The Republic of Heaven

For when you need literature in small doses. Name your favorites. I'll name mine shortly.

Ali Smith's short stories are just gorgeous, wonderful creations. Other Stories and Other Stories is my favourite collection so far, but I have more to read yet.

All of the Sherlock Holmes shorts are exquisite - better than the novels. I love his prose, and I find it endearing the way he has characters telling stories of characters telling stories of characters telling stories of characters so that the page is sprayed with quotation marks:

""""What did you say?," he asked," she said," they exclaimed", said the stranger.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote most of my favorites. Particularly:

The Garden of Forking Paths
The House of Asterion
The Circular Ruins
The South
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
The Lottery in Babylon

Some of those translations aren't the best, but they're free on the internet . . .

Ooer, I haven't even heard of the first and haven't read much of the latter two. *adds to list*

Favorite collections:

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, particularly the title story, "Spin," "How to Tell a True War Story," and "Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong."

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, particularly the title story again, and "The Third and Final Continent."

Sherman Alexie's work, particularly "The Toughest Indian in the World" from the collection of the same name, and "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven collection.

Other randomly selected favorites:

"The Half-Skinned Steer" by Annie Proulx

"Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates

"Sea Oak" by George Saunders

Ray Bradbury is always excellent,The Murderer is particular is great.

I, like Matt, really like Borges' short stories, although I haven't read most of them since high school. I like Cory Doctorow's short stories (although there's quite a bit of preaching to the converted going on), some of Neil Gaiman's short stories, and Margaret Mahy's short stories for children (collected in a book called A Door In The Air, and Other Stories). On the whole, however, I don't read much short fiction because I love stories so much I like them to go on a bit longer than 50 or so pages...

There are a lot of names here I've never heard of, but I guess I'm not a short story person either. It's rare that I find one completely satisfying.

I loved 'Singing My Sister Down' by Margo Lanagan, though - I must read more of her collections. Like Dolorosa I'm a fan of Neil Gaiman and Margaret Mahy, though my favourite Mahy collection is The Chewing Gun Rescue. I like some of Michael Marshall Smith's stories, especially 'The Man Who Drew Cats' and 'Hell Hath Enlarged Itself'. I One of my favourite children's authors is Eleanor Farjeon - probably still out of print - who wrote The Little Bookroom, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard and Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field, collections of fairy tale style stories from (I think) the fifties. And then there are traditional fairytales, but that's for a whole other thread.

My favourite type of short stories (which seem to be out of fashion) are the ones that come with a frame tale, like the Marin Pippin books and Arabian Nights. Dated perhaps, probably spurned by people who take the art of short story writing seriously, but oh so satisfying.

Hmmm.

Almost anything by M.R. James, but especially The Mezzotint.

The short-story format works well in SF. Favourites include The Store of the Worlds by Robert Sheckley and The Man Who Lost The Sea by Theodore Sturgeon.

And, of course, there's The Dead by James Joyce, whose ending is so sad it's almost unbearable.

I'm sure I could think of lots more if I tried.

And, of course, there's The Dead by James Joyce, whose ending is so sad it's almost unbearable.

Nearly every story in the book is the same, but I'd say A Painful Case and A Little Cloud are worse.

As for the thread, The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a favourite, it's just about as Hemingway as it gets, if that makes any sense.

As for the thread, The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a favourite, it's just about as Hemingway as it gets, if that makes any sense.

I'm an inveterate Hemingway hater but I do like that one, and "Hills Like White Elephants" quite a bit. Perhaps I can bear him in small doses.

junot diaz's drown was quite good, and you'd probably like it if you liked the brief, wondrous life of oscar wao.

I recently read a few Nikolai Gogol short stories, having acquired the book somehow (someone found it lying around somewhere, and gave it to my mother) and I'd certainly recommend him to anyone who has an interest in reading his stuff one day. I've not yet reached The Overcoat, as it's the end of the book but I do look forward to it (whenever I get round to it). The few stories I've read (St. John's Eve, The Night Before Christmas, The Terrible Vengeance) are all sort of oddly surrealist, and told in such a strange stream-of-consciousness-like manner that I wonder if that's how he wrote, or if there's something changed in translation in an effort to be true to his original writing style...