Get To The Point: Great Short Story Collections To Read

 If you’re not in the mood for a novel, you can always read a short story collection. Short story collections are perfect if you want to skip around a book or be done with a story faster. So, what kind of short story collections should you read? There are short story collections of multiple genres and types. There are even novella collections, where the stories are slightly longer than your typical short stories but are also shorter than your typical novels. Here are some books worth checking out.

“Different Seasons” by Stephen King – A collection by Stephen King, this book is close to perfect, as in every story in this collection is gold. Even two iconic movies, The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, have come out of this collection. “The Shawshank Redemption” is based on the story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” and “Stand by Me” is based on the story “The Body”. Both stories are well worth reading, with “The Body” being one of my personal favorite Stephen King stories. Another story in the collection, also made into a film, is “Apt Pupil”, which unlike “The Body” and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” isn’t heartwarming but instead terrifying, but in a more realistic way than supernatural way you often find in a Stephen King story, as a kid becomes obsessed with his Nazi neighbor.

“Get In Trouble” by Kelly Link – Kelly Link is the only fantasy writer to be a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and this is the book that was up for it. While known mainly as a fantasy editor, she started to publish short story collections in 2005 with her book, “Magic for Beginners.” Link’s writing style varies from story to story, but she often dives into not just the supernatural but the unusual as well. Some of the stories in this book include “The Summer People” about mysterious neighbors, “Secret Identity” which bends the supernatural and mundane, and “Origin Story” about a trip to a Wizard of Oz themed amusement park and many other oddities. Link is a very good writer.

“I Robot” By Issac Asimov – “I Robot” is the classic short story collection by science fiction author Issac Asimov, and though it’s sometimes labelled as a novel, it’s really a short story collection. Asimov is one of the best science fiction writers of all time, and this is a collection of short stories with a simple theme: robots. Asimov was known for his robot novels and would go on to write 37 books about this theme. However, “I Robot” is where this all starts. The stories are woven together by a women named Susan, who is telling the stories to a reporter who is writing about the robotics company she works for. Each story explores the ethics of and the relationships robots have with humans. It is arguably Asimov’s most famous book, and worth a read.

“The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” by Sherman Alexie – Sherman Alexie is the great modern storyteller of native American culture, and in this 1993 short story collection, he continues being this. What makes this collection interesting is many of the stories in this collection are about the same character, Victor. In one story, Victor looks back on his childhood on the Native American reservation, in another story, he collects his father’s ashes, and still another story, Victor attends a carnival with his friends, leading him to reflect on conforming to the white man’s identity. There are also other stories in this collection, including a women reflecting on her son’s birth, a narration of a women raising her son year by year, and other stories. Sherman Alexie is a funny and sensitive writer, and well worth checking out.

So, these are some short story collections worth checking out. Oddly when I was writing this article, I was trying to remember the short story collection I read “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, but on further research, I realize that this piece was published in a magazine back in the 1980s.  I had to read this for a college course, but I remember it being a great short story, so I recommend seeking this one out on the internet, as well as it’s well-done movie adaptation “Smooth Talk”. These books should get you started on the artform of shorter fiction. Despite not having a book on this list, I also recommend seeking out any short story you can by Ray Bradberry, Kurt Vonnegut and Mark Twain.