December Book Recommendations: Short Stories
Do you need something new to read over winter break but don’t have the time or attention span for a full novel? Do you want a way to make Chanukah feel special even though we still have school? Well, I can recommend some short stories! This Chanukah I’m going to be reading a different short story each night and currently, these are the four collections of stories that I am picking from, each one I’ve already read before. They are all books I highly recommend for any time, whether that’s Chanukah or some free time over winter break.
1. All These Wonders from The Moth
The Moth is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the art of storytelling, and as well as publishing this book, the staff has a created podcast. All These Wonders is a collection of 45 true stories about facing the unknown. The storytellers include famous names like Hasan Minhaj and Tig Notaro, as well as a high school student, an astronomer, and a female spy from World War II. With so many stories included in the compendium, you can pick ones you find interesting and there’s something to take away from each one. It’s a great reminder of humanity’s perseverance and capacity for kindness, which I found quite comforting.
2. Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
My copy of Difficult Women is well-loved, to put it nicely. I constantly reread it because it is just that good. It’s a collection of 25 stories about women; some obviously otherworldly and some more realistic or familiar, which can sometimes make them more disturbing. They tell stories about women’s lives in modern America, raw pictures of social pressure and violence. Gay writes tales about women recalling being kidnapped as children and a glass woman who married a stone-thrower. It’s full of dark themes but manages to be comforting in the way that it shows how even though these problems are common, no woman is alone in these feelings. At the end of each individual story,I have the same feeling as I have at the ending of an incredible book: not quite sure what to do now that it’s over, but with a vague feeling that I should take a walk or drink some tea. It’s a book about women, but the amazing storytelling makes it a great read for anyone.
3. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
Machado’s debut novel Her Body and Other Parties is a lot like Difficult Women. In fact, one of the quotes on the back cover is by Roxane Gay. Her Body is also a book about women and the violence visited on their bodies. This is a book of eight stories, some of which are a bit longer than can be read in a single sit-down, but they are so worth the time. In one world, each woman has a ribbon somewhere on her body and no men understand why, until one unties it from his wife’s neck, while in another world a woman documents her sexual encounters as a plague ravishes the earth–which now seems very topical. Unlike Difficult Women, this book contains more science-fiction and psychological horror stories. Difficult Women is disturbing because of how real it is, while Her Body and Other Parties is largely otherworldly and absurd, though still too stinging to be written off as fantasy. The writing is extraordinarily skillful, but the contents are not for the faint of heart. I highly recommend it, but proceed with caution.
4. Lost at Sea by Jon Ronson
Someday I will run out of Jon Ronson books to recommend, but today is not that day. Lost at Sea is a collection of 24 stories he covered in his travels along his career. This book is full of true stories with topics including modern-day superheroes, the dark past of a Christmas-themed town, and the telekinetic mythos that returning contestants on “Deal or No Deal” have latched onto. The collection is divided into six sections, which have titles like “The Things We’re Willing to Believe” and “Stepping Over the Line.” They’re stories of some of the most bizarre fringes of the modern world. Consistently amusing and occasionally morally ambiguous, these tales explore the limits of the human mind. If not for Ronson’s journalistic style of writing, I would probably forget that these are stories of true phenomena, incidents that are so well-documented that you could Google them. This book is an education on the strangest parts of humanity, and it’s so entertaining you might not check your phone until you’ve finished the whole thing.
