UKC

Because i am generally very busy i tend to like wee or short stories these days.So would any of you UKC literary experts recommend me any that are top quality?So far my favourite by a mile is "Smeddum" and very worth a read to,it's by Leslie Mitchell.I only usually read political books but would generally like to start reading more of this fiction malarky you hear that much aboot.

In reply to Gudrun: How about, 'Lord Peter views the body'; nice little detective stories and a sympathetic hero.

In reply to Gudrun:

Candidate for most bang-for-your-buck short story (supposedly by Hemmingway, though there's some dispute):

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn"

that "wee" enough for you?!

In reply to thebigfriendlymoose: The last man in the world sat alone in his room. There was a knock on the door...

In reply to Gudrun: When she awoke, the dinosaur was still there.

In reply to Gudrun:

Some good stuff of a very feminist bent which I dare say would appeal to you, in
Women Fly When Men Aren't Watching, by Sara Maitland.

I have not read them all but there are some good 'uns for sure.

In reply to Gudrun: those last three aren't really stories though are they, more something to ponder on.

In reply to Gudrun:

I read this at school ages ago. it's by no means highbrow, but it's a nice easy read.



http://teacherweb.com/ON/SacredHeartHighSchool/MrStriukas/A_Sound_of_Thunde...

In reply to Gudrun: Some good short stories in The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, and Close Range: Wyoming Stories by E Annie Proulx.

I don't exactly know where a short story stops and a novella starts but The Old Man and The Sea (Hemmingway) is fantastic.

In reply to Alyson:

Oh..."Other People" by Neil Gaiman from the "Fragile Things" collection.

"Time is fluid here..."
LOVE IT!!

http://holdinghandswithhades.edublogs.org/seven-deadly-sins-part-7-the-othe...

In reply to Gudrun: http://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Best_Russian_Short_Stories

In reply to Gudrun:
Well if you want literary recommendations... Pushkin is renowned as a master and many people think 'queen of spades' is the greatest shortest story ever written. I disagree - my favourite is 'The Dead' by James Joyce, part of 'Dubliners', which has many other wonderful stories about ordinary people and events in Dublin. The Dead develops slowly but the ending is a magical and haunting depiction of the complexities of love (or something like that).
Other favourites of mine are 'Wife-wooing' by John Updike (only about three pages), and some of Norman Mailer's stories.

In reply to Gudrun:

For really short, I'd recommend Richard Brautigan. I also like Lydia Davis.

Some contemporary writers springing to mind: Ali Smith, Annie Proulx, Alice Munro, Tim Winton. For something altogether more troubling, try Guts by Chuck Palahniuk (that's a story, not a collection).

In reply to Gudrun:

I'd recommend Nightfall by Asimov (in fact any Asimov short story) & The Pavilion on the Links and/or The Ebb Tide by RLS.

In reply to Gudrun:

The Call of Cthulu by HP Lovecraft is another that shouldn't be missed.

In reply to Tom Last:

That should be Cthulhu sorry.

Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino, if only for the story about the shift-working husband and wife who keep missing one another.

In reply to Gudrun:

Tobias Wolff.

In reply to Gudrun:
Tillie Olsen - Tell Me A Riddle. Mid twentieth century American social realism from a generally feminist / trade-unionist perspective would be a technically accurate description but doesn't do justice to the fact that she's a heartbreakingly brilliant at writing characters. The first short story in the collection seems to be online in a pdf if you google it - no idea how legit it is so I won't post a direct link.
James Kelman - An Old Pub Near the Angel. As above but more grumpy and Scottish and seventies.
Alasdair Gray - Ten Tales Tall and True. Kind of uncategorizable. Weird mix of social realism, whimsical science-fiction, angry satire and emotional vignettes. Excellent in places, although his full length novels are even better.

In reply to Gudrun:

J G Ballard?

