Favorite short stories

Drew Ott

Drew Ott

Wish I were banned.
I've always been a big fan of short stories.

What are some of your favorites?

I'll start:

'Nobody Said Anything' by Raymond Carver. - A story of a young teenage boy who skips school to go fishing. One of my favorite endings ever. Can be found in the collection of short stories titled, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?".
 
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I believe from last year in school it was a heroic poem, but I can't remember any other short stories. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. But back to the poem was Beowulf - No author has still not yet been found (Movie didn't follow the story after the first 10 minutes) but back to topic those two I recall I liked. I'll probably pick up a few more later on.
 
Several by Edgar Allen Poe.
http://www.poestories.com/stories.php

The Tell-Tale Heart is the most memorable along with his poem The Raven.

A few others:

TheBlack Cat
The Cask of Amontillado
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Masque of the Red Death
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Pit and the Pendulum
 
A few off the top of my head...

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Conner
"Zoe" by Salinger
"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by Salinger
"The Woodrow Wilson Dime" by Jack Finney
"The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke
 
A Leg of Lamb, Roald Dahl (A young pregnant wife murders her police-detective husband, and creatively disposes of the murder weapon)

The Human Operators, AE Van Vogt and Harlan Ellison (Human beings are held prisoner by the AI-controlled spacecraft aboard which they were fighting a war)

The Stone Boy, Gina Berriault (A ten-year-old boy accidentally shoots and kills his beloved older brother)

The Settlers, Ray Bradbury (Members of a human expedition to Mars are hunted by one of their own number, whose sympathies are with the Martians)

At the Mountains of Madness, Howard Phillip Lovecraft (A university expedition to Antarctica discovers things and places they wish they hadn't)

Voyagers, Ben Bova (A human astronaut boards an alien space probe passing through our solar system)

Common Time, James Blish (A human astronaut encounters a very strange entity while testing a new spacecraft drive)

Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night, Algys Budrys (A future media mogul battles his deadliest rival for control of a new and vital technology)

Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell (Orwell's own experiences living on a shoestring in those cities)

...And He Built a Crooked House, Robert A. Heinlein (An architect creates a tesseract-shaped house, with unintended consequences)

Neutron Star, Larry Niven (A space pilot is hired to discover what killed the crew of a ship on a research mission)
 
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Nemesis, Arthur C. Clarke (Two refugees from their respective times - a Hitleresque dictator from 200 years on, and a scholar from thousands of years later - encounter one another on an Earth so far in the future that the rest of humanity has gone extinct)
 
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Anything by Harlan Ellison

Some of my favs: Prince Myskin and Hold the Relish, Mefisto in Onyx, "Repent Harlequin!" Said the Tick-Tock Man, etc.

And if you want to read one that will chill you to the bone read Croatoan.
 
The Amphibians, Kurt Vonnegut (people learn to extract themselves from their bodies and live non-corporeally; society at large doesn't like it)

The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry (a struggling husband and wife each sacrifice something precious, in order to find Christmas gifts for one another)
 
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My wife tucks me in to bed with the short stories of
" Birbal and King Akhbar "
Also the Transformers make a good bedtime story.
 
I could talk about short stories and writers all day!

To start with, Yukio Mishima's "Patriotism" is one my by favorite pieces.
 
Maybe it might be better if we give the title and a very short description. It's taking me a long time to read about the short stories and find out where I can read them.

Editing my first post accordingly.
 
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