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| My well loved short story collections. |
In honor of the start of Camp NaNoWrimo and my endeavor to
write a short story anthology, I thought I’d point you toward some short
stories available online that have left a mark on me as a reader/writer.
As an English graduate, short stories were my bread and
butter during my academic days. In some ways, I learned to love short stories
more than I do novels. All texts, whether 1,000 words or 100,000 words, require
a level of bravery and talent to leave any kind of mark on the world, but I
think a short story has a lot of work to do in a very limited space that gives
them a certain appeal unobtainable by longer novels.
If a short story can elicit some kind of visceral emotion
from me within their short pages, I hold them to a different level than I would
a novel that did the same. There is no room for background, slow building, or
space to grow a strong bond between reader and text in a short story. It’s all
action, and if done right, powerful, lasting action.
—That’s not to say I
don’t love full-length novels. I’m a reader of all—
I’ve fallen in love with many short tales, but these are my
favorites:
If you read
any on this list, let it be this one. It has Christian undertones, some might
say overtones, like most of Tolkien’s work, but it’s also simply a story about
people, about appreciating your neighbor and looking at the world through their
eyes. It’s also about an artist, a pastor, death, and a leaf.
This one had me in a moral
quandary. If you’re a lover of Utopian/Distopian stories, give this short one a
read and decide what you would do. It’s about a perfect society, what is responsible
for that perfection, and what one would do in the face of that thing which
makes it perfect. I’m writing in circles, just give it a read.
Another
moral quandary story. This is about a town that holds a lottery once a year as
a ritual to bring prosperity to the town. I won’t tell anymore, but it’s
definitely worth a read.
This is
about a sick woman who is locked away in a house in the country at the advise
of her husband to help her get better. Strange things happen in her isolation
and the ending is just creepy perfection. Read it.
Honorable Mentions:
