Many times, you are so engrossed in the story that you are almost living with the characters from the story. However, as you reach the climax storyteller pulls out the smartest trick of revealing something shocking which will twist the entire story. Today’s storyteller is a master of such surprises, O. Henry. This American storyteller was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina with the name of William Sidney Porter. While writing the stories and sending it to editors, he used a number of pen names including S.H. Peters, Oliver Henry / O. Henry, James L. Bliss, T.B. Dowd, and Howard Clark. It was O. Henry which rang the bell with almost everyone and it stuck with him like forever.
There are two conflicting points of views about reading habits of writers. Some say it’s very helpful to read other authors while others put their foot on the opposite line. But just like I mentioned Neil Gaiman’s reading habits of his childhood, O. Henry also grew up reading all the time. He read almost everything which he could get his hands on from classics to dime novels but Lane’s translation of One Thousand and One Nights and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy were his favorites. O. Henry wrote the stories which are playful and have a witty narration. His stories often end with surprising plot twists. This writing style gave him the reputation of American answer to Guy de Maupassant.
The book I am taking in my TBR is titled with one of his famous story, The Voice of The City. This collection was first published in 1908 and contains 25 stories. There are hundreds of imprints and editions of this book out there on Amazon and other platforms but a good thing, this classic is available for free on Kindle as a public domain book converted in digital format from the physical edition by a community of volunteers. So, guys, what are we waiting for to read this amazing master of surprise? Click the following link and get your Kindle copy.
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 261.0 KB
Print Length: 174 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1522704760
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Sold by: Amazon Asia-Pacific Holdings Private Limited
Language: English
Adding this to the amazing bucket of blogs at #BlogchatterA2Z.
Have you ever got attracted to fantasy, horror and ironic humor at the same time? Then, my friends, you should definitely check out Neil Gaiman, the master of contemporary fiction. Neil Gaiman was born on 10th November 1960 in a Polish – Jewish family living in Portchester, Hampshire. Neil grew up with the staple reading of great fantasy writers like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll and Dennis Wheatly which must have sowed the seeds of fiction writing in the mind of this amazing storyteller. R. A. Lafferty guided Neil with the encouraging and advising letter when he sent him the Lafferty pastiche.
But as my personal liking and the theme of this year’s A to Z challenge, I would like to present you, Fragile Things, a short story collection by Neil Gaiman. “Let me tell you a story. No, Wait, one’s not enough, I’ll begin again… let me tell you stories of the months of the year, of ghosts and heartbreaks, of dead and desire. Of after-hours drinking and unanswered phones, of good deeds and bad days, of trusting wolves and how to talk to girls.” This is what Neil says in the blurb when he introduces us to the 32 stories in this book. As the subjects of these stories and Neil’s style of writing suggest, we are in for the stories which will dazzle all our senses, trigger the hunting of our imagination while we are engrossed in the reading. Come on guys, let’s just right away jump in the fantasy world Neil has created.
When India was struggling for its independence under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and many more, a girl was born in Matualalaya of Dhaka in Bengal Presidency of British India in a literary family of Ghataks. Manish Ghatak, well-known poet and novelist of the Kallol movement and Dharitri Devi, Writer and Social worker was blessed with a baby girl on 14th January 1926. With a strong alma matter of Vishwa-Bharati University and Calcutta University and literary culture at her home, Mahasweta Devi has written over 100 novels and over 20 collections of short stories.
The book I am bringing to you is called Bitter Soil. This is the collection of most compelling stories written by Mahasweta Devi which are translated from Bangla by Ipsita Chanda. Three of the stories in this collection were previously translated either by Devi herself or by other authors. The stories included in this collection sheds light on Devi’s political and economic humanism perspectives about human life. Mahasweta Devi has worked in the welfare of tribal communities of West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states of India. This interest in tribal welfare is always reflected in her stories. This collection not an exception to that either. Though the book is translated from Bengali, I have read it still carries the same excellence and mastery of storytelling. Thanks to Ipsita Chanda for giving access to these amazing stories told by one of India’s finest storytellers.
Lydia Davis, An American writer who is famous for her flash fictions along with her short stories, novels and essays. Lydia Davis, born in Northampton, Massachusetts, USA, has translated many French literary classics, including Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. Her stories are full of wit, insight and genre-defying formal inventiveness. Many of her stories revolve around very common people which you can find around you and find particular moments in those common lives and bring a humor out of them.
Her one of the new story collection is ‘Can’t and Won’t’ published in 2013 contains the stories which comment on the quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life with very sly humor. Amy M. Homes, famous American writer known for her controversial novels and unusual stories, says nothing buy “read her now!” in praise of Lydia and Can’t and Won’t. Cover of a paperback book is very simple with the title and author name in white and a pleasant sky-blue color in the background. So, let’s go and meet the characters which Lydia has developed for these stories and try to enjoy what we all live on a day – to – day basis.
Ireland is equally famous for its literature and long tradition of fantastic storytelling as it is for its Guinness. Kevin Barry from Limerick City follows the same tradition of storytelling which reads like a modern-day Dubliners. Born in 1969, Kevin has to wait for his first ever story collection gets published. “There are little kingdoms” was published in 2007 and it received a huge critical acclaim and won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
While describing his feeling about getting published after such a long wait, Kevin confessed to “haunting bookshops and hiding to spy on the short fiction section and see if anyone’s tempted by my sweet bait” in 
When you read such praising words for some storyteller, you don’t think twice before picking up her book as your TBR. Jhumpa Lahiri is Bengali storyteller born in England and brought up in Rhod Island USA. There’s a debate about her ‘Indian’ness as she hasn’t been in India for a major part of her life, but her stories revolve around Indians and Indian migrants in the west. Many of her stories are published in the American journal The New Yorker including The Long Way Home and Cooking Lessons. Her debut story “collection Interpreter of Maladies has won a prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is my pick for this TBR entry of Adi’s Journal.
