I’ve been enjoying an advance copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of short fiction, Unaccustomed Earth. These stories don’t significantly diverge from her previous fiction, either in theme or tone or style, but they still are moving renditions of Indian immigrants torn between being American and being Indian. Of these eight stories, only three (so […]
And the best title for a short story collection since the Read This! nomination of Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead goes to . . . . Salmonella Men on Planet Porno. Yes, that’s right. Tsutsui Yasutaka, a Japanese author, published this in 2005, and it came out here in April, 2007. What’s […]
Bookforum reviews Donald Barthelme’s new collection of short stories, Flying to America: 45 More Stories. But only three of the stories are brand new. Over at A Work In Progress, there’s a post about John Cheever’s short stories and their adaptations into theater pieces. The Village Voice reviews Wanda Coleman’s new collection, Jazz and Twelve […]
Apparently there is a website that will allow you to pick a number of short stories that will be bound in a one-of-a-kind anthology. Hence the name of the site, Anthologybuilder.com. This is so beautiful – imagine the gifting potential! Instead of burning a friend a mix tape, you select and buy them a mix […]
Over at The Millions, there is a great post on what to do with your rejection slips. There is a suggestion about a dress. There is also one about a tux. And there is the famous reminder that Steven King impales his on a nail. Me, I just keep them in a big stack, but […]
It’s lovely that the NYTBR reviewed Max Apple’s collection of stories, A Jew in Home Depot, the first collection he’s published in twenty years, but just strange that the review is coming out now, nearly four months after the book was released (The LA Times review, written by Tod Goldberg, came out in late November). […]
I decided to read Tessa Hadley’s collection Sunstroke and other Stories mainly because it had been nominated for the Short Story Prize. Hadley’s a Welsh writer that writes short stories of manners, usually with female protagonists, and always concerned about interpersonal interactions in domestic environments. Most of the stories in this collection share a theme […]
I’ve always been fascinated with, yet never entered, the Writers Weekly 24 hour short story contest. Seems a bit gimmicky (in the same vein as NaNoWriMO), but also could be rather fun, in that collectivist, lets-all-make-art-simultaneously type of way. Anyway, it starts Jan. 26th. If you want some great, constantly updated information about short story […]
Over at the Guardian there’s a blurb about how their fastest reader, John Crace, only reads sixty pages an hour, and how he considers that to be quite fast enough. I suppose I don’t know how many pages I read an hour, because really, pages are a rather inaccurate unit of measurement considering all the […]
I made the mistake of trying to read New York Echoes, a short story collection by Warren Adler coming out in February. I say trying because I couldn’t make it through. Aside from the pressing desire to cut the character’s dialogue in half and compress the narration, I was most put off by the morality […]
