I don’t normally read mystery novels, let alone short stories, but short seems to be a less suitable form for mystery. The suspects are too few, so obviously the least suspected would be the culprit, and the mystery is solved before you know it.

I have previously read Isaac Babel’s The Public Library and Jorge Luis Borges’s The Library of Babel from this collection, then left the book for a while. A post on QL 696.C9 by A Work in Progress made me pick up this short today, since she mentioned that it’s her favorite short story in the anthology. Check out her review for more comprehensive synopsis!

I’d never heard of Anthony Boucher before this. From the book:

Anthony Boucher (1911-1968). One of the most important figures in 20th century mystery and detective fiction, Boucher was a novelist, editor, and–perhaps most importantly–a critic who wrote the “Criminals at Large” column for the New York Times from 1951 until his death in 1968. He was a founder of the Mystery Writers of America and for nine years was the editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The “Bouchercon“, the oldest and largest annual convention of mystery fans, is named in his honor.

Anyone of you familiar with his works?

Have a nice weekend you all!

Mom’s flowers last spring

I didn’t think I’d be able to read a short story and write about it this Saturday, but I stole some time reading outside at our backyard, trying desperately to enjoy the last bit of sun before we officially enter winter. Hubby worked on his bike from our round trip of garage sale today, such a happy boy he was. For myself, among other things I got Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck for a buck, such a happy girl I was!

After the first Brodkey’s that I read a few months ago, I’ve decided to give him another go, especially after Sasha‘s raving reviews of his works recently. And what a great short to read under the sun. First Love and Other Sorrows is about young love in the spring, about understanding what it means, and about growing up, growing out of your idealistic love. The narrator is an awkward 16 year old boy living with his beautiful popular sweet sister and their widowed mother. I loved the point of view of a younger brother, talking about his older sister. It reminded me of my younger brothers.

“From my room across the hall I would hear my sister chattering about the men she knew–the ones she dated, the ones she wanted to date, the ones she wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. My mother would interrupt with accounts of her own cleverness, her sorties and successes when young, sometimes laughingly, but sometimes gloomily, because she regretted a lot of things. Then she and my sister would label my sister’s suitors: one or two had family, one had money, one–a poor boy–had a brilliant future, and there were a few docile, sweet ones who were simply fillers, who represented the additional number of dates that raised my sister to the rank of a very popular girl.”

It’s a quiet melancholy story. Short and warm, just like that tiny window of sunshine in the fall.

Though I’m still unsure why Jeffrey Eugenides would pick two of Harold Brodkey’s stories for My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead (the only author given the space), at least he has redeemed himself for me and I will happily read more of his works in the future.

Read Sasha’s review on First Love and Other Sorrows.

The evolution of trickster stories among the dogs of North Park after the Change is a short story by Kij Johnson, which I picked out of Nymeth‘s favorite short stories (check her sidebar).

Knowing that it’s about dogs, I thought I could well connect with it, because I’m nothing but fond of dogs. My family kept dogs since I was small. My brothers and I even picked up stray puppies as kids and kept them. We weren’t the types of kids that get excited temporarily then forget to take care of the animals. We were good loving kind-hearted kids that really cared (even though the puppies died eventually because our incompetence..)

In this short story there’s an unexplainable event that makes the dogs able to talk. And that scares people off. To the point that the dogs get kicked out of their lovely homes and most are stranded in parks all around the city. Linna is different. She feels for these dogs and she listens to their stories.

It’s not that I didn’t like the story. I liked how unique it was. But I finished it with the thought “and what’s the point?” I was never sure whether the dogs story is allegory to something deeper, or just story about dogs period.

The story is available online at Kij Johnson website. Read it online.

It won a couple of awards:
Final ballot, 2007: World Fantasy awards and Nebula awards.
Nominee, 2007: Hugo awards and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

I did finish two more short stories from The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, but I’m still thinking if I should post them after I finish the collection or not, because unlike my usual style to pluck a short story here and there, I feel like finishing the entire collection this time.

