It has been a great reading week this week! I’ve been moving slowly through Steven Millhauser’s Dangerous Laughter, a book of short stories that I’m reading for the March Book Menage over at Citizen Reader. I don’t read short story collections very often, but so far I am quite enjoying it. I’m used to just reading short stories one at a time, which is very different from reading them as a collection. Millhauser has the book divided into sections, so it’s fun to read each story and see how it ties into the next one.
The first story is called “Cat ‘N’ Mouse” and is about the epic battle between a cat and a mouse. Millhauser essentially writes out a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but gives the cat and mouse psychological motivations. What I like most about the story is that Millhauser takes something familiar and makes it a little quirky and deviant, a theme that runs through all the stories in the collection.
The other thing I like about reading Dangerous Laughter is that I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t read any reviews, no criticism, no opinions from friends or professors. It’s fun going into a book that I get to consider only in the context of my own opinions. I suspect the review is going to be a lot of fun to write once I finish the book!
What is your favorite short story collection? Do you like reading short stories on their own, or as part of a collection?
Photo by minkeymonkeymoo via flickr
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
My mother and son love Tom and Jerry so they’d probably love that story.
I don’t have a favourite short story collection. Except possibly the ones written by Jhumpa Lahiri. I’m not a big fan of the short story. I like things to be explored more.
My family and I went out for breakfast on Sunday and we were seated in the children’s section where they had Tom and Jerry playing. I enjoyed it more than my three year old son!
I don’t think I had ever read a short story collection since high school? until I started blogging. I don’t know if I have a preference – all the short stories I’ve read have all been part of a collection – usually hardbound books from the library so I’m not knowledgeable enough to answer that.
I do know that I do NOT read them in order! Some silly quirk, maybe?
LOVE your reply comments within the comments. I am not sure if it’s my blog layout or what, but I don’t like when my own reply comments are counted in my comment counts and show up on my sidebar. Anyhoo…. I’m still undecided about how to do this! ANy advice or opinion?
I’ve actually never been a huge Tom and Jerry fan, but I thought the story was very funny
I like short stories, I just don’t read them very often because of what you pointed out — I always want them to be more. When they are good, they end too quickly, and when they are bad I’m just left feeling unsatisfied but not quite sure how to articulate it. I like reading a collection though, it’s fun to compare the stories.
Yeah, I don’t like when mine count in the number either, but never found a way around it. I just checked, and comments still count in the number even when you do it this way. Oh well. I think this makes the conversation easier to read. It’s a new setting in Wordpress, you could do it on your blog too if you wanted — check out the Wordpress blog.