View Full Version : Recommand me a Short story collection?
Elevate1618
09-19-2008, 04:28 AM
hello. i am looking to read some modern short stories 1900's to present. Any recommendation to authors, collection etc will be much appreciated :)
Hank Stamper
09-19-2008, 05:57 AM
you can't go wrong with a bit of JG Ballard or Roald Dahl in my opinion
for early 1900s - anything by Kafka and some of HG Wells's short stories that were penned at the turn of the century too
Atsab
09-19-2008, 06:02 AM
Ernest Hemingway.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY!
Complete Stories is best, but if it's got more than you want I'll say my favorite (if I HAD to choose one) would be Men Without Women. It also has the best title ever, because is there anything else worth reading about?
....(ernest hemingway)......
Atsab
09-19-2008, 06:07 AM
Also I read a 60s scfi-fi anthology called Dangerous Visions last year and it was really fantastic. Besides the great, aforementioned J. G. Ballard it includes other 'famous' people like Roger Zelazny, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison (who edited it as well), Phillip K. Dick, Lester del Rey, Robert Silverberg, Philip Jose Farmer, Larry Niven, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Damon Knight, and Samuel Delany. The stories were all written specifically for the book, and they're all short and weird; a lot of them are really cool too, and some of them are actually mind-blowing. If it's your thing, check it out.
Inderjit Sanghe
09-19-2008, 06:11 AM
Well, they say variety is the spice of life, but here are my 4 favourite short story collections:
'Collected Stories' by Katherine Mansfield
'Collected Stories' by Vladimir Nabokov
'For Esme-with Love & Squalor' by J.D Salinger
Plus the short stories of Kafka and Borges.
Annamariah
09-19-2008, 06:22 AM
you can't go wrong with a bit of JG Ballard or Roald Dahl in my opinion
I'd recommend Dahl too :nod:
Basil Valentine
09-19-2008, 08:53 AM
If you like SF, Gene Wolfe's 'The Island of Dr Death and Other Stories and Other Stories' is probably the best single author short story collection I've ever read. I'd also echo the recommendation for J G Ballard - my favourite collection of his is 'Vermilion Sands'.
There are a lot of good short ghost story anthologies - most stories by M R James, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Ambrose Bierce and the like will usually be well worth reading.
TheFifthElement
09-19-2008, 08:57 AM
Angela Carter's Black Venus or The Bloody Chamber are both excellent short story collections providing a slightly different take on the fairy tale.
Ian McEwan - First Love, Last Rites
Haruki Murakami - The Elephant Vanishes
Margaret Atwood - Bluebeard's Egg
A S Byatt - The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye
Etienne
09-19-2008, 12:38 PM
Witold Gombrowicz - Bakakai
LitNetIsGreat
09-19-2008, 12:51 PM
The Happy Prince and Other Tales - Oscar Wilde, beautiful.
Atsab
09-19-2008, 03:17 PM
I'd like to give Borges another shout-out. Besides his own work (any volume of which is bound to be well near perfect), he co-edited a large anthology of short fantastic literature, all philosophical and thought-provoking, called "The Book of Fantasy". In it are 80-some small pieces by luminaries such as Ambrose Beirce, Ray Bradbury, Jean Cocteau, G. K. Chesterton, Lord Dunsany, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kafka, Kipling, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelley, Yeats, J. G. Ballard (!), and a bunch of Eastern folktales. Plus it has Borges' best story, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius".
For contemporary, Alice Munro is superb. And as already mentioned, Katherine Mansfield, whose collected stories brought me into the reading of short stories as an art outside of other narrative prose. In truth, almost any canonical short story writer seems to be good, because bad short story writers seem to be silenced quickly.
Another great name in the short story is Italo Calvino, who seems the supreme magical realist short-story writer. Cosmicos is a good collection by him, as is t zero, and even Invisible Cities (though I confess, Invisible Cities loses tons in translation).
Faulkner is another superb story writer, whose work is quite constantly sublime.
Virgil
09-19-2008, 04:45 PM
Of those not already mentioned, D.H. Lawrence, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce.
book_jones
09-20-2008, 12:45 PM
My two favorite short story writers are Donald Barthelme and Eudora Welty.
poppymontgomery
09-20-2008, 02:55 PM
I'd suggest olaf olaffson, the icelandic author, and clive barker, and echo james joyce and jg ballard.
Drkshadow03
09-20-2008, 03:02 PM
Kelly Link's and Jeffery Ford's short story collections are worth checking out, especially if you like speculative fiction.
Elevate1618
09-20-2008, 07:28 PM
cool. thank you everyone. Anymore suggestion will be great
PabloQ
09-20-2008, 10:50 PM
I recommend the Oxford Book of Short Stories edited by V. S. Pritchett. It will give you a taste of many of the authors already recommended. Once you find what you like, there is typically a collection of short stories by individual authors. Having said that I also recommend Flannery O'Connor and John Cheever in addition to Barthelme and Salinger for a more modern look at the short story.
Etienne
09-20-2008, 11:14 PM
Nevermind, I forgot the 1900+ part.
Virgil
09-20-2008, 11:28 PM
Oh Rudyard Kipling was a fine and innovative short story writer.
Atsab
09-21-2008, 06:15 AM
Yoshihiro Tatsumi - The Push Man and other stories.
lavendar1
09-21-2008, 08:56 AM
Lately, I've been reading Alice Munro. Carried Away is a good collection of her work. And if you're interested in reading 'best' collections, try the annual O'Henry Prize publication.