If you haven’t heard, Claire at Paperback Reader is hosting Angela Carter month this April. We’re halfway through, but if you read even a tiny bit faster than me then you still have plenty of time!

And because the snake was so popular, I feel the urge to share more. And this time it’s all about the crocs!

Look at how high it can go!

Do you know that crocodile’s jaw is even stronger than shark? (And Australia has both in abundance…)

Crocodiles Overload

This is crocodile farm. So they’ll be send away for their skin and meat.

We could see the crocodile warning signs everywhere near water. Including the sea!

To balance all the nastiness, here’s baby ducks for you. (Taken at Sydney Easter Show.)

Hope they brighten your day!

]]> http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2010/04/the-evolution-of-trickster-stories-among-the-dogs-of-north-park-after-the-change-by-kij-johnson-short-and-misc/feed/ 10 http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2010/04/short-saturday-chicxulub-by-t-coraghessan-boyle/ http://www.meexia.com/bookie/2010/04/short-saturday-chicxulub-by-t-coraghessan-boyle/#comments Sat, 03 Apr 2010 13:32:06 +0000 mee http://www.meexia.com/bookie/?p=3637 Oh how do I begin? Chicxulub is such a simple story. A man and his wife has the phone ring one night. Their daughter has been in an accident. Everything in the story is like a thunderstorm, sweeping me, like a meteor, hitting with resonating impact. Like Chicxulub, an asteroid that collided with the earth 65 millions years ago and is believed to wipe out the Dinosaurs. Yes that’s what Chicxulub is. For some reason prior to reading I thought Chicxulub was in the same family as Cthulhu…

For such a simple story, I could not put it down. I know, you’re thinking “Why put it down, it’s only a short story, you can finish it in one sitting”. But not me, I put down short story and I don’t read anything in a single sitting. This time I walked from my station to my bus stop reading, then from my bus stop to my office, reading, while walking, with runny nose, because I get runny nose when I force myself not to cry. The tears run into my nose.

I was so surprised of how the story shook me so. I wasn’t ready for such an emotional piece. I was going into the story thinking it might be fantasy. How it got to me I don’t really know. I read a short by Raymond Carver a while back with a rather similar plot: husband and wife has their kid involved in an accident (titled A Small, Good Thing), and it wasn’t even close in giving me the same level of emotional impact. Boyle’s writing just got to me. Electrifying I say. Or could it be because the story is interleaved with comets and asteroids? (I’ll let you find out how it is so yourself).

This is my first T. C. Boyle and I would love to read more. But half of me worries that nothing else of his works will be as good. That’s what I thought every time I finished a fantastic mind-blowingly good book or short story. “Nothing else will ever be as good. This is it.” I would slump to my seat with overwhelming sadness.

And yet I find more. Not very often. But I do.

Ah.. such is the journey of a reader.

Chicxulub was published by The New Yorker in 2004. You can read it online.

It is indirectly recommended by Nymeth @ things mean a lot (check out her sidebar). It has also got raving reviews from The Book Mine Set, Lakeside Musing, and Teddy Rose.

Short Saturday is the time when I talk about awesome or not so awesome short stories I read during the week(s). Join me in my journey? Michelle does.

I’m not sure if you noticed, but I haven’t posted Short Saturday for a few weeks, what with the holiday and catching up. Lucky me, Michelle has been continuing and it encouraged me to continue too. We’ve been posting about short stories on Saturday for a couple of months now (not always continuously) and it’s great to have a bloggy friend to do it together!

Talking about bloggy friends, I have been recommended many short stories since my first Short Saturday was up and it’s been so much fun to try so many stories that I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. For this week, I was intrigued by Claire‘s favorite short stories that are listed on her sidebar and I picked three to read.

