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Favourite Short Stories

  • 20-02-2011 6:37pm
    #1
    pavb2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,077 ✭✭✭


    I like a good short story but some modern ones leave me thinking what was that all about? Did I miss some underlying theme or symbolism?

    Here are some of my favourites

    An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
    Poignant twist
    The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
    Good twist again
    Leningen versus the Ants -Carl Stephenson
    All Action hero
    The Lady or the Tiger - Frank Stockton
    No answer to this
    The Secret Miracle- Borges
    Fascinating concept of one second being expanded to a year


Comments

  • #2
    point7
    Closed Accounts Posts: 12 ✭point7


    The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
    It's about a mobile library visiting Buckingham Palace and the Queen happens upon it and takes up reading, opening her mind and questioning issues.

    On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
    Devastating & beautiful prose about a couple on their wedding night. Set in the early 60s just before the sexual revolution.


  • #3
    Suzie433
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7 ✭Suzie433


    yep love the Lottery and Flannery O'Connor's a Good Man is Hard to Find is brilliant too, one of the more enjoyable ones, I think anway.


  • #4
    dark crystal
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,962 ✭✭✭✭dark crystal


    I have always loved 'The Selfish Giant' by Oscar Wilde. It makes me cry each time I read it. Just beautiful.


  • #5
    Mardy Bum
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,674 ✭✭✭Mardy Bum


    Chekhov's A Lady with a Dog and Hemingway's A Clean Well Lighted Place, two deeply meaningful and philosophical stories.

    I enjoy many of Raymond Carver's stories also.


  • #6
    pavb2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,077 ✭✭✭pavb2


    http://www.classicshorts.com/author.html

    Here's a good link.

    Some very good recommendations from people on here, increasing the reading list again.


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  • #7
    dots03
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 86 ✭✭dots03


    I'm a big fan of Kafka's short stories and one of my favourites is The Hunger Artist. In typical Kafka fashion it's a simple and absurd story (on the surface), but it's one of those stories that has stayed with me over the years.

    Another short story I love is On the Rainy River by Tim O'Brien from the book The Things They Carried..powerful stuff. The book itself was not as good as I had hoped, maybe because the subject matter does not resonate with me on a personal level - it's a collection of stories, based on the authors experiences, about the Vietnam War - or maybe because it was over hyped by the person who recommended it, but the 'On the Rainy River' story captures so well the stand off between ideology and reality when having to make the monumental decision whether to go to war or not.


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