30 Day Book Challenge: Day 17

Last year I found this book challenge (since then I have seen many variations of it, but I like this one best!), and have been intrigued about how I would answer the questions posed. Obviously, I started this challenge over 30 days ago...I just wasn't inspired. It isn't as easy to write about books as I thought.


Feel free to comment with your own answer or post the challenge to your own blog.


Favorite Story or Collection of Stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes etc.)


Favorite Story

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" 

Favorite Collection of Stories

Favorite Novella

Favorite Novelette

The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)

Day 02 – A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about
Day 03 – The best book you've read in the last 12 months
Day 04 – Your favorite book or series ever
Day 05 – A book or series you hate
Day 06 – Favorite book of your favorite series
Day 07 – Least favorite plot device employed by way too many books you actually enjoyed otherwise
Day 08 – A book everyone should read at least once
Day 09 – Best scene ever
Day 10 – A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11– A book that disappointed you
Day 12 – A book or series of books you've read more than five times
Day 13 – Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)
Day 14 – Favorite character in a book
Day 15 – Your "comfort" book
Day 16 – Favorite poem or collection of poetry
Day 17 – Favorite story or collection of stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.)
Day 18 – Favorite beginning scene in a book
Day 19 – Favorite book cover (bonus points for posting an image!)
Day 20 – Favorite kiss
Day 21 – Favorite romantic/sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 22 – Favorite non-sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 23 – Most annoying character ever
Day 24 – Best quote from a novel
Day 25 – Any five books from your “to be read” stack
Day 26 – OMG WTF? OR most irritating/awful/annoying book ending
Day 27 – If a book contains ______, you will always read it (and a book or books that contain it)!
Day 28 – First favorite book or series obsession
Day 29 – Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)
Day 30 – What book are you reading right now?

55 Books in a Year: Book #13 A to Z Stories of Life and Death

After joining Blogging from A to Z Challenge April 2012, I surfed around the blog and its leaders and participants and found Damyanti Biswas and her book A to Z Stories of Life and Death and I figured that for $1.99 I could download and read 26 stories about life and death.

I gotta tell you, I'm pretty impressed with these stories and they remind me a lot of Annie Proloux's Wyoming Stories and Sue Miller's book Inventing the Abbott's and Other Stories. They are sparse and true and sexy and tragic. They are about life and each one has a taste of bittersweet.

Below you will find a list of all the story with asterisks indicating how many stars (1-5, like a book review) I gave each and then a sentence or two about it and why I liked it.

Aquarium ***
A girls aquarium gets snails, at first she thinks it's cool, but in the end she realizes they mean so much more.
Burn *
A teacher wants his protege to learn how to burn.
Commas **
A teacher with AIDS teaches her student about more than commas.
Do What You Do **
A man picks up a Dontella Versace look alike.
Ecstasy **
"Ecstasy is not death, it's a release from pain."
Fickle **
A person with ugly hands is comforted Mr. and Mrs. Winter
Girls ****
A family of children are saved by their brave sister Sakhi.
Heart ****
Ruth is a stealer and taker of hearts.
I Have A Secret *****
A woman finds out so much about herself when she takes her god-daughter to buy her first bra.
Jasoda's Children *
Jasoda is a baby-snatcher.
Kill ****
A man dreams of getting revenge on a doctor, can he go through with it.
Life ****
"Smoking Can Kill You"
Mannequin ***
Behind every mannequin is a person, or is that the other way around.
Nothing *****
A couple deals with the loss of their child.
OK ****
A boy digs through trash every day to help his family.
Perilious ***
Walking on the edge of life.
Quit ***
The Blue Tilapia must behave.
Reunion ***
Sula is the best host of childhood games.
Sacrilege *****
A boy must decide to be a man.
Tell Me A Story *****
A little girl teaches her father about living.
Under the Skin ****
Tattoos go deeper than the top layer of the skin.
Victorious *****
Although her neighborhood is gone, an older woman remembers and it's still there.
Women ****
A woman passively fights against the kidnapping of women.
X-Ray ***
Can you be dirty inside and out?
Youth ***
A murderer puts it all to an end.
Zone ****
A man is with his wife for the last time.

