Every six months or so for the past decade, I’d randomly type ‘Elissa Schappell’ into Amazon’s search bar and cross my fingers. I kept hoping and hoping that she had released a book that some…
Posts tagged Short stories
For whom the Bell tolls
Imagine a linear story. Now imagine cartoonist Gabrielle Bell studying it with her hands on her hips. She takes a giant scissors, the kind used by mayors at ribbon cutting ceremonies, and makes two incisions…
Thar’s humans in those there cube farms
If I had a dollar for every time I have referenced, linked to, or told someone about Daniel Orozco’s short story “Orientation” (which you can listen to right here, fast forward to about 50:45), I…
Machine of Death
It all started with this Dinosaur Comic where T-Rex had a great idea for a short story – a world where everyone knows how they're going to die. But T-Rex is a bit sneaky and…
The wonderfully forgettable Charles Baxter
I believe that Charles Baxter is one of the best writers on Earth. If I had to pick which one should sit at the head of the table during a gathering of my top ten,…
Slut Lullabies will not put you to sleep
In my head if Mary Gaitskill’s writing and Philip Roth’s writing were to meet, have sex, and create a baby, that baby would be Gina Frangello’s writing. I choose Gaitskill because, like Frangello, she writes…
Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
Sometimes when I read short story collections I try to figure out what the author’s thing is. By thing I mean the big issue they address in their writing. While it’s easy to extrapolate from…
Stories: All-New Tales
Stories: All New Tales, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, makes me want to add more short story collections to my ever-growing read list. In the introduction, Gaiman states that he and Sarrantonio: “…wanted…
A Good Slice of Home Life
Some books of short stories are held together by a theme, but John Jodzio’s new book, If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home, is held together by style. Darkly humorous and filled with unsettling…
The everything guru
Well. Now Doug Dorst is just showing off. The relative newbie to the world of book glue’s new collection of short stories The Surf Guru, is so fun, so clever, and so so exciting that…
The Safety of Objects
A.M. Homes seems to have assembled the stories in The Safety of Objects with an eye toward pushing the envelope. Sometimes, she pushes that envelope too far, but she does so in the interest of…
Uneasy state
When Michael Schaub and the Largehearted Boy started raving about Emma Schaub’s Fly-over State on Twitter, it took me roughly 48 seconds to order up the book. That kind of hype cannot be withstood. Besides,…