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Post by Sphi on Mar 28, 2004 2:04:03 GMT -5
I've read quite a few good short stories this year in English class. Off the top of my head, some of my favourites are "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane and "Desiree's Baby" by Kate Chopin. I think the ability to interpret these stories in different ways is one of their best qualities. I enjoyed very much hearing what other people were thinking when they read it, especially if they took a completely different outlook than I did.
Has anyone else read these stories? Or do you have any favourites of your own that you could recommend to us?
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Post by En on Mar 30, 2004 11:56:27 GMT -5
Hmm... I'll have to think about it a bit, but pretty much anything by Ray Carver is bound to be great ("Cathedral" was my favourite), and I actually like Hemingway's short-short stories, and of course "The Dead" by James Joyce (imho, his 2nd most important work, and by far the most readable)... in fact, I'd recommend "The Dead" to anyone here, in a heartbeat.
Oo, and "A Rose for Emily" by Faulkner. It's macabre, but it's totally brilliant. Special mention for being one of two pieces of writing I've ever seen that get away with narrating in the first person plural.
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Post by Sphi on Mar 30, 2004 14:25:57 GMT -5
"A Rose for Emily" was pretty good. It makes you rethink about what you just read, you know? Like with the chronology, you try to figure out exactly what happened. Oh, and that reminds me of "Masque of the Red Death", which I also really loved. It freaked me out the entire night, though.
I read a story by Hemingway--I think it was called "Big Two-Hearted River"--and I couldn't get over how the language was so...simple. But not simple in a good way. It was frustrating how choppy and insignificant everything he was writing seemed. I only liked two parts in that story because it allowed for free interpretation, in my mind--a little flashback near the middle and the very ending.
"The Dead", huh? I'll check that out sometime. If it's not in our massive short story book, I can probably find it online somewhere.
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Post by En on Mar 30, 2004 17:52:40 GMT -5
Yeeeah... Hemingway's style is definitely distinctive, and can feel choppy, especially to people who like more of the DH Lawrence sort of stuff. I dunno. "Hills Like White Elephants" was probably my favourite of his.
As for "The Dead" -- le voila. Enjoy
OoOoOo... Poe's short stories are like candy for my dark side... I used to give recitations of "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Cask of Amontillado." "The Gold-Bug" is harder for modern audiences to get into, but Heart and Amontillado are timeless.
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Calavera Diablos
Ravenclaw Alumni
Draws grown men wearing underpants outside their trousers
Posts: 1,547
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Post by Calavera Diablos on May 25, 2004 16:26:15 GMT -5
Graham Greene's "The Destructors", very powerful peice of writing.
OH, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson is another amazing short story I read in highschool. It has a lovely little twist.
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Post by Sphi on Jul 6, 2004 23:30:49 GMT -5
I know what "The Lottery" is about, but I've never read it. I think it's just common knowledge to know what the twist is.
A couple nights ago, I reread "After Twenty Years" by O. Henry. Great story. I didn't quite remember it (I think I read it...four years ago?), and since it was O. Henry, it was just as exciting as reading it for the first time. I also liked "Gift of the Magi"...maybe I should reread that. Hehe.
I'm definitely in a reading mood. I'm going to read "The Dead" now. *runs off*
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Post by En on Jul 8, 2004 14:28:58 GMT -5
Oo oo, let me know what you think ;D
It's always a little weird for me to go back and read "The Lottery," or O. Henry stuff, or even Hemingway, because I've been away from them for so long and yet have been reading so many things that were influenced by them. Like, I can totally see the influence of O. Henry or de Maupassant on Bel Canto (Ann Patchett), which I just finished recently... and the evidence of O. Henry's passage in film is everywhere, absolutely everywhere.
And yet, I was one of the ones who didn't know what the plot twist was in "The Lottery" before I read it, so my memory of it is as seared into my brain as... as my first viewing of Citizen Kane, which also has a twist I didn't know about.
I can't help thinking of Paris when I think about stories with twists. There are these completely blind corners in Paris, some possibly remaining so from days when Roman roads were the main thoroughfares in France, and besides the millions who live in Paris, millions more have seen them at least once, and millions more than that have heard about some specific ones. And so there are places in a city of literature that, though they would trip you up if you were just driving in a strange town, somehow seem familiar, even when you're turning the corner for the first time....
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Post by Sphi on Jul 8, 2004 15:58:47 GMT -5
Okay well after I finished reading "The Dead" (which was a lot shorter than I thought it would be) I was just like, "What?" I'm still pretty weirded out. I immediately asked my sister to come read the story and tell me what happened, but she thought it was just a normal dinner party, which definitely isn't what I saw. I looked at the title and then at the last half of the story, and all I could deduce was that the Conroys died on their way to the party but made it there anyways... Either that, or it's a dead-party.
I looked around on that same website and read a bunch of other stories, too. I love "The Nightingale and the Rose" and "The Sphinx without a Secret" by Oscar Wilde (the second one reminds me of me sometimes... ).
I haven't had nearly as much contact with all the literature/art you have, so finding literary influence isn't quite as easy for me. But I like your last paragraph. It was fun reading it for some reason. I'd like to think that I could relate, because for the very least, we can experience familiar feelings, no matter where we go or who we're with.
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S.S Tigress
Slytherin Alumni
Shots in the dark from empty guns, never heard by anyone
Posts: 1,345
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Post by S.S Tigress on Nov 6, 2004 18:33:28 GMT -5
I tried to read "The Dead" En, but It was so difficult for me to read it thoroughly on the web. Especially the way it's been cut up into different pages, it isn't easy for me to focus on what I'm reading rather than how many pages I have left. D'you know of what book it's published in, if not in it's own book?
My summer reading was Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger. I don't have English until next semester (questions to how that one works, PM me) so for now I only like one of the stories the most out of them all and that was Teddy. I love it so incredibly much, thinking about it makes me want to go now and reread that one story.
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Post by Sphi on Nov 11, 2004 17:39:41 GMT -5
Oh geez. *feels like an idiot* I just realized that I didn't read the whole story that first time. That would explain why I couldn't make sense of it. Ti, I can copy the text of the story here, if that would help. I'm going to finish it now myself.
We've read quite a few very good stories in Spanish class (in Spanish, of course, so discussing them really helped ). If you can find a good translation of them, I'd suggest Julio Cortazar's "Continuidad de los parques", Jorge Luis Borges' "La muerte y la brújula," and Isabel Allende's "Dos palabras."
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Post by nancy on Feb 26, 2006 17:50:09 GMT -5
Waaa! Continuidad de los parques is my favourite Julio Cortazar story... I'm in love with it, it's amazing... yeah, I love that one.
What about Isaac Asimov? Or Ray Bradbury? The Sound of Thunder is a great story, I love it. And everything in "The Martian Chronicles" which is really just a connection of loosely tied short stories... It's the fourth time I read that book, I love them all. I have a special fondness for the first one though, The Rocket Summer.
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