Armchair BEA-- my favorite books of short stories

The thing about short stories is that they are short, and so for those of us who are fast readers desperately trying to escape reality with full-blown immersion in text they sometimes you get to the end just as the edges of life are starting to blur and you are no longer worrying about the cat's overdue vet appointment etc., and this can be frustrating.

That being said, there are three authors whose short stories I return to time after time for my re-reading pleasure (possibly because some of their short stories verge on novellas....)

The first of these is Ursula Le Guin.   Her stories, of which I feel there are hundreds, encompass  science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, and historical fiction, and they are twisty, thoughtful, beautiful, disturbing, and above all, memorable.   (Shakes self away from mental wandering through story after story....I have read them so often that I can go into a fugue state where they scroll through my mind).   Happily, her stories have recently been anthologized in two volumes--The Unreal and the Real, from Small Beer Press (2012).   If you are a speculative fiction fan, I'd actually start with Vol. 2, set in various places far beyond earth.  

I don't often say this, but I think reading Ursula Le Guin has made me a better person (or at least someone who tries to be a better person).  She is my favorite author of all, and the most thrilling moment of my blogging career was when she put a link to my review of  her novel, Lavinia up on her webpage.

I have been rereading the same Joan Aiken anthologies since I was nine, and they are pretty much on their last legs.   Some of her stories I wish I hadn't read, because they tip over into horror (at least from the point of view of a kid).   But others have become treasures in the storehouse of my mind.  A good place to start (especially if you are a kid!)  is The Serial Garden--these are all about the same family, and they are funny and magical as all get out (here's my review).   The title story is one of my favorite pieces of short fiction ever.  If  you are a grown-up who likes the darker side of things, you could try to posthumous anthology, The Monkey's Wedding and Other Stories. (both of these are also from Small Beer Press).

Finally, I'd like to share my love for the short stories of Robin McKinley.  My third favorite piece of her writing (after The Blue Sword and Beauty), is the title story of the anthology A Knot in the Grain.  It is the story of a girl whose family relocates to a big old house in the country...and the loneliness of her first summer there, her tentative progress into new friendship, and the old magic she finds in the hidden attic above the attic are beautifully described.  I aso very much enjoy her stories in Water and Fire, although some of these you can feel desperatly straining to become novels of their own....as happens a lot to Robin McKinley, which is why she wasn't able to write short stories for the other elements (Pegasus, for instance, was supposed to be an air short story.....)