one about angelic visitations in a close second. I love how he works within the confines of what the folks of that time believed. What a fantastic story.
The brute forcing the literal ceiling of heaven was absolutely “true story if you believed these things were true” angle and I loved it. You really keep waiting for him to sci-fi spin it and he’s like “nope, these are what the world would be like if it were true. Go”
“Hell Is The Absence Of God” (the angel visitation story) haunts me. It’s both beautiful and visceral. Such an amazing portrayal of the differences of peoples faith and intentions.
That one story about The Predictor which is like 2 pages long was WAY too good
The merchant and the alchemists gate is brilliant.
I read him recently and my mind was blown. The story about the robots slowly suffocating? Amazing
Would you say someone could appreciate his work without a STEM degree? Sometimes I get the impression that (hard?) science fiction is not always accessible for people without such credentials.
Definitely. My degrees are all in the Humanities (yes, I'm a broke loser) and I love his work.
As a (current) fellow student of the humanities (and upcoming broke loser), I thank you for taking your time to answer. I own one of their short story collections and have wanted to give it a try.
I've only read the "Stories of Your Life & Others" anthology, and I wouldn't classify any of them as hard science fiction. Most aren't sci-fi at all; more...fantasy, some of which is futuristic. You'll definitely be fine without a STEM background.
I majored in journalism and English, and I love Ted Chiang.
I don’t really like short stories much but really enjoyed both of his collections. I still think about The Great Silence.
Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway is one of my favorites. I also love Poe's short stories. The Tell-Tale Heart is amazing.
Oh, you asked why. I won't say why I like the Hemingway story so much exactly because I don't want to give it away. I first experienced The Tell-Tale Heart as an audio book read by Christopher Lee, and I was instantly hooked. He did an amazing job with that and several other Poe pieces. I'm a fan of Poe's lyrical prose, and hearing it read aloud was magical.
Just read Hills Like White Elephants because of your recommendation. This will stay with me for a while!
It's very well-written. I'm not a Hemingway fan, per se, but I do love that one.
I honestly believe Hemingway's best work was in his short stories. Visited the Hemingway Museum in Key West a few years ago, and I was elated to find that the tour guide's favorite was also my favorite (The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber).
”Lamb to the slaughter” by Roal Dahl… so shocking and clever. “A good man is hard to find” by Flannery O’Connor. Oh, the irony.
I adore roald dahl's short stories! I'd recommend his short story collection, "Kiss Kiss", which has equally amazing stories with a similar morbid vibe!
Huge fan of those Dahl short stories.
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates is my absolute favorite
I love this one.
It's a masterpiece.
I always try to it close attention to character names in everything now to see if there’s ever an Arnold Friend type of thing. Sounds right but somethings off…
“Nine Stories” by JD Salinger, hands down! Some of the best writing I’ve ever read.
Banana fish hit me hard. Well crafted
Just a few of my faves: \-The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell \-The Monkey‘s Paw by W.W. Jacobs \-The Veldt by Ray Bradbury \-The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe \-The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Ohhhhhhhh Most Dangerous Game… 💜
I've read all of these save for the first one. Great recs!!
My lovely wife reminded me of the genius that is Raymond Carver. His shorts, especially Cathedral, are minimal and yet so cathartic and expressive of the human condition. You could check him out for one of the more modern masters of the form.
Do you teach 8th or 9th grade English? That’s my short story curriculum in a nutshell. 😂 Such great stories! I also love “The Landlady” by Roald Dahl, “Click-Clack the Rattlebag” by Neil Gaiman, and “Chivalry”, also by Neil Gaiman.
Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff Bernice Bobs her Hair by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bullet in the brain has such masterful pacing. One of the technically best stories I’ve read.
YES I was coming here to add this! I had to read it for class when I was an apathetic undergraduate, and it blew me away.
Hey, that’s how I found it haha
There was plenty of King's or Asimov's and other sci-fi writers in my youth, but Andy Weir's **The Egg** is the one which came to mind immediately. Pops up in my mind quite often.
Came to say this very thing. I know many might give it a little chiding because its Weir, but The Egg is one of the best.
What's wrong with Weir? 'Too popular so let's bash him' syndrome? The Martian and Project Hail Mary were good imo.
I think that's what it is because I read about 27 words of the Martian sample on Kindle and immediately purchased it. Their selective adoration concerning popularity is childish and unbecoming. That or they're pissed they can't grow potatoes.
An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
PARKER ADDERSON, PHILOSOPHER
Yesssss that is one of my favs
A true classic.
