On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning
by Haruki Murakami,Sunlight on the Grass Anthology
Why do we need stories? Author Robert McKee says that “stories transform life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience” and that this “work of art unites meaning and emotion … heightening your awareness and delivering a sureness of your place in reality.”
In this short tale by Haruki Murakami, love becomes a miracle. Lovely, right? But will this dreamy moment ruin reality? Here, we go into that odd space that only Murakami can bring a reader, into the occasion of love plus imagination plus reality. Plus modern society’s romantic standards and our conscious prejudices.
We have the longing of a young man in search for his 100% perfect woman. He’s quite chatty in his thinking when he suddenly discovers this woman on the street in April. A cosmic miracle? Does he grab the event with both hands? Would you trust such perfection? Or is it only the idea of perfection? The risks in the modern fairy-tale-ish adventure won’t let your remove your eyes from the page until you’ve read the last line.
Read the short story (20 minutes) here at Genius.com:
Haruki Murakami is a Japanese novelist. Haruki has received several noted awards for his fiction and non-fiction works. He was also referred to as one of the world’s greatest living novelists by The Guardian. Norwegian Wood (1987) is an extremely popular novel among the Japanese youth and abroad. Murakami, an iconic figure of postmodern literature is known for his unreal and humorous work on the loneliness and empty mindedness of Japan’s work dominated generation. He now resides in The United States. Some of his favorite novels are F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, and Franz Kafka’s, The Castle.
Don’t forget to view the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, ‘quiet horror,’ and mainstream fiction.
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The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe (1842)
This month of January is the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe (birth January 19, 1809). What better time to mark our appreciation of this great writer than to read one of his stories?
The Masque of the Red Death is fast 20-minute read for readers who love supernatural and mystery. I think this story has a timeliness during this Covid pandemic when we are all wearing masks and where many of us wish we could run away to our private abbeys to stay safe.
“The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.”
Prince Prospero summons his dominions to his castle, an abbey in the far hills. Here the ‘gay society’ is safe to enjoy themselves in the seven rooms of different colors—which have its own mystery. We are at a masked ball with music and dancing, but who arrives? An uninvited mysterious figure. In the seventh room that is draped in black velvet with blood red window panes, our tale goes deep with supernatural, psychological, and horrific elements in grand Poe style. This is soooooo Gothic!
Watch the film created at the University of Technology, Sydney for Media Arts and Production (15 minutes). Sweeping, baroque, and spooky.
Poe wrote in many genres. He was the first to include deep psychological and intuitive horror in his stories. His tales often reflect that the true monster of evil is within each person and what happens when that evil is acted upon. His most famous work is The Raven.
Don’t forget to view the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories (some with audio), by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, ‘quiet horror,’ and mainstream fiction.
Follow or sign up to join me in reading one short story every month.
Short, cozy, and deep, this short story holds a bright candle to spending winter in a country house with your lover. The intensity between reality and imagination is Beattie’s signature style. This is written in second person narrative (not one of my favorites), but well done in imagery and metaphor.
“I know that stories don’t really have conclusions. It’s only an appropriate moment for stopping.”
This is not a surprising quote by Beattie. Her stories often dangle you at the end. In Snow, the dangling leaves the reader with a sense of drama and loss. But even that is open to interpretation. Reading this 5-paragraph story a couple of times is well worth it!
Ann Beattie is an American short story writer and novelist. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form. Her work has been compared to that of Alice Adams, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and John Updike. She is the author of twenty-one books, including the collections What Was Mine, Follies, The State We’re In, and The Accomplished Guest, as well as the novels Chilly Scenes of Winter, Another You, Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, and A Wonderful Stroke of Luck (Viking, 2019). Beattie was the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. She lives in Maine and Key West.
Read the short story here at Wattsenglishclass.weebly.com:
Don’t forget to view the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, ‘quiet horror,’ and mainstream fiction.
Follow or sign up to join me in reading one short story every month.
( Novellas, Short Stories, Essays, and Children’s Books)
“Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else, disrupting the delusion that we’re permanent and at the centre of the universe. Suddenly (we’re saved!) other people are real again, and we’re fond of them.”
