May GenreCAT: Short Stories and/or Essays

The May GenreCAT features short stories and/or essays. When considering the topic, I was thinking of short story collections or essay collections rather than single short stories or essays. However, these challenges are open to individual interpretations. Many but certainly not all short stories or essays appear in periodicals before appearing in collections.

Short stories are a form of fiction, and essays are nonfiction. Both can be on practically any topic. Some collections include works by many others and others by just one author. Below are just a few suggestions of collections of these works.

Short stories: collections or selections from one author such as:
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor by Peter Taylor
The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin (includes a novella)
The Ways of White Folks: Stories by Langston Hughes
Death in Venice and Other Stories by Thomas Mann
A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories 1968-1994 by Alice Munro

Short stories on Specific Subjects:
Mysteries:
Sherlock Holmes in America edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Daniel Stashower (multiple authors)
The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie (an early Jane Marple)
Sleep No More by P. D. James
Related to another literary work:
Reader, I Married Him edited by Tracy Chevalier (multiple authors re Jane Eyre)
One event on one specific day:
Stories from Suffragette City edited by M. J. Rose and Fiona Davis (multiple authors, suffrage parade in New York City, October 23, 1915)

Essays:
Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry by Wendell Berry
Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver
The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present selected with an introduction by Philip Lopate. (multiple authors)
Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Some, but not all, of these anthologies are quite long. Often when I read only some short stories or essays from a collection, I will list it followed by (Selections). I have done this often for the short stories seminar I've been taking for the past two years.

Happy Reading.

Please remember to post your reading on the GenreCAT wiki https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/GenreCAT_2021#May:_-_Theme:_Short_Storie...

I'm planning to read one of Alice Munro's many collections of stories and Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver for this challenge.

I've borrowed Mantel Pieces a collection of essays and short works by Hilary Mantel.

I have quite a few that could fit here. Some of my top options:

- Hallucinations / Oliver Sacks
- Nobody's Mother / Lynne van Luven
- Your Move / Jonathan Kay

I've got two essay collections lined up for this month, I'm excited to read both of them:

Antlers of Water: Writing on the Nature and Environment of Scotland ed by Kathleen Jamie; and
Music to Eat Cake By: Essays on Birds, Words and Everything in Between by Lev Parikian.

I think I'll probably be reading The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout.

I have two anthologies of mysteries I am considering for this:

Past Crimes by Ashley Gardner
Bloody Scotland by Lin Anderson

I have Crimes in Southern Indiana by Bill Frank set aside for this. It is a collection of 17 short stories that are reviewed as hard-hitting, messed up and violent. Exactly what I am in the mood for!

I'm planning on two short story collections: How to Dispatch a Human: Stories and Suggestions (received from the LT early reviewer program recently) and North American Lake Monsters: Stories (which rose toward the top of my TBR after I read the author's other, newer collection of short stories earlier this year).

I will do The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie for this

There isn't an entry for this on LT as it's an online publication, but I've just finished reading a set of essays by previously unpublished writers called Nature Writing for the Common Good (available here: https://www.cusp.ac.uk/projects/arts/naturewriting/ ).

>11 Jackie_K:. Thanks for this info, Jackie. Of course, a lot is being published online now.

>11 Jackie_K: I've added Nature Writing for the Common Good to LT here (touchstone not working yet):

https://www.librarything.com/work/26400386/

I'm planing to read Tomboyland: Essays by Melissa Faliveno for this challenge.

My plan is to read The Garden Party and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield because it will also provide with an Oceania read for my personal challenge and GeoKIT.

I would also like to read a collection of essays or an essay published on its own. I have several on different topics (literature, climate crisis, social studies), so I will pick one that interests me at the time. Although May will be a very busy month, so I will see.

Even though it is not winter, I still want to finish Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie.

I have two Australian books on my list that would fit, Smart Ovens For Lonely People and Blueberries.

>4 LibraryCin: And everything I had picked out was nonfiction/essays.

And, my GR group's theme was just announced as "short stories"! LOL!

I don't have nearly as many short stories on my tbr, so I'll have to see. I will have at least one additional to the options I posted above, or if I don't have time, I'll just have to switch my essays above to a short stories that will fit both there and here.

ETA: It wasn't as tricky as I thought. Maybe I didn't even check for short stories when I was deciding; maybe I only looked at essays.

Anyway, I am likely going to aim for a local author here:
Vanishing and Other Stories / Deborah Willis

Finished How to Dispatch a Human: Stories and Suggestions by Stephanie Andrea Allen.

A fantastic read with lots of short, humorous speculative fiction. Dark themes, but the humor and fast-moving stories made it feel fairly light. Full review written!

I have completed the short story collection, Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill. Very dark and violent but well written stories that get the heart pumping!

