# Anyone Recomend A Good Book of Short Stories? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 17, 2008, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891 "2008-01-17T17:45:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![McDeath\_the\_Mad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a3d4f5/32.png) [@McDeath\_the\_Mad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/McDeath_the_Mad)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/1 "2008-01-17T17:45:48Z")
I’m looking for a book of short stories to keep in my car so I can read them while waiting for various things. Can anyone recomend a good book? I’d like the stories to be fairly short (I don’t know 2-8 pages maybe) because I won’t have a ton of time to read and it won’t be on a regular basis. I wouldn’t want to start a story, then have to finish it a couple weeks later. As far as types of stories I like: - Fishing - Outdoors - Sea tales - Fantasy - Bill Bryson type humor/story telling So any recomendations? MtM ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/2 "2008-01-17T17:52:57Z")
My favorite is a collection of the short stories of **W. Somerset Maugham**. **The Collected Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway** is on my shelf and gets pretty regular use. There’s a lot of outdoors adventure-type stuff in there. **Stephen King** has released several large collections of short stories: _Night Shift, Different Seasons, Skeleton Crew, Four Past Midnight,_ and _Nightmares & Dreamscapes_. _Different Seasons_ is actually a collection of four novellas (including those that would become the films _Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil_ and _Stand By Me_), but _Night Shift_ and _Nightmares and Dreamscapes_ are both good collections of short stories, and there’s actually quite a bit of variety in them - much more than just horror. ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/3 "2008-01-17T18:00:28Z")
Roy Blount, Jr.'s books are similar in style and humor to Bill Bryson. Neil Gaiman has a couple of fantasy/horror books of short stories out. John Steinbeck’s _Travels with Charley_ and _Log from the Sea of Cortez_ aren’t short stories, but they are travel tales that are told as a series of vignettes, rather than a continuous narrative, so you could still read a bit and put them down. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/4 "2008-01-17T18:17:54Z")
Gene Wolfe has been putting out great short story collections over the years - sci-fi and fantasy. Absolute prime stuff is his ‘book of days’ and ‘the island of Dr Death and other stories and other stories’ from the 80s. The latter one is perhaps a bit heavy for reading in the car. His sci-fi is consistently good whereas his fantasy can be uneven - when he’s on song with it though there is no short story writer like him. I’m just remembering a very short one he had in a recent collection called ‘starwater strains’ that had a first line something like: ‘My dog can fold time and space.’ Fantastic stuff! ---
**Author:** ![MrSquishy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9e5f3/32.png) [@MrSquishy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrSquishy)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/5 "2008-01-17T18:46:20Z")
I don’t know if either of these would be up your alley, but how about James Joyce’s [_Dubliners_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubliners), or some [Hunter S. Thompson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_Hunter_S._Thompson)? ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/6 "2008-01-17T19:49:14Z")
James Herriot’s books, beginning with _All Creatures Great and Small_, are composed of chapters that are mostly standalone stories, each describing a different experience. It would be pretty easy to go through the books reading a single chapter at a time. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/7 "2008-01-17T23:39:26Z")
I usually recommend a series of books titled _[Sudden Fiction](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/002-7782498-1527228?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sudden+fiction&x=16&y=14)_. The stories within are between 2 and 6 pages, and they’re all good. When you have 5 pages to tell everything, you get only what’s essential and excellent. These books, along with some from David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, are my airplane / cruise ship / need something quick to read choices. _Sudden Fiction International_ has three of my favorite stories of all time: Ann Beattie’s “Snow”[sup]1[/sup], Bai Xiao-Yi’s “The Explosion in the Parlor”[sup]2[/sup], and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl”. [sup]1[/sup]“Snow” has a memorable line in it that I’ve had in my head for many years: “Who expects small things to survive when even the largest get lost? People forget years and remember moments. Seconds and symbols are left to sum things up . . . Love, in shortest form, becomes a word.” [sup]2[/sup]Another great line: “There are things which people accept less the more you defend them. The truer the story you tell, the less true it sounds.” ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2008, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/8 "2008-01-17T23:45:19Z")
I highly recommend [The Best of Beaumont](http://www.amazon.com/Best-Beaumont-Charles/dp/0553227602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200613414&sr=8-1). You won’t be sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/9 "2008-01-18T00:10:44Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp] My favorite is a collection of the short stories of **W. Somerset Maugham**. [/QUOTE] I too love his short stories. For variety, I would suggest trying one of the volumes in [_The Best American Short Stories_ series](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_American_Short_Stories) - there will always be something worthwhile and you will be able to discover which authors you need to investigate further. ---
**Author:** ![gardentraveler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gardentraveler/32/3576_2.png) [@gardentraveler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gardentraveler)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2008, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-recomend-a-good-book-of-short-stories/433891/10 "2008-01-18T01:03:35Z")
The Constant Reader group over on GoodReads is discussing short stories from [You’ve Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe](http://www.amazon.com/Youve-Got-Read-This-Contemporary/dp/0060982020/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200617835&sr=8-1). I haven’t read it, but it sounds interesting. GT