“When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.”
“By honing the sentences you used to describe the world, you changed the inflection of your mind, which changed your perceptions.”
“Sometimes I think fiction exists to model the way God might think of us, if God had the time and inclination to do so.”
George Saunders (Born 1958) is a New York Times best-selling American writer of short stories and eleven novels. He won the Man Booker prize in 2017 for Lincoln in the Bardo. His stories have appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1992. The short story collection Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has taught, since 1997, in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.
Interview (Late Night with Seth Myers) with George Saunders, How Stories Enter Our Minds as Memories:
George Saunders is a conjurer, summoning worlds by stacking sentences and paragraphs, using agile and often brutally efficient language. An interview with Saunders at The Believer Magazine:
“You want funny? Saunders is your man. You want emotional heft? Saunders again. You want stories that are actually about something—stories that again and again get to the meat of matters of life and death and justice and country? Saunders. There is no one better, no one more essential to our national sense of self and sanity.”—Dave Eggers, author of A Hologram for the King
“The best short-story writer in English—not ‘one of,’ not ‘arguably,’ but the Best.”—Mary Karr, Time.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction.”—The Wall Street Journal
Please join me in my reading nook and discover an author on Mondays at Reading Fiction Blog!
Once a month I feature a FREE short story by contemporary and classic authors. Browse the Index of Authors’ Tales above to find over 200 free short stories by over 100 famous authors.
Springtime is hardly known as the season of witches, but if you are a lover of supernatural stories—and like me you are fascinated by the myths, history, and fiction about witchcraft—every month is the season for witches. Also, since my birth date is on Halloween, I have both a fear and an attraction to witches. And while witches (associated with the word wicked) are traditionally thought to possess evil powers who communicate with spirits and underworld realms, acting out their powers of womanhood, I am wondering if there is much more to discover about witches than just their dark arts.
Today we are exploring the Titaness deity known as Hekate, or Hecate (pronounced Heck-ah-teh), an ancient witch-priestess. You may have seen images of this well-known witch, deemed the queen of witchcraft, black magick sorcerer, as a three-headed figure (she sees in all directions), standing at crossroads, holding torches or keys, with a black dog at her feet. She is revered as the goddess of magick of the night and the underworld, the moon, ghosts, and necromancy. Pretty hot babe, wouldn’t you say? She is among other dark goddesses like Kali, Morrigan, Brigid, Hel, Baba Yaga, Aradia, Isis, Persephone.
In the story for this month’s reading, The Abduction of Persephone, Hekate makes a brief appearance in this tale of Zeus and Demeter (goddess of the earth) who have lost their daughter Persephone. Hades has abducted the girl. Hekate hears her screams from the Underworld. When Persephone eats the food of the dead, Zeus and Demeter must make a deal with Hades to get their daughter back.
This is an enchanting flash fiction (10-minute read), totally enjoyable, which symbolizes our shifting earth seasons, grief and loss, and brings meaning to mother/daughter love relationships. Reading myths can answer timeless questions about the value and insights of life, love, trust, good and evil. In the art of storytelling, these human experiences are everything.
Hekate has a much more powerful and impressive role in TheGolden Ass by Lucius Apuleius (Chapter 47). In this myth, Hekate speaks to us and identifies her qualities. When the narrator Lucius is turned into an ass, it is Hekate who shows him how to return to his human shape.
In my research about Hekate (for a short story I’m writing and my upcoming supernatural novel Draakensky) I found a mix of good and evil in her mythical history. Hekate knows she has powers to both destroy and create and uses that power wisely. Many believe her to be an intuitive goddess, soul-knowing, who holds both darkness and light within her powers. Hekate favors the color black, lavender, and the Yew tree. She is said to be the Dark Mother. I can’t help align her with Mother Nature who brings us fruit, grain, herbs, flowers, the beauty of sunrise and sunset, but also brings us hurricanes, drought, poisonous plants, pestilence and disease.
