Tag Archives: short story collections

I have to admit, when I heard about Joyce Carol Oates’s book, The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares: Novellas and Stories of Unspeakable Dread, I couldn’t wait to jump in.  I’m a sucker for stories that tingle the back of your spine, and with her reputation preceding her, I figured Miss Oates would deliver, and then some.

However, I was somewhat disappointed with The Corn Maiden.  The seven stories that are featured in this collection are anything but “unspeakable dread”.  I wouldn’t even classify them as nightmares.  A few are unnerving, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen in  Law and Order: SVU.    

Arranged in no particular order, the stories in The Corn Maiden are told from different perspectives and each contain different characters of different ages in different times in their life.

“The Corn Maiden” is perhaps the best of the stories in this collection.  It’s a nail-biting tale of a little girl who is kidnapped by her peer and raised to become a human sacrifice.  Perhaps the scariest of the stories in this collection is the last one, “A Hole in the Head”.  A short tale about a botched medical procedure, “A Hole in the Head” is gruesome and uncomfortable to read…and it will defiantly make you think twice about cosmetic surgery.

If you’re looking for blood and guts, monsters and vampires, look elsewhere.  The stories in The Corn Maiden are psychological in nature, toying with human suffering and the nightmares of the disturbed mind.  From human sacrifices to Botox gone wrong, these short stories are only scary in that they could happen in real life…and may have already.

However, despite the fact that I was disappointed that my expectations of the book weren’t true, I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy reading the stories in The Corn Maiden.  They all captured my interest and I easily read the entire book in 2-3 days.  Each story did have me anxious to reach the end…to find out the outcome for these unfortunate and disturbed people, but often I felt the ending of the stories a bit of a let down.

Looking for a new book to read? Check in every Friday for a “Bee Happy” post, where I share reviews of books I’ve read or other book-themed lists.

Your name:  Elizabeth Bennet.  Your mission:  to increase your chances of marrying well and improve your small family fortune.  Equipped with the devices that make every Jane Austen heroine strong and loveable (sharp wit, natural good sense, beauty, and elegance), you embark on a mission filled with decisions and trivia, all leading to your ultimate romantic and financial fate.  Throughout your journey, you gain and lose points, build up connections, and create a list of fine accomplishments…as well as a much larger list of failings.

And so begins Lost in Austen, a fabulous “choose your own adventure” style book through the novels of Jane Austen.  Filled with hilarious scenarios, comical illustrations, and true Austen wit and charm, this wonderful read lets you decide whether Elizabeth (you) ends up with Mr. Darcy or Mr. Wickam…or maybe another male figure in one of Austen’s other novels.  You decide what paths to walk, who to approach at parties, and what do to about sick sisters.  All of your decisions result in you either losing or gaining points, connections, accomplishments, or failings.  For the true fans of Austen’s wonderful books, this read is an absolute joy.

For those who are interested, here’s how my adventure turned out!

I started with 200 Intelligence Points which quickly diminished to 30.  Let’s just say I decided not to let Mr. Darcy get away with anything…and I paid for it!  Luckily my pride gained me more confidence points.  I started with 200 and ended with 230, so that’s not bad!  As for my fortune, I started with 50 and ended with 60, so not much of an improvement…I guess that’s why I have such strong confidence 😉

Throughout my travels, I gained two superior connections—Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Wickam—and didn’t manage to get any inferior connections, so that’s good.

My list of accomplishments included Fluent in French, ability to do screen covering, dancing the Boulanger, and being highly observant.  My much longer list of failings included being resentful, a love of walking in bad weather, no style, taste, or beauty, incredibly noisy, blind partiality, willfully prejudice (no surprise according to my point score!), and poorly timed liveliness.  Ugh…sigh.

Looking for a new book to read? Check in every Friday for a “Bee Happy” post, where I share reviews of books I’ve read or other book-themed lists.

When I heard that James Franco was writing a book of short stories, I was super excited to read it.  First of all, I think he’s a brilliant actor with a wide range of abilities…so I figured his writing must be similar…weird, yet strangely entertaining.  The last thing I was expecting from this book was a trip back to Creative Writing 101.

Palo Alto:  Stories depicts the confused experiences of teenagers in Palo Alto, California.  The characters are often driven to violent ends because of a lack of self-esteem or self-worth.  Infatuations, drunkenness, boredom, and sexual frustration are themes in his collection, highlighting the major theme that growing up is stressful and painful.  While I wasn’t moved or impressed by many of the stories, I will say that Franco’s attention to character voice was fantastic.  Every story read as if a teenager actually wrote it, complete with the jargon and slang of middle school life.