I'd recommend The Best American Short Stories of the Century (edited by John Updike), too.
Happy reading!
RogerL
09-22-2008, 05:06 PM
Graham Greene, Carol Shields, Edith Wharton
4a4a7a
04-01-2016, 08:55 AM
hello. i am looking to read some modern short stories 1900's to present. Any recommendation to authors, collection etc will be much appreciated :)
Needle in the Hay is a superb place to drop by. The site owners round up a team of judges every week and short list the best out of the best. You would never waste your time reading pointless content.
Try this one for instance; A Tall Guy with Three Holsters.
ennison
04-02-2016, 03:16 PM
Elizabeth Taylor
T C Boyle
Peter Taylor
Raymond Carver
J S Grant
Robert Sheckley
William Trevor
Kipling
EmptySeraph
04-02-2016, 07:13 PM
Clarice Lispector? Roberto Bolaño?
Danik 2016
04-02-2016, 08:25 PM
Clarice Lispector? Roberto Bolaño?
In support of Clarice Lispector:
http://bombmagazine.org/article/7108/clandestine-happiness
And:
https://books.google.com.br/books?id=wSzt5jmcLz8C&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=joao+guimaraes+rosa+short+stories&source=bl&ots=RTjoKWKVEb&sig=Vni2HQ8P4p9srFKBThmS-3XpT10&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY8ZfQmvHLAhVDUZAKHU9_CsYQ6AEIMDAC
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1941913.The_Jaguar_and_Other_Stories
Eiseabhal
04-07-2016, 01:22 PM
Jayne Anne Phillips
John Collier for funny oddities
Gerald Kersh for even stranger.
John Cheever
I would agree with most of the others. I myself have never taken to the brittle Miss Mansfield but no doubt she was able.
There are numerous anthologies out there. I have somewhere in the outrash here an anthology of sci-fi which was edited by (if I remember rightly) Kingsley Amis and was a very entertaining read
ennison
04-09-2016, 06:54 PM
Did you know Eiseabhal that Cheever sometimes composed his stories totally orally and only started to write anything down after he had recited them to himself aloud?
Dogbird
04-16-2016, 08:47 AM
Recommendations of short stories :
Dubliners by James Joyce . Look at Ernest Hemmngways recommended reads .
Father Brown by Gilbert Chesterton
Chekhov which isn't modern but good reads
Collection of short stories by Louis Lamour
Short stories by Ernest Hemmingway ( The Killers).
The Blue Hotel and more by Stephen crane
Jack London- best short stories
JuanMSanchez
09-17-2017, 03:45 AM
Hi. I recently went to Youtube and found a nice short story collection: French stories. It starts with a story by Alexandre Dumas and so on. My favorite story teller is Jack London, and he has a lot of stories, so you can find his complete works and have fun for a while. The same with Alan Poe. I am also a writer and I have quite a bunch of short stories written. They are romantic realistic stories, but some of them are sutble horror or magic realism. If you want to take a look I leave you the link: literaryechoes.com Please leaveme come honest comments about how you like them.
wreade1872
09-17-2017, 06:51 PM
Not a fan of short stories as a rule except Lovecraft but heres a couple i quite liked, The Last Tram by Nedim Gürsel and A Sense Of Reality by Graham Greene.
kiz_paws
09-17-2017, 07:39 PM
Some good Canadian Short Stories can be found by looking up W.D. Valgardson or Margaret Atwood.
American Short Stories I liked can be found from O. Henry (he's my fave in American Shorts)
Ukrainian Short Stories I liked were from Nikolai Gogol
I actually appreciated all the short stories from Stephen King.
F. Kafka wrote amazing short stories...
It is all up to the reader's tastes in 'literature', methinks. :)
ennison
12-14-2018, 06:38 PM
The short stories of TC Boyle. The stories of Neil Munro, Ambrose Bierce, James Shaw Grant, John Cheever. Lots of others.
hellsapoppin
07-10-2025, 01:03 AM
https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.6a75f313f6a27eb30cba2e6fff8a5b41?rik=XOzK1uzJVC5 n4A&pid=ImgRaw&r=0
Others mentioned one or two of his stories. Here is an entire collection.
hellsapoppin
07-18-2025, 11:58 PM
Would anyone like to start a discussion of Ficciones. I am presently reading the stories but find it a tad unreachable. I checked for analytical essays online but have found very little despite the author's great reputation and would like it if some of your could share your insights into Borges's highly metaphysical writings.
Ecurb
07-22-2025, 02:31 PM
I can't attempt a discussion on Ficciones. But I recommend A Swim in a Pond on the Rain by George Saunders. It reprints short stories be Chekov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol, and analyzes them in an attempt to discover techniques and methods other writers can use. Saunders is an excellent novelist and short story writer, and teaches creative writing at Syracuse U.
The book is excellent, as are the masterpieces analyzed.
Here's a Guardian review:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jan/06/a-swim-in-a-pond-in-the-rain-by-george-saunders-review-rules-for-good-writing-and-more?CMP=share_btn_urlo
perhapsican
01-18-2026, 04:18 AM
Just finished Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh. If you like Ottessa Moshfegh, you'll like it. If you don't like Ottessa Moshfegh, you won't lol.
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