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman confused me. One day he wrote The Graveyard Book and Coraline, another day The Sandman. Is he a YA writer or a twisted adult writer? Maybe both and he can change skin anytime he likes. Now Snow, Glass, Apples is more in the vein of The Sandman rather than his YA books, and I… LOVED it! (Though 10 paragraphs in there’s a blood sucking scene and I groaned “Not another blood sucker!” because I’m not a fan of anything vampiric.)

As you can probably guess from the title, the story is a retelling of Snow White. Twisted fairytale retelling is really my thing so I just fell for it. It’s a little bit disturbing at times, but really, after reading The Sandman, nothing can surprise me out of Neil Gaiman. Do not expect the story to be anywhere near kiddy or fluffy!

Did I just find my third 5-star short story? I did!

Read the story online

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

I first heard of The Lottery when tanabata made a brief comparison of it to Battle Royale. As the latter is one of my favorite books, she piqued my interest straight away. When I saw the short story made appearance on Claire’s list, I just knew I had to read it.

The Lottery started with the whole village gathering at the square for a yearly lottery that has become a custom since a long time ago, nobody knows since when. We don’t know what the lottery is about, so the build-up to it is just amazing, the anticipation gripped me like few else. Of course, I wouldn’t tell you what it is, but the ending shocked me. I just didn’t see it coming. I got chills down my spine and goosebumps for minutes. Felt a little angry even. “I don’t get it”, repeated myself in my head.

The Lottery was first published in 1948 issue of The New Yorker. To the surprise of Jackson and the magazine, they got a high number of negative responses and angry mails from the readers. I must say I kinda understand why. The ending was morbid. However, I’m impressed with Shirley Jackson’s skill to bring such strong reaction from people. Her novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle has been on my radar for a while and I would love to read it some time soon.

Read the story online

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I first heard of Charlotte Perkins Gilman from Rebecca, when she reviewed Herland (which I’d love to read but not sure when). So when I saw her name on Claire’s list, I picked the short story.

The main character is a woman who is rather ill and advised to stay in her room resting and doing very little. However the wallpaper on the wall disturbs and distracts her restlessly.

I don’t know if it’s only the copy that I read, but I felt the writing a bit choppy. There’s often only one sentence in one paragraph, so it changes paragraph all the time. Also, I’m never fond of mad-man story, because it always gets too abstract and loose at the end, and not to mention confusing. I read a bit on the background of the story and it apparently was a backlash from Gilman after she was advised by her doctor for a rest cure (and followed the advise leading to her depression).

Read the story online

This story is included in the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006 list)

I had a good short story week! How about you? As always, I welcome any recommendation!

I have a very short list to share. I’m going to (try to) read Tender Morsels with Claire’s gang (no, the other Claire, and no, her other gang) and The Colour of Magic for Terry Pratchett challenge. I might continue with Fables series too. We’ll see.

Are you joining too?

Short Stories Read

1. The evolution of trickster stories among the dogs of North Park after the Change by Kij Johnson (4/5)

Books Read

1. The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan (4/5)
2. Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon (5/5)
3. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (4/5) — contains 10 short stories
4. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (4/5)
5. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (5/5)
6. The Sandman Vol 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman (3.5/5)

Mark David has recommended The New Yorker Fiction Podcasts to me for a while. In fact he has written a post on it last month. But only last week after he shouted at strongly encouraged me to try one when I talked about Borges’s The Library of Babel,  did I manage to listen to two of them.

In each episode, a contemporary writer reads a short work by a classic writer. There’s a bit of talk and discussion before and after the reading of the story. I loved the discussion parts of the podcasts, but I’m not sure if I got much out of the two stories being read. I’ve mentioned before how I’m a poor listener, and it doesn’t help when the story is not very listen-able. (We have word for readable! How about listenable?)

