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Short Story Appreciation Discussion - January 2024 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-25 21:11:57
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  • How to Read Short Stories - Book Club Guide.pdf

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Content

Dear Book Club Readers ---

Short stories are magic portals to exciting worlds. And great stories, like great poems and novels, are more profound when shared with fellow lovers of literature. 

So it would be wonderful to hear what short stories you are enjoying alongside your other reading. Our short story appreciation thread is a place to mindfully check in and share what works of short fiction have resonated with us recently.

The best way to appreciate short stories is to dive into some great ones and start discussing your insights and impressions with others. So let us know:

What short stories are you appreciating at the moment?

Let us know anything that has resonated with you during your short story excursions:

  • Powerful subtext
  • Compelling themes
  • Resonant passages
  • Your favourite writers
  • Beautifully crafted lines
  • Complex character studies
  • Elements you want to examine
  • Stories you want to recommend
  • Reflections, musings, and insights
  • How the stories inform your wider reading

This is the place to put your short story appreciations and get other readers weighing in on your thoughts!

Curated Short Stories:

I have also specially curated three stories for you to enjoy. This is, of course, completely optional. Don't feel like you need to read all three. I recommend sampling the opening lines, or the first few paragraphs, of each one and seeing which one pulls you in. Spend time with the story that most speaks to your heart.

My aim is to offer you short masterworks that will inform your wider reading. I love these works dearly, and believe that being attentive to the themes, characters, and style of writing will prove to be very rewarding.

The short stories I would like to recommend for you are:

I would love to know what you make of the chosen stories. Which one did you focus on? Why did the style or theme resonate with you? Did you discover anything that complements our current big reads? If you read a different short story, let us know your thoughts on it. Or tell us about your favourite story.

All short stories can be found in the anthology That Glimpse of Truth, which makes an excellent collection for deepening your appreciation of the short story form.

For more information on short story appreciation, I've put together a PDF printable guide for you called 'How to Read Short Stories,' which you can find at the bottom of the post. This guide outlines the things to keep in mind to get the most out of your short fiction.

Thank you so much for sharing your love of great literature with us.

Happy reading, everybody!

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Comments

Anna Rowe

I almost forgot to comment on this thread which would have been a shame because I have developed a real appreciation of the short story over the last decade or so. I love the work of Angela Carter, Flannery O'Connor and of course Anton Chekhov. A few collections by more contemporary authors that I have enjoyed are: Florida by Lauren Groff, By Light We Knew Our Names by Anne Valente and What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Leslie Nneka Arimah. I also enjoy Ted Chiang in small doses. One collection I adore and go back to time after time is Island by Alistair MacLeod. He was a Canadian writer and most of his stories take place in Cape Breton on the Atlantic Coast. He beautifully captures the people and families and lifestyle in Cape Breton and I find his stories to be warm and comforting.

Jamie Otelsberg

I just read Eveline. I’m sure that we all can relate to those nauseating emotions that face us in the form of hard choices and split decisions. Trying to understand what we are responsible for enduring for others, especially our family, is so tough.

Diane

Oh happy day! My That Glimpse of Truth has arrived from Blackwell's across the pond! What a beautiful tome! Excited to dig in!

Diane
>>128883628

Ooh I love Cape Breton Island! Beautiful country! Thanks for the rec!

nicole gravel

Hello everyone!I would like to attempt to talk about Eveline. First say it comes jrom Dubliners (Joyce, 1914) It made me want to read the whole of Dubliners! The story old in the 3d person, tells us exclusively what is going on in Eveline's head,A kind of "stream of consciousness". We get to knw her circumstances, the brothers, the abusive father and also her Frank who will take her to Buenos Ayres. She thinks of all this, 2 letters in her lap, her head in the dsty drES. THEN SUDDENLY, EVERYTHING CAPSIZES, SHE IS ON A QUAY, HOLDING ON THE RAILING.

nicole gravel

Pressed on a wrong button, sorry. this is trhe end of my post.So everything changes in a heart beat. The narrator takes command:She stood among the swaying crowd She caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat,,,All the seas of the world tumbled in her heart...The rest is heart rendering. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal.

Steven McVicar

Thanks for this selection Benjamin. I enjoyed them all. The Rocking-Horse Winner is my favourite of the three right now. There’s a vagueness to the other two that left me feeling I was missing something. I plan to read them again to get closer to some meaning. I love the atmosphere of The Swimmer although I don’t fully understand the ending.

Diane

I never considered myself a short story reader but I have found myself dabbling in stories from various authors over the past few weeks and I am really developing an appreciation for them. After Eveline, I read some more of the Dubliners. I found Araby to be heartbreaking and it continues to stay with me. Also read Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, whose writing I love. I also stumbled upon an ebook of Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino. Probably more fables or fairytales than short stories, per se, but I found them delightful as well. It is lovely to break up our big reads with these lovely short story palate cleansers. They wil certainly be part of my reading diet from now on!

Jane

I have just picked up my old copy of Eudora Welty’s short stories that took me a very long time to fathom out. What is going on ? :) Is anybody else a huge fan of Welty also ?

Paul Meunier
>>129919544

I liked the swimmer much as I like what I call a mood movie. It sets a tone more than it embodies a plot. To me, it was foreboding/ominous as it started on such a glorious day and time and got steadily darker and colder. Also, it hinted at the vacuousness of the lifestyle they all were living. And he started out being hailed and warmly greeted and then as he moved on, troubles and irregularities crept in. A couple they had mistreated, a broken off affair, etc. I had never read Cheever before but I thought he set a mood of downward spiral, ala Rosemary’s Baby or Goodfellas.

Paul Meunier
>>128887825

So true, Jamie!. I think in her mind, she could have left for love. But once she realized even subconsciously, that she was leaving as escape, then it became a breach of commitment. In her mind. I obviously don’t endorse her decision to remain in harm’s way. But I understand it.

Kelly R.

My personal favourite was “Rocking Horse” because it nailed two aspects for me - straightforward yet elegant language, but also theme - how materialism just doesn’t satisfy. However I did really enjoy “The Swimmer” too. I felt like the weather changes were really key - perhaps mirroring how we move through life stages. I recall being and acting much more confident in my twenties making choices, and now in my fourties I’ve been knocked around a bit, albeit not seriously, and am more than a bit surprised when I realize I’m closer to 50 than 30. Eveline left me both intrigued and unsettled. It needs revisiting. I too am a newly minted short story fan.

Kelly R.
>>130940982

I just re-visited Éveline and had a significantly better experience than the first read. It felt much more accessible to me, and now I’m actually amazed by how much can be communicated in such a short story. This one really helped me to see how much is implied by thinking about what is unsaid. I subsequently listened to an analysis of this story where they point out how the narrative switches from first to third person, leaving a sensation of confusion- which seems to be what many of us felt. I couldn’t put my finger on why though until they said this.

Cherian Philipose

What a beautiful essay on short Story reading by Ben!