And, you can find the author and more interesting stuff about her at...
Twitter: damyantig
Blog: damyantiwrites.wordpress.com

4 Stars   

Philip K. Dick-itis...it's a disease, I swear!

          Ok, so here's the deal, I read a ton of science fiction and yet...I am always surprised that another Philip K. Dick story/movie has been turned into a film. Case in point that little film over there The Adjustment Bureau. My friends and I went to watch it one Friday and pow, at the very beginning the screen reads something like "based on the story 'The Adjustment Team' by Philip K. Dick" and, as in previous years, I go back home rummage through the books I have, and, no I don't own "The Adjustment Team" (it seems that the stories used for movies are in different Dick volumes spread across the Earth, nay the Universe), so, I began my search on the interwebs...found the story, read it and thought what I always think when I read a Philip K. Dick or watch the movie of a story I've already read (this has only happened one time with Minority Report)..."What the deuce? Some of the themes match and the premise is the same, but this story is very, very, oh my dear, different." And, I come to the same conclusions I always come to, "The story is changed because it is addressing a modern era and must be changed." And, then, because the itch has been scratched, down the Philip K. Dick spiral I go...I buy another book, I research and I talk about and I write about all that I know about the master of Science Fiction. I stop only when I feel satiated once again, I stop only when I feel I have read what must be the next movie or book by him, and everytime...I fail. Philip K. Dick-itis has no cure. I mean he wrote over 100 short stories alone and then you have to add in the novels...what mere mortal has the kind of time to find, buy and read them all? I do have to admit though, I'm getting pretty close.

Films and the stories that go with them:

(Links to stories where available, otherwise links to B&N)

Blade Runner

Movie: 5 Stars

I remember watching this movie when I was a kid and being mesmerized by Daryl Hannah. Her character, Pris, still haunts my dreams. Add in Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young (in her 1st of 2 roles worth watching) and others directed by Ridley Scott and you have yourself a cult classic that I didn't realize, until watching the extras on the anniversary edition, took so much out of everyone.

Story: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

4 Stars

 
Because I read the story about 8 years after watching the movie, I don't really feel the same connection and well, the story is different enough that I was disappointed...I tried not to be, but, well...um...

A Scanner Darkly

Movie: Never seen it, it's in my Netflix queque

Novel: A Scanner Darkly

Never read it, I suppose I should put it on my TBR...

Total Recall

Movie: 4 Stars

This movie genuinely rocks my socks off, I remember how high-tech it was at the time. My husband and I watch it often, we have it on Blueray for some reason, I think we've also made all of our friends watch it. They don't seem to feel as passionate about it as we do, maybe they, too, should have seen it when it first came out.

Story: We Can Remember It For You Whole Sale 

4 Stars

I enjoy this story VERY much, although it is still different than the movie. To me, it isn't so different that the essence is lost...the movie just modernizes it.

Minority Report

Movie: 4 Stars

This really is the perfect SF cop thriller. I'm out of breath just thinking about the lovely ride it puts you on. Strung-out cop realizes that he has to forget the past to save an unknown. I love the scene with the umbrella.
Story: Minority Report 
3 1/2 Stars

The cop and the ending are very different, but this story is a fun ride that you can definitely tell was written Mid-20th Century, and I like Mid-century.

Next

Movie: Never seen it, it's in my Netflix queque

Story: The Golden Man

Never read it, I do own the book in which it lives...now...

Paycheck

Movie: 4 Stars

Ok, so if you read about a movie and hear that it's bad because it doesn't hold true to the original concept in any way, you watch the movie first, and, frankly, I like it a lot. The idea that no matter how hard we try we can't stop the inevitable is always interesting to me, and it's brought to you with a lot of action and, well, Ben Affleck.

Story: Paycheck

4 Stars

I like that this story still has the themes and I like that it is very different the movie. The movie would not have read well. I'm pretty sure I would not have thought this if I'd read it first. So good this story is.

