Your 3 favourite short stories

[Carmilla]

Hello everyone!

List your 3 favourite short stories. :)

The Shout(Robert Graves)
Olalla (Robert Louis Stevenson)
The Fate of Madame Cabanel (Eliza Lynn Linton)

[YesNo]

Here are three I can think of. I consider them in the favorite class if I've read them at least twice and wouldn't mind reading them again at some time in the future:

Dorothy M. Johnson, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
Flannery O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Gimpel the Fool"

[Diggory Venn]

The Three Strangers (1888) - Thomas Hardy
Carmilla (1872) - Sheridan Le Fanu
The Adventure Of The Priory School (1904) - Arthur Conan Doyle

[Whifflingpin]

"The King's Ankus" - Kipling
"The Village that voted the earth was flat" - Kipling
"Wee Willie Winkie" - Kipling

[ajvenigalla]

"Young Goodman Brown" - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Good Country People" - Flannery O'Connor
"Bartleby, the Scrivener" - Herman Melville

[Marcus1]

"A Country Doctor" by Franz Kafka
"Prize Stock" by Kenzaburō Ōe
"The Third Bank of the River" by João Guimarães Rosa

[chrisvia]

I think the time it would take me to actually settle on what could be established as my 3 favourite would be interminable, so here are 3 strong contenders:

"The Hunger Artist" by Kafka
"The Aleph" by Borges
"A Haunted House" by Woolf

[ennison]

I don't think I have three favourite stories but I will say that I like the following:
The Store of the Worlds
The Dead
Scots Settlement

But I like lots of the stories of Carver, Donald Gillies, Kenneth Mackenzie, I C Smith T C Boyle and others and could probably substitute any of the above with something from these authors

[AdrianoJones]

1. For Esmè - With Love and Squalor by J.D. Salinger
2. The Dandelion Girl by Robert F. Young (this author is little known; I came across his name and this story in an anime!)
3. Either The Rats in the Walls by H.P. Lovecraft or The Dead by James Joyce. Hard to say.

[Poetaster]

Either 'A Country Doctor' or 'Metamorphosis' by Franz Kafka
'Green Onions' by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
'The Dead' by James Joyce

[ennison]

I should have added Kipling to those writers of short stories whose work I like. It's a long time since I read him but Whifflingpin reminded me, though it's not those ones I recall best.

[wordeater]

E. A. Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart
Roald Dahl - William and Mary
Thomas Hardy - Barbara of the House of Grebe

[Scheherazade]

Most of the stories in Wineburg, Ohio

"A Rose for Emily" by Faulkner

"A Tell-Tale Heart"

[qimissung]

Rikki Tikki Tavi-Rudyard Kipling
In the Red Room-Paul Bowles
Or just about anything by Saki, Salinger, or Vonnegut

[JuanMSanchez]

Nice thread, I will read them all :) I see Tagore is missing, for instance The Babus of Najanyore, also dear Jack London, To build a Fire, and some of Alan Poe´s : The black cat.

[kiz_paws]

My favorite 3 (darn, so limiting, oh well):


"Diary of a Madman" or "The Portrait" by Nikolai Gogol

"The Gift Of The Magi" ... by O. Henry

"The Metamorphosis" ... by Franz Kafka

Note that here, within LitNet, we have some awesome short story writers, Captain Pike and Steven Hunley come to mind first. A lot of talent, right here at your fingertips! :)

[EmptySeraph]

In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
The Killers by Ernest Hemingway
The Dead by James Joyce

[kiz_paws]

hmmm... "The Dead" has come up more than once... I will make a point of reading that! :)

[CloudDweller]

"In The Penal Colony" Franz Kafka
"The Dead" James Joyce
"The Hills Like White Elephants" - Ernest Hemingway


And some runner-ups
"White Nights" - Feodor Dostoevsky
"The Caucasus" - Ivan Bunin
"The Overcoat" - Nikolai Gogol
"The Lady With The Dog" Anton Chekhov
"The Hunger Artist" Franz Kafka


It is hard to narrow down like this...

[ajvenigalla]

A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor

Young Goodman Brown - Nathaniel Hawthorne

After the Ball - Leo Tolstoy

[kev67]

Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Machine Stops - E M Forster

Edit: I think might substitute Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu for The Machine Stops, or maybe Carmen by Prosper Mérimée.

