TIOLI - August 2012 - Challenge #19 - rolling alphabetical short work challenge

Please see also the main Challenge thread here - http://www.librarything.com/topic/140308#3517363

Here's my challenge (post #108 on the main challenge thread) as rewritten tonight to clarify the rules:

Challenge 19 - read a short work such as a short story or an essay, but:

1: the title must fit into an alphabetical sequence

2: You may skip one letter at any time - so a C story can be followed by D or E

3. You can not have consecutive entries, so if you post F you need to wait for someone else to post a G (or an H)

4. The words "a" and "the" don't count

The purpose of this thread is to discuss and recommend short stories, essays or other pieces defined as short works - what did you read? why? Did you like it or find it useful in anyway?

To help anyone thinking of trying to match, what collection, anthology, magazine or other source did you get it from? Heather listed a Mrs Gaskell short story which I might have in print somewhere but not in exactly the same book, but I was able to download it free from Amazon, as I thought it would be fun to match where I can as well as to read my own choices. I will come back to the story later this week, I hope, once the new month starts.

I think this is a reallly great challenge. I never seem to want to tackle a whole anthology of short stories, but doing so individually is fun!

I primarily would like to read most of the selections in Naguib Mahfouz's collection, The Time and the Place which is one of my choices for the Reading Globally Mideast challenge.

The second collection I want to focus on is Dorothy M Johnson's collection of western stories The Hanging Tree. Ms Johnson is an icon here in Montana, her home state, and with readers of literary western fiction.

I have a couple more anthologies to choose from if we get stuck. I've added one story from Unbridled Spirits Short Fiction About Women in the Old West. The one I've added is a non-fiction memoir of Jack Schaefer's --author of Shane--grandmother.

I usually don't read much western fiction, but reading The Way West last month for the western challenge has fueled my interest.

Does anyone think we'll get through the alphabet ten times?

If someone has skipped a letter can I go in and insert one it the proper place or do I have to wait for it to come around again?

Wait for it to come round again, I think - that's part of the fun! I'm hoping with short stories we will actually be able to read a fair number of them, and even do some shared reads. Though some of the books used are a bit obscure and hard to get hold of!

The short stories I have listed so far are ones I need to read for the Science Fiction and Fantasy course I am taking with Coursera.

All are available for legal free download at the following websites

Mosses from an Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/512

Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13707/13707-h/13707-h.htm

The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. Wells
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wells/hg/

5: Thanks for those links, and I'm pleased to see a couple more potential shared reads appearing. I have so many books I'd like to use in this challenge, because I really like both anthologies (various authors) and single author collections of short stories.

This is a great idea, Luci. I've wanted to read Selected Stories by William Trevor for awhile, and your challenge is a great way to get started on it. I'll start with On the Streets, and add other stories from the book over the month.

Who are your favourite short story writers? Or do you have a favourite anthology or single author collection?

I like the following writers of short stories:

Katherine Mansfield
Toni Cade Bambara
Alice Munro
Mavis Gallant
Helen Simpson

Margaret Atwood
Shena Mackay

Collections I've enjoyed include

Roddy Doyle, The Deportees
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck

I love O Henry; I wasn't reading any of his work right now, but streamsong added one of his stories, so I'll be joining that one... I've read all his stories one time or another, but I have no problem with doing some re-reading there.

Other than that, I really like Poe, and Wells, and I'm reading some Hawthorne now which I'm also enjoying... I don't read short stories very often, so I'm also trying to just join some reads on the list....

My favorite short story writers are:
Haruki Murakami
Dan Chaon
Jonathan Lethem
T. C. Boyle - I read one of his today for your challenge, Lucy!
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Jhumpa Lahiri
Barbara Mujica
Danielle Evans
Michael Zadoorian
Savyon Liebrecht
Rattawut Lapcharoensap
and...
Stephen King!

For short essays, I love reading those of...
Barbara Kingsolver

Collections/anthologies I'm reading from for this challenge

Jennifer Egan, Emerald City and other stories
Elizabeth Taylor, The Complete Stories
Muriel Spark, The Complete Stories (Canongate edition)
Murder Squad, Best Eaten Cold - Murder Squad is a group of crime writers based in the North of England who do events together - including Stuart Pawson, Cath Staincliffe, Martin Edwards, Ann Cleeves and Margaret Murphy (John Baker and Chaz Brenchley have been involved in the past)
Liza Cody, Lucky Dip and other stories
Anne Enright, Yesterday's Weather
Lia Matera, Lawyers and Lovers - a new Kindle/ebook collection of her short stories which have appeared in various magazines and anthologies
various Mammoth crime anthologies, including 4 edited by Maxim Jakubowski

