Short Story Collections (for the Little Times)
Short Story Collections (for the Little Times)
By Independent Book Review
Here's a shout out to the little times.
The five-minute window.
The thirty minute rest.
The hour at night when your toddler is asleep and you haven't passed out yet.
Reading is a time-consuming activity. You only have 24 hours every day. And some of that time is spent sleeping and some are doing dishes and some are cleaning and some are working and some--too often the lonely few--are free.
Before every reading session, I flip from the page I'm currently on to see where the next chapter, story, or paragraph break is. It's a practical decision. I'd like to know if I can finish a section before my break/rest is up and if I have the time to do it, or if I should open a different book. With short stories, I can get the full experience--the arc, the purpose, the world--and not devote myself to the next few open reading windows I get (like I do with a novel). After finishing the book, I can piece together all of my little times into a cohesive whole. A world of moments. Here's to the little times!
These are our choices for the September 2023 Indie Books of the Month.
Little Feasts
Jules Archer and Carolyn Brandt
$16.99 $15.80Little Feasts is SHARP in prose and jab, slicing into toxic masculinity and drawing blood with vengeful leading ladies. This collection of flash fiction (all under 1k words, but many much shorter than that) is a 5-10-minute window kind of a book.
Maybe This Is What I Deserve
Tucker Leighty-Phillips
$12.00Got a minute? This microfiction collection can get you in and out of a vivid & breezy Midwest in no time. I love the smallness of each story--not only in size but in scope--and how big they resonate after finishing. Weirdly enough, we get a big picture at a tiny glimpse.
This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love.
Jennifer Wortman
$16.00A nice smattering of longer stories with flash fiction in between! This is so cool because when read straight-through, you take a little break with a flash piece to propel you into the next big one. "A sincere story collection" about trying and failing and trying and failing and living and loving in the meantime. You may need 20 minutes, you may need 2.
Here in the Night
Rebecca Turkewitz
$21.95 $20.41In a recent starred review, Nathaniel Drenner says this quiet collection of ghost stories has "threads woven with such expertise that the smallest of details carry great reverberations... The result is a fresh and thought-provoking narrative each time." Stories are usually around 15-20 pages long.
Eternal Night at the Nature Museum
Tyler Barton
$16.95 $15.76How is it that it's been two years and I still haven't stopped picturing the set-ups, scenes, and characters of these evocative short stories? Somebody get me in a small-town demolition derby asap. Alexandra Barbush says, "Barton’s prose manages to be funny while painstakingly honest, overtly earnest, and, at times, prickly, leaving his characters, their dialogue, and the overall tone of the entire work quite raw." 10 pages, 20 pages, 2--make time for it!