Without further ado, the two I picked were:

The Gospel According to Mark by Jorge Luis Borges, read by Paul Theroux

I’m not sure if I got it. I repeated the ending about 5 times and each time it made me go “huh?”. But I continued on and luckily Paul explained more about what’s going on in the story. Originally published in 1970, it is about a young man who visits a friend’s holiday house in Argentina. He meets a family of illiterate workers to whom he reads some books, but the only one they’re interested in the most is an old Bible. He reads the gospel of Mark which contains the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness He granted to the world. When he was found to lay with the daughter of the family, well…

Paul Theroux actually read to Borges when he was alive (and blind). And that’s awesome because Paul is a fantastic reader. I’d never heard of him before this. Apparently he has written many novels and travelogues. After quick wiki-ing, I found that he won James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981 for The Mosquito Coast (join win with Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children) and Whitbread Prize for Best Novel  in 1978 for Picture Palace. Have you read any of his books before?

My Russian Education by Vladimir Nabokov, read by Orhan Pamuk

I feel kinda bad to say this, but most of the words read by Pamuk went over my head, because I had problem with his accent. Therefore I’m unable to rate this in any way. But I’m sure I will (re)read the story in text format in the future, because it’s Nabokov’s autobiography, though published as fiction. The story is based on how his father was shot dead. It was originally published in 1948 by the New Yorker and it is one chapter out of 12 that was later published in 1951 as a book titled Speak, Memory (My Russian Education is Chapter 9 in the book).

I loved to listen to how Pamuk loved Nabokov. I always love the whole writers speaking very highly of other writers. It’s very adorable. I read Lolita by Nabokov in 2008 and I really admired how Nabokov used English language. Sure, I didn’t understand a lot of the passages, but that’s beside the point… because I admired the ones that I did understand! :)

Did you read any short story this week?

As you know, if you read the header above, I’ve been talking about Capote‘s A Christmas Memory like a broken radio. But from last week conversations in the comments, I just remembered that there was another short story that blew me away with the same magic! It was recommended by a friend IRL years ago and I read it online. I have probably read it a couple of times by now, which is unheard of for me.

It is none other than:

On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning by Haruki Murakami

which you can read in full online (thank you, steph tai). It is available at more sites, but I love that particular one, because of the illustration and the way the text is put together. Tips: if it appears too small on your browser, press Ctrl + (plus sign) until it gets to the right size.

Please read it too. You’ll fall in love with it. I promise.

This short story is included in his short story collection Elephant Vanishes, which I sadly do not own, and it is not available at my libraries. Another of his short in the collection called Sleep was recommended by Rob (link to Rob’s review), which he rated 5 stars, and is “about an insomniac wife who gets into a habit of reading literature all night”. That sounds amazing! I have to get hold of the book.

The cover looks very plain, but really, shorts about libraries and librarians?! How enticing is that? And look at the big names inside! Italo Calvino, Ursula K. LeGuin, Isaac Babel, Lorrie Moore, Francine Prose, Alice Munro, Ray Bradbury, Jorge Luis Borges, and more!

This morning I went straight to:

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

“The universe (which others call the library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps an infinite, number of hexagonal galleries, with enormous ventilation shafts in the middle, encircled by very low railings.”

The Library of Babel is a universe of books, the world where people are born and live, where every book ever written in every possible language resides.

Knowing how famous it was, I was quite surprised to find how short it was! However, while the premise can’t be more amazing, I found the writing was rather hard to get into. The translation maybe? Borges was Argentinian, it was translated from Spanish. It did feel like reminiscence of Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler. It also bothered me that he mentioned alphabet has 22 letters. Does Spanish have only 22 letters?

It deserves a re-read. But for now, I’ll rate it

Some of you may wonder what happened to My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead. I had to return it to the library. (Library!) I’ll borrow it and continue again later, because there are more that I want to read. Isaac Babel‘s story is one of them. So when I saw In the Stacks also has his short (a different one) in it, I jumped into it.

