Reddit reviews Collected Fictions
We found 25 Reddit comments about Collected Fictions. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
For the first time in English, all the fiction by the writer who has been called “the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century” collected in a single volume
Hard to choose just one favorite, so here are a few of mine:
Collected Fictions is one of my most prized possessions. Any fiction suggestion someone else may mention will be in here.
My favorite SF short story writers (in no special order):
EDIT--added Amazon links
EDIT2--Also Gardner Dozois' "The Year's Best Science Fiction" is always ridiculously good. I haven't read this year's collection, but I am sure it's excellent.
Everyone should do themselves a favour a get a copy of this book.
I know I must be missing some, but these are all that I can think of at the moment.
Fiction:
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
White Noise by Don Delilo
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by DFW
Infinite Jest by DFW
Of these, you can't go wrong with Infinite Jest and the Collected Fictions of Borges. His Dark Materials is an easy and classic read, probably the lightest fare on this list.
Non-Fiction:
The Music of the Primes by Marcus du Sautoy
Chaos by James Gleick
How to be Gay by David Halperin
Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
Secret Historian by Justin Spring
Of these, Secret Historian was definitely the most interesting, though How to be Gay was a good intro to queer theory.
Reading Arno Schmidt's - Collected Stories and really enjoying them so far. It's my first dip into his writing and I am loving his playful prose and extreme use of punctuation. I have just gotten to the more experimental "Country Matters" section and love it so far. I'm curious to once I'm done check out his novels to see how he tackles more long form stories. Anyone else read Arno Schmidt?
Interspersed with this I am reading Borges' - Collected Fictions and I am not enjoying them quite as much. I'm wondering is it just the nature of the chronology of them? seeing how everyone fawns over ficciones but not necessarily his whole oeuvre of short stories. Will the later ones get better? I'm interested in Borges because I know Italo Calvino was basically obsessed with him.
I'd just buy the excellent Collected Fictions and then, if you want, Selected Non-Fictions. They're nice, inexpensive volumes you may be able to find in a used book store. The non-fiction work is, to my mind anyway, less interesting than the other (which is often fiction pretending to be non-fiction anyway).
If you want specific books, just read Ficciones or The Garden of Forking Paths first, though there's at least a few great stories in every book.
Apart from 1984 others that I have on my list:
[Technetronic Era Brezzinski] (https://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Ages-Americas-Technetronic/dp/0313234981/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484536562&sr=1-1&keywords=technotronic+era) (NWO blueprint)
[Fictions, Borges] (https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Fictions-Jorge-Luis-Borges/dp/0140286802/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484536608&sr=1-2&keywords=fictions+borges)
[Brave New World , Huxley] (https://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-World-Revisited/dp/0060776099/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484536696&sr=1-3&keywords=brave+new+world)
[Making of a President, Roger Stone] (https://www.amazon.com/Making-President-2016-Orchestrated-Revolution/dp/1510726926)
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Check this I just did a list of alternative media channels that worth it
[TOP LIST 2016 and Beyond: Friends vs Enemies of The Movement, Based News Sources vs Fake News and More] (https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5o472i/top_list_2016_and_beyond_friends_vs_enemies_of/)
Dante is a pretty traditional part of the Western canon, but you can probably make the argument if you try.
Some other books to consider (and I'll even give you male protags):
(And I know you probably don't have time to read any/all of these before school starts, but they're good books to be aware of, and you should check them out if you can.)
However long the list, make some room for anything by Jorge Luis Borges.
For a really short list: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius.
If you have more time: Collected Fictions.
I have this collection of his fiction - I’m not sure but I think it includes all his short story collections. There is also a non-fiction volume and a poetry volume in the same set.
You cannot be disappointed with anything Borges so fire at will.
> I'm not seeing anything online from Borges that could be called a trilogy. Am I misunderstanding you?
I never realized how many editions are being published. I had in mind this trilogy: Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poems. I don't know how obvious it is through the screen, but they line up rather well as a full representation of his work in one lovely little series in real life.
Labyrinths and Brothers Karamazov are ridiculously good. Be warned though, Brothers Karamazov vacillates between a slow, ass-dragging chore of a book and the kind of page turner that keeps you up at nights. There were definitely a number of times I wanted to give up on it, but I'm glad I saw it through to the end. It's probably the single most life-changing book I've ever read.
Also, for Borges, you may just want to get his Collected Fictions instead of Labyrinths. It has all of the stories from Labyrinths, plus quite a bit more.
http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Fictions-Jorge-Luis-Borges/dp/0140286802/ref=pd_sim_b_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=1K9VFZHP5VY9QRWN55VT
The one you really want is this one: Collected Fictions https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140286802/.
All his best stories, a lot of them, and all very well-translated. IMO, this is the essential Borges collection in English. I think every story mentioned in this thread is in this book.
Don't stop there, just get all of his work.
Classics: Tristram Shandy, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, The Grapes of Wrath. All wonderful in their own ways. Tristram Shandy is very 'post-modern' in feel depite being from the 1700's
I'm also rather fond of 'classic' short stories, so I can reccommend various collections like this or this or this - all collections I've read and enjoyed. Cheever, O'Hara, Chekov, Carver are all well worth your time.