Braiding Sweetgrass / Robin Wall Kimmerer
3.25 stars

The author is an Indigenous woman who studied botany, so she learned our white scientific ways to study and research. But she combines that with everything she learned while growing up Indigenous – the traditional “ways of knowing”, specifically with regards to trees, plants, nature.

I love the philosophy that nature is so much more than white people (and scientists) give it credit for. I can’t even explain, but I really did agree with most of what she described. I listened to the audio (read by the author) and I did lose focus at various parts, so I did miss some of it. But there were plenty of other interesting things mentioned/explained that I enjoyed listening to.

>21 LibraryCin: - I bought this earlier this year as part of my Thingaversary purchases and I'm so looking forward to reading it later this summer on the deck. The remarks I've seen here have all been good.

I just started reading a book bullet I received last week: World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. So far, so good.

I read Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie. That one book hit several of my challenges for this month.

>22 dudes22: Yes, most people have rated it quite high. As usual, I wonder if I would have also rated it higher had I read the print or ebook.

I read short story collection The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. A framed story with a series of stories that address technology dehumanizing us, nuclear war, censorship. I enjoyed most all of them.

I also completed I Feel Bad About my Neck by Norah Ephron. I mostly enjoyed these essays which I think might mean more to the older woman than they would to someone younger.

Vanishing and Other Stories / Deborah Willis
2.75 stars

A book of short stories… I’ve said it before – I’m not usually a fan of short stories, and I wasn’t here, either. There was one that I liked; there were a few more that were ok – I wouldn’t say I liked them, but at least they held my attention; the others, I just wasn’t interested in and didn’t even manage to follow.

I hate writing a bad review about a book by a Canadian author, but I’ve actually also met this author a couple of times (and my book is a signed copy). I did like that some of the stories were set, not only in Canada, but in my city (Calgary – where the author lives, or did the last I knew), and in another city I’ve visited a couple of times (Victoria), so it’s always nice to recognize the places mentioned/described.

I have finished Die tückische Straße, a collection of 19 crime stories. I can't really call them mysteries, as they are not typical whodunits. It's about people lying, cheating, stealing from and killing each other. I did't like it verymuch, but at least it's off the shelf.

I think I'm going to try the Audible version of Sister Outsider for this month's CAT. I haven't really read Lorde's stuff or read much about her work other than she was an activist, black and queer. So I'm excited to go in without too many preconceptions!

I've just started Imaginary Lands, a collection of fantasy stories edited by Robin McKinley.

I've finished Snow in May, which was a bookclub choice this month. I didn't realise it was a book of short stories until I'd started it. Claiming it anyway.

I finished Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

My thoughts: Exhalation: Stories is the award winning collection of short stories by Ted Chiang. The stories in this collection are one of my favorite types of science fiction stories - the what if? big picture stories. They are the types of stories that are not really about the characters or plot, but rather about a concept that the author has and then explores the implications of. What if there were time travel portals, what if we could talk to our counterparts in alternate universes, what if users could raise virtual pets and teach the a.i. to evolve and "grow up," etc. I found the stories in this collection caught my interests and made me think about the issues with futuristic technologies. I recommend this collection to anyone who likes similar style of science fiction stories. If you are looking for stories with deep characterization, or exciting plots, these might not be for you - but if you like wondering what if...these stories really deliver.

Just finished Voice from the Edge: Vol 1, I have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. I never intended to read this but I did. This is a collection of short stories that would be horror, fantasy, soft SF. I guess this is an example of New Wave. This is an audio version of stories written and read by the author. I have to say, he does a good job of reading unlike some authors. The author is quite clever and has written some pretty good stories, on the other hand, there is profanity and sexual content.

I have finished The doll's house and other stories by Katherine Mansfield. "New dresses" And "The doll's house" are my favourites.

I read Climb: stories of survival from rock, snow and ice by Clint Willis.
This is a wonderful collection of short stories, both true and fiction, about climbing. H.G. Wells' humorous short story "Little Mother Up the Morderberg" about a mother and son climbing expedition was the most entertaining. Some, including the fictional stories, are quite tame and do not induce the anticipated vertigo, while others recounting misadventure have a greater impact. Pete Sinclair's harrowing story is one that will stick in the memory.

For a story collection, I've read An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten, translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy. This is a fun read about an 88 year-old Swedish woman who manages to get rid of people who are inconveniencing her by killing them. She manages to do this to three people without being investigated. The fourth person, a male antique dealer, is found dead in her apartment, and she is investigated. The male investigators decide that such an elderly woman could not have committed the murder, and let her go. The two female investigators believe that she is the chief suspect but the men will not listen to them.

Thanks to Robertgreaves for telling me how to do this.

>37 sallylou61: Use the angle brackets around the word spoiler at the beginning of your spoiler and around /spoiler at the end of your spoiler

>37 sallylou61: Thank you for a book bullet. This sounds like something I would enjoy immensely.