Other reports of Hekate are less flattering. She is said to be the high witch of the underworld Hades, her rituals and rites associated with death and secrecy, and she can banish or produce a ghost or ghosts infestations. She holds the ultimate skeleton key to unlock the gates to all realms, including Hades. Does she cast spells? Probably. Does she invoke the devil? Some say yes, some say no. There is a clear uncertainty about Hekate. But truth is like the sun, it eventually shines.
If you are in the season of the Crone, on the wise woman’s journey to deeper self-discovery, or curious to experience the cave of feminine power, Hekate is a woman you might like to explore. The archetype of “the witch” is a seeker and bringer of ancient secrets if not deeper knowledge. Witch, goddess, priestess, queen, crone, healer, medicine woman, warrior, shaman, leader, mentor, whatever you call her, feminine power is on the rise in our society.
For more on Hekate, stop by Keeping Her Keys website by Dr. Cyndi Brannen, a psychologist, author, and teacher who writes from the crossroads of psychology, spirituality, and traditional wisdom merging ancient knowledge with modern practices.
At this point, I cannot help but wonder where the crossroads meet between wicked witch vs. good goddess and what we might discover there. Is the shadow side of the Crone archetype the wicked witch? Or maybe it’s something else. What is the Dark Mother really about? You can read about The Dark Mother here: https://thenephilimrising.com/2017/06/22/the-dark-mother-lessons-from-lilith/
Do you think the patriarchy is losing power? These days the Divine Feminine is becoming stronger and more visible every day. There are legendary stories inside all of us. What is yours at this challenging time in our world? Is there a warrior woman inside of you?
Please feel free to add your thoughts to this page. I would love to hear from you!
Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, ‘quiet horror,’ crime, sci-fi, romance, and mainstream fiction.
Follow or sign up to join me in reading one short story every month.
Shall we go back to our childhood days today? The mythical Santa Claus and his magical sleigh, a sweet babe in a manger who brings love to the world, bright star lights on evergreen trees, festive feasts of meats, sweets, and gingerbread houses, the lonely elf on the shelf, and perhaps a boozy eggnog. One more item we can’t forget are the Christmas legends and fairy tales that make our holidays so warm and memorable.
Who doesn’t remember The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen? If you’ve forgotten this sad but poignant story, you can read it here at American Literature. My mom used to tell us this story every Christmas Eve as we drove around town to see all the Christmas lights. And, this story is especially dedicated to Grandmas, Nanas, and Gramzies because this is a grandparent story too.
The audio is a real treat. The Little Match Girl was meant to be a read-aloud.
There is another Christmas legend, less known and one you may not have read. The Christmas Spider (also known as The Spider’s Gift, The Spider’s Miracle, and other cultural variations), a folktale originally from the Ukraine.
I found this story in an old Christmas book. You will be pleasantly surprised how a story about a spider for Christmas will endear you to these odd little creatures.
Read it here, reproduced from my Christmas Book.
The gray spider worked very hard every day making long strands of silk that he wove into a web in which he caught troublesome flies. But he noticed that everyone turned away from him because, they said, he was so unpleasant to look at with his long crooked legs and furry body. Of course the gray spider didn’t believe that, because he had only the kindliest feelings for everybody.
One day when he was crossing the stream he looked into the water. There he saw himself as he really was. “Oh,” he thought, “I am very unpleasant to look at. I shall keep out of people’s way.” He was very sad and hid himself in the darkest corner of the stable.
There he again began to work as he always had, weaving long strands of silk into webs and catching flies. The donkey and the ox and the sheep who lived in the stable thanked him for his kindness, because now they were no longer bothered with the buzzing flies. That made the spider very happy.
One night, exactly at midnight, the gray spider was awakened by a brilliant light. He looked about and saw that the light came from the manger where a tiny Child lay on the hay. The stable was filled with glory, and over the Child bent a beautiful mother. Behind her stood a man with a staff in his hand, and the ox and the donkey and all the white sheep were down on their knees.
Suddenly a gust of cold wind swept through the stable and the Baby began to weep from the cold. The mother bent over Him but could not cover Him enough to keep Him warm.
The little spider took his silken web and laid it at Mary’s feet (for it was Mary) and Mary took up the web and covered the Baby with it. It was soft as thistledown and as warm as wool. The Child stopped His crying and smiled at the little gray spider.
