Book Rex: Short Story collections (for the distracted reader)
Sometimes we don't have the attention for a novel, but I have good news!
Given that the entire planet is conspiring to destroy our ability to pay attention, it’s not a surprise that sometimes we can’t commit to or focus on a novel. If this is you, I have a suggestion: don’t even try! Instead, get back into the reading habit by reading short fiction.
This was not a medium I held in particularly high regard until the pandemic, when I realized I needed a short palette cleanser before bed each night, and couldn’t easily jump back into a 300-page novel without getting distracted by the ongoing apocalypse outside my walls.
So I’d like to share my five favorite short story collections!
As usual, all books are affiliate linked to Bookshop.org, which means I get a small kickback if you buy using the link. Also — a portion of your money goes directly to your local bookstore! Which is neat!
Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez
Mariana Enriquez is (I am so, so sorry Stephen King, you know I love you) the best living horror writer, hands down. Things We Lost in the Fire was the first of her short story collections to be translated from the original Spanish — the second, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is equally good, and I have her first translated novel Our Share of Night sitting on my bedstand to read next.
Enriquez uses old school cosmic horror as a method through which to present the nightmares of the past 60 years of Argentinian history, with its Dirty Wars, its military dictatorships, and its economic turmoil. It is breathtakingly good, and is almost always exceptionally spooky.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
None of these short stories are by George Saunders, which would be a bit sad, as he is widely regarded as one of the best living short story writers. It’s not sad, though, because it’s actually a master class in which Saunders presents six stories written by four of the greatest Russian short story writers (which, incidentally, makes them among the best short story writers in history, as pre-Soviet Russia did short fiction extremely well), and then analyzes what makes them great.
The result is basically a much-cheaper, easier-to-access version of Saunders extremely exclusive Syracuse short story course, which something like 6 people a year get to attend. It’s a beautiful introduction to the art of the short story, and to the art of storytelling in general. And you get to read stories by Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Turgenev!
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Ted Chiang is best known for his story “Story of Your Life,” which was adapted into the excellent sci-fi movie Arrival. His short stories all have take ingenious premises mostly pulled from science and then build a world around them. One of them asks, “What if creationism was scientifically true?” and then pictures a world in which old trees stop having rings if you go 8000 years back, as that was the year God created them.
Others imagine a world in which you can see whether people go to heaven or hell when they die, others present allegories for the heat death of the universe, others have small devices that disprove the existence of free will: it’s all mind-bending stuff, and is genuinely exciting to read.
Exhalation is his more recent collection, but Story of Your Life and Others is also excellent.
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
Borges short stories have the feel of an MC Escher painting. They feature infinite libraries where every possible book ever written is shelved, they feature men who wish to dream a person into existence, or men driven mad by the realization that Judas, not Jesus, was the true Messiah that died for our sins, as Judas is the one that suffers to this day in Hell.
Borges is dense, but his writing is entrancing. This is his best short story collection.
In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd
Hey, remember the movie A Christmas Story? This is A Christmas Story, divided up into short stories, with a few more added on outside the Christmas season. The movie was narrated by the author Jean Shepherd himself (Shepherd also appears as the guy waiting for Santa Claus who says, “Hey kid! The line ENDS here. It starts back there!”), so it is impossible not to read this book in Shepherd’s perfect baritone.
It is also, like that classic movie, utterly hilarious, and adds a whole lot of extra flavor and color that didn’t make it into the movie. Shepherd was one of our funniest writers of the 20th century.