Would anybody be interested in doing a short story book club?

I would, but what authors are you thinking of? I would suggest to read an author of a different nationality each week so that it becomes varied, and even alternate between male author and female author each week. Perhaps even do 2-3 stories from different authors each week and compare them.

>>8868029
>author
>female
lol

>>8868029
I was thinking something from

Chekhov
Tolstoy
Nabokov
Carver
O'Connor
Munro
Hemingway
Maupassant

To start with

>>8867844
lol, why find when you can get it all in scribophile.com? if you haven't visited it, feel free to give a shot.

>>8868029
let's cut out the middle man and only read slam poetry by non-binary individuals of indeterminate ethnicity

>>8868161
Do you already have the selected stories and the schedule prepared?

>>8868161
I'm interested. Please add:

Flaubert
Kafka
Edgar Allen Poe
Borges.

I think it would be a good idea to have a theme so that it is easier to choose stories, like particular language or particular historical era. You can also strawpoll maybe.

>>8867844
I'm interested. How does it work? I've never been in a book club before, let alone on 4chan.

>>8867844
I am reading Hemingway now so I would be interested. Are newreaders welcome?

>>8868029
Don't forget we also need to read at least 50% POC to make up for all the time literature was dominated by boring, dead, white males.

>>8868029
>>8868201
Tadeusz Różewicz

I'd be interested too. Could we add more scandi writers? Currently reading some Askildsen and very much enjoying.

Sounds good. What about contemporary writers?

>>8868132
>Being in a short story thread and not knowing about Alice Munro
>Being this retarded

I'm down.

>>8868161
>>8868201
This is a good list.

Would it offend y'all's delicate taste if we threw Gene Wolfe, Harlan Ellison, and Ursula Le Guinn into the mix?

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>>8867844
Nice idea, I'd definitely be up for it.

But it'd have to be short stories that are easily available online, since nobody's gonna want to buy a different short story collection every week. But most famous short stories are online so that shouldn't be a problem.

Also, this is just my personal preference and it's not a big deal at all if people reject it, but might it be an idea to take several short stories by the same writer instead of a different writer every week, so we're picking up on a writer's style and commonalities between the stories. So "Pierre Menard", "Library of Babel", and "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", by Borges for three weeks, then "The Lady with the Dog", and "The Bet" by Chekhov the next two weeks (or something along those lines; these are just examples)

That way the reading process is cumulative and we have more reference points by the end of the second or third week, to get more out of the stories.

Also noticed no one's mentioned Jimmy Joyce yet and we need to do some of the stories from Dubliners

Honestly we could probably just start by working our way through this book:
The World's Greatest Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486447162/
It's only $3 but better yet all the stories are online. It contains:

Bartleby the Scrivener (1853, Melville)
The Necklace (1884, de Maupassant)
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886, Tolstoy)
The Man Who Would Be King (1888, Kipling)
The Yellow Wallpaper (1892, C.P. Gilman)
The Fortune-Teller (1896, Machado de Assis)
The Lady with the Toy Dog (1899, Chekhov)
How Old Timofei Died with a Song (1900, Rilke)
The Path to the Cemetery (1901, Mann)
The Prussian Officer (1914, D.H. Lawrence)
Araby (1914, Joyce)
Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law (1917, Pirandello)
The Mark on the Wall (1921, Woolf)
A Hunger Artist (1922, Kafka)
The Garden-Party (1922, Mansfield)
The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket (1924, Kawabata)
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1926, Hemingway)
The Sacrifical Egg (1959, Achebe)
A & P (1961, Updike)
Borges and I (1962, Borges)

>>8869065
Thats a quality list. I'd be up for this

We should really do some Road Dahl too

Someone get a spreadsheet or something going because there are a lot of storied being tossed around. I like the idea of going through one collection well and fine, but maybe one with material that is less frequently anthologized.

I would like to read some contemporary stories as well, but I understand they're not in the public domain.

Curious how this is gonna work.

Post it on the discord if you're a member

>>8869065
I would be interested if the list was not so pretentious. What about some of G.R.R.Martin's early work? A song for Lya s a fantastic story.