The Adjustment Bureau

Movie: 5 Stars

Romance in a Dick story, what???? But, I love it! It's so pretty and, well romantic.

Story: The Adjustment Team

4 Stars

No, romance, but other than that the story is the same. Really! In thinking...I may even give this story 4 1/2 stars...

Check out more stories and films...here.

Irish Short Story Week 2011

It's Irish Short Story Week at The Reading Life and I am so glad that it is St. Patrick's Day, as I wanted to use this day to talk about Ireland and dig in to some good Irish short story reading.

About Ireland:

          I've only been to Ireland twice. The first time was in 1998 when I was studying abroad. Upon arrival, we were given a lovely tour of the town by two boys who had to have been about 12 or 13. We weren't used to their accents, but I think they told us a little lore, a little history and all about where to find food like McDonald's and their friendly humor was indicitive of the rest of the people we'd meet. We stayed with a lovely elderly lady who made sure that we didn't put our money in our back pockets, got us up for breakfast (large Irish breakfast with eggs, and toast, and bangers and mash, and tomatoes and some sort of porridge, coffee and tea), knew what time we got home at night (didn't she Julie?), pronounced film like phil-um, and made sure we weren't in the house when she wanted to go to mass (which was at least 3 times a day--I swear). We visited with a man that could quote Seamus Heaney, took a hop on hop off tour, visited the Guiness Brewery, the City Centre and many cathedrals. And, we took a train outside of Dublin and climbed the hills by the ocean. To this day, however, and after all of that I still consider this woman and those boys the idea of what it means to be Irish and to be in Ireland...warm, friendly, inviting, but stern, strict and highly religious.

          I have tried to pick stories that I think capture the essence of Ireland to me, while still finding stories that in some way appeal to me. Happy Reading and Happy St. Patrick's Day!!! Click on the title of the story to access the link to the story.

The Short Stories

"The Quiet Man"...Maurice Walsh
4 Stars

"Shawn Kelvin, a blithe young lad of 20, went to the States to seek his fortune. And 15 years thereafter he returned to his native Kerry, his blitheness sobered and his youth dried to the core, and whether he had made his fortune or whether he had not no one could be knowing for certain. For he was a quiet man, not given to talking about himself and the things he had done. A quiet man, under middle size, with strong shoulders and deep-set blue eyes below brows darker than his dark hair - that was Shawn Kelvin."
Themes: manly pride, feminine pride, Irish pride, roots, being true to ones sense of self
About: A guy, who having grown up in The States, comes back to his home in Ireland to assimilate into Irish life, find a wife and live quietly. He, however, finds more than he bargains for in Mary-Kate and a tragic event that even an ocean cannot help him forget.    
Why you should read it?
Well, I will have to say that it is the definitive Irish story. There's boxing and beer and a beautiful red-headed woman and if you're like me, you won't be able to help yourself and you'll imagine John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara.

"The Dead"...James Joyce
5 Stars
"LILY, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also."
Themes: what it means to be alive, what lessons do we learn from those around us, things are not always what they seem
About: A man and his wife go to a party and nothing much seems to happen. He is oridnary and comical and she is passive. After one brief moment on the stairs he realizes that both of their lives mean so much more than he could have possibly thought.    
Why you should read it?
I love this story because I read through all of the beginning (which is really quite a lot) thinking what is the point and then the ending (Joyce's epiphany) is so beautiful and profound that it changed my way of thinking about life and about what it means to live.

"Dracula's Guest"...Bram Stroker
4 Stars
"When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer."
Themes: terror,
About: An English gentleman goes against the wishes of his carriage driver and takes a walk down a path to a village inhabited by the dead. Dracula comes to his aide, but how and why?    
Why you should read it?
Who doesn't enjoy reading a story that has suicide zombies, wolves that are more than wolves, Dracula and a daring rescue. Save it for Halloween, read it to your friends.

