[Reading Room] Strike and Fade by Henry Dumas

Whoa.

Henri Dumas’s story, Strike and Fade, about a ‘cat’ during the Harlem Riots of the 1960s is raw, unapologetic, and rises to a spine-tingling finale. (I actually said ‘wow’ out loud, when it ended.)

This must have been like a literary ice bucket challenge when it was first published. What a voice. And all the more poignant when you consider the author was, himself, killed by police at a relatively young age.

And in this season of unrest, it is a worthwhile reminder than we can’t know what other people are going through until we listen to their stories. And that every one should strive to tell the stories that only they can tell, no matter what reality they reflect.

Essential Guide To the Best Short Stories of 2014

If one of your resolutions for next year is to read more short stories (and it should be!), it can be hard to know where to start.
You want to cultivate a modern style, the kind of thing that reflects your voice AND the kind of stories people want to read.
The problem with a do-it-yourself reading masterclass, is that anthologies tend to contain a vast range of stories, chronologically arranged from the late 1800s to the mid 1960s. These stories have stood the test of time and are therefore considered classics, but their style can seem pretty dated.
On the other hand, you could grow old reading a random selection of the multitudinous modern short stories available online. So what’s a serious writer to do?

Let other people recommend stories to you.

I’ve trawled the end-of-year roundups and found a number of recommendations for your further reading. Most of these are stories from this century, with a few must-read classics sprinkled in here and there. Names that kept cropping up on list after list: B. J. Novak, Lorrie Moore, Lydia Davis, Elizabeth McCracken, Phil Klay, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro.
Treat yourself to a volume or two, or trot off down to your local library to look for some of these titles.

Powell’s Short List 2014

Powell’s audaciously posted a “best of” list in time for Short Story Month in May this year (N.B. Did we make May the month for short stories? I don’t remember anyone calling it that before we started this crazy thing in 2010. Pat yourselves on the backs, StoryADay-nauts! I think we created a Thing!)
NOT a list of the best short story collections this year, it is however a list of excellent short story collections from the century so far:

The Guardian’s Ill-Defined “Best” List

Not sure what the category here is —  I suspect it’s the editors’ favorites list, rather than a true ‘best of’ — but I’m betting there are some collections (and authors) you might have missed in this British-based list.

Paris Review’s Prize Winning Stories of The Year

Two stories are in the Best American Short Story Anthology this year and nine were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Read some at the Paris Review site.

The Independent’s Best Stories of the Year

Another list from a British newspaper. Includes Hilary Mantel’s controversial “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher”, some Margaret Atwood and a collection by Tom Barbash, a fave of mine.

The Huffington Post’s 10 Best Short Stories You’ve Never Read

Take the HuffPo challenge. Have you read them? I felt quite smug when I discovered I had read the first one on their list…then I looked at the rest of them. Ahem…

Electric Literature’s Best Short Story Collections of 2014

25 recommended story collections from Donald Antrim to Lorrie Moore with some names that didn’t hit any other lists I saw.

Readers’ Digest 8 of the Best

RD recommended these eight collections in the spring (another shout out for May as Short Story Month!). Some familiar names on this one…

BookTrust Recommendations From Short Story Authors

BookTrust asked prize-winning writers to pick THEIR favorite collections. Seems sensible…
Also, check out BookTrust’s online library of short stories here:

Longreads Best of the Year

A subjective list of the best short stories of the year. As good a place as any to start 😉

The Quivering Pen Great Big Roundup

A fine list of short story collections from David Abrams. Compiled in June, it contains some interesting titles.

Hugo Award Nominees 2014

If all that up there is wa-ay too much literary fiction for you, how about taking a look at the Hugo Award nominees of the year for some speculative fiction-y goodness?

Stacked’s Young Adult Short Story Recommendations

Doesn’t it seem like YA would be a great category for short fiction? Well, Stacked has a list of some YA short story collections from the past few years.

Fantastic Stories of the Imagination’s Short Genre Fiction Recommendations for 2014

Finally! A collection that includes Speculative and horror short stories. Only four stories in this list, but they are different enough to be worth checking out.

