Book Lists

My Favorite Short Story Collections

I love to read short story collections and admire the craft involved. When I tried to write a few myself, I discovered it’s a lot harder than it looks. (I’ll get into some of the reasons why in a later post.) Here are a few of my favorite collections, in no particular order.

  1. Anything by Alice Munro – she’s simply the best and she makes it look so easy!
  2. Tom Perrotta’s Bad Haircut and Nine inches both made me laugh out loud. I like his novels too but I like the short stories better.
  3. Dan Chaon’s Fitting Ends and Among the Missing captured something Midwestern and hard to define. They stayed in my mind for a long time.
  4. Ron Rash, both Burning Bright and Nothing Gold Can Stay – I like his novels and other collections too but these are favorites.
  5. Ron Carlson’s The Hotel Eden – and I highly recommend his book about writing short stories, fittingly titled Ron Carlson Writes a Story.
  6. Laura Lippman’s Hardly Knew Her – great twist-and-turn nourish stories from a female point of view.
  7. Marly Swick Monogamy and The Summer Before the Summer of Love. Monogamy sat on my bookshelf for years before I picked it up and read it. I loved it so much I immediately ordered The Summer Before the Summer of Love and I wasn’t disappointed. Great stories!
  8. Molly Ringwald’s When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories. I wasn’t expecting much on the erroneous assumption a talented actress couldn’t possibly write too but I was wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed these stories.
  9. Alix Ohlin’s Signs and Wonders. A relatively new writer and another great find.
  10. Jennifer Egan’s Emerald City and A Visit from the Goon Squad (linked short stories in service of a novel.)

Ten Books that Mattered (A Lot) to Me

I thought I’d compile a list of the books that really mattered to me throughout my life. Perhaps not surprisingly, I read many of them when I was very young, in my “formative” years as a reader. I don’t know if I’d rate them all so highly today based on literary criteria but that’s not my goal here – these are books I cared passionately about, books that influenced me, made a difference. Literary masterpieces and classics are conspicuous by their absence – I’ll cover my favorites there in another list. These are my top ten for sheer entertainment and emotional impact.

 

  • KNIGHT’S CASTLE by Edward Eager – as an adult, I’m not a huge fan of magic fantasy novels, but I loved all of Edward Eager’s magic-based book. This one, an alternative take on Ivanhoe, was my favorite.
  • DAVID AND THE PHOENIX by Edward Ormondroyd – a wonderful children’s book. I cried again when I reread it as an adult.
  • THE MOONFLOWER VINE by Jetta Carleton. Maybe because I’m one of three sister, this tale of three sisters really got to me.
  • TEMPLE OF GOLD by William Goldman. Goldman is more famous for his screenplays, but I’m a huge fan of his novels – especially this impressive debut.
  • THE MAGUS by John Fowles – I read this in college and have re-read it several times since. It starts slow but then it’s a speeding bullet to the finale.
  • REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier – possibly my first exposure to a huge twist ending – which caught my adolescent self by surprise. I read a lot of du Maurier as a result and also liked a couple more obscure ones – MY COUSIN RACHEL and THE PARASITES.
  • GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell – I’m pretty sure this is an unfashionable, politically incorrect choice, but I loved it – and like most teenage girls of my era, I identified strongly with the Ashley-Rhett dilemma.
  • GREEN MILE by Stephen King – I’m not a big fan of horror either, but this was like a textbook on how to write a page-turner – it was almost impossible to put down and the ending really paid off (for me).
  • A SIMPLE PLAN by Scott Smith – the movie is good, but the book is better. It’s so tight, so compelling, and it really stayed with me.
  • ENDLESS LOVE by Scott Spencer – the novel, not the movie. Spencer captured the crazy urgency of adolescent love (for me) and the last paragraph is a thing of beauty.

 

I’d love to read some of your lists if anyone feels like sharing!