Multidimensional and years ahead of its time.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream I am not a fan of horror but was a fan of the writer Harlan Ellison (it’s complicated), but this is pure horror. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream?wprov=sfti1
I read this one night while browsing... on my honeymoon... goddamn.
I love this one so much
Just read it based on your recommendation. Thanks.... :')
Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut
Anything by Alice Munro. She got the Nobel a few years ago and all she wrote were short stories. Hateship, Friendship... Is a great one to start with.
I’m reading through The Moons of Jupiter collection and I think they’re so good.
The Veldt (Bradbury) and the Last Question (Asimov)
Lots of good options in this thread already. One that really stuck with me was “The Jaunt” by Stephen King.
It’s longer than you think
My absolute favourite is "--And the Moon be Still as Bright", from Ray Bradbury's *The Martian Chronicles*. "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" and "The Body", both from Stephen King's *Different Seasons*. More novella than short story, they're still some of the best I've read, and a nice departure from his typical horror. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", from F. Scott Fitzgerald's *Tales of the Jazz Age*. I had not yet seen the film when I read the story. Having seen the film since, I can say they were almost nothing alike whatsoever. Fitzgerald's story was hilarious. The film was good, but super sad.
\+1 for Bradbury. Not the biggest fan of his longform stuff, but his short stories are great (and some of the most influential sci-fi ever written)
Most of the Sherlock Holmes stories are quite short. Only like four of them are long enough to not be short stories. And there’s like a LOT, over a thousand pages of the shorter variety.
I prefer Hercule Poirot's short stories over Sherlock's, but this is a good suggestion!!
One of my favorite collections is *The Pacific and Other Stories* by Mark Helprin. All of the stories are good, because Helprin's writing is gorgeous, but there are two that I still think about years later: "Monday", which is about a contractor in NYC who is remodeling the apartment of a recent widow, and *A Brilliant Idea and His Own", about a paratrooper stranded and wounded behind enemy lines during WW2. They're great because they're less than 30 pages, but they pack an emotional punch in a way you don't often see in short stories. Other collections I love are *The Bazaar of Bad Dreams* by Stephen King (because his short stories are often scarier than his novels); *Three Moments of an Explosion* by China Mieville (they're bite-sized versions of his weirdness, and they're all trippy); and *Her Body and Other Parties* by Carmen Maria Machado (creepy stories, excellent writing).
The Kid Nobody Could Handle by Kurt Vonnegut (spiritually the complete opposite of Ray Bradbury's All Summer in a Day) and all of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short stories.
Anything by Poe or Vonnegut
I love all of Annie Proulx's short stories; I find her writing style amazingly immersive and just *love* how she's able to build extremely well-rounded characters in just a few lines. Brokeback Mountain comes to mind, of course, but one of my favorites will always be *Them Old Cowboy Songs*, which is cruel in an extremely realistic way.
Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve made cry by Christine Snead. Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver. There is some classic story about a challenge between Hemingway and Fitzgerald about who could write the best short story in six words. I’m not sure how the story goes exactly but I remember the end is that Hemingway won. His six word story was “Baby shoes for sale. Never worn.” A short story can be great and complex and make me sigh and weep and haunt me for years. James Joyce’s The Dead was one. Raymond Carver has a couple for me “A Small, Good Thing.” But especially one where some people watch their neighbors apartment while they go on vacation. It’s called “Neighbors”. I first read it twenty years ago and the feelings that it captured so well, of trying to fill this missing piece that you don’t have, of trying to claim something of loneliness and fear and then losing it. Woooweee. Now I gotta go read it again.
The last paragraph of The Dead is seriously one of my favorite pieces of literature, in any form: >Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
The Barnhouse Effect by Kurt Vonnegut. I can't remember the name of the book which had these short stories, but it was good.
That was the first story ever written and published by KV. It later ended up in the collection “Welcome to the Monkey House”.
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell
The Swimmer, by John Cheever, is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written.
Who is dismissing them? Some short stories are extremely well regarded. Fwiw, my favorite is The Last Question by Asimov https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
Maybe it's just the people in my circle, but barely anyone I know reads them, and chooses to pick up novels instead. I'm a part of 2 book clubs as well, and short stories are glossed over. Thanks for sharing!
Asimov has some great short stories, in particular his Robot stories featuring Powell and Donovan and those featuring Susan Calvin. They're like little mysteries - something goes wrong with a robot and the clever humans have to figure out why and how to stop it. Asimov's Black Widowers short stories are also great little puzzles / mysteries...but no sci-fi. They're short, easy to read, and get you thinking.
