This week’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, is about favorite short stories and novellas. I don’t read a lot of novellas, but I’ve really warmed in recent years to the genre of short stories. I love short story collections where the characters and settings connect across the stories. The Settling Earth does this really well, but I think possibly the best writer of this type is Elizabeth Strout. I loved her recent collection Anything Is Possible.
Here are some of my favorites. I highly recommend these books if you want to…
Consider diverse perspectives:
- Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
- What it Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
- This is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Visit faraway places and times:
- The Settling Earth by Rebecca Burns
- Astray by Emma Donoghue
Appreciate what it means to serve:
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- Redeployment by Phil Klay
Encounter the eerie:
- Bloodchild by Octavia Butler
- Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
- The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Thinking about novellas, I’m not sure I know what’s a novella and what isn’t. Many novellas are just novels that are too short for me. But some excellent ones I’ve read recently are All Systems Red, the Binti trilogy, and Slade House by David Mitchell. Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451 may also be novellas, and they are two of my favorite books.
I feel like there’s a lot I missed! What short story collections or novellas are your favorites?
