My only complaint about short fiction is that I don’t have time to read more of it. That said, here’s my current top ten list of short stories (listed in the order they came to me). I hope you’ll post a comment about your faves.
1. “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” By Flannery O’Connor
2. “Red Weather.” By Lewis Buzbee (from the After the Gold Rush collection).
3. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” By Raymond Carver
4. “The Twenty-seventh Man.” By Nathan Englander.
5. “Brokeback Mountain.” By Annie Proulx
6. “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” By Flannery O’Connor
7. “The Masque of Red Death.” By Edgar Alan Poe
8. “The Chrysanthemums.” By John Steinbeck
9. “Hills Like White Elephants.” By Ernest Hemingway
10. “How to Date a Brown Girl.” By Juno Diaz
snarkydan said
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” By James Thurber.
“The Bablyon Lottery.” By Jorges Luis Borges.
“The Waltz.” By Dorothy Parker.
“Erendira.” By Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
“Spotted Horses.” By William Faulker.
The last two are more like novellas. Here’s another one:
“The Crying of Lot 49.” by Thomas Pynchon.
Nice list.
dt
lwdoyle said
Thanks, Dan. An enticing list; I’ll add these to my must-reads.
Don Thompson said
I’m going to check out “Hills Like White Elephants.”
I thought a short story was the novel that you finished reading within 24 hours.
lwdoyle said
Nice post, Don. Thanks.
ozarkmossman said
“Texas City, 1947″ by James Lee Burke, in Jesus Out to Sea.