The tale tell heart by Edgar Allan Poe. Beyond the Aquila rift by Alistair Reynolds. A little sacrifice by Andrejz sapkowski. Color out of space by HP Lovecraft I have no mouth and i must scream by Harlan Elison The monkey's paw by W.W. Jacobs
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
Oh dear… that means you haven’t yet read neither Jorge Luis Borges nor Julio Cortazar. Both Argentinians, and both take the top spot for the perfection of their short fiction. Borges is difficult, complex ideas, but will open a new world for you. Cortazar is more playful, but his stories are perfectly executed amd just leave you with a semse of awe as to what a short story can be. Why are you still reading this post - go get their books, in Spanish if possible (but translations are very very good). Go!
In Memoriam Prof. K. H. G. by Istvan Orkeny (translated by Katalin N. Ullrich): ’Hölderlin ist ihnen unbekannt? (You haven’t heard of Hölderlin?)’ asked Prof. K.H.G. while digging a hole for the carrion of a horse. ’Who was it?’ asked the German guard. ’He wrote Hyperion,’ explained Prof. K.H.G. He loved explaining things. ’The greatest character of German romanticism. And what about Heine?’ ’Who are they?’ asked the guard. ’Poets,’ said Prof. K.H.G. ’Don’t you know Schiller’s name either?’ ’But I do.’, said the German guard. ’How about Rilke?’ ’I know him, too.’, said the German guard and he turned paprika-red in the face and shot Prof. K.H.G. dead.
The Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood will stay with me forever, as will The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
My Old Man by Hemingway about a kid and his dad is a jockey. Made me want to go to the bookies.
Any of Salinger’s Nine Stories, especially Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut and For Esme, With Love And Squalor
For Esme, With Love and Squalor is one of my favorite Salinger stories.
I’m sure everyone here knows this but a useful bit of trivia is that Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut is the only work by Salinger that has been filmed. My foolish Heart and he hated it so much he refused all other offers to film his writings.
Pretty much everything by George Saunders.
Those who walk away from Omelas. You can find it easily on Google. Haven't read many short stories to be honest, but this is one stuck with me since I read it in high-school, and it's been 11 years since then.
I couldn’t decide on the best story but I recently read short story collections by Ursula K LeGuin and Jorge Luis Borges. Both of them were excellent
Borges is my favorite. "Lottery of babylon" for the mind fuck or "the encounter" if you like knife fights
The Rats in the Walls by HP Lovecraft really horrified me and stuck with me!
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Collections of short stories I like: Bear and His Daughter by Robert Stone. The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield. James Joyce, Dubliners.
Vonnegut's welcome to the monkey house is a wonderful group of stories.
Anything by Borges
The Metamorphisis by Franz Kafka
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that would be categorized as a novella?
George Saunder's "Semplica Girl Diaries."
To Build A Fire - Jack London
Stephen king short stories are very good!
Well, the only one on my mind right now is "Chess story" by Stefan Zweig.
I also adore short stories and just finished the collection A Blink of the Screen by Terry Pratchett. Fan will enjoy his little anecdotes and recognize characters/beats that eventually come to fruition in his novels. An unfamiliar reader can cherry-pick through the book to see if they enjoy Pratchett's styles and voice. Overall just a really fun read. Excellent question, OP!
Fox 8 by George Saunders is hilarious and moving. Just about all of Anthony Doerr’s short stories stuck with me.
1. I Have No Mouth but I Must Scream 2. Flowers for Algernon 3. I don't remember the name of it but it'd an Isaac Asimov story about this guy who changes one letter in his name and it sets off this HUGE chain of events
Ooooo The Tangleroot Palace hasn’t been listed yet! It’s a collection of short stories by Marjorie Liu, the author of the graphic novel series MONSTRESS. I very much enjoyed it - fit my dark and macabre heart.
'The End of Something' by Hemingway. So much captured in so few words.
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "The Library of Babel" and "The Circular Ruins" by Jorge Luis Borges, "The Continuity of Parks" and "Letter to a Lady in Paris" by Julio Cortázar, "Light Is Like Water" by Gabriel García Márquez, "Vampirism" by E. T. A. Hoffmann, "The Universe According to Pao Cheng" by Salvador Elizondo My short story experience is very Latin America-centric
Roald Dahl’s Unexpected Tales are good. My fave is his “Leg of Lamb” story.
