Staff Picks Category: Short stories

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. [Book]

view/request

If you are looking for a vacation read that is thought provoking, beautifully written, and exciting, I recommend Flights by Olga Tokarczuk.

Olga Tokarczuk is the first Polish woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and perhaps the most internationally beloved living Polish writer. Her books are always full of eccentric characters and rich prose.

Flights takes the form of what Tokarczuk calls a “Constellation Novel” — a disciple of Jung, she strings together vignettes, short stories, and essays (some only one sentence long) loosely associated as she creates a psychological portrait of her narrator.

The book is a meditation on travel, and on the psychology of people in states of motion. (The original Polish title, Bieguni, [lit. “runners”] refers to a sect of the Old Believers who believe that constant motion is a way to avoid evil.)

The structure of the book itself is designed for a travelling reader — the small vignettes make it easy to pick up and put down, for example when going between a plane and an airport terminal, without sacrificing the literary quality. You will meet a 17th century Dutch Anatomist who discovers the Achilles tendon in an unexpected way, a woman returning to her native Poland to poison her childhood sweetheart, A wife and child who disappear from their husband to return weeks later with no explanation, and academics who give lectures at airline gates to captive audiences.
This is an extraordinary book, in an excellent translation, that I expect I will return to again in moments of travel through life.

I also enjoyed Tokarczuk’s mystery novel Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead, although that one is better read in winter, and I look forward to reading her recently translated magnum opus, The Book of Jacob, an epic novel of the Frankist movement in Poland, but at 912 pages it may be slightly too large to fit into your beach bag.

Let me know what you think of Flights, and happy summer reading everyone!

I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Flights:

“This is why tyrants of all stripes, infernal servants, have such deep-seated hatred for the nomads — this is why they persecute the Gypsies and the Jews, and why they force all free peoples to settle, assigning the addresses that serve as our sentences.

What they want is to create a frozen order, to falsify time’s passage. They want for the days to repeat themselves, unchanging, they want to build a big machine where every creature will be forced to take its place and carry out false actions. Institutions and offices, stamps, newsletters, a hierarchy, and ranks, degrees, applications and rejections, passports, numbers, cards, elections results, sales and amassing points, collecting, exchanging some things for others.

What they want is to pin down the world with the aid of barcodes, labeling all things, letting it be known that everything is a commodity, that this is how much it will cost you. Let this new foreign language be illegible to humans, let it be read exclusively by automatons, machines. That way by night, in their great underground shops, they can organize reading of their own barcoded poetry.

Move. Get going. Blessed is he who leaves.”

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life) by George Saunders [Book]

view/request

Reading this book is like getting to take author George Saunders’ MFA writing course on the Russian short story, as he takes you through reading seven of his favorites by Russian giants Tolstoy, Chekov, Gogol, and Turgenov. And while this might seem like a daunting hurdle, or something only helpful for aspiring writers – Saunders’ engaging examinations into how these greats are doing what they do, make for an accessible exploration into the importance of fiction and in turn: a revelatory experience of becoming a better reader AND an inspiration for finding one’s voice in any form of expression (not just writing). A non-fiction extension from what Saunders achieves with his own award winning fiction, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is appearing on many “Best of…” lists for good reason – an essential read for anyone who loves stories!

First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami [Book]

view/request

This small collection of eight short stories by Haruki Murakami has everything I love about Murakami’s writing: the subtle oddness, the evocative descriptions of ordinary things, his expansive awareness of culture and great enthusiasm for favored subjects from baseball to jazz. Each story here is written in the first person, from the perspective a man, usually a middle-aged writer, examining some past experience. Many of the stories are completely realistic, with a few leaving you wondering whether they might be autobiographical. In one the narrator is even an author named Haruki Murakami! In others, the stories are subtly fantastic: the narrator reflects on the time he met a talking monkey at a hot spring; the narrator finds himself in another man’s body, perhaps. And, in typical Murakami fashion, even some of the most realistic stories leave you perplexed, like the narrator, wondering just what might have been going on.

My favorite story in the collection is, without a doubt, “The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection”—the story with a narrator named Haruki Murakami that reads so much like memoir. In it the narrator tells us of his love of baseball, how he came to become a Yakult Swallows fan, and how, early in his career, he self-published a chapbook of poems about baseball. The story includes a number of delightful poems about baseball (you need not be a baseball fan to appreciate them) and is told in a pleasantly conversational tone. There is no strangeness in this story, except for the mundane strangeness that lies at its very heart—why would a man be a fan of such a losing team?

This is a great volume for fans of short stories. It is sure to delight established Murakami fans, and would be a great introduction to his work for anyone not yet familiar with his writing.

Translated from the Japanese by longtime Murakami translator Philip Gabriel.

Levar Burton Reads by Levar Burton [Online Resource]

view/request

Levar Burton’s podcast has a tagline that embraces superlatives: “The Best Short Fiction, Handpicked by the Best Voice in Podcasting”. That may be taking things a bit far, but I am loving the stories Levar picks, and I can’t think of anyone I would rather hear read them. Perhaps that’s because I grew up on Reading Rainbow, but whatever your generation, if you enjoy short fiction read allowed, I urge you to check out Levar Burton Reads.

