Kyle Minor rarely thinks small. When asked if he could maybe let my readers know if there was a novella he would suggest they read, he opted to send me a list...of 100. One thing you'll note is that Kyle is modest and does not include his own novella, "A Day Meant to Do Less," which only was included in Best American Mystery Stories the year it was published. From Kyle:
One hundred novellas you should read, right away (in no particular order):
1. "The Old Forest," by Peter Taylor.
2. "One of Star Wars, One of Doom," by Lee K. Abbott
3. "The Age of Grief," by Jane Smiley
4. "Goodbye, Madagascar," by Jennifer Spiegel
5. "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
6. "Auslander," by Michelle Herman
7. Mitko, by Garth Greenwell
7. Mitko, by Garth Greenwell
8. "All Through the House," by Christopher Coake
9. "The Palace Thief," by Ethan Canin
10. The Barracks Thief, by Tobias Wolff
11. "The Dew Breaker," by Edwidge Danticat
12. Street of Lost Footsteps, by Lyonel Trouillot
13. "The Beast God Forget to Invent," by Jim Harrison
14. Clown Girl, by Monica Drake
15. "The Womanizer," by Richard Ford
16. "The Bear," by William Faulkner
17. "The Talk Talked Between Worms," by Lee K. Abbott
18. "Gusev," by Anton Chekhov
19. "Fathers and Sons," by Ivan Turgenev
20. "The Death of Ivan Ilych," by Leo Tolstoy
21. "Heart of Darkness," by Joseph Conrad
22. Steps, by Jerzy Koszinski
23. From Old Notebooks, by Evan Lavender-Smith
24. Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson
25. Indignation, by Philip Roth
26. Everyman, by Philip Roth
27. "Goodbye, Columbus," by Philip Roth
28. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. Seize the Day, by Saul Bellow
30. "Sonny's Blues," by James Baldwin
31. "Makedonija," by Miroslav Penkov
32. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
33. "Poachers," by Tom Franklin
34. So Long, See You Tomorrow, by William Maxwell
35. Cataclysm Baby, by Matt Bell
36. "Puttermesser and Xanthippe," by Cynthia Ozick
37. Voices from the Moon, by Andre Dubus
38. The Master of Go, by Yasunari Kawabata
39. Snow Country, by Yasunari Kawabata
40. Seventeen, by Kenzaburo Oe
41. J, by Kenzaburo Oe
42. The Lover, by Marguerite Duras
43. Bloodbrothers, by Richard Price
44. The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
45. "Good Old Neon," by David Foster Wallace
46. The Shawl & Rosa, by Cynthia Ozick
47. "In a Wilderness Station," by Alice Munro
48. "Meneseteung," by Alice Munro
49. "The Love of a Good Woman," by Alice Munro
50. "Brokeback Mountain," by Annie Proulx
51. "A Bear Came Over the Mountain," by Alice Munro
52. "The Collectors," by Matt Bell
53. The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker
54. By Night in Chile, by Roberto Bolano
55. "Legends of the Fall," by Jim Harrison
56. "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," by Stephen King
57. "The Body," by Stephen King
58. "Low Men in Yellow Coats," by Stephen King
59. "Hearts in Atlantis," by Stephen King
60. The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing
61. Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to entricate., by Johannes Goransson
62. Ask the Dust, by John Fante
63. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," by F. Scott Fitzgerald
64. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
65. On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
66. The Cement Garden, by Ian McEwan
67. Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy
68. Carrie, by Stephen King
69. Kaddish for the Unborn Child, by Imre Kertesz
70. "We Don't Live Here Anymore," by Andre Dubus
71. "Adultery," by Andre Dubus
72. "Finding a Girl in America," by Andre Dubus
73. "The Pretty Girl," by Andre Dubus
74. Great Jones Street, by Don DeLillo
76. Oh What a Paradise It Seems!, by John Cheever
77. A Heaven of Others, by Joshua Cohen
78. The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain
79. Double Indemnity, by James M. Cain
80. I Lock My Door Upon Myself, by Joyce Carol Oates
81. The Long March, by William Styron
82. "June Recital," by Eudora Welty
83. "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," by Katherine Anne Porter
84. "A Long Day in November," by Ernest Gaines
85. "The Making of Ashenden," by Stanley Elkin
86. "Death in Venice," by Thomas Mann
87. "The Dead," by James Joyce
88. The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James
89. "Spotted Horses," by William Faulkner
90. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, by Carson McCullers
91. "A River Runs Through It," by Norman MacLean
92. Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote
93.The Double, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
95. Desperate Characters, by Paula Fox
96. The Story of Lucy Gault, by William Trevor
97. "Reading Turgenev," by William Trevor
98. "My House in Umbria," by William Trevor
99. Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
100. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Kyle Minor is the author of In the Devil's Territory, a collection of stories and novellas. (note from Dan: You can also pick up an inexpensive sample of Kyle's work if you own a kindle as his story, "The Truth and All Its Ugly" is also available for only $1.99)
This is why he's such a good teacher.
Posted by: Staci | June 04, 2012 at 09:08 AM
Jiminy, I've only read 11 of these. And I prefer shorter books.
Posted by: Pete | June 08, 2012 at 04:05 PM