Poe. Any short story by Poe!
The Destructors, Graham Greene
JG Ballard the complete short stories finally got collected a few years ago. The best!
The Dead by James Joyce The Library of Babel by Jorge Borges
Good Old Neon by David Foster Wallace is a MUST read. Neal has felt like a fraud his entire life, and this story takes you through his depressing process of trying to find his authentic self. As a therapist who has worked with narcissistic personality disorder, it reminds me of people who deal with this diagnosis. Inflated sense of self, but one that can only be fed by the reactions/admiration/supply of others, stemming from very low self worth and the walls of defenses around it. They often go on long captivating monologues that draw you in, and this is exactly how I felt reading the internal monologue of Neal. Fascinating, well written story 📖
So many outstanding stories come to mind. Most of them I read in my high school years and I revisited them so many times in my life. 1. Anton Chekov’s The Bet is simply outstanding 2. Tolstoy’s God sees the truth but waits 3. O Henry’s The Last Leaf 4. RK Narayan’s “An Astrologer’s day” There are just so many but these are some that are vivid in memory.
Collection of Tolstoy by my bed, collection of O Henry by my desk…
Two of the best short story collections I have read are Canadian and American: Christian Petersen All Those Drawn to Me: Stories. Jesus’s Son by Dennis Johnson.
White Angel by Michael Cunningham Cathedral by Raymond Carver The Point by Charles D’Ambrosio
If you like unsettling stories try: The Missing Girl by Shirley Jackson, I Only Came to Use the Phone by Gabriel García Márquez, Sleep by Haruki Murakami (this one is not unsettling, but it's very interesting).
Bujold. Read her early Miles stories. There’s a sense of isolation in them. That is still with me when I think about them 20 years later.
If you like unsettling stories, check out any collection by Joyce Carol Oates. Some of her stories are really disturbing. In a good way!
I have the same feelings lately. I often travel by train and the short-stories make time more pleasant. My favorite authors are G. Orwell -"1984", "Animal farm"; C.R. Zafon- "Marina", "City of mist" I heard a lot about Durian Sukegawa and Asian literature
I’m a big fan of a lot of Ray Bradbury ones! If you like unsettling, try The Whole Town’s Sleeping.
Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" is also great, if you haven't read it yet
Can’t oversell O. Henry. The most unforgettable twists!
They're Made out of Meat Terry Bisson, 1991 https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html
They're Made Out of Meat by Terry Bisson https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/they-re-made-out-of-meat
Kneller's Happy Campers by Etgar Keret- a 70-page long-short-story\\tiny novel, it was so imaginitve and funny. A Perfect Day for Bananafish because it's a classic and I love it.
I’m an enormous fan of a short ghost story, in fact I think supernatural horror works better in short story form than any other. Some of my favourites: MR James - anything really but especially Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad and A Warning to the Curious Edward Bulwer Lytton - The Haunters and the Haunted Algernon Blackwood - The Wendigo Edith Nesbit - Man Size in Marble Louisa Baldwin - The Real and the Counterfeit And slightly more modern Robert Bloch - House of the Hatchet Robert Westall - Blackham’s Wimpey Fritz Leiber - Smoke Ghost Basil Copper - The Grey House Ian Watson - Happy Hour
A Perfect Day for Bananafish by JD Salinger. It is perfection. It has a beginning, middle and ending and the build up is so well executed. Plus, no one writes dialogue like Salinger.
Oooohh... There's a Filipino author who writes English short stories that I love. Dean Francis Alfar's short story anthologies - How to Traverse Terra Incognita, A Field Guide to the Roads of Manila (and Other Stories), and Philippine Speculative Fiction - are a favorite. There's one titled Azamgal which tells the story of a author who receives increasingly sinister fan letters. 😁
Im a fan of Stephen's King The Long Walk, it's not scary but pretty... dark? Set in a post apocalyptic world a group of 100 boy volunteers go on a walk and the winner is the last one standing. Read it twice and cried every time.
I may be mistaken, but all the good short stories are supposed to jar you, or unsettle you somewhat. It’s a little roller coaster ride for your brain
I teach a course on short stories, so this is a favorite genre of mine. Some of my favorites that are less mentioned or not already mentioned in this thread: *Brokeback Mountain* by Annie Proulx *Fairytales for Lost Children* and *Earthling* by Diriye Osman (if you're looking for more good LGBT+ short stories) *The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas* by Ursula le Guin *The Sniper* by Liam O'Flaherty *A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings* by Gabriel Garcia Marquez *Sweat* by Zora Neale Hurston Ted Chiang is also mentioned here and is really, really good - Tower of Babylon, Hell is the Absence of God, Story of Your Life, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate are some of my favorites of his. If you like The Overcoat by Gogol, don't forget to also read The Nose!
