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Bed

Tao Lin · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

Nine Stories

J.D. Salinger · 208 pages

First published short story volume by the author of Catcher In The Rye.

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary FictionDepression
❤️

Can't and Won't: Stories

Lydia Davis · 304 pages

A fifth collection by the author of the National Book Award finalist, Varieties of Disturbance, includes pithy one-liners, exploratory observations and letters of complaint, including "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," in which a professor is stymied by her choices.

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

Malgudi Days

R.K. Narayan · 250 pages

Introducing this collection of stories, R. K. Narayan describes how in India “the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story.” Composed of powerful, magical portraits of all kinds of people, and comprising stories written over almost forty years, Malgudi Days presents Narayan’s imaginary city in full color, revealing the essence of India and of human exper

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

The Collected Stories

William Trevor · 1,261 pages

William Trevor is one of the renowned figures in contemporary literature, described as 'the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language' by the New Yorker and acclaimed for his haunting and profound insights into the human heart. Here is the ultimate collection of his short fiction, with dozens of tales spanning his career and ranging from the moving to the macabre, the humorou

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

Bad Behavior: Stories

Mary Gaitskill · 203 pages

Powerful stories of dislocation, longing and desire which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation that is groping for human connection. (Or, more simply put, the angst of people-who-wear-black.)

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary FictionDry Humor
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Homesick for Another World

Ottessa Moshfegh · 304 pages

Features stories, in which the flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful, but beauty comes from strange sources. In this book, the author shows us uncomfortable things, and makes us look at them forensically - until we find, suddenly, that we are really looking at ourselves.

Short StoriesSparse ProseLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

Cathedral

Raymond Carver · 227 pages

Twelve stories deal with loneliness, loss, the tragic banality of everyday life, and redemption.

Short StoriesSparse ProseLiterary FictionDepression
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In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

Tobias Wolff · 175 pages

Among the characters you'll find in this collection of twelve stories by Tobias Wolff are a teenage boy who tells morbid lies about his home life, a timid professor who, in the first genuine outburst of her life, pours out her opinions in spite of a protesting audience, a prudish loner who gives an obnoxious hitchhiker a ride, and an elderly couple on a golden anniversary cruise who endure the off

Short StoriesSparse ProseLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

Pieces for the Left Hand

J. Robert Lennon · 213 pages

A collection of 100 short pieces-- some not even a page long-- full of subtle humor and surprising incidents. They are grouped into seven themes.

Short StoriesSparse ProseLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

Olive Kitteridge

Elizabeth Strout · 288 pages

Olive Kitteridge: indomitable, compassionate and often unpredictable. A retired schoolteacher in a small coastal town in Maine, as she grows older she struggles to make sense of the changes in her life. She is a woman who sees into the hearts of those around her, their triumphs and tragedies. We meet her stoic husband, bound to her in a marriage both broken and strong, and a young man who aches

Short StoriesSparse ProseLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

Venus Drive: Stories

Sam Lipsyte · 192 pages

Short StoriesSparse ProseLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

The Bed Moved

Rebecca Schiff · 139 pages

"A New Yorker, trying not to be jaded, accompanies a cash-strapped pot grower to a "Clothing Optional Resort" in California. A nerdy high schooler has her first sexual experience at geology camp. A young woman fundraises for a social-media savvy cancer patient whose circle of supporters grows increasingly obsessive. A college student, the night of her father's funeral, watches an old video of her

Short StoriesSparse ProseLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

Reasons to Live

Amy Hempel · 129 pages

This collection of fifteen stories deals with the strategies of emotional survival and offers sharp, brittle, and intelligent looks at staying alive, at how to manage a life truly one's own, and how to resist becoming a victim.

Short StoriesSparse ProseLiterary FictionDry Humor
❤️

A Clean, Well Lighted Place

Ernest Hemingway · 30 pages

As a Spanish café closes for the night, two waiters and a lonely customer confront the concept of nothingness.

Short StoriesSparse ProseLiterary FictionDepression
❤️

The Nimrod Flipout: Stories

Etgar Keret, Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature · 176 pages

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary Fiction
❤️

Stories

Anton Chekhov · 348 pages

Called the greatest of short story writers, Chekhov changed the genre itself with his spare, impressionistic depictions of Russian life and the human condition.

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary Fiction
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The Voice Imitator

Thomas Bernhard · 114 pages

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary Fiction
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Great Dream of Heaven

Sam Shepard · 186 pages

"In these eighteen stories, Sam Shepard taps the same wellsprings that have made him one of our most acclaimed - and distinctly American - playwrights: sex and regret, the yearning for a frontier that has been subdivided out of existence, the comic gulf of misapprehension between men and women, and the even deeper gulf that separates men from their true selves.". "A fascinated boy watches the gri

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary Fiction
❤️

A Stranger in this World

Kevin Canty · 180 pages

A Stranger in This World marks the debut of a powerful new talent. With a voice akin to those of Denis Johnson and Richard Ford, westerner Kevin Canty is a versatile and intelligent writer whose stories both shock and transfix. In this extraordinary collection, he portrays - with frightening calm - the unpredictable darkness of everyday life. Canty describes territory we all know well, but with a

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary Fiction
❤️

The Life of a Stupid Man

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary FictionDepression
❤️

Close Range

Annie Proulx · 287 pages

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short-story collections of our time. Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in these breathtaking tales of loneliness, quick violence, and the wrong kinds of love. Each of the stunning portraits in Close Range reveals characters fierc

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary Fiction
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How We Are Hungry

Dave Eggers · 224 pages

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary Fiction
❤️

Lizard

Banana Yoshimoto · 180 pages

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary Fiction
❤️

Last Night: Stories

James Salter · 132 pages

A superbly accomplished new collection explores the acclaimed author's signature themes: love, honor, sacrifice, friendship, and abandon. In these taut, powerful stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments.

Sparse ProseShort StoriesLiterary Fiction
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