College Students! discussion

I'm really into short stories at the moment because that's the bulk of what I'm reading in American Literature class.. what are some of your favorites?

I really love the ones by Kate Chopin! My favorite so far would have to be "A Respectable Woman"

Great topic!

I love Nine Stories by JD Salinger. I haven't read it in a while. I've been dying to read Interpreter of Maladies as well as No One Belongs Here More Than You.

I also loved I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies) True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl

I like Hemingway's short stories. Other than that, I haven't read a ton of short stories. I own The Portable Dorothy Parker, which has some short stories and poems; I read a few poems and they were pretty good.

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut has to be my all time favorite collection of short stories. I also really enjoy short stories by Isabel Allende.

Oh man. I love short stories. My favorites are probably Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. Le Guin. She also has these great interconnected novellas called Four Ways to Forgiveness Stories, which is really incredible. Bradbury is basically my favorite person in the world and any of his short story collections is worth your time. Steven King has some pretty good short stories every now and then, and Four Past Midnight has some cool novellas.
Also, if you're into science fiction or fantasy, there are great short story anthologies that come out every year by Gardner R. Dozois that usually have some pretty sweet stuff in them.
And then there's Shirley Jackson who wrote the lottery and some other good short stories as well.

I love Fitzgerald's, and Chekhov's as well. Edgar Allan Poe is a classic, and oh, HP Lovecraft. I've been wanting to read Stephen King's short stories as well.

Oh yeah, Poe is classic. And Lovecraft is pretty crazy. And Hawthorn if you're into guilt and sin.

I read No One Belongs Here More Than You and I was really excited about it when I bought it. I read it and was really disappointed with it. Anyone else read this one?

I love Flannery O'Connor's short stories. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories and Everything That Rises Must Converge are my favorites. I was never a huge fan of short stories until I read her's.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown is really good, as well.

Jamie, I tried No One Belongs Here More Than You and I couldn't get past the first twenty pages. It was terrible, in my opinion!

I love Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth and Amy Bloom's Come to Me. I'll think of other good volumes I like; I was on a short story collection kick a few months ago.

Jess wrote: "Jamie, I tried No One Belongs Here More Than You and I couldn't get past the first twenty pages. It was terrible, in my opinion!

I'm glad I wasn't the only one!!

I read No One Belongs Here More Than You, and I only really liked a couple stories. Like the one about the lesbian couple making ends meet. The others were about crazy people I didn't like.

Raymond Carver is the most perfect short story author in my opinion. I read his collections over and over again. I even read his books which gave advice on how to craft a short story. He is genius with constructing a sentence, and with crafting stories out of mundane observations.

Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio is the perfect short story collection, as he weaves all the stories together to depict life in a small town.

Jay McInerney released a collection of stories spanning 20+ years entitled How It Ended. Good for fans of Gossip Girl. He was actually a student of Raymond Carver's.

I also love J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Shirley Jackson, and Kate Chopin.

I've noticed that I always want to read short stories during the spring. There's just something about the weather or the atmosphere that makes me gravitate (mentally anyway) to short stories.

Jess wrote: "... I love Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth and Amy Bloom's Come to M..."

Jhumpa Lahiri is one of my favorite authors. I LOVED Interpreter of Maladies and am now currently reading Unaccustomed Earth: Stories.

I was never really into short stories until I read Lahiri. Now, I love them because they're perfect for my lifestyle at the moment (reading a story during a subway ride).

I definitely recommend anything by Lahiri!

Birds of America
by Lorrie Moore

The Collected Stories of Richard Yates
by Richard Yates

Bed
by Tao Lin

I've read all three, all of them were brilliant.

I collect Ann Beattie's short story collections. I found one at a garage sale years ago and have loved them ever since.

I also collect The Best American Short Stories anthologies. I love those things. They always have a great mix of awesome authors I think I have read about twelve of them and own seven. I have only been disappointed by one so far.

For some reason, some of the best short stories I've read have been in edited best of SF volumes. Even when I haven't been in the mood for SF, I find some of the best literary stuff in the SF readers.