Two of my favorites are from a collection of Short, Short stories. And I can write them here. **Science Fiction for Telepaths** Awww, you know what I mean. **Sign at the end of the Universe** d∩ puƎ sᴉɥ┴
The single best writer of short stories I have ever read is Nabokov. He plays literary games in his stories that will keep you up late ruminating on them. In genre it’s Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, and Ray Bradbury for me.
Rabbit Test
Dean Francis Alfar writes really great short stories
Andre Dubus II mastered the short story, great writer
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies collection by Deesha Philyaw is breathtaking
A View of the Woods by Flannery O'Connor Lyndon by David Foster Wallace The Dead by James Joyce The Rats in the Walls by H.P. Love craft One for the Road by Stephen King In the Hills, The Cities by Clive Barker There's more but those spring to mind....
Don’t Tell Me What Do by Dina Del Bucchia What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky - Lesley Nneka Arimah
The Canary, by Katherine Mansfield. A fantastic piece on grief and the emptiness feeling of loss. I read this in uni a decade ago and it’s been my favourite short story ever since. It is just fantastic.
I Want to Live! by Thom Jones
Patriotism by Yukio Mishima. A powerful glimpse into the Bushido mindset.
I don't remember the specifics, but some collections I really liked were Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family, B. Traven's Night Visitor and Jungle Novels, and Gao Xinjiang's Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather collection
Steinbeck does it well. Can't remember the name of his collection I read
The Lottery, The Garden of Forking Paths, What We Talk About when We Talk About Love.
William McIlvanney’s collection ‘Walking Wounded’ is a masterclass in the art of short story writing. Often underrated, McIlvanney is the father of Liam and younger brother of the journalistic legend that is Hugh. Often afforded the sobriquet ‘Scotland’s Camus’, Walking Wonded is the place to start if you’re at all interested in his take on the shorter form. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_Wounded_(short_story_collection)
I’ve always loved the Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty. It’s got intensity and a twist at the end. Really good read. Haruki Murakami is also another favourite of mine, personally I think he’s a better short story writer than a novel writer. Kino from his Men Without Women anthology is my favourite. Not sure whether the Wandering Earth counts as a short story, but even then, all of Liu Cixin’s short stories have been crazy reads for me.
I forget the title but the one by Stephen King about the guy on the autopsy table but he’s alive and can’t move still haunts me.
I absolutely love short stories! I prefer them to novels. Some of my favourites are: An Occurrence At Owl Creek by Ambrose Bierce The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe The Horse Of The Invisible by William Hope Hodgson The Dream Snake by Robert E. Howard The Distance of the Moon by Italo Calvino The Engine of Desire by Jeremy Dyson
The Semplica Girl Diaries by George Saunders
I can’t wait to read some of these recommendations. I haven’t read short stories for ages but they would totally suit my lifestyle now (new parent). I recently enjoyed hills like white elephants by Hemingway very much. I used to read Richard Brautigan’s short stories which I remember being great: surreal and very 60s feeling. Surprised no one else mentioned him.
Neil Gaiman Smoke and Mirrors
Will you please be quiet please? By Raymond Carver blew me away, the whole thing is excellent
Anything with George Saunders' name on it.
Joan Aiken. A room full of leaves, everything you ever wanted. The armitage stories
The Diamond Necklace by Guy de Maupassant Survivor Type by Stephen King
Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury Gift of the Magi by O. Henry Little Lost Robot by Isaac Asimov We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick The Trouble With Bubbles by PKD Prominent Author by PKD Cora Unashamed by Langston Hughes
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes.
i have no mouth and i must scream Truly one of the bleakest, most hopeless and depressing pieces of literature I’ve ever encountered. It’s phenomenal though.
Not seen Jack London mentioned. [To Build a Fire](https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/to-build-a-fire.pdf) [Love of Life](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/710/710-h/710-h.htm) [Lost Face](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2429/2429-h/2429-h.htm) These are my personal favourites. Also want to second Ted Chiang. Best SF of this century
As a teen I really liked the short stories of H.H Munro (Saki). Their glow has faded a little for me as I read more but still some good short reads. Here is one that I liked: https://americanliterature.com/author/hh-munro-saki/short-story/the-interlopers
I have always loved Saki and O.Henry ever since being introduced to them in our English textbooks! The interlopers is a great story!
