Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Short story collections...

...have the very best titles you'll find anywhere.

I mean, just listen to these things:

Too Much Happiness

A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You

Shout Her Lovely Name

Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry

Cowboys Are My Weakness

The Secret Society of Demolition Writers

This Will Be Difficult to  Explain

This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You


It makes me really yearn to actually like short story collections more than I do.

But... instead, I just admire their titles from afar.


6 comments:

Bybee said...

Raymond Carver had good titles too, like "Will You Please Be Quiet Please" ...there might be a comma in there somewhere. I don't know.

Unruly Reader said...

Bybee -- Oh, that title is amazing. Makes me want to read it. Even though short stories... I don't adore them.

Christy said...

I picked up Jason Brown's "Why The Devil Chose New England For His Work" for the title alone. I couldn't even make it through the first story of the collection though.

Unruly Reader said...

Christy -- Great title! But I know what you mean about the stories not always living up to the title...

The Well Read Fish said...

I just read one of Pam Houston's stories from the Cowboy book. The story was "How to Talk to a Hunter."

I wish I liked short stories more too, since that is what I write. I am going to try to read more though. I think I like longer reads because I like to get caught up in the worlds of stories. Short stories are too short to engage me as much.

Maybe I'll write a collection and call it "Short Stories for Those Too Small to read the Tall Ones" or something.

Unruly Reader said...

Fish -- LOL@ "tall ones"! That's excellent.

I agree -- about liking to sink into the world of a story, so a novel is more satisfying than a short story.

But I'll bet your short stories are different. And I'll bet they have great titles, too. Yes?