With a few days delay, it’s finally here: the Bookworms Carnival for November. This month’s theme is short stories. I don’t know why, but there were not that many submissions (this is why I sometimes included more than one submission from the same blog). Maybe it’s because of the last-minute change of host, maybe it’s because my litblog is fairly new and doesn’t have a huge amount of readers yet, maybe us bloggers just didn’t write that much (about) short stories in the past few months. But I can assure you that the amount of submissions says nothing about the quality of the posts. And about that I can only say, that I had a blast reading your reviews and your short stories! I also discovered quite a few new blogs and writers that I will be returning to for sure.
I am sure that you will also find lots of reading fun in this Carnival.
So let’s get started!
Short stories you wrote
Seamus Kearney wrote a very gripping and suspenseful story about a man who hears sounds in the next-door apartment. It seems like someone is making his way through the wall. But is that really what it is? Go over to Shameless Words to read Something Quite Brazen!
Mark A. Rayner wrote a science-fiction story about Henry, a human who wants to tell stories but who is limited by the world he is living in: a world of cyborgs with implants. You can read Under the Blue Curve at Mark’s blog The Skwib.
Reviews
Melanie at The Indextrious Reader held a Short Stories Week in which she posted a review of a different collection of short stories each day. Accidentally or not, all the authors she reviews are Canadian and female: Kate Sutherland, Sarah Klassen, P.K. Page, L.M. Montgomery, Ethel Wilson, Frances Itani and Jacqueline Baker. For Melanie’s very diverse series of seven reviews, go here.
Cloudscome at A wrung sponge wrote a very interesting and positive review for 145th Street Short Stories, a collection of stories by Walter Dean Myers.
Raidergirl3 at An adventure in reading reviews The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, a collection of short stories by Alistair MacLeod. The stories are all set in Nova Scotia in Canada and tell about the hard lives of the fishermen and coalminers living there and the choices they have to make to make life better for themselves and for their children.
At the same blog there is also a review of The Specter Bridegroom, a short story by Washington Irving. Raidergirl3 muses about whether our ideas of what a scary story is have changed over the ages.
Imani takes us to Brittany on the other side of the Atlantic when she reviews a collection of Breton folk tales at The Books of my Numberless Dreams.
At The hidden side of a leaf Dewey reviews The Squirrel Mother by Megan Kelso, a collection of “graphic short stories”, probably a one of a kind genre.
Dewey also reviews three short stories by Margaret Atwood, Hardball, Cold-Blooded and Epaulettes.
Chris at Book-a-rama shares her favorite collections of short stories: The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson, Great Irish Tales of Horror compiled by Peter Haining and The Collected Stories of Carol Shields.
Petunia at Educating Petunia shares how reading Edith Wharton’s ghost story The Eyes gave her a sleepless night.
Becky reviews the psychological sci-fi stories in The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury over at Becky’s Book Reviews.
Kalyan Banerjee at Thus Spake Kalyan writes about the nostalgia he felt when reading the stories in Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.
And finally, here is the bonus post that needs a category all of its own: Gentle Reader over at Shelf Life talks about six-word stories. What they are? Head over and find out. I guarantee you’ll have fun.
Next month’s Bookworms Carnival is hosted by A Striped Armchair. The theme is non-fiction and the deadline for submission is December 14. You can email your submissions directly to Eva at astripedarmchair [at] gmail [dot] com.
A Haunted House: The Complete Shorter Fiction - Virginia Woolf
Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger
In Europa - Geert Mak
Eine Hand voller Sterne (A Hand full of Stars) - Rafik Schami
Thank you for hosting! It looks great
Great round up! Thanks for hosting.
Good job here! Thanks also for the link to my story … although “Kierney” should read “Kearney”.
Nicely done!
I’ve been waiting to read this. Thanks so much for hosting it.
Ouch! Sorry! Fixed it.
Great-I’ll advertise this on my blog today!
I planned on submitting, but when I went through all of my short story posts, I realised that almost all of them also talked about things other than short stories. So I thought that would have been a little weird.
Doesn’t “graphic short stories” sound like they’ll be X-rated? Same with graphic novel, only at least people have started to know what graphic novel really means. I with there could be a new term, like pictorial novel or visual novel.
I just don’t really read many short stories. I think I overdosed on them in college. Lit majors get assigned tons of them, I guess because a semester is too short to assign many novels.
Thanks for hosting. This looks great; a lot of new posts to explore.
I know Dew, it does sound sort of x-rated. I’m sorry if this gives you the wrong reputation around here. That is so not my intention!
I don’t read that many short stories either. Once in a while. I think I prefer novels because they last longer. Reading short stories to me feels a bit like dipping your toe in the sea or at best going in till your knees. Whereas reading a book feels more like a good swim. Maybe that’s just me and I just don’t appreciate a good short story.
On the other hand, I am still reading the Sherlock Holmes stories. But for the last couple of weeks they have been lying untouched in the corner. They might stay there for a while longer.