On Monday, JE gave us a preview of Ben Loory’s new collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day saying, among other things: “I have no idea what they were about. But they stick with me, like great episodes of “The Outer Limits,” or asparagus—I’m not sure why they have the effect they do, but it’s strong. And like cryptic things crazy people shout in your face, you end up trying to unravel their significance for a good while after the fact.”
Here’s what I think: I think that if you read the first story in this collection, you’ll have to read the next one. And once you finish that, you’re probably going to have to read the next one, and so on until you read the whole damn thing. Loory’s stories are quizzical, puzzling, magical little parables. Perfect. You should go out and get one.
Fortunately, thanks to our friends at Penguin, there’s at least a chance that you don’t have to. They’ve offered three copies of Loory’s book to 3G1B as a giveaway to our readers. So, here’s the entry pass: just comment below with the title of another favorite story collection and I’ll draw the winners randomly from the entrants over the weekend.
“Welding with Children” by Tim Gautreaux. Wonderful collection. Gautreaux is a great storyteller–his two novels are magnificent as well–and he’s a good reader and nice guy, too. I had the opportunity to meet him at a Georgia State reading he gave, and I think I was the first person to tell him that STORY magazine, where I had first read his fiction, had just folded (this was early 2000, I think). His face fell and he was clearly upset, as if I’d just told him a beloved author had just passed away.
I read Volt by Alan Heathcock pretty recently and it was fantastic. I just mailed my copy to my younger brother, who wanted to read it after I raved about it. Such a great collection.
I usually have a rather difficult time w/ short stories because I become invested with one character/set of characters and like to stick with them for more than 25-30 pages. One of the few exceptions to this was Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth.” I loved that book and will read anything by her.
YES PLEASE. girl with the flammable skirt! aimee bender.
Also a Volt fan! other fav. short story collections read this year – Patrick Somerville’s The Universe in Miniature and Matt Bell’s How They Were Found.
My newest favorite story collection is Caitlin Horrocks’ This Is Not Your City. And I echo everyone else who has put in a vote for Volt.
I’m enjoying GRYPHON by Charles Baxter. Ever since THE FEAST OF LOVE, I’ve been a huge fan. Peace…
Pick just one? Can’t do it. So: Volt by the several-times-aforementioned Alan Heathcock. You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon. American Masculine by Shann Ray. Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson. I’ll stop there, but there are others …
I’m a big fan of Vonnegut’s short fiction, but it would be hard for me to choose a favorite. I really enjoyed the posthumously published “Armegeddon in Retrospect.”
Liked They Could No Longer Contain Themselves recently.
Well, I’ll go with one of my favorites of all time, Woody Allen’s “Without Feathers,” one of the funniest books ever.
Hitchcock’s Spellbinders In Suspense, Robert Bloch’s Final Reckonings, Bitter Ends, Peter Straub’s Houses Without Doors, they still haunt me and raise goosebumps.
Karen Russell’s “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”. Weird, fantastical, awesomeness !!!
The Surf Guru or The Book of Other People.
Blue Birds Used to Croon in the Choir, by Joe Meno. Deceptively simple stories that focus on character and character yearning; that snake out of idiosyncrasies into real human feeling, or, what Richard Bausch refers to as “the felt life.”