Showing posts with label Short stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Short stories. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Haruki Murakami fans are in for a treat...

Are you a fan of Haruki Murakami? Then you need to pick up this weeks The New Yorker Magazine!

Haruki Murakami writes fiction filled with bits of surrealism and humor; themes dealing with isolation and loneliness. And somehow he is able to open up his characters and show us parts of ourselves. His writing is wildly popular! Not only in Japan, his birth place, but all over the world. When there is something new written by Murakami, word spreads fast. A prime example of his popularity is his forthcoming book, IQ84, which was a novel published in three volumes in Japan between 2009 & 2010. The first printing sold out in one day, and sold one million copies in one month. We've been waiting in the U.S for the translation of the novel to come our way for over a year, but will finally have our chance to read it in October 2011.

What can we expect in The New Yorker Magazine? A short story, U.F.O. in Kushiro, written by Haruki Murakami that's described as "Short story about a Japanese man who attempts to piece together his reaction to his divorce by taking a trip north to bleak Hokkaido." Such a matter of fact group of words put together to describe something written by a writer that deceptively uses the everyday to surprise us with the unbelievable.

If you subscribe to The New Yorker, you can access U.F.O. in Kushiro from The New Yorker website via their digital online edition. If you don't subscribe, don't forget to pick up your March 28th, 2011 copy of The New Yorker where ever magazines are sold!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Short Story Reading Challenge 2010

The Short Story Reading Challenge 2010

This past Sunday I posted about short stories, listed some great authors that have short story collections and wrote how I really wanted to make an effort to read more short stories. Fortunately there usually is a challenge for almost every occasion, and so I've signed up to participate in The Short Story Reading Challenge 2010. This is the perfect way to be encouraged to read more short stories! Here are the different ways you can participate...

Here are the Challenge Options:

Option 1:Simply commit to reading ten short stories by ten different authors over the course of 2010. If you're relatively new to reading short stories, any ten will do.

Option 2: If you’ve already got a lot of short stories under your belt, read ten short stories by ten writers whose work you have not yet read.

Options 3: Commit to reading between five and ten short story collections over the course of 2010. Again, if you're a short story novice, the world is your oyster as far as selection is concerned.

Option 4: If you're a seasoned short story reader, read between five and ten short story collections by writers whose short stories you have not yet encountered.

Option 5: This is the custom option which you can tailor your reading list to best meet your personal reading aspirations. You might wish to craft a short story reading list that focuses on a particular place, or era, or genre.

*In the words of Mavis Gallant, short story writer extraordinaire, she advises... Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait...

I am choosing Option 1, reading ten short stories by ten different authors! Two of the books I just picked up to complete part of this challenge are Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat, and Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro. I'm thinking of spending a leisurely afternoon at my local library and reading some more short story collections there... Interested in learning more? Head on over the The Short Story Reading Challenge Blog to learn more, signup, and to get some great reading suggestions from other participants!

I'll list here the stories I have read, the authors and the books that the stories are from and my thoughts on what I read, so check back every once in a while to see how it's going, (suggestions here are always welcome!) and to hopefully find some great suggestions from what I read! Good luck if you decide to participate! I look forward to having some fun discovering new authors!

Happy reading... Suzanne