"A Modest Proposal"...Jonathan Swift
5 Stars
"It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms."
Themes: the plight of the Irish, British Rule
About: A gentleman decides that there is a better way to rid the British of their problems with the Irish. This 'proposal' will even help the Irish with their 'starvation problem'.    
Why you should read it?
 If you like satirical stories about social commentary, you'll love this. I think I might be ruining some of the surprise by telling you this is satire...the people who read it when it first came out didn't know, many now don't understand to this day what Swift was getting at.

"First Confession"...Frank O'Connor
5 Stars
"All the trouble began when my grandfather died and my grand-mother - my father's mother - came to live with us. Relations in the one house are a strain at the best of times, but, to make matters worse, my grandmother was a real old countrywoman and quite unsuited to the life in town. She had a fat, wrinkled old face, and, to Mother's great indignation, went round the house in bare feet-the boots had her crippled, she said."
Themes: family relationships, the relationships of brothers and sisters, faithfulness, self-righteousness
About: A little boy, who has committed sin upon sin, skips out on his first confession, only to find out that me must go it alone on a Saturday escorted by his perfect sister, no less.
Why you should read it?
If you were ever that kid who worried about what the Lord was going to do to you after you died, you will love this touching story of true confession.

Natalie...Anne Enright
4 Stars
"So Natalie put me straight. Who knows what Natalie wants or what she likes, but we know what she doesn’t like, that’s for sure. At least we do now."
Themes: family, friendship, high school, girl friendships, boyfriends
About:  A girl and her 'friendship' with a girl named Natalie, a boy named Billy and her boyfriend. On one night this girl realizes what life is truly about and she realizes what it means to be a friend and what it means to love people.   
Why you should read it?
I was a melancholy teenage girl...always thinking. When I read this story I am reminded of that fact and I am reminded that being melancholy isn't really all negative.

Wasting Time with People...Mauve Binchy
2 Stars
*sidenote: the link for this is from Mauve Binchy's website and it says that she changes stories periodically, so you may be getting a different story than I read.
"Beth tried to be friendly when John and Kitty came to live next door at Number 29. She made them a lamb stew as a supper for their first night there. They were polite and thanked her for her kind gesture but they sent out a very strong message."
Themes: friendship, envy, being neighborly
About: A woman who learns what she has (time, friendships and love) only after new neighbors move in and an accident changes their lives.    
Why you should read it?
Read this story if you like short feel-good pieces about community and, well, friendship.

The Short of It

Source

-"The short story is like an old friend who calls whenever he is in town. We are happy to hear from it; we casually fan the embers of past intimacies, and buy it lunch."

~R.Z. Sheppard quotes

          I love a good short story.
          I think that it is amazing when a writer, in less than 40 (sometimes less than 2) pages can tell you a whole entire story complete with character development, suspense and life changing themes and morals.
          I find that people who don't like short stories don't like them because a short story ask you to infer so much, sometimes it even ask you to infer the ending...most short story endings are not clear cut. I, personally, like that.

About the short story
English Companion
Collected Short Stories

Some excellent short story reviews from fellow bloggers
Exercises in Style
Blackbird House
The Interlopers
2 by Eudora Welty
Elizabeth Bowen stories
Body English (lots of short story reviews)


Short Stories: The List (My favorites)
Link is to the story itself or to the book in which it can be found.

"The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World"...Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"The first children who saw the dark and slinky bulge approaching through the sea let themselves think it was an enemy ship. Then they saw it had no flags or masts and they thought it was a whale. But when it washed up on the beach, they removed the clumps of seaweed, the jellyfish tentacles, and the remains of fish and flotsam, and only then did they see that it was a drowned man."

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love"...Raymond Carver
"My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gave him the right.
The four of us were sitting around his kitchen table drinking gin. Sunlight filled the kitchen from the big window behind the sink. There were Mel and me and his second wife,  Teresa--Terri, we called her--and wife, Laura. We lived in Albuquerque then. But we were all from somewhere else."

"My Dead Brother Comes to America"...Alexander Godin
"When we arrived in New York Bay it was already winter, and the ground was covered with a hard brittle coat of snow. The whole harbor, as far as our eyes could reach, seemed to have been enameled with one vigorous sweep of the brush; standing on the deck, the sun high overhead, it hurt our eyes to look upon so much whiteness."