The Public Library by Isaac Babel

With mere 3 pages long, this must be the shortest of shorts I’ve read so far. But it’s a nice complement after The Library of Babel. The Public Library shows a glimpse of a public library, its attendants and regular visitors.

“You can feel straightaway that the book reigns supreme here. All the people who work in the library have entered in communion with The Book, with life at second-hand, and have themselves become, as it were, a mere reflection of the living.”

I liked the writing, and I’ll watch out for more Babel in the future. (Just realized the author shares last name with Borges’s short… Coincidence?)

I mentioned Lorrie Moore last week and am excited to find she also has a short in the anthology titled Community Life. I’ll save that for next week ;)

Okay, I’m gonna have breakfast now. I woke up, read the 2 shorts and wrote this post first thing in the morning. Argh, what am I doing?! I haven’t even had tea or something!

Hope you have a fabulous weekend!

Continuing from the first three short stories I read from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, I read 3 more in the span of a few weeks (taking my time, I know).

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

As you can guess, the title is where Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is from. I read Carver’s Cathedral last year and while the stories didn’t blow my mind, they do have certain charm. By this time I felt like I was sooo familiar with Carver’s style: sparse prose, tackling issues of married couples.

In this story two married couples drinking together one afternoon, talking about love they find around them. Like all Carver’s stories, it struck me as being very male. And somehow the characters always drink. They drink a lot and talk s*it. I’ll call it Carverian, as in this story is very Carverian.

How to Be an Other Woman by Lorrie Moore

I picked this story out of whim. The Other Woman story never gets old. I love it that in this short Lorrie Moore gave a very smart twist. It is told in sort of a set of instructions (How to Be… Get it?)

“When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it cam mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.

You walk differently. In store windows you don’t recognize your self; you are another woman, some crazy interior display lady in glasses stumbling frantic and preoccupied through the mannequins. In public restrooms you sit dangerously flat against the toilet seat, a strange flesh sundae of despair and exhilaration, murmuring into your bluing thighs: “Hello, I’m Charlene. I’m a mistress.”

It is like having a book out from the library.

It is like constantly having a book out from the library.”

I was really quite impressed with the story and checked out the author, Loorie Moore, as I never heard of her before. She’s American fiction writer known mainly for her humorous short stories. No wonder. I would love to read more of her works.

RobAroundBooks hosts a challenge called William Trevor vs. Lorrie Moore: A Quest to Discover which of the Two is More of a Modern-day Chekhov. So I wasn’t wrong. Lorrie Moore is a big-shot in shorties world. She also just released a new novel titled A Gate at the Stairs which Ann Kingman raved about a while back.

It’s great timing, because my next story is of Chekhov’s. I just need to read William Trevor after this (which luckily is also included in the anthology).

The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov

The Lady with the Little Dog is a bitter-sweet love story between a man and a woman, both are married to other people. In their ripe age they just realize that they have possibly just fallen in love for real and thus have not married the right person.

The story is available to read online. Over there it’s called The Lady with the Dog (link to full story). I don’t know which title is correct. If you’re interested to read Chekov, 201 of his stories are also available online. Go nuts!

Coincidentally, RobAroundBooks also hosts a challenge called Chekin’ Off the Chekhov Shorts and he’s been going through all those 201 stories, with links to his rating and thoughts. Really, I’m not gonna read all 201 shorts, so Rob’s page is a great way to let someone else do the weeding and plucking for you :D

For another opinion, in her review, Eva talked about all three stories above. She seems to like them about the same amount as I did.

What I learned this week: One of my problems with short stories is that most of the time I feel like I have read something similar in the past. I think it’s because with books you have enough time and space to make your book unique, but with short stories there’s so little time.

Did you post any thoughts on short stories this week? I would love it if you leave a link in the comment!

The great thing about shorts is that I can taste a bunch of writers in bite size portion and see if I’d like to read more of them. A couple of months ago I browsed the library to find this great sounding anthology edited by Jeffrey Eugenides (my favorite author!) titled My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekov to Munro. There are many big names inside, a lot that I’m interested to read.