I was perhaps most frustrated with the lack of resolution in the series of stories.  Time after time these characters perform inhumane acts of violence and greed, but never learn anything from their mistakes.  Holden Caulfield kept wandering in and out of my mind as I made my way through the collection as Franco’s “muse” for Palo Alto.  His frustration with life, love, and acceptance in Catcher in the Rye are mirrored in many of Franco’s characters.

If I had to pick one story in the collection, I’d recommend “Tar Baby”.  I thought it was the most creative and engrossing of all of Franco’s works.  Alone this story shows what a great writer Franco can be…if only he wrote outside of the lines a little bit more.

NEXT WEEK:  Death.  It doesn’t have to be boring.

Looking for a new book to read? Check in every Friday for a “Bee Happy” post, where I share reviews of books I’ve read or other book-themed lists.

Death is a funny subject.  It can start conversations and end them.  It can make people uncomfortable and can cause fear in even the strongest of hearts.  It’s inevitable…the one fate we all have in common.  Ironically enough, for David Sedaris anyway, death is just the motivation he needs to start living.

In this collection of essays, When You Are Engulfed in Flames,  Sedaris discusses everything from his fascination with dead bodies, to moving to Japan to quit smoking…from a crude taxi driver to how his boyfriend, Hugh, was knighted “Sir Lance-a-lot”.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll find yourself wanting nothing more than to spend an evening with Sedaris and his wack-job family (yes, he’s the brother to the one and only Amy Sedaris, who makes a few appearances in these essays).

When You Are Engulfed in Flames is essentially an ode to Sedaris’s midlife crisis.  As he contemplates death and dying, the main theme of this collection begins to emerge:  how to quit smoking.  In his final essay, “The Smoking Section”, we journey with Sedaris and Hugh to Tokyo, Japan.  Set up as various diary entries, “The Smoking Section” is laugh out loud funny.  The cultural differences between east and west almost seem too stereotypical to be true.  The customs and traditions of the Japanese lifestyle both interest and scare Sedaris…and his various run-ins with electric toilets, poopy hands, and abrasive barbers make his journey all the more enjoyable…for us, anyway.

Ultimately, death always wins—regardless of how it claims a life.  “I never truly thought that I would die the way my mother did [lung cancer], but now I really, really don’t think it,” he says, after three weeks of not smoking.  “I’m middle-aged, and, for the first time in 30 years, I feel invincible.”  Thank goodness for that, both for his sake and his readers’.

NEXT WEEK:  Cooking got you down?  Tired of the same ol’, same ol’?  Why not try an aspic on for size?  Or maybe some calves’ brains?  The French may be fashionable, but their food…well, that’s another story.

Looking for a new book to read? Check in every Friday for a “Bee Happy” post, where I share reviews of books I’ve read or other book-themed lists.

“It was a dark and stormy night…”

“My father and I lay tensely side by side in total darkness, not daring to breathe.  The space was small and smelled bad.  We were flat on our backs, scarcely able to lift our heads.  Above us, the ting shifted restlessly on its bed, grunting.  I hoped it would settle itself soon.

Finally the thing stopped moving.  I counted seconds.  Was it asleep?  Or just lying there awake, waiting?

‘Now,’ my father whispered in my ear.

And very slowly we reached out and up to grasp the child’s ankles with our cold, dead hands.”

EEP!

And so begins Susan Rich’s engrossing collection of ghost stories, Half-Minute Horrors.  This little gem of a book holds more than 70 30-second ghost stories written by some of the biggest names in literature today, including Lemony Snicket, Margaret Atwood, Michael Connelly, Gregory Maguire, Joyce Carol Oates, James Patterson, R.L. Stine, and many more.

While most of these stories are geared towards kids and tweens, this twenty-somthin’ gal found herself shaking in her boots after reading a few of these stories.

This is a great book for a campfire or a rainy night spent with family and friends.  Read it cover to cover or pick and choose stories based on your favorite authors.

Half-Minute Horrors is a treat for fans of The Goosebump series, campfire ghost stories, and those who just like a little shiver down their spine!

NEXT WEEK: Things are not always the way they seem when you look through the looking glass…and for Alice Liddell, life in Wonderland was anything but a golden afternoon…

Looking for a new book to read? Check in every Friday for a “Bee Happy” post, where I share reviews of books I’ve read or other book-themed lists.