Hit me with your top ten. I’m lately reading short stories in between novels as a palate cleanser.
I personally LOVE Ray Bradbury. Some of my favorites include: There Will Come Soft Rains (all time favorite), Kaleidoscope, Rocket Man and the Night. Also love Last Rung on the Ladder, Under the Weather, and Summer Thunder by Stephen King. Just getting into Ken Liu, but Paper Menagerie is a wonderful story. For fellow short story fans, you must check out the podcast Levar Burton Reads.
Cheers!
by MaxFish1275
5 Comments
Epicac and Rocket to Rocket by Kurt Vonnegut, Doctor Voch and Mr Veech by Thomas Ligotti, a bunch of Silvina Ocampo and Clarice Lispector stories as well.
Every single story in Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang. Her writing is stunning.
Don’t have 10, but here’s a few that have stuck with me:
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
Revelation by Flannery O’ Connor
So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
The Paperhanger by William Gay
Taking Care by Joy Williams
I love short stories and definitely wish they were more popular in today’s reading climate.
All Summer in a Day
The Last Question
The Lottery
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
Drive (Expanse short story)
Those are the best ones I read in 2024.
The WORST I read was the “Machine of Death” collection by Ryan North. It is so very clearly a collection of amateur stories, and almost none are worth reading. First every single story needs to explain the origin of the machine, so that get’s old after the first few stories. Second, you expect some funny, ironic death based on the machine results right? Wrong. Pretty much every single story does NOT go into the deaths and instead explores some concept of the world. Like in this short story, all these cliques form in school based on the death results! In this one, Doctors and medicine have changed forever! It’s like every single author thought they had the most clever idea and they all ended up the same.
Oh look this comment turned into a rant. Sorry, I really did not enjoy Machine of Death.
Murderer or The Murderer, I forget which, is another great Bradbury short story you might like.