>>8869201
>pretentious

Why would you use a buzzword like that? Don't you have your own containment general?

>>8869159
I am not a member. How do I join?

>>8869250
ask someone to send you an invitation

i'm too lazy tbqh

How about, beside stories, longer poems also? Rimbaud's longer works, Mallarmé, Baudelaire...

>>8868161
Dostoevsky too! And Borges.

>>8869201
Who let the redditor in

>>8869065
Sounds like a pretty solid list, I enjoyed all of what I've read from here.

Someone should create the threads weekly after he has read the story, and ideally start the OP with a couple of questions/background to encourage discussion, then we're all set.

>>8869201
>things I don't like are pretentious
>let's do this thing I want to do
>you better not call me a pleb or else you're just pretentious

>>8869201
>classics?
>nah man, let's read some genre fiction author
>that'll show those elites

>>8867844
Sounds nice.

I'm in as well, could use some more short stories

>>8869201
Is this satire

>>8867844
yes

>>8870044
All right I'll do it. This Sunday I'll make the first /lit/ short story club. We'll follow this book starting with Bartleby the following Sunday. As for this Sunday we'll discuss Voltaire's The Good Brahmin:

http://www.online-literature.com/voltaire/4411/

A story short enough that those happening upon the thread can read it on the spot and join in.

>>8873149
Is there an easy way I can keep track of the group or should I just watch out for the threads?

>>8868161
>>8868201
>>8869024
>>8869065
>>8869398
Bumping with interest. The authors stated above are all good choices; this ought to be fun.

>>8873149
Thanks, anon. So will we read a new short story each Sunday from The Worlds Greatest Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)?

>Short story thread

>Not one single mention of Mark Twain

>>8873149
Just one, though? One per week seems too little, it's not like it will take the entire week to read it. We should read 2-3 stories, depending on the length.

>>8874250
>Short story thread

>Mentioning Mark Twain

>>8874259
This. 2 stories a week seems reasonable, what do you say lads? Will it be one short story a week or two? If it's going to be two a week then would we discuss those two stories every Sunday at once or ?

>>8874416
I'd say two per week and discuss them both in the same thread. Let's see if it works out. If it doesn't, we'll stay with one.

>>8874259
>>8874416
>>8874438
Yeah but were all busy people with our own reading we'd like to do. I think two stories would lower interest really. How about this, each week is one story from the book and we pick another story by that same author as supplementary reading. I'm not really familiar with Melville so someone more knowledgeable than me would have to say what we should pair with Bartleby, but for example the week of The Hunger Artist we could have In the Penal Colony as supplementary reading.

>>8874455
So, you are saying that instead of reading 2 short stories per week (something that doesn't even take you one day) because people have other stuff to read, we should instead read 2 short stories per week?

Brilliant.

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>>8874455
Melville has other good short stories, pic related are some of them.

But I agree with this anon >>8874467, if we are going to read two stories anyway, we might as well do different authors. Or read two of the same author, but don't pretend that it will mean less stuff to read. If you are joining a reading group, you are expected to read for the group. We ain't taking into account your other current reads, we don't care, we all have them.

>>8874455
I actually like this better. The whole supplemental reading idea makes it all the more interesting so we could familiarize ourselves with authors we're not too well-read on. So what'll it be? Will we read 2 short stories from the book OP recommended or should we read one of the short stories & then a supplemental reading on another short story from the author we just read?

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I think we should just stick with one

>ctrl-f
>no Hoffman
>no Gogol
>no Hawthorne
>not even mentioning three of the greatest short story writers

And wouldn't it make more sense to start earlier, anyways?

>>8874488
>>8874615
The other idea of the supplemental reading is that it's a story picked by the community in the preceding weeks thread. In addition to not being 'required' reading, as in anons don't have to have read it to join in the thread.

Plus if we do two stories by two different authors each week than the threads will be rather schizophrenic.
And the point isn't to read a bunch you niggas can do that on your own, the point is to have a rich in depth discussion.

