Tag Archives: fiction

50 fiction recommendations from the last 5 years

Today, I start working part-time my favorite bookstore – Changing Hands in Phoenix. I am incredibly stoked because I love bookstores. I often spend any free time that I need to kill at a local indie or at Barnes & Noble. I even worked at BN in Augusta, Maine and Tempe, Arizona (where I dated someone at each one… so there’s that).

For nearly three years, now I have interviewed authors for various sites including Electric Literature and the Millions. I’ve provided some reviews and criticism as well; mostly at Writer’s Bone. If you didn’t already know, I love books. Now that I am going to be on the front lines of the book world a few days a week, I went through my favorite works of fiction – mostly novels, but some short story collections as well – so I could be ready to suggest some works people may have missed.

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Ep. 12: Erica Ferencik | Author of The River at Night

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Erica Ferencik is a Boston-based author whose recent release, The River at Night is a modern Deliverance set in the deep woods of Maine. I conducted a full-length interview with her for Electric Literature that talks about the research that went into writing the book and so much more.

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25 books from 2016 you need to read

Reading is probably the least sexy part of pop culture. If there is a ranking it would go: keeping up on Peak TV, catching the latest Oscar bait, and hearing the newest band before the rest of the world does. Yet literature is the longest, strongest pillar of culture, pop or not.

Here are 25 works of fiction – in alphabetical order – that made me laugh, cry, shiver, and think.

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Interviews with two National Book Award nominees

The longlist for the National Book Award in fiction was released today. Of the ten authors, I was lucky to interview two of them earlier in the year. Both Garth Greenwell and Karan Mahajan wrote two of my favorite novels released in 2016 and if I had to vote for a top five to make the shortlist, both would find a spot as finalists. Read the interviews of Greenwell and Mahajan after the complete list of nominated authors.

Congratulations to:

  • Chris Bachelder, The Throwback Special
  • Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You
  • Adam Haslett, Image Me Gone
  • Paulette Jiles, News of the World
  • Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs
  • Lydia Millet, Sweet Lamb of Heaven
  • Elizabeth McKenzie, The Portable Veblen
  • Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
  • Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn

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5 more short stories you can – and should – read online right now

UPDATE 2: Yet another 5 short stories you can – and should – read online right now can be found here.

UPDATE: Another 5 short stories you can – and should – read online right now can be found here.

My friends over at Paste Magazine wrote an article called “5 Short Stories You Can – And Should – Read Online Right Now.” It’s good. It contains one from the 1880s, 1950s, and three that were written since 2010.

It got me thinking about short stories that I like. I started seeing if they were available for free – either legally or not. We know that there is a lot on the World Wide Web and it’s easy to find a lot of PDFs or just copy/pasted stories out there. Here are five that I like; in no particular order. Unsurprisingly, most of them come from my favorite source of short stories: The New Yorker.

“That Bus is Another World” by Stephen King – 2014 

I wouldn’t call myself a Stephen King fan (I’m not outside of Different Seasons and Misery). I’m not a fan of horror. But I am a fan of a suspenseful narrative. And that’s what this story is. You’ll have to read a PDF scan of Esquire to get this online, but it’s there. It follows a man named Wilson who is late to a meeting he flew into New York to take. In typical King fashion, the story is not what it appears. There’s a bus, obviously. What happens on that bus is definitely another world away from Wilson. It’s a breezy read that leaves you both wanting to know more, but begging that you’ll never find out.

“Cold Pastoral” by Marina Keegan – 2012

I have been obsessed with the late Marina Keegan as of late. Her story is tragic: a rising literary star who graduated from Yale with a job waiting for her at The New Yorker, only to have her life cut short at 22 by a car accident. Her family and writing mentor put together a collection called The Opposite of Loneliness (named for an essay she wrote shortly before commencement). “Cold Pastoral” is one of those stories. It eerily deals with death. In it, the narrator’s sort-of-boyfriend dies. The character is left with a feeling of emptiness, but also of anxiety. She wasn’t the love of his life; they were just consistently having sex. Keegan beautifully weaves in numerous emotions in such a short amount of space.

“Alma” by Junot Diaz – 2007

Diaz’s This is How You Lose Her collects nine interlinked stories surrounding the relationship between a young man named Yunior and his love interest Alma. This is the shortest in the collection with a word count under 1,000, but that doesn’t mean there is any less impact. Written in second person, you become Yunior. You’re called bad names as Alma claims horrific things about you. You’re sucked in almost instantly and aren’t let go until Alma decides to let you go. There’s a resounding punch to the gut that any man – or even woman – who reads this will take some time to recover.

