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58 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
To contain the conversation in some kind of structure that isn't just completely random. 
And LOL, I initially wondered how this thread exploded from 2 or 3 posts to two dozen in like 15 minutes... it just didn't seem that loaded a topic.
I love Historical fiction, Mystery, non fiction... I often have a couple of books going at the same time.
Love the idea. 
if I possibly can. Good on ya, Seabeyond for bringing this back up.
I read ALOT. 
i need a hug
It might just be easier to handle, and easier for more people to participate, if they could read some and not all of the stories.
Canadian women have long had a very strong literary voice, and short stories is a genre in which some have excelled. Alice Munro is the, um, mistress of the genre. She writes about women's lives and her writing is very accessible. The only story I remember specifically from reading long ago is the one with a line that goes something like "More like birds than birds themselves", which I think every time I see an image that reminds me of the story. Lives of Girls and Women, 1971, that was the one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munro
Alice Ann Munro (née Laidlaw; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize. Generally regarded as one of the world's foremost writers of fiction, Munro writes about the human condition and relationships seen through the lens of daily life. While the locus of Munro’s fiction is her native Southwestern Ontario, her reputation as a short-story writer is international. Her "accessible, moving stories" explore human complexities in a seemingly effortless style. Munro's writing has established her as "one of our greatest contemporary writers of fiction," or, as Cynthia Ozick put it, "our Chekhov."
I throw her out as an example of the short story suggestion, but I do think she herself is worth considering.
Many of Munro's stories are set in Huron County, Ontario. Her strong regional focus is one of the features of her fiction. Another is the omniscient narrator who serves to make sense of the world. Many compare Munro's small-town settings to writers of the U.S. rural South. As in the works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, her characters often confront deep-rooted customs and traditions. However, the reaction of Munro's characters is less intense than their Southern counterparts'. Thus, particularly with respect to her male characters, she may be said to capture the essence of every man. Her female characters, though, are more complex. Much of Munro's work exemplifies the literary genre known as Southern Ontario Gothic.
Munro's work is often compared with the great short story writers. For example, the American writer Cynthia Ozick called Munro "our Chekhov." In Munro stories, as in Chekhov's, plot is secondary and "little happens." As with Chekhov, Garan Holcombe notes: "All is based on the epiphanic moment, the sudden enlightenment, the concise, subtle, revelatory detail." Munro's work deals with "love and work, and the failings of both. She shares Chekhov’s obsession with time and our much-lamented inability to delay or prevent its relentless movement forward."
A frequent theme of her work—particularly evident in her early stories—has been the dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in. In recent work such as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) she has shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, of women alone and of the elderly. It is a mark of her style for characters to experience a revelation that sheds light on, and gives meaning to, an event.
Munro's spare and lucid language and command of detail gives her fiction a "remarkable precision," as Helen Hoy observes. Munro's prose reveals the ambiguities of life: "ironic and serious at the same time," "mottoes of godliness and honor and flaming bigotry," "special, useless knowledge," "tones of shrill and happy outrage," "the bad taste, the heartlessness, the joy of it." Her style places the fantastic next to the ordinary with each undercutting the other in ways that simply, and effortlessly, evoke life. As Robert Thacker notes: "Munro's writing creates ... an empathetic union among readers, critics most apparent among them. We are drawn to her writing by its verisimilitude—not of mimesis, so-called and... 'realism'—but rather the feeling of being itself... of just being a human being." Many critics have asserted that Munro's stories often have the emotional and literary depth of novels. The question of whether Munro actually writes short-stories or novels has often been asked. Alex Keegan, writing in Eclectica, has a simple answer: "Who cares? In most Munro stories there is as much as in many novels."
Munro's work is often compared with the great short story writers. For example, the American writer Cynthia Ozick called Munro "our Chekhov." In Munro stories, as in Chekhov's, plot is secondary and "little happens." As with Chekhov, Garan Holcombe notes: "All is based on the epiphanic moment, the sudden enlightenment, the concise, subtle, revelatory detail." Munro's work deals with "love and work, and the failings of both. She shares Chekhov’s obsession with time and our much-lamented inability to delay or prevent its relentless movement forward."
A frequent theme of her work—particularly evident in her early stories—has been the dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in. In recent work such as Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) and Runaway (2004) she has shifted her focus to the travails of middle age, of women alone and of the elderly. It is a mark of her style for characters to experience a revelation that sheds light on, and gives meaning to, an event.
Munro's spare and lucid language and command of detail gives her fiction a "remarkable precision," as Helen Hoy observes. Munro's prose reveals the ambiguities of life: "ironic and serious at the same time," "mottoes of godliness and honor and flaming bigotry," "special, useless knowledge," "tones of shrill and happy outrage," "the bad taste, the heartlessness, the joy of it." Her style places the fantastic next to the ordinary with each undercutting the other in ways that simply, and effortlessly, evoke life. As Robert Thacker notes: "Munro's writing creates ... an empathetic union among readers, critics most apparent among them. We are drawn to her writing by its verisimilitude—not of mimesis, so-called and... 'realism'—but rather the feeling of being itself... of just being a human being." Many critics have asserted that Munro's stories often have the emotional and literary depth of novels. The question of whether Munro actually writes short-stories or novels has often been asked. Alex Keegan, writing in Eclectica, has a simple answer: "Who cares? In most Munro stories there is as much as in many novels."
Aha, this might be the one to go for:
Her story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" was adapted for the screen and directed by Sarah Polley as the film Away from Her, starring Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent. It debuted at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. Polley's adaptation was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, but lost to No Country for Old Men.
Then the lazy like me could just watch the flick! Or maybe we should wait for her next one:
At a Toronto appearance in October 2009, Munro indicated that she received treatment for cancer and a heart condition, the latter requiring bypass surgery. At that time, she indicated that her next work would involve a theme of sexual ambivalence.
omg -- "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" is available on line!
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/12/27/1999_12_27_110_TNY_LIBRY_000019900
Wouldn't that be an easy way to ease into the process for a starter?
Now in a thread about reading, don't anybody be saying my posts are too long!!
as this thread might indicate, perhaps short stories really are a good idea.
Anybody want to look at "The Bear Came Over the Mountain"
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/12/27/1999_12_27_110_TNY_LIBRY_000019900
and see what they think?
Just a suggestion for a jump-start to the season.
I kind of like the idea that it was also a movie, particularly that it was directed by Sarah Polley.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0491747/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Polley
Many of the actors are Canadian -- Gordon Pinsent, a grand old man of Cdn TV and cinema, Alberta Watson, Wendy Crewson -- but it also stars Olympia Dukakis and Julie Christie (which says a lot for the young Sarah Polley, 27 at the time). And the theme song is Neil Young's Harvest Moon. Just don't read the whole plot!
Tout, tout.