>>8874725
Fair enough, then I support the supplemental reading proposal.

>>8874647
This.

I have enough reading to do as it stands.
But I can cram one in there if the discussion is meaningful, with two it becomes a burden and people will quit after the first weeks.

>>8867844
i would like this just for the social interaction. if we are ever gonna do this sighn me up

Super down but def needs Gogol and DFW.

i'm in, make sure the thread title draws some attention

>>8873149
>http://www.online-literature.com/voltaire/4411/
>>8874259
this. The good brahmin is like the shortest short story of all time, we should at least read 2

Guys seriously, this is a good idea, but unless we're reading something longer like Bartleby or The Willows or the Snows of Kilimanjaro, a short story shouldn't take any longer than 30-45 minutes to read. We should challenge ourselves a little more if we're going to commit to a discussion group

>>8869065
Count me in OP, will order a copy asap.

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Absolutely in. I will read anything. I'm new to actual reading .

In regards the two 'two in one week idea', I think it limits quality in favour of quantity. There won't be enough time to allow each story to ferment and thus generate provoking discussion, and I can imagine that threads will inevitably segue into discussion of the author as a whole.

We should focus on one story at a time, and set a date on which to proceed to the next one on a case-by-case basis. There's a lot more to talk about in Borge's works than Hemingway's imo.

Really, I'm just against the idea of running parallel discussions. The quality of discussion would degenerate quickly.

Why not focus on one story at a time, even if only for a few days, and then move onto the next one asap. It would require strict maintenance on the part of whoever's running it, but there's no point in assigning a week for something as short as 'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.'

Thoughts everyone? I would really like to see this idea come to fruition

>>8867844
Let's.

>>8873149
Ok, I just went ahead and read it and I hope I don't already start the discussion on it, but if al the stories in the list are this bad I suggest we pick some other list.

>>8875780
Oh, it's not even on the list, so never mind. Retarded first pick though.

>>8875682
Maybe if we cut it down to one every 3 days. If I only have to read one a week for the discussion I'm probably going to lose interest in following along to be honest

>>8875780
>>8875784
>not liking Voltaire

>>8867844
No one here is interested in books anon.

>>8868029
Or we could pick books based on putative quality, and not on their author-age. But I guess your idea is really great too

I would also like to suggest Stefan Zweig get added to the potential list, his short stories are wonderful

>>8875518
>We should challenge ourselves a little more if we're going to commit to a discussion group
Agreed, other anons have suggested that we do a short story every 3 days or so. I think that's reasonable, as much as I like The Snows of Kilimanjaro for instance there's just not enough content there to keep a discussion going for a full week.

Reading lenghtier works would sort that out, but the key idea was to limit ourselves to short stories, not novellas. Keep it varied, thematically rich and make available for free, so as many people can join in as they wish, without much investment. If we want to make it more challengnging and interesting for discussion, we could read anthologies once it's up and running. A /lit/ readalong of Dubliners would be fantastic for instance

I'm in, but how are we organizing the meetings? Are we doing it on a communication app like slack or on /lit/?

>>8877804
Idk what is slack but I assumed we'd keep it a recurrent thread in /lit/

>>8877693
REEEEEEE

>>8875682
This anon's right. If we do supplemental reading the discussion will most likely be about the author rather than the book itself. And if we do to two books a week by a different author then the discussion thread will just be a havoc. 1 short story a week sounds like the best idea imo.

The Good Brahmin is trash and is only going to reinforce the pathetic fetishistic fantasy of people on /lit/ as being

>tfw to smart to be happy

I'd prefer one story per week. People who want to read more can do so on their own, but people with little time might not be able to.
I really like the idea either way.

>>8878375
>I'm smarter than Voltaire
I bet you ain't even read The Chinese Catachism

>>8867844
If dubs we do a short story every 3 days.
If not, then we do one a week.

>>8878576
They are independent short stories. If you don't have time to read 2 short stories in a week (pleb), just participate in one of the threads. You won't be "behind" for the next ones, as they are not chapters of a book. As for parallel discussions, you guys realize we can make a new thread for each short story right?