There’s introduction by Eugenides at the beginning, which after you read, you’d quickly realize that this won’t be a collection of sappy love stories. It’s more of a twisted-complicated one, which is exactly my cup of tea!

“Please keep in mind: my subject here isn’t love. My subject is the love story.

When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims–these are lucky eventualities but they aren’t love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.

We value love not because it’s stronger than death but because it’s weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its profound importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn’t hit us the way it does.”

~ Jeffrey Eugenides, Introduction

As I mentioned earlier, I vowed not to bog down myself with obsessive-compulsiveness to read everything in a collection of short stories and let the randomness takes me. The first story that I chose was one that Eugenides mentioned in his introduction, about a Harvard’s senior attempt to bring his girlfriend to her first orgasm by means of act of cunnilingus. Really, the plot line sounded ridiculous, so I caved. Also, the writer, Harold Brodkey, is the only author in the book that has two short stories. Everyone else only gets one space!

Innocence by Harold Brodkey

Unfortunately, Innocence contains the longest non-sexy sex scene I have ever read (and probably ever will). Like I said, the plot sounded ridiculous. Almost the entire story is set in bed, with the guy performs the act, thinking about other stuff during. It was sooo tiring and looong. I think I was just as frustrated as him seeing that the girlfriend doesn’t JUST come! After pages and pages of futile effort, I started to skim read. I just wanted it to end. My head was going to explode. Just come you b*tch!, I was screaming in my head.

Finally she does, they both cry, and the story ends.

Not the greatest start-up I’m telling you.

Thinking that I shouldn’t take too big of a risk for the next short, I chose the one by Alice Munro. I heard so much about her and I just learned that she ONLY writes short stories. Amazing how you can be so famous only writing short stories. She must be really good.

The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro

Eva mentioned in her review that it’s like Munro’s version of The Notebook. Exactly what I thought! At first. Further on, not so much. The story is about an old married couple. Fiona starts to show symptoms of Alzheimer disease, so she’s moved to a facility home, away from Grant, her husband. As time passes, Fiona starts to forget about Grant. She makes friends with another guy in the nursing home, who she gets more attached to than her own husband, which annoys Grant. We get to learn from Grant’s reminiscence of their past that he has not always been faithful, though not because they were unhappy (So why? I have no idea).

I have to admit, story about very old people doesn’t entice me most of the time. This one has enough depth and was quite skilfully written that it kept my attention the whole way through. I couldn’t much guess where it was going too, which was a plus. Odd thing is, I could never figure out the meaning of the title. There’s NO bear.

The story first appeared in The New Yorker (link to full story) on 27 December 1999. Made into a movie titled Away From Her (2006), nominated for 2 Oscars (Best Actress and Best Screenplay). Would love to see that one.

The Hitchhiking Game by Milan Kundera

I have wanted to read Kundera’s books for the longest time. Alas, I have not. Good thing his short story is featured in the anthology, and it was good according to claire and Eva. The story is originally included in Kundera’s collection Laughable Loves.

The Hitchhiking Game looks at a young couple who’s going on a road trip. When they stop for gas, the girlfriend wanders ahead. When the guy picks her up, they pretend that the girl is a hitchhiker and they don’t know each other. The girl becomes more brazen, unlike her usual shy self, because that’s what she imagines a hitchhiker to be. The guy starts to treat her with less respect, because he sees her like other wild-natured women whom he doesn’t like. They get more and more mixed up in the game until it gets difficult to tell what’s real and what’s not.

Excellent premise and Kundera delivered! I’m happy to find that his writing is not hard to read, so I look forward to reading his books!

And the journey continues…

(I actually read the three stories in 2009, so you’ll find them on Books and Shorts Read in 2009)

Let me know if you’ve posted any thoughts on the stories, because I couldn’t find any apart from the ones linked above!