Photo by Mateusz Zdanko
We’ve been asking our Twitter followers to recommend their favourite short story reads. From the humour of Capek and Wolff, to the dark tales of Malamud and Salinger, we have had a broad and inspiring response.
So now that the THRESHOLDS bookshelves are bulging with new titles, we thought we would pass them on to you. Go, read and feed your imagination. Then sign in and leave a comment to let us know what you think, or send us your own favourite story in a Tweet to @ShortStoryForum.
If you would like to tell us more about your favourite short story or short story author, why not submit a full-length feature essay to one of our departments?
A selection of our followers’ favourite reads:
My favourite #shortstory: The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. Blows my mind that it was written in 1909. Scarily prescient. [from @nembow]
I love Late by Susan Irvine from her collection ‘Corpus’. Every writer has had one of those days. [from @FemiMartin]
A Perfect Day For Bananafish by JD Salinger. I’d take his short fiction over ‘Catcher in the Rye’ (and I love Catcher). [from @jhenrybenmore]
Footprints by Karel Capek. [from @jjponeill]
The Things They Carried [by Tim O’Brien] & German Refugee [by Bernard Malamud] are closer to perfection than I’ll ever get. [from @JarredMcGinnis]
James Lasdun’s Cranley Meadows is a favourite of mine, as is Fitzgerald’s The Lost Decade. [from @AshleyJStokes]
One of my faves is Diary of an Interesting Year by Helen Simpson. Serious issues told with great voice & dark humour. [from @StalkerEva]
Favourite #shortstory – The Age Of Lead, by @MargaretAtwood. One of those stories that stays with you. [from @LightInABottle]
Not absolute favourite but memorable, Patrice Chaplin’s Night in Paris (Minerva anth.1988 Giles Gordon Ed). [from @wrathofgod]
Chekhov’s On The Road; Mansfield’s A Dill Pickle; Carver A Small, Good Thing… … Steinbeck’s Breakfast & The Vigilante; Dennis Lehane Until Gwen; Frode Grytten Sing Me To Sleep… …Realise I was listing, not explaining! Well, one reason: I want my stories to make people feel the way those stories make me feel. [from @DineshAllirajah]
A.L Kennedy’s Mousebok’s Family Dictionary: an experimental story full of paranoia, discomfort & humour. Highly recommend. [from @VicHeathWrites]
Hard to beat Tobias Wolff’s Bullet in the Brain #Comedy #Poetry and a suave attack on lazy critics: newyorker.com/online/2008/02… [from @nicholas_hogg]
The Flower Garden by Sara Maitland … Weather by Carol Shields. [from @SalnPage]
Amy Hempel – In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried. [from @AJAshworth]
John Cheever – The Swimmer, Lydia Davis – Lord Royston’s Tour, Roberto Bolaño – Last Evenings on Earth. [from @ahmpreston]
Sredni Vashtar by Saki. [from @eamonngriffin]
Snow by Ann Beattie – beautiful, short and evocative. First story that made me think about writing stories. [from @saralangham]
Caro at the Pool by Clare Wigfall in her anthology ‘The Loudest Sound and Nothing’. [from @HardLuxeLiving]
Bliss by Katherine Mansfield. Also the Windeater collection by Keri Hulme. Will think about more. [from @LauraDunkeyson]
Honoré de #Balzac’s Une Passion dans le Désert (1830). Unforgettable. [from @ConorFarrington]
The Indian Uprising by Donald Barthelme. [from @chris_power]
Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker. Far and away… @DorothyParkerSociety. [from @SuchFriends]
Enemies – Chekhov; You Must Know Everything – Babel; The Country Doctor – Turgenev; Axolotl – Cortazar; Marquise of O – Kleist. [from @jimmylorunning]
A Poetics for Bullies by Stanley Elkin lodged in my head when I read it in ‘The Granta Book of the American Short Story’. [from @darrenmjones]
La Casa Tomada by Cortazar is eerily fantastical. [from @BellaWhit]
The White Road by @TaniaHershman and Words from a Glass Bubble by @vanessagebbie. [from @sarah_hilary]
The Juniper Tree by Peter Straub #shortstories #recommendations. [from @Mr_RoyEHU]
The Sagebrush Kid by Annie Proulx. There’s just something about it to ignite the imagination. [from @marybracht]
The Madman of Freedom Square by Hassan Blasim @Commapress, Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders, To Room 19 by Doris Lessing. [from @ZoeFLambert]
People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk by Lorrie Moore. [from @joannabquinn]
Gloria Sawai: The Day I Sat With Jesus On The Sun Deck And A Wind Came Up And Blew My Kimono Open And He Saw My Breasts. [from @angelreadman]
Don’t forget to send your short story recommendations to @ShortStoryForum – we’ll publish the best selection.