“Story, With Bird” by Kevin Canty – 2014

This was published pretty recently. Admittedly, I don’t know much about Canty, but I love this story. It’s not a traditional story in the sense that it just delves into bits and pieces of a narrative, but leaves a lasting impression of those moments in time. It’s about a couple who likes to drink more than they like each other. It really impacted me because it was similar in tone and theme to a story I had been editing for a few weeks. If you want to read a good, atmospheric story, then this is one short on you definitely need to click.

“Just Before Black” by James Franco – 2010

This may not be the best story by the actor-turned-director-turned-curator-turned-writer. Franco might not even be a good writer. But this was my first introduction to the actor’s stories and it stuck with me. It was nice to read a story by someone who wasn’t a “writer.” Not yet anyway. Reading it again four years later, I understand why not everyone was in love with Franco’s early work. Yet, it’s still interesting to read if you like how his views on suburbia developed; especially in his collection Palo Alto.

“The Point”

The following as a short piece of fiction adapted from the episode “Double Double Date” of the ABC series The Wonder Years. The dialogue and a portion of the narration was taken directly from the episode written by Sy Rosen and Mark B. Perry.

We had just run off from both of our dates at the school dance. The night was warm and the sky was clear. Stars sparkled over the placid town that nurtured me my entire life. We parked in my parents’ car at a make-out spot on a cliff, known as the Point, overlooking the town in my tux and her in a ravishing pale dress. The effect the dress had by contrasting with her skin drove me wild. We couldn’t believe we ran off, but we had no choice. It was as if the stars, and the universe, and destiny had bound us together.

I moved to her and put my arm around her shoulders, but my cufflink had gotten caught in her corsage. Her face turned from total infatuation to total confusion in an instant. I leaned over and struggled to fix the problem. I was closer to her than ever before, and I didn’t want to break free. As I fiddled with my silver hook and her lilies, I awkwardly relayed a story about two people kissing and getting their braces stuck together. She made fun of me for believing that they had to go to the hospital, but when I finally dislodged from her, I saw her looking deep into my eyes, mouth agape and breathing heavy.

“Maybe I’ll just stay here for a while,” I said with my arm still around her. She was pushed into me; accepting the fact I would never let her go.

“You’re so cute,” she said, her eyes never breaking from mine. “You’ve always been cute.”

I wanted her again. We had been torn apart for too long. I gently took her chin to guide her eyes back to mine once more.

“I guess that’s why you’ve been crazy about me since the day we met.”

“I was not,” she responded. She couldn’t stop staring and smiling. “You were crazy about me.”

Now I couldn’t stop staring and smiling. “You’re right.”

And that’s when it happened. At that moment, all the feelings that she and I had been trying to bottle up finally came rushing to the surface. We couldn’t hide our passions anymore. I stroked her face and felt her soft lips. Her breath was warm on my fingers. So I leaned in closer and kissed her… Right on the eye.

I pulled away and our eyes locked. Hers broke away for a moment, but returned with a fire. And then she kissed me… On my eye.

I stroked the back of her head. Feeling her velvety, midnight black hair and whispered, “What happened?”

She looked at me wide-eyed and just as nervous as I was before telling me, “I’m not sure.”

And the thing was neither of us knew. Maybe our aim was off. Or maybe it was something else.

Our glances broke again, but she spoke.

“I was just thinking about the first time we ever met.”

“Yeah,” I barely was about to get the word out of my throat. “You were wearing a little yellow raincoat, and that stupid yellow rain hat.”

Her smile grew. Our faces were inches from each other and she said, “You were soaking wet.”

“My brother told me my folks got me a horse,” I revealed to her part of the story she never knew. “When I ran outside, he locked the door.”

“You came to my house to dry off.”

“Yeah. Right,” I said, always whispering as quietly as she was. “So,” I paused to notice the beauty in her deep chocolate eyes, “Do you want to try that again?”

Without missing a beat, she informed me, “I’d like to think about it for a little while.”

Even though I was hurt because I wanted nothing more than to kiss her, I agreed with her and said that’s what I wanted. She nuzzled her head against me, resting it on my shoulder. Maybe she wanted to kiss, and I know I did. We sat there holding each other as I waited passionately. The long cuddle continued. But the thing was that’s all we did. Maybe it was happening too fast. Maybe we wanted to hold on to what we had. Or maybe we both knew there were things we had to find before we found each other.

All we really knew for sure was, as we sat there looking out over the lights of the town where we had grown up together, it all felt right. It all felt… Perfect.