"Hills Like White Elephants"...Ernest Hemingway
"The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. ..."

"Cabulliwallah"...Rabindranath Tagore
"Mini, my five-year-old daughter, cannot live without chattering. I really believe that in all her life she has not wasted one minute in silence. Her mother is often vexed at this and would stop her prattle, but I do not. To see Mini quiet is unnatural and I cannot bear it for long. Because of this, our conversations are always lively."

"Harrison Bergeron"...Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the ceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."

"Gaston"...William Saroyan
"They were to eat peaches, as planned, after her nap, and now she sat across from the man who would have been a total stranger except that he was in fact her father. They had been together again (although she couldn't quite remember when they had been together before) for almost a hundred years now, or was it only since day before yesterday? Anyhow, they were together again, and he was kind of funny. ..."

"The Story of an Hour"...Kate Chopin
"Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death."

"A Good Man is Hard to Find"...Flannery O'Connor
"The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. 'Now look here, Bailey,' she said, 'see here, read this,' and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. 'Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did.'"

"Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?"...Joyce Carol Oates
"Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie."

"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"...Katherine Anne Porter
"She flicked her wrist neatly out of Doctor harry's pudgy careful fingers and pulled the sheet up to her chin. The brat ought to be in knee breeches. Doctoring around the country with spectacles on his nose" 'Get along now, take your schoolbooks and go. There's nothing wrong with me.'"

"A Jury of Her Peers"...Susan Glaspell
"When Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got a cut of the north wind, she ran back for her big woolen scarf. As she hurriedly wound that round her head her eye made a scandalized sweep of her kitchen. It was no ordinary thing that called her away--it was probably farther from ordinary than anything that had ever happened in Dickson County. But what her eye took in was that her kitchen was in no shape for leaving: her bread all ready for mixing, half the flour sifted and half unsifted."

"A Cup of Tea"...Katherine Mansfield
"Rosemary Fell was not exactly beautiful. No, you couldn't have called her beautiful. Pretty? Well, if you took her to pieces...But why be so cruel as to take anyone to pieces? She was young, brilliant, extremely modern, exquisitely well dressed, amazingly well read in the newest of the books,  and her parties were the most delicious mixture of the really important people..and artists--quaint creatures, discoveries of hers, some of them too terrifying for words, but others quite presentable and amusing."

"The Veldt"...Ray Bradbury
"'George, I wish you'd look at the nursery.'
'What's wrong with it?'
'I don't know.'
'Well, then.'"

"The Revolt of 'Mother'"...Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
"'Father!'
'What is it?'
'What are them men diggin' over there in the field for?'
There was a sudden dropping and enlarging of the lower part of the old man's face, as if some heavy weight had settled therein; he shut his mouth tight, and went on harnessing the great bay mare. He hustled the collar on to her neck with a jerk."

"Winter Night"...Kay Boyle
"There is a time of apprehension which begins with the beginning of darkness, and to which only the speech of love can lend security. It is there, in abeyance, at the end of every day, not urgent enough to be given the name of fear but rather of concern for how the hours are to be reprieved from fear, and those who have forgotten how it was when they were children can remember nothing of this. ..."

"The Weapon"...Fredric Brown
The room was quiet in the dimness of early evening. Dr. James Graham, key scientist of a very important project, sat in his favorite chair, thinking. It was so still that he could hear the turning of the pages in the next room as his son leafed through a picture book."

"Everyday Use"...Alice Walker
"I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house."

"The Fan Club"...Rona Maynard
"It was Monday again. It was Monday and the day was damp and cold. Rain splattered the cover of Alegbra I as Laura leaved her books higher on her arm and sighed. School was such a bore. School. It loomed before her now, massive and dark against the sky. In a few minutes, she would have to face them again--Diane Goddard with her sleek blond hair and Terri Pierce in her candy-pink sweater. ..."

"The Things They Carried"...Tim O'Brien
"First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of the runsack. In the laste afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending."

and...short stories previously listed here and here!

Happy Reading!

What's your favorite short story?