I read No One Is Too Small To Make A Difference by Greta Thunberg, which is a collection of speeches from 2018 and 2019. This might be a bit of a stretch for this CAT, but as many essays originally start out as speeches, I think it's ok.
While I agree with Greta Thunberg and think that her message is very relevant, I was a bit disappointed because the speeches are very repetitive and I didn't learn many new aspects.

I read Deadly Anniversaries edited by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini. This one was on my TBR list. About 3 stories worked really well and another couple worked fairly well. The rest were mediocre to bad. I found I disliked one author's short story as much as I hate her books. Today's authors over-use alternating between time periods, and the story that used this technique did not work for me.

I've finished Antlers of Water: Writing on the Nature and Environment of Scotland, edited by poet and essayist Kathleen Jamie. Mostly essays, but also a couple of photo-essays and 3 or 4 pieces of poetry too. It's a fine addition to the canon of Scottish nature writing.

For this month's category, I read Stories: All-New Tales. My review is here.

Here's June's thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/332261

I've completed Lev Parikian's Music to Eat Cake By - subtitled "Essays on Birds, Words and Everything in Between".

I read Iraq +100 by Hassan Blasim. It is a collection of science fiction stories by Iraqi authors. All of the stories take place in Iraqi cities 100 years after the U.S. Invasion of Iraq.

I finished another book today: Inside Jobs - Ben H. Winters. It is an audible original audiobook with three short stories about crime during the lockdown.

I've finished The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a collection of stories about Nigeria told from a woman's point of view.

Hallucinations / Oliver Sacks
3.25 stars

Oliver Sacks is a neuroscientist, and this book includes essays on the topic of hallucinations. There were chapters on blindness, Parkinsons, epilepsy, drugs, migraines, narcolepsy, and a lot more, as well as a couple of chapters on auditory and smell hallucinations.

It was mostly interesting, but some parts did lose my interest. His books are like that for me (well, the few that I’ve read).

I read another book of essays; Hope Nation: YA Authors Share Personal Moments of Inspiration edited by Rose Brock. There are many different essays included. It was at times very interesting but also lacked balance.

I'm glad to see that so many of us are reading short stories and/or essays. Many of the collections sound very interesting.

I enjoyed reading Mary Oliver's Upstream: Selected Essays. I knew her as a poet; this is the first time I've read any of her essays, many of which related to nature (as does much of her poetry).

Starting Past Poisons, an anthology of historical crime stories edited by Maxim Jakubowski

COMPLETED Past Poisons, edited by Maxim Jakubowski

Starting The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michel Faber

I have completed The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans. It includes short stories and a novella.

COMPLETED The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michel Faber

Herbert has Lots for a Buck / Elizabeth McLachlan
4 stars

This book looks at twelve small towns on the Canadian Prairies, four towns in each of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. These are towns that have reinvented themselves to come back from dying out completely. One chapter for each town tells us the history of the town and what they’ve done to keep the town alive.

I grew up in a small town in Saskatchewan, so I found this really interesting. It might have helped that I know some of the towns (and I know about Rosebud, AB and Vulcan, AB and their “claims to fame,” so to speak); however, I really do think the stories of these towns could be interesting to anyone. The author really does write the stories of the towns very well. The book reminded me a bit of CBC’s “Still Standing”, except the book includes more town history, in addition to the current situations in the towns.

Favourites of mine were Craik, SK (now an eco-village) and Neubergthal, MB (done up as a historical Mennonite village). My Dad’s background is Mennonite, so that might also have helped with the interest there. Other towns (you can guess what Vulcan is famous for): Rosebud is for the dinner theatre in town; Warner, AB for a world-class women’s hockey program; Elbow, SK for their marina, Beacham, SK for the artists in town; Inglis, MB for their “elevator row” (historical grain elevators). The title really drew me to the book, as I have family in Herbert, SK. The author did not include Herbert as one of the essays, but she mentioned a bit about it (and the title) in the epilogue.

I learned something interesting this month. I seem to have more essays than short stories on my tbr. And I think I liked them better!

I read four books that fit here, but only one was short stories; the others were all essays. (Quite the opposite of most, judging by the wiki!)

Thanks to everyone who participated in this challenge. I hope that you enjoyed your reading.

>57 LibraryCin: Although people read a lot of short story collections, I was surprised to see how many read essays.

Running a month behind, but I am reading Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City by Martin H Greenberg for this challenge.

I read the 2020 Giller Prize winner How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankahm Thammavongsa. Short stories about immigrants from Laos dealing with strained relationships, limited prospects, learning a multitude of unwritten rules while trying to maintain dignity.

It was a bit understated (I expected more of a punch given the title!), but I felt like I had a chance to experience a little bit of the emotional life of a Laotian immigrant.