Tag Archives: Short Stories

Viral, Lorrie Moore, Girl Through Glass, New Chris Bohjalian

I’m like my very on book club as my latest reads have all been women-centered and fairly mainstream. But while all of them were easy, diverting reads, only one of them lived up to the jacket copy. Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America was a departure for me as I hardly ever read short stories. This one I did in fact read for a book club, the first one I’ve joined in ages. As much as I love to read, I don’t generally do well in…

Read More »

Kid Stuff (Not Just for Kids)

I originally bought Abby Hanlon’s Dory Fantasmagory for my older daughter, who liked it at first then lost interest. My younger daughter (turned 5 today) picked it up and had me read the whole thing to her over 2 reading sessions. It’s an absolutely adorable tale of a little girl with a big imagination, and the illustrations are a lot of fun. She has all these imaginary friends and enemies who tend to take over her life and make her do things that her family…

Read More »

Love and Other Distractions edited by Christiana Miller

Synopsis: A collection of short stories on the theme of love written by an eclectic group of Hollywood screenwriters. Review: The short stories in Love and Other Distractions are as delightfully varied as I’ve ever seen in an anthology. A fundraiser for the charity Kids Need to Read, the collection shows how different writers can be one from another. Shelly Goldstein’s ‘The Vagina Dialogues’ takes a witty, refreshing look at the way women talk about love, while ‘Full Moon Fever’ by comedian Doug Molitor will…

Read More »

Another Kind of Paradise by Trevor Carolan, Ed.

Synopsis: Short Stories from the New Asia-Pacific. Review: Another Kind of Paradise is a collection of stories from Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Viet Nam, Cambodia, and more. My favorite was “Their Son” by Hong Ying from China, which takes expectations about parents and children and totally upends them. It was sad, sweet, funny, and provocative. “Third Meeting” by Mi-na Choi from Korea had a narrator that really grabbed me, even though the story was heartbreaking beyond words.

Read More »

The Inheritance and Other Stories by Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm

Synopsis: A set of stories by two authors sharing one body: edgy sci fi by Megan Lindholm and longer fantasy by Robin Hobb. Review: I really enjoyed almost all of the stories in The Inheritance. I liked returning to the Rain Wilds in Hobb’s stories, especially because these stories were longer. But the Lindholm stories have an edge to them that I miss in Hobb’s works, and I yearn to see more of that anger and complexity in the Six Duchies stories. This is definitely…

Read More »

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Synopsis: 4 new stories that probe what ordinary people might do when faced with evil. Review: There were times when I considered putting down Full Dark, No Stars because it went so deep into the blackness. I know that sounds odd, because of who the author is, but for some reason these stories felt compressed in an unpleasant way. When King takes more time to develop his stories and let them breathe, you get some relief from the evil. That’s not the case with these…

Read More »

The Great Bazaar and Other Stories by Peter V. Brett

Synopsis: A selection of deleted scenes from Peter V. Brett’s debut fantasy novel The Warded Man. Review: The Great Bazaar and Other Stories is a fun little read for fans of the world and characters created by Peter V. Brett in The Warded Man and its upcoming sequel The Desert Spear (which is so so so so so good, by the way–watch for my review and an interview with Peter in April!) I enjoyed reading a few more stories about characters I have come to…

Read More »

Just An Ordinary Day by Shirley Jackson

Synopsis: A collection of unpublished and previously uncollected short stories by the reigning queen of gothic Americana. Review: Short stories are not usually my cup of tea, because they’re over far too quickly. But I’ll read anything that Shirley Jackson writes, and I really enjoyed the stories found in Just An Ordinary Day, which I’ve been reading in fits and starts for several months. Oddly enough, my favorites were among the unpublished pieces. In particular, I greatly enjoyed “My Recollections of S.B. Fairchild,” about a…

Read More »

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

Synopsis: A collection of short stories. Review: Just After Sunset offers a lackluster selection of short stories, hardly any of which really grabbed me by the collar. Many of them had a fancy twist ending that could be spotted a mile away (“The Mute”), while others were just deadly dull (“The Things They Left Behind”). I did enjoy “N,” which evoked the same creepy unease that I so loved in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. However, once it reached the final section it had…

Read More »

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Synopsis: A collection of short stories featuring Indian American protagonists. Review: Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake was one of my favorite books I read the year I was pregnant with Superfast Toddler, and I was so happy to get Unaccustomed Earth for Christmas this year. What I love about Lahiri’s stories is that I never feel shortchanged by them. No matter how good a short story is, for the most part I always wish I were reading a novel instead. Short stories are too brief,…

Read More »