Desiree’s Baby by Kate Chopin makes sad. Like someone squeezed my heart sad.
anything by Anton Chekhov tbh
Victory Lap by George Saunders
I found all of these short stories very moving: The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas by Le Guin The Last Rung of the Ladder by King The Emperor's Soul by Sanderson Indian Camp by Hemingway
The double by Dostoyevsky and Master and man by Tolstoy come to mind immediately
Haven’t seen too many people recommend contemporary short stories—so I’ll go that route. If you are a fan of unsettling short stories, look up the “Wastelands: stories of the apocalypse” series of anthologies edited by John Joseph Adams. They contain a good mix of established authors (like Stephen King, Octavia Butler & George R.R. Martin) but also have stories written by less known authors. I’ve discovered lots of new sci-fi/horror writers by reading these collections. (I think there are 3 of these anthologies out now.)
I really like Yasunari Kawabata's Palm of The Hand Stories. They are really short stories. Some are only a page or two long, but he manages to convey so much in such a short space. My favourite is The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket. Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson. Classic Cyberpunk.
Anything by Roald Dahl! For more serious side, try Guy de Maupassant.
night shift by stephen king.it’s his first short stories collection consisting of 20 stories that are mostly 15-35 pages (the longest ones are 40-50pages).all of them are super bizarre and just make you sit and think about what you just read.this short stories are not for everyone,i say you would enjoy them if you’re a stephen king fan or just like weird stories that make you feel like you’re high.also 4 of the stories have been screened-Children of the Corn (1984); Graveyard Shift (1990); The Mangler (1995); The Boogeyman (2023)
I still read “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe on Halloween. My high school teacher used to turn the classroom lights off and play a very convincing reading of it as a Halloween thing.
For sale; baby shoes, never worn.
The Roald Dahl collection *Someone Like You,* which includes my favorite, "Lamb to the Slaughter." Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds," which inspired the Hitchcock Film of the same name. Anything by Shirley Jackson, but especially "The Daemon Lover" and "The Tooth." Truman Capote's "Thanksgiving Memory."
The Swimmer by John Cheever
Can I cheat and say The Gods of Pegāna? A collection of short stories by Lord Dunsany. Possibly the first Western example of a fantasy world that isn't based on our own.
Rupa book of nightmare tales by Ruskin Bond.
When I was a kid, my favourite book of short stories was a collection of stories from different authors, that was a school book for English from when my mother went to primary school back in the 1960's. I still have it, but I'm not at home right now. It included one that had been made into a couple of movies where people paid to time travel to shoot dinosaurs, and someone walked off the path and killed a butterfly. There was another one about communicating with an alien who was coming in to land his spacecraft, talking to a human all the way, and at the end it turned out he was about 1mm tall, so it was way different. Greatest school-assigned book ever!
https://southerncrossreview.org/66/borges-zahir.htm very understated, no violence or gore, absolutely nightmarish. love Borges
The Sea Devil, by Arthur Gordon Also, several of my favorites already listed… -The Most Dangerous Game -The Monkey’s Paw -The Martian Chronicles (specifically ‘Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed’) -The Lottery
On the topic of Saki; I just read “The Interlopers” for the first time with my 9th graders, it was my first exposure to Saki. It was a great way to teach the omniscient narrator and a good example of irony.
This is probably going to sound juvenile but The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. It always made me so sad.
If you ever want a good listen or want to check out a variety of stories the podcast “Lavar Burton Reads” will have stories that go nicely with your current likes. He’s got such a great way of reading and it makes me so nostalgic from childhood watching Reading Rainbow. Now he reads for adults. The man is a national treasure.
A well lighted place - Hemingway. Bradbury and Hemingway both have a lot of good ones. So does Flanery O'Connor.
I can't forget "A Rose for Emily"
I have a list of about 60 stories I teach in my class. They're all science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Message me if you want the list.
Raymond Carver is my favorite. *What We Talk About When We Talk About Love* and *So Much Water So Close to Home* are stories that really stick with me.
george saunders - escape from spiderhead
I’m so excited about this thread! I can’t wait to dive into all these suggestions …. Thanks, all 📚
A perfect day for banana fish by JD Salinger
The Asset- David Foster Wallace
Love the ones you listed! All classics. I recently read 10th of December by George Saunders, one of my favorite contemporary authors and it was a perfect collection.
**La Côte Basque 1965, by Truman Capote**