best collection of short stories?

[mister_noel_y2k]

ive just read "when the women come out to dance" by elmore leonard and "the bloody chamber" by angela carter and both are books of short stories. i think carter's book is probably the finest book of short stories i've read yet but what're your favourites and whats the best story in the collection

[Sitaram]

I am delighted with an old, old hardcover edition of the short stories of A.E. Coppard. I read one story from that edition in the 1980s. Several years ago, I saw the same old edition for sale for $1 at a yard sale. If I tell you too much about the first story I read, it will be a spoiler. Im not even certain if it is still in print.

[mono]

I tend to love many of the classic short story writers - O. Henry, D.H. Lawrence, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ambrose Bierce, but when in the mood for something out-of-the-ordinary, I will pick up some work by Shirley Jackson, Ursula le Guin, and, most recently, Heinrich von Kleist.

[artemis]

well, I think that you could read something from J.L.Borges, a great autor.

[subterranean]

One of my all time short stories writer is Guy De Maupassant :nod:

[mister_noel_y2k]

i think oscar wilde's short stories are wonderful, the happy prince, the model millionaire, the nightingale and the rose, they're all so imaginative and beautiful especially the characters of death and avarice in his story the young king were easily the best representations of death and avarice in an anthropomorphic way ever. so beautiful, well constructed, wilde was a genius even if some of his stories (the remarkable rocket, the sphinx without a secret) sometimes fall flat. :banana:

[Surfer]

Paul Bowles' Collected SS

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0876853963/qid=1108587129/sr=1-24/ref=sr_1_24/103-7433075-2292657?v=glance&s=books

Best in the English language. One of our great post-WWII writers.

Hard to pick one, but Distant Episode is deliciously brutal.

[EAP]

Nothing tops the ground-breaking 'Dangerous Visions' anthology IMO. [Ed. Harlan Ellison]

[Molko]

I absolutely loooove Edgar Allen Poe - his short stories are always entertaining and unique

[whereismymind]

I read somewhere that Dubliners by James Joyce was supposedly the greatest short story collection in the english language, and I'd have to agree. J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories are also very good.

[subterranean]

They give us the chill as well...and the goosebumps :nod:

I absolutely loooove Edgar Allen Poe - his short stories are always entertaining and unique

[Adelheid]

What is your definition of "short"? :smile: Well, I personally like the Unmasked thrillers by Louisa May Alcott. They are wonderful. They are all so good, that it's so hard to choose which one I like best. But perhaps "A Marble Woman: or, the Mysterious Model" is my favourite. Anyone ever read the collection of Alcott's thrillers? It's a totally different aspect of Alcott's literary life!

[mono]

What is your definition of "short"? :smile:
I think most people define short (in a "short" story) as something one can read in one sitting, yet even that seems vague, depending on the reader. Most people would consider Edgar Allan Poe's long A Narrative of A. Gordon Pymn a short story, though it has such length in comparison to some of the very brief short stories of O. Henry, for example.

[mister_noel_y2k]

arthur gordon pym by poe was his only novel :banana:

[mono]

Ah, thanks, mister_noel, I felt a little unsure whether one would classify the story as a long short-story (interesting oxymoron) or a short novel. A few of Poe's "short" stories resulted in some length, I think - The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall, for one.

[Koa]

I tend not to like short stories, they're too...well...short...I find myself at the end really disappointed thinking "and then?"
Last week I got in my hand a book of short storis by Roald Dahl, author I worshipped as a child but I didnt know till now that he wrote for adults too... Well, I read 2 or 3 of them then had to leave the book cos it wasnt mine, but I actually revaluated the concept of short story thanks to him (they actually come to an end you see...)

[Rechka]

I just discovered the work of Flannery O'Connor. I read A Good Man is Hard to Find. Loved it! It's stark and violent and it left me with an existencial void. I just ordered the complete stories and I can't wait.

[Rechka]

I tend not to like short stories, they're too...well...short...I find myself at the end really disappointed thinking "and then?"

Have you read A Hundred Years of Solitude? That is a question you will never ask that book. The best ending ever, IMO.