More Genre Fiction from Jonathan Strahan

This list is way out of date, but worth looking at just because genre gets so little respect in the other lists. All titles are from the first decade of the 21st century. Good additional recommendations in the comments section.

Jason Sanford’s Sci-Fi Picks for 2014

An author and reader picks his best bets for next year’s awards lists.
Then of course, there is always the Best American Short Stories annual anthology, The Best British Short Stories 2014, and I highly recommend the Selected Shorts podcast as a way to have new and notable short stories read to you by great actors, wherever you are.
Side note: apparently Brits take the short story much more seriously than folks anywhere else in the English-speaking parts of the planet. Prizes, end-of-year round ups, they dominate them!
Lets all don fake-British accents (except for me, of course who still has a semi-authentic one) and cheer the patron saints of the short story: the good folk of the UK!
So, what short stories have you read this year that you’d recommend? Share in the comments!

[Reading Room] This Old House Erotic Fan Fiction by Rebecca Scherm

This Old House Erotic Fan Fiction by Rebecca Scherm via McSweeneys

I approached this humorous piece with a doubtful look. Satire is so hard to pull off and I often find stories published in McSweeneys miss the mark for me.

Not this one though.

In This Old House Erotic Fan Fiction, Rebecca Sherm takes on two of the biggest genres to storm the internet: erotica and fan fiction. And she blends it with This Old House! Talk about your Fifty Shades of Grey!

Sherm uses the language of erotic fan fiction and ladles on the innuendo, but never crosses the line into crudity (or, actually, erotica). That tension is what makes the piece so entertaining.

Recommended!

[Reading Room] The Zero Meter Diving Team by Jim Shepard


Jim Shepard turned up in my RSS feeds this week because blog were reporting on Joshua Ferris hailing him as the Best Writing Teacher Ev-ah.

The name rang a bell in the back of my head and I strongly suspected he was the author of a story I’d heard on Selected Shorts. A story I had been really impressed by. Sure enough it was I’d also heard the author interviewed and been impressed by him. (I thought of trying to get him to come and do an interview here. Now I know he’s a Big Deal, but I’ll still try).

Anyhoo, I bought a collection of his stories, Like You’d Understand, Anyway.

This first story in the collection is an absolutely haunting account of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Told from the perspective of a bureaucrat, it gives insights into the workings of a Soviet family and the Soviet governmental style, all while taking an unflinching look at what exposure to that kind of radiation does to a body.

And yet, there is a lightness and humanity in the story that is really hard to explain.

All I know is that I couldn’t get this story out of my head for days.

[Reading Room] The Day We Were Fish by Stephen Koster

Feathertale.com

It’s just an ordinary a day in the office, when suddenly the boss notices his staff are turning into fish…

This engagingly bizarre and whimsical short story by Stephen Koster reminds me why I love the short story. Short stories let you break all the rules. They are amuse-bouche. They are wonderful places for trying out ideas you could never sustain in a novel (or maybe you could, but a short story is certainly a good place to test out the idea).

As with many of the short stories I read, this one wasn’t perfect, but it was amusing and it split my brain open and filled it with all kinds of ideas, and it inspire me to write. Can’t ask for more than that!

[Reading Room] Incognito by Susan M. Lemere

I have a thing for stories written in letter form, so i was well-disposed towards Susan M. Lemere’s charming story Incognito before it even got rolling.

It starts with a teacher interceding on behalf of one of her students who has lost a tooth — literally lost it in the playground grass — and is inconsolable until the teacher promises to write a note to the Tooth Fairy. That would be the end of it, except that the tooth fairy responds. By email. And she has some advice for the teacher, herself.

As the story unfolds we learn more about Katherine, the teacher, and her life, and the changes she needs to make. Will she? Won’t she?

It is a subject that could be dreary or pedestrian, but Susan M. Lemere’s use of language, whimsy and humor keep it from being either of those things. I was, in no time at all, rooting for Katherine and enjoying listening to her voice portraying her various moods.