I also have collections by Clare Boylan, Carol Shields and Margaret Maron handy

Other people have chosen to read work from the following collections and I'm hoping to join them for some shared reads:
Penelope Lively, Pack of Cards
Lorrie Moore, Birds of America - I think I have this but I'm using a Collected Stories which actually seems to be selected
Mavis Gallant, In Transit
Marianne Wiggins, Bet They'll Miss Us When We're Gone
and perhaps Nadine Gordimer and Amy Hempel - I've not heard of Hempel before, but I saw a big collection of her stories in a charity shop on Saturday, and I'm not sure whether or not I've read Wiggins' novel Separate Checks but I certainly haven't read her stories

Essays: Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I read Books

Then there's Polly Sansom's first short story collection which I bought when it came out more than 10 years ago and I still haven't got to, two volumes of short stories by Helen Dunmore, lots of anthologies. I'm sure I have a big collection of William Trevor's work somewhere but not sure where, if I don't find it perhaps I can find one in one of my anthologies for a shared read with you, Darryl.

I was a bit wary of short stories until I did a course on short stories and got a bit obsessed - I wrote a dissertation on short stories by women writers.

For people who love to read, I don't see what so many people object to short story collections. As a matter of fact, I recall that being one of the first TIOLI challenges* I offered.

* ep! April, 2010 (as seen on Morphy's list!)

I don't really object to short stories, but I don't really own many short story collections and just don't really seem to get around to reading them. So, I guess that's why we have challenges like this one ;)

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Flannery O'Connor yet. She is my favorite short story writer, bar none.

Can I assume that short nonfiction works also count for this challenge? I had meant to read the works of several of the great New Yorker contributors of the mid-20th century this summer, particularly Joseph Mitchell, A.J. Liebling, John McPhee and Whitney Balliett. If they count, I'll read at least one story by each author this month.

Yes, short non fiction works definitely count - I've included stories and essays, and The Getaway Car by Ann Patchett is a mini memoir.

Britt84 Thanks for joining me on the O Henry story. I've read several of his quite a few years ago; I remember Mom reading Gift of the Magi to us when we were really young after watching a (black and white) version of it on television. I was surprised to see him in a volume of stories--fiction and non-fiction-- about pioneer women in the west.

I have not read much in the way of short stories in the past few years (decades?) although I'm really enjoying this challenge. I was blown away by Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House when I was in high school and also enjoyed James Thurber about that same time.

Brilliant idea, elkiedee.

I've just been downloading various free and cheap books for my Kindle - stories and essays by Willa Cather, early fiction by Edith Wharton, and the Common Reader two essay collections by Virginia Woolf (whose work has quite recently gone out of copyright as her death was just over 70 years ago).

I had heard so much about Flannery O'Connor I was glad this challenge gave me a chance to check her out. Lordamercy! If you're ever having a wonderful time: enjoying a cool breeze on a warm day, the dogs are running, the birds are singing, your children have made you feel like a good mother - she'll slap those feelings of joy and hope right out of you. I think this line from A Good Man is Hard to Find pretty much defines her view of people: "She would have been a good woman," the Misfit said "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." I read 5 of her stories, and I think that'll be enough, unless my life begins to go off on such a wild spree of happiness that I need to bring myself down a peg or two.

I'm finding that the difference between short stories and longer works is that short stories can pack a very intense punch in just a few pages.

When reading a novel you may have several hundred pages to build up to and absorb-in-advance its power. And then when you start the next novel, you get a resting place of a hundred page or so before the intensity builds again.

Trying to read several short stories in a day can indeed be punch, punch, jab, jab, punch until you feel like a boxer on the losing side of a bout.

I'm finding that very thing with the Naguib Mahfouz book I'm reading. According to the introduction, some of these were written by Mahfouz between 1967-1971 just after Egypt's disasterous war with Israel; conditions were bleak in Egypt and Mahfouz was distressed (depressed?) and unable to write novels at that time. Many of these short stories are very bleak--disaster occurs strictly by chance, depending on the time and the place you happen to be somewhere. It's hard to read more than one of this genre in a day.

Happily, I have them randomly interspersed with lighter fare from other authors; the order I'm reading is the order I placed them alphabetically. So I had the light O. Henry referred to above in between two of Mahfouz's heavy hitters.

I don't think I could read many Flannery O'Connor's in a row although I remember doing just that in college.

I agree, Streamsong. Even reading Edith Pearlman's excellent collection, Binocular Vision was like gorging on fudge - wonderful, unctuous fudge that shouldn't be eaten a pound at a time.

To add again to your comments, Streamsong, I just read In the Manner of Water or Light by Roxane Gay. It covers 3 generations of Haitian women and goes from a small Haitian village to Manhattan and Israel. It's a perfect little compressed story and would make a great novel, which I'd like to read, but I wouldn't be willing to read a whole book of these stories. Or if I did, I'd have to do so over a month or so. Such condensation would be too much to take one after the other.