The podcast is impeccably produced, with sparing use of subtle soundscapes that enhance the storytelling. The stories are mostly science fiction and fantasy, but the selections are always of an accessible sort—you don’t need to be a fan of these genres to appreciate these well-told tales. And the authors are diverse, including both classic well-established writers and new writers of all races and genders. Levar always takes a brief moment to tell you about why he selected the story and what it means to him, and I invariably find I appreciate what he has to say.

So, whether you are looking for new authors and ideas, some great bed time stories, an impeccably produced podcast, or just the comfort of hearing Levar’s voice, give it a listen.

Report to the Men’s Club by Carol Emshwiller [Book]

view/request

Though we’ve labeled this science fiction, for the most part these short stories are magic realism, little worlds where everything is normal, except perhaps, grandma can fly. Some funny, some a bit macabre (think Joyce Carol Oates with a sense of humor.) One is a paean to a feminist anthropologist, many about the lives of women. They will stick with you after the volume is closed.

Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Hornung [Book]

view/request

Did you know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law E. W Hornung was also a successful author? Hornung’s hero, A. J. Raffles is a “debonair, witty and cricket-loving gentleman thief” too selfish to be a Robin Hood, but too noble to steal from those he feels can ill-afford it, and patriotic enough that he goes to war for his country and once, after making suitable precautions to avoid self-incrimination, he arranges for the spoils of a particularly splendid heist to be a gift to the queen.

Like those of Sherlock Holmes, the exploits of A. J. Raffles are told from the perspective of a devoted friend and accomplice. In place of Doctor Watson, Raffles has Harry Manders, more usually known, at least to his criminal friend, as Bunny. Bunny Manders is a struggling journalist and surprisingly innocent given his enthusiasm for his scofflaw friend. At the beginning of Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman, Bunny has recently been released from jail, and Raffles is presumed dead. Of course, we soon learn that they both have plenty more adventures ahead of them.

Hornung dedicated his first set of Raffles stories to his brother-in-law, and Doyle was suitably impressed, writing that “there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these.” He did not however, approve Hornung’s choice of subject, however: “You must not make the criminal a hero.” Readers, however did not seem to mind: Raffles was the second most popular fictional character in the early twentieth century, second only to Sherlock Holmes.

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz [Audiobook]

view/request

The audiobook is read by the author, Junot Diaz, to wonderful effect. We follow the life and romantic misadventures of Yunior, from the time his family immigrated from the Dominican Republic to his life as a professor in Cambridge — although not in a straight chronology. Diaz’s language is in turns brash and lyrical, peppered with slang. Yunior is not always an easy guy to like, and that he becomes a sympathetic character at all is due to Diaz’s genius (as further evidenced by his being named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012). The version of the audiobook I listened to was further interspersed with latin music, helping to set the mood and carry me away.

East, West by Salman Rushdie [Book]

view/request

I love short stories and I’ve made a resolution to read more of them this year. With this in mind, but as I haven’t yet read any new story collections this year, I’ve picked an old favorite for this post. East, West is a collection of stories by British Indian author Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s writing here is witty and colorful, and these stories, are quick, enjoyable reads. Rushdie draws inspiration from a variety of sources, both classic (Shakespeare, the life of Muhammad) and modern (The Wizard of Oz, Rambo, Star Trek). The plots are not particularly memorable (I’ve read the volume several times but can never quite remember how the stories unfold), but the flavor of the stories, and the voice of the author will stick with you. (I’ve found that to be true of much of Rushdie’s writing—if you are going to enjoy Rushdie you probably won’t mind this in the least.) A good introduction to this important author.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury [Book]

view/request

A science-fiction classic, The Martian Chronicles tells a story of the colonization of Mars through a series of short stories and vignettes. Bradbury imagines Mars as the home of an ancient and beautiful civilization, doomed to fall when it encounters the shortsighted and destructive people of Earth. Despite the gloomy prospects for all involved, Bradbury’s stories are full of humor, and make for a quick and very enjoyable read.

Interestingly, these stories have been the subject of several radio dramas and audio productions; I first encountered them listening to Relic Radio’s science-fiction podcast, where they are still available to download, and here at the library you can find radio theater versions on audio tape (Old Time Radio: Science Fiction).

The Djinn in the nightingale’s eye by A.S. Byatt [Book]

view/request

A collection of fairy tales for adults. The title novella is on a middle-aged Englishwoman attending a writers’ conference in Turkey. She picks up an antique bottle and as she is washing it a djinn appears, offering to grant her three wishes. She is aware of the untoward consequences of hasty wish-making so after careful consideration, she asks for a younger body, then requests he make love to her. Very fun!

Asimov’s Mysteries [Book]

view/request

A collection of short stories, each of which could equally well be described as science fiction and as a mystery. These stories are fun, amusing, and all the more charming for being a little dated. A quick, easy read.