Borges is fascinating and strange - a great conversation starter.
Mystery/Thrillers: James Ellroy's LA Quartet, George V. Higgins (The Friends of Eddie Coyle, etc.), Chandler's The Long Goodbye, Ross MacDonald's The Chill, Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me...
There's loads of great sci-fi out there - start with a Gardner Dozois "Best of" and branch out. Philip K Dick (Ubik is a good start). Charles Stross Accelerando. William Gibson. Collections of short stories are great: Rewired, Mirrorshades, various 'best of' collections. Swanwick, Sterling, Egan.
As mentioned Douglas R Hofstadter's stuff is great non-fiction (philosophy? linguistics? cogsci? AI?) with a decidedly playfull streak that makes it a joy to read.
Borges is a good choice, for sure. In fact, this is a really excellent collection that should make OP happy for a while.
Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite writers in any genre, and I second your recommendation of him in general, but I wouldn't consider him a magical realist. He wrote straight-up fantasy and science fiction, he just did it differently than anyone else.
Another recommendation: Donald Barthelme might be called a magical realist, but I don't know if he would identify as that. He wrote surreal and experimental short stories set in our world.
Also Kafka and Marquez.
Hi! I've heard this is a good collection with a good quality translation, but being Mexican I've always read his work in Spanish. I'll ask a friend and let you know if she comes up with anything better.
I would recommend Ficciones (I think it is named the same in English) as a Borges starting point. It has some of his best stories (Tlön, my personal favorite by him, among them). Also without spoiling anything, I'll just say his themes are, most of the times, related with truth, existence, loops, time, and the universe.
Let me know what you decide and what you think of him.
If you want specific titles from his short stories that I would recommend:
Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius if you love fantastic worlds and have a soft spot for linguistics.
"There are more things" (that's the original title, yeah, in English). Won't say anything else about it.
The book of sand is actually a great story.
The Garden of Forking Paths is a bit of a thriller and a puzzle.
Happy reading!
All right, here's my best effort at trying to tie together all these threads with some recommendations. Two different routes to take.
1. Get some polish poets. My recommendations of three volumes would be Zbigniew Herbert's Elegy For The Departure, Czesław Miłosz's New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001, and Wisława Szymborska's Map: Collected and Last Poems. In mid-to-late 20th c., Polish poets were at the top of their game. They were confront a lot of issues like morality, politics, oppression, society. Herbert is a personal favorite of mine. Miłosz is just a towering figure. And Szymborska was a master at language. Miłosz and Szymborska both won the Nobel Prize, and Hebert was nominated several times but (controversially) never won.
2. Get some novels by Erskine Caldwell. Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre are the natural starting points for him. If you're into Percy and O'Connor, he's a natural fit. Personally, he has some controversial views, but he was a master at presenting the struggling, impoverished South.
Edited Addendum:
3. Get a collection of short stories from Jorge Luis Borges. Ficciones and The Aleph (as published by him) and Labyrinths (as first published in English) are the collections you see most often, but I'd reccomend something all-encompassing, like the more modern Collected Fictions.
There's this http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Fictions-Jorge-Luis-Borges/dp/0140286802 , wich contains I guess almost all of his stories ? and also his collected poems and essays ( wich are outstanding , really) published by the same publisher as the one above
If you cant get a hold of those , try "Ficciones" or there is another book called "The Aleph and other stories"
Personally I started of with his short story Man on Pink Corner and The Aleph , ive never read anything like it
EDIT ; let me know what you think if you read him , id love to discuss his work , dont know anybody who knows about him :(
[Blow Up: And Other Stories by Julio Cortazar] (http://www.amazon.com/Blow-Up-Other-Stories-Julio-Cortazar/dp/0394728815/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331377282&sr=1-1)
Strange, sometimes surreal but beautifully written.
Short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. [Can be found in this collection] (http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Fictions-Jorge-Luis-Borges/dp/0140286802/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331377800&sr=1-1)
I have only read Borges in English, sadly, and actually only his short stories.
The most recent translations, by Andrew Hurley in the complete Collected Fictions, are considered to be excellent, although he's a bit stiff-legged in places compared to earlier translations; for example, "Funes el memorioso" has become the rather dull "Funes, His Memory", whereas in the earlier translation, the poetry of the title was preserved as "Funes the Memorious" and becomes somewhat Lewis Carrolesque in English. On the other hand, he corrects some liberties taken by earlier translations. Of course, Borges would probably say that the original text was probably not all that faithful, either. :-)
Speaking of Borges, have you read Adolfo Bioy-Casares' The Invention of Morel, perchance?
Jorge Luis Borges
I don't know if they are considered the best, but the translations used in the set that this book is from are quite readable and widely available.
I liked On Truth and On Bullshit two tiny little books philosophizing about exactly what they say they are. I also highly recommend Borges' short fiction, each individual work is short, but you can consume as much as you choose since there are so many.