Honestly I would just start a thread with the first story and a strawpoll oan it so people can vote if the new thread is made in 3 or 7 days.

I'd make it myself but people would expect me to keep being the OP and fuck that.

Has anyone made the thread yet?

>no cortazar
????

>>8880716
>Someone else on /lit/ has read Cortázar beyond Rayuela

Lies

>>8867844
I would be down to do it.

Should we make a doc or spreadsheet to record all this stuff down?

>>8880746
of course dude
i loved everything in "end of the game and other stories" when i read it years ago, and i'm reading through "a change of light" right now

>>8880746
>Imbloing cronopios y famas aint hes most famous shit
Im new to /lit/ but everyone has read thos stories man
Or at least said they have

>>8880888
Seconding this, a nice pastebin or something
Nice digits btw

>>8881691
I've never even heard of him, and I would like to branch out into some Spanish literature.

I've been woefully deprived of anything from Spanish speaking portions of the world.

OP here

Sorry for being AWOL, I have been overseas.

I have compiled a list of stories with online pdf links, so they are accessible to all.

I will make a thread and we can begin after the Christmas holidays are over.

>>8869065
Great suggestion. I'm getting a copy.

You're a legend, anon.

>>8869201
Stop throwing this word around.

>>8881719
Neato. Let's do et.

>>8879273
I didn't say Voltaire is shit, I said The Good Brahmin is shit

>>8881882
Very much this

>>8881691
>Im new to /lit/ but everyone has read thos stories man
Nope, I've started a couple threads on him and they either die with no replies or they turn into Rayuela discussions by anglos.
I'm not saying Rayuela is a bad book, far from it, but his shorter fiction is miles ahead of it. Honestly he's up there with Borges as the best short story writer in Spanish for me

>>8868192
underrated post.

>>8881719
Great topic. Might I suggest some William gass as well? I have a PDF of his stories I can share.

>>8882263
>Honestly he's up there with Borges as the best short story writer in Spanish for me

You haven't read much then if you think Cortazar is as good as Borges or the best short story writer in Spanish.

>>8882400
Cortázar is like Borges counterpoint, especially in cortázar more experimental efforts
Check out sabio con agujero en la memoria or something like that (i dont know the name in English, sorry) its him kinda poking fun at Borges style

>>8882409
Spanish is my mother tongue, so no problem there.

That story is certainly interesting, but I don't think he is making fun of Borges's style.

Cortazar was very much influences by Borges (as any writer writing in Spanish after Borges was), but there are many more writers of short stories that are better than Cortazar, like Monterroso, Felisberto Hernández, Rulfo etc. Which is not to say that Cortazar wasn't good, but he is not as good as to call him "the best".

>>8882423
Monterroso i havent read, i would totally agree with you on felisberto but i would say cortázar is way better than Rulfo, ofcourse we only have el llano en llamas to judge him on short stories while cortázar has pretty big catalog.
Ive always found cortazars style to be increadibly dynamic while Rulfo feels more like an atmosphere kinda guy so, tastes, i Guess...

>>8882455
You should totally read Monterroso, he is brilliant and you can find all his work on google.

While I agree that Rulfo is more about atmosphere than Cortázar, I don't think that quantity correlates to quality. Todo lo contrario, we would say in Spanish. Rulfo does not experiment with form as much as Cortázar, if at all, but what he does he does it good. That alones makes him greater than Cortázar, since he is not restrained by the chains of experimention and trial and error.

Count me in!

In addition to short stories, it might be interesting to read excerpts from longer works.

Guts by Chuck Palahniuk... nuff said

>>8882852
Goddamn these memes. Palahniuk has so much better stuff... I suggest the first story from "make something up", i dont remember its name but i really love the way it creates an explores its narrator mainly through the way he talks (if you guys could recc me more stuff that does this it would be greatly appreciated)

So... Has anyone done anything about this? I dont want this idea to just die

>>8883752
I think people are waiting until after the holiday.