In reply to ThunderCat:

Loads of Bradbury's short stories are ace and it's not all (not by a long shot) sci-fi / fantasy.
"The Next in Line" is just stunning - here's someone else's opinion on it and a little excerpt

"The Next in Line" is one of the best I've read in ages; in it I could sense the seeds of Matheson, Beaumont, King, Campbell, Etchison, others who would come along in the future to join Bradbury in delighting readers with dread. A young couple vacationing in Mexico visit the mummies in the catacombs and learn how the poor bury their dead. Marie, the wife, is struck dumb and cold by the dried-husk bodies:

Jaws down, tongues out like jeering children, eyes pale brown-irised in upclenched sockets. Hairs, waxed and prickled by sunlight, each sharps as quills embedded on the lips, the cheeks, the eyelids, the brows. Little beards on chins and bosoms and loins. Flesh like drumheads and manuscripts and crisp bread dough. The women, huge ill-shaped tallow things, death-melted. The insane hair of them, like nests made and remade...

How the story plays out and ends, is weirdly redolent of "Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Well, the song is redolent of the story. Just in atmosphere rather than narrative.

In reply to Blue Straggler: JG Ballard is good too if you want something a bit darker. The Atrocity Exhibition is good. And Philip K Dick, but I think his early collections are much better than the later ones

In reply to Gudrun:

A Raymond Carver compilation would be my recommendation - sparse, simple and devastating stories of the everyday. Hemmingway's "The first 49 stories" has some good ones.

Gogol's "The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories" is entertaining, and for something a bit less absurd, Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories" is good, albeit harrowing.

In reply to Gudrun:
"Starlight and Storm" by Rébuffat for something on climbing - but a little bit more poetic than Bonington's "I chose to climb" for example? It reads like 6 short stories.

Kafka's "In the Penal Colony". Great and strange.

Otherwise, I second Gogol, Hemingway and Lovecraft.

In reply to Gudrun:
Have you read anything by Alexei Sayle?

"Barcelona Plates" and "The Dog Catcher" are collections of short stories (not tiny wee things - about 9 or 10 in each book).

Brilliant stuff, dark, funny, just a little bit political. The eponymous story "The Dog Catcher" is my favourite I think.

In reply to Gudrun: I quite like "The Outsider" by Albert Camus, more of a short novel than a short story, but I did once read the whole thing on a single train journey. Again, Arthur Conan Doyles "The heart of Darkness" short but with a hefty punch, still more of a novel than a short story.

Flaubert's "three tales" is quite a classic collection, very worthwhile and definitely a collection of short stories, not short novels.

In reply to Gudrun:
You'll like this one:

The Ransom of Red Chief. By O Henry:

http://www.online-literature.com/donne/1041/

In reply to Gudrun:

Not really a single story, more of an anthology.

Full-Throttle Space Tales series. Especially Space Grunts Space Horrors.

In reply to Gudrun:

Since all short stories are written in the shadow of Chekhov, just go and read some Chekhov. There's loads to go at.

Tho' Tobias Wolff and Hemingway also very good.

In reply to Tom Last:

Oh all that turgid anal retentive ponderous prose. It's atmospheric, but so is farting on a crowded tube.

In reply to Gudrun:

Roald Dahl: Champion of the World.

I can't think of a better told short story than that.

In reply to Gudrun:

"The Open Window" by Saki

In reply to thomm:

I just read it; it was OK but the ending was predictable and it didn't stir up any great emotion or empathy in me. I was interested in the outcome, but as I said, it was predictable (if not the means by which it was realised).

In reply to Gudrun:

Danke shone to you all,that should save me much time and effort.

In reply to Gudrun: The Most Beautiful Woman in Town by Charles Bukowski
Amazing piece of writing.

In reply to Gudrun:

I'm currently re-reading the collection 'Meet my Maker the Mad Molecule' by JP Donleavy. Fantastic stuff.

In reply to Gudrun:
Try "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes. Powerful stuff.

In reply to Gudrun:

Atlas Shrugged.

In reply to Gudrun: Yuri Nagibin - The Winter Oak, read it during my GCSEs and it's still stuck with me. Must be good to leave such an impact.

In reply to Gudrun:

Hi Gud I've never heard of Smeddum by Leslie Mitchell but I've read Smeddum by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, a short story classic but then you can't go wrong with LGG.

George MacKay Brown is also well worth a look.

In reply to Removed User: Jumping in blind here, but Leslie Mitchell was LGG's real name. Apologies if you were having a laugh.

In reply to OMR:

Hiya, no laughs, I didn't know that, thanks.