Truly great short stories

[Hank Stamper]

You can't beat Poe, Kafka or HG Wells

Although I also love Roald Dahl's collected short stories and Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted is pretty good, if only for 'Guts'!
Bukowski's The Most Beautiful Woman in Town is one of my favourite books ever, and his other bits (Tales of Ordinary Madness and Notes of a Dirty Old Man) are ok (I'm planning on reading South of no North at some point).
Vonnegut's Bagombo Snuff Box and Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love are also some of my favourite short stories... For ghost stories the best by a spooky mile is M.R.James's Count Magnus and other stories...

[stlukesguild]

There are plenty of great short story writers and great short stories. I think it would be very difficult to hone it down to 10 favorite short stories... rather like 10 favorite poems. Among my favorite short stories I would include:

J.L. Borges- Collected Fictions (especially Ficciones, Labyrinths, El Hacedor...)
Kafka- Collected Short Stories
Maupassant- Tales
Thomas Mann- Death in Venice and other Stories
E.T.A. Hoffmann- Tales
Monterroso- Complete Works and other Stories
Robert Louis Stevenson- Short Stories
William Wilkie Collins- Short Stories
Henry James- Short Stories
Checkov- Collected Tales
Ambrose Bierce- Short Stories
E.A. Poe- Tales
Hawthorne- Tales
L.S. LeFanu- Tales
Sherwood Anderson- Winesburg Ohio
Hemingway- Collected Short Stories
H.G. Wells- Short Stories
Lord Dunsany- Tales
C.K. Chesterton- Collected Short Stories
Gottfried Keller- Short Stories
Rudyard Kipling- Collected tales
Mark Twain- Collected Tales
Flannery O'Conner- Collected Short Stories
Donald Barthleme- 40 Stories, 60 Stories
Harold Brodkey- Stories in an almost Classical Mode
Tolstoy- Collected Shorter Fiction
Dostoevski- Collected Short Stories

[_Shannon_]

I love Kipling's Just So Stories.

And collected stories of : Thomas Wolfe, Tenessee Williams, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Ring Lardner. Jack London, John O'Hara, DH Lawrence, Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, O. Henry.....

It's too hard to pick individual stories!!!

I can't remeber who wrote it- but "The Most Dangerous Game" is a great story.

[kasie]

Nobody seems to have have mentioned M R James - his ghost stories give me the shivers so much, I can't read them if I'm alone in the house!

[Hank Stamper]

Nobody seems to have have mentioned M R James - his ghost stories give me the shivers so much, I can't read them if I'm alone in the house!

look again

[kasie]

look again

D'oh!

Sorry - couldn't see for looking!

[Dark Muse]

There are all kinds of faveorite books lists floating around so I thought I would make one for the short story sense I do not think I have seen one yet.

What are your top 15 short stories?

[Jozanny]

In A Grove by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, is the best short story to emerge from the 19th into the 20th century. It allowed Hollywood to merge the attractiveness of Asian concepts of *face* and *honor* into American Western mythology, which is alive and well to this day. It is the basis for the urber-classic Japanese film Rashomon.

The rest is legacy.

I don't have another 14 for you at the moment, but most of those would be contemporary and I'd have to dig.

[Dark Muse]

That does sound interesting, I might have to look into it.

Hehe, that is alright, it is not a strict rule to follow.

[Jozanny]

That does sound interesting, I might have to look into it.

Hehe, that is alright, it is not a strict rule to follow.

I discussed it with a Yahoo Group which wanted me to leave. I did eventually, but not because of flaming. It was spoiler rules and I raised my voice over that, and posted about my personal problems with one of the owners, which was a mistake.

But one can get small gifts even if online communities aren't always suitable, and In a Grove was one.

Maybe I should put a plug on it for the rest of the evening Dark . I am sure I will think of a few more....

[kelby_lake]

I liked Bernice Bobs Her Hair by F Scott Fitzgerald.
Oh, and The Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka.

[WICKES]

D H Lawrence: The Prussian Officer
Roald Dahl: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Aldous Huxley: The Gioconda Smile

[Virgil]

Wasn't there a thread on tis already?

Anyway for now:
The Horse Dealer's Daughter - DH Lawrence
The Battler - Ernest Hemingway

[Dark Muse]

If there was I was not aware of it.

Here is my list as it currently stands, as it is subject to change while my reading progresses, but from what I have thus far read:

1. Youth, Beautiful Youth ~ Hesse
2. The Metamorphosis ~ Kafka
3. Liegeia ~ Poe
4. A Decent into the Maelstrom ~ Poe
5. The Aspern Papers ~ Henry James
6. The Open Boat ~ Stephen Crane
7. Bride Comes To Yellow Sky ~ Stephen Crane
8. The Apt Pupil ~ Stephen King
9. Bartleby ~ Melville

And that is all I have for now

[Jozanny]

I thought of another:
Maupassant, Boule de Suif

And an American,
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery

But to me, the short story blossomed in the mid-20th century, and surpasses anything which might be in the classic canon.