[desiresjab]

An Outpost of Progress (Joseph Conrad)

The Wall (Jean Paul Sarte)

Counterparts (James Joyce)


Other strong contenders:

The Killers (Ernest Hemingway)

Ivy Day in the Committee Room (James Joyce)

The Compartment (Raymond Carver)

[Danik 2016]

Some of my favorite short stories written in English:
The Christmas Tale-Dickens
The Dead-J. Joyce
A Rose for Emily- Faulkner

[Whiskeyclone]

"The Rats in the Walls" by Lovecraft

"Bartelby, the Scrivener" by Melville

"Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog" by Kurt Vonnegut

Runners up: "The Metamorphosis", "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber", "The Yellow Wallpaper", "An Outpost of Progress", "The Call of Cthulu", "Fall of the House of Usher".

For recent stuff, I just read the latest Best American Short Fiction collection and there was standout stuff by people like Louise Erdrich, Andrea Barret, Meron Hadero, and Karen Russell.

I'm looking forward to getting around to the Roberto Bolano collection soon, and I wouldn't mind revisiting a few of tbe other Kafka heavy hitters.

[desiresjab]

Is everyone on here really that fond of The Dead, or is this follow the leader?

I am not saying The Dead is not a great story, but it is one of Joyce's longest and slowest short stories, and one of the more complex and symbolic. It got listed here a couple of times, then it got mentioned by the OP, then it started appearing even more regularly among posters' all time favorites. Suspicious. I personally do not buy it. It is not the kind of story people flock to and leave fascinated by, in general, forever impacted. It will put most people to sleep.

If half the people on here could legitimately not find a short story they liked more than The Dead, then either an abundance of literary mavens are posting in this thread, and abundance of beginners who have read very few short stories, or an abundance of people who cannot make up their minds and list The Dead because others are and it is supposed to be of high literary quality.

I would rate The Dead no higher than sixth out of the stories in The Dubliners, when the criterion was how much I enjoyed them. For literary grade and depth, The Dead may be Joyce's top effort in the short story medium. But that would not make it everyone's favorite. It would make it the Joyce short story with the most critical reputation. That's it.

[Danik 2016]

When the memory of a past lover stands out against the banality of life...

"one of the more complex and symbolic" stories by James Joyce

But not everyone has to like it, though many do, it seems.

[Cauldbairn]

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner -- Sillitoe
The White People -- Machen
Yellow Wallpaper -- Gilman

[desiresjab]

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner -- Sillitoe
The White People -- Machen
Yellow Wallpaper -- Gilman

Wow, I have never heard of those stories. My bad...

[tonywalt]

You're ugly too - Lorrie Moore
Mr. Voice - Jess Walter
The Rotifer - Mary Ladd Gavell

All very modern, 'cept the last one

[Whifflingpin]

The Good Samaritan
The Miller's Tale
The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat

[tonywalt]

"One thing- Litnet is still thin on modern literature," he said(that would be me saying), then ducked and scurried quickly into a doorway, then another doorway.

[robingoodfellow]

This took some thought, but here's what I settled on:
-"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe
-"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin
-"Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry

[shakespeare1]

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambroise Bierce)
J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Poseidon (Kafka)
The Scarlet Ibis (James Hurst)
Couldn't help myself ;). Here's four.

[shakespeare1]

Love your signature! Greatest stage direction of all time!

[thialfi]

"Specialty of the House" by Stanley Ellin
"Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," by Robert Bloch
"Battle of the Monsters," by Morgan Robertson

[hellsapoppin]

3) "What Men Live By" ~ Tolstoy

2) " The May-Pole of Merrymount" ~ Hawthorne

1) "The Cask of Amontillado" ~ Poe

[mvrmoorthy]

Hello everyone!

List your 3 favourite short stories. :)

The Shout(Robert Graves)
Olalla (Robert Louis Stevenson)
The Fate of Madame Cabanel (Eliza Lynn Linton)

My favorites are:
1. Clochette ( Guy de Maupassant)
2. The Lady with the lap dog ( Anton Chekov)
3. Clara Milich ( Ivan Turgenev)

[Oliver477]

"The King's Ankus" - Kipling
"Olalla" - Robert Louis Stevenson
"A Rose for Emily" by Faulkner

[Peng Wynne]

"Le Collier" - Guy De Maupassant
"There Will Come Soft Rain" - Ray Bradbury
"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" - Ursula K Leguin

But, but.... so many more! It was a really close shave not to put "The Parson's Pleasure" by Roald Dahl...

[GoldDustWoman]

The Story of an Hour (Chopin)
Babylon Revisited (Fitzgerald)
A Perfect Day for Bananafish (Saligner)

[Tamago]

I've never thought about this before. But now that I saw the question, three titles popped up into my head. So here they are:

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy
2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin