Short Story Collection Recommendations
Plus my favorite stories in each one
In the middle of October, I suddenly realized I had set a reading goal on Goodreads for 50 books. I was at 21. If you’re like me and are checking that goal you had for 2024 with horror, realizing you’re behind, you’re probably on the hunt for some quick reads to speed up the process. I’m not always in the mood for poetry, so I tend to gravitate towards short story collections.
Short story collections, I feel, are always left out of conversation online. I never know why they don’t get the same love and attention as full length novels. To me, they have their own quirky charm due to their feeling of disjointedness. They are full of complete little stories that have nothing to do with one another really, but they’re perfect for when you want a quick escape from reality for about an hour. I think it’s great that short story collections allow you to do that one story at a time.
I also feel like November as a month is sort of left out of the love and appreciation, and is overshadowed by Christmas or the lingering spooks of Halloween. So, I thought, since we’re here, I might as well pair the underappreciated things together in one Substack post. Here are my favorite short story collections to date in case you need some quick escapes for your day, or you just want to get into short story collections more often.
1. Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell
I first got into short story collections a couple of years ago, and this book just so happened to be one of the first ones I tried. I gravitated to it for no other reason than I thought the title was cool. Boy, was I not ready for how weird this collection was (in the best way possible). Karen Russell looks at the human experience through some of the least-human situations, making monsters and creatures from our nightmares seem like neighbors and people we know.
It’s so hard to pick my favorites from this collection; the book includes a story about a massage therapist who can manipulate a soldier’s memories through his tattoos and another about the ghosts of former presidents trapped in the bodies of horses doomed to live in a barn together. But, out of the eight in the book, “Reeling for the Empire” and the title story “Vampires in the Lemon Grove” were my favorites. The former is about women working in a silk factory in Japan as silkworm/human hybrids discovering their autonomy. The latter had one of the best descriptions of biting into a lemon I’d ever read and it hasn’t left my mind since.
2. Make/Shift by Joe Sacksteder
I will admit that I’m slightly biased when it comes to this book. I went to a writing summer camp in high school and Sacksteder was one of the instructors. But regardless, Make/Shift is an amalgamation of pure feeling, as if you are moving from one memory to the next in a trance. Each story is almost like a dream; it makes total sense while you are in it but feels off only when you wake up.
My favorite of the collection is “Unearth,” the story of four friends who once buried a time capsule in one of their backyards and dig it up years later. Not only is it beautiful and a poignant reflection on how time can change everything, but I also had the pleasure of hearing it read aloud by Sacksteder at the summer camp. Needless to say, once he finished, the room sat in awestruck silence for a few seconds before erupting into applause.
3. The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
I first read Evans’s The Office of Historical Corrections in a freshman year English class in college and after the class was finished, I ended up buying myself a copy because I liked it so much. If that isn’t enough to convince you that it’s just that good, Evans takes a look at many facets of race, history, and culture with precision and a nuanced and thoughtful eye. Each story asks the question: who gets to tell history?
They all were great, but the one that stands out to me the most to this day is “Boys Go to Jupiter.” It follows a white college student trying to reinvent her image after a photo of her in a Confederate flag bathing suit circulates online. But honestly, all of them are standouts due to Evans’s sharp writing. The collection is just so smart and multilayered; seriously, I will never stop recommending this one.
4. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Okay, okay, so this isn’t technically a collection of stories that were meant to be together in one book. But how could I not include them?! I’ve loved Sherlock Holmes stories since I was in middle school and BBC’s Sherlock is my comfort TV show. When I first got this collection of stories in one large book (thanks Barnes and Noble for your special edition) I devoured each story. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson have been done over countless times in media that I always encourage people to read the original stories and experience their magic.
I have a soft spot for many of the stories for different reasons, but I remember finding “The Hound of the Baskervilles'“ especially thrilling, and subsequently the BBC show’s version of that story ended up becoming one of my favorite episodes. But at the same time, nothing will compare with the feeling of first meeting Holmes and Watson in “A Study in Scarlet.” Honestly, I can’t pick one. Read them all!
5. Bliss Montage by Ling Ma
Oddly enough, I discovered this book because it was on a list of recommendations for if you liked Gerwig’s Barbie film. Bliss Montage doesn’t have the technicolor, everlasting summer vibe of Barbie, but it definitely chronicles women’s lives in raw, unflinching ways. Each story is steeped in magical realism, feeling dreamlike and yet still very tangible and authentic. The protagonists, predominantly Asian-American women, share one thing in common: loneliness no matter how many people surround them.
I’ll never get over “G,” a story surrounding a toxic friendship between two women that take a drug that allows you to become invisible. I can’t even find the words to describe the heartache I felt reading it, remembering my past unhealthy friendships with women and I was reminded once again how women can sometimes be the worst to other women. The situations are fantasy, but the dialogue is all too real. That’s what makes this collection great.
6. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King
I’ve never been a big horror fan when it comes to books, but have always had an inherent reverence towards Stephen King. I’m not going to lie and say that initially, when I picked this up in eighth grade, I was drawn to the cover art. But then I started actually reading it. I was hooked. Some stories are thrilling, some thought provoking, and some just downright scary. I will say, that this book is not like the others due to its length. Maybe don’t pick this one up if you’re in a pinch. But, if you think you can crank it out (or even better, listen to the audiobook on your commute) I highly recommend it!
It’s weird to say that this story was my favorite because it left me scared sh*tless. But, that’s how good this story was. It’s titled “Bad Little Kid,” and boy, King not kidding with that title. The start of the story is a man about to go to the chair for un-aliving a child. He tries in a last ditch effort to explain that this kid has been following him and taunting him his whole life. I’m not exaggerating that the ending left me floored and I was nervous about going to sleep at night for the next two weeks.
7. A Comedy of Nobodies: A Collection of Stories by Baron Ryan
With lines like “I want to die, but I’m so unlucky that if I were reincarnated, I’d probably just come back as myself,” and “maybe the craziest thing you can do with your life is to not do the crazy thing,” I couldn’t help but love this collection. I found Baron Ryan, like many people, through his TikTok account where he writes quirky little short films and play all the parts. His debut, A Comedy of Nobodies, chronicles a sophomore at Harvard named Charlie who is pretty ordinary but gets into extraordinary circumstances. Each story is a vignette, a look into Charlie’s life with his friends as they navigate what it means to be a good human.
My personal favorites of the stories were “The Last American Pie” and “Looking for Love in a Loveless World.” The former is a story where Charlie and his friends who make up a jazz trio are asked to play the National Anthem at a Harvard vs. Yale hockey game and are later booed off the ice for playing a jazz rendition of “American Pie” instead. The latter follows Charlie as he has a conversation back and forth with someone in the back cover of a psychology book sitting in the campus library. All the stories surrounding Charlie and his pals are cute and poignant and feel like a Wes Anderson script in a way, which is probably why I like them so much.
I have plenty others on my list to read, including Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, Table for Two by Amor Towles, and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver, to name a few. Let me know if there are any others that should be added to my always-growing TBR. :)
- Lillian