Then Mary said, “Little gray spider, for this great gift to the Babe you may have anything you wish.”
“Most of all,” said the spider, “I wish to be beautiful.”
“That I cannot give you,” Mary answered. “You must stay as you are for as long as you live. But this I grant you. Whenever anyone sees a spider at evening, he will count it a good omen, and it shall bring him good fortune.”
This made the spider very happy, and to this day, on Christmas Eve, we cover the Christmas tree with “angel’s hair” in memory of the little gray spider and his silken web.
Wishing you all the happiest of holidays, the gift of love, the gift of peace, and the magic of Christmas stories!
For one more Christmas story—one of my own creations—stop by my December 7, 2017 blog post for Christmas River Ghost. A ghostly holiday story about family, celebration, coming home, and a Christmas peacock.
“They come—through the icy wind, between the naked trees, walking the bridge, by Eagle Hill River … on Christmas Eve … ”
Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, ‘quiet horror,’ crime, sci-fi, romance, and mainstream fiction.
Stop by every month or sign up to follow my blog to read one short story every month.
Murder, nostalgia, understanding life. Bullet In the Brain is a fast read (15-minutes), unforgettable, and will draw you into the story immediately and hard. Do you love stories that explore language? Author Tobias Wolff has a reputation as a sharp academic. In this story, Wolff has crafted his narrative with fast tension and then redirects into an irresistible slow motion that keeps the readers hanging on every sentence. Truly a master writer.
Anders, a bitter literary critic by trade (a lover of literature), walks into a bank. He engages the other customers with sarcasm and wit when two bank robbers enter the front doors. For Anders, language has always provoked wonder (he is quite the entertaining logophile)—but a jaded one. You’ll love the cynicism laced with humor. In this story Anders discovers that even danger holds a disdain for him. Read it slowly to enjoy Wolff’s chills, the humor, and this extraordinary character who jumps off the page into your mind. Savor the last lines. Say them aloud, because they have quite a slap.
Tobias Wolf is the author of novels The Barracks Thief and Old School, the memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army. Also short story collections In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, Back in the World, and The Night in Question. His Our Story Begins, won The Story Prize, 2008, and he received the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award, both for excellence in the short story, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and other magazines and literary journals.
Listen to an short interview with Tobias Wolff speak about short stories:
Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, ‘quiet horror,’ crime, sci-fi, romance, and mainstream fiction.
Tuesday’s Fairy Tale, A Modern Retelling August 11, 2020
As an avid reader, you might know that fairy tales are being retold in modern and highly inventive ways. You may have seen titles like Cinderella is Dead or The Librarian and the Beast or Alice, The Wanderland Chronicles. Retellings of Little Red Riding Hood are one of the most popular stories to flood the literary marketplace. Amazon has over 100 retellings (The Red Wolf; Moon and Fangs; Reluctant Hood). Why we still love fairy tales comes from our need to believe that magical things can happen to common folk and what better place to indulge in that than fiction.
The original Little Red Riding Hood is believed to have been written by Charles Perrault (17th century), or possibly more ancient than that as an 11th century poem, according to anthropologist Jamie Tehrani at National Geographic. Most of us know the story as authored by the Brothers Grimm from 1812 “Rotkäppchen.”
This week, however, I bring you a version of Little Red Riding Hood by Angela Carter, The Werewolf. Flash fiction at 900 words, a 5-minute read. And what a read it is. Gothic, pastoral, sharp. And this little riding girl is skilled at using a hunting knife. It ends grimly but like all fairy tales, the last line in this miniature narrative is dramatically tight.
Read Carter’s The Werewolf here at Biblioklept.org:
Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, ‘quiet horror,’ crime, sci-fi, romance, and mainstream fiction.
Why do we read short stories? Because we can explore a variety of different authors and experience a wide range of genres without the full-time commitment of a novel. Short fiction is a way to bring back daily or weekly reading time in small bites of pleasure. And with flash fiction, you can read a full story in the time it takes to eat your lunch. This blog has been devoted to short fiction for over seven years with over 250 stories by over 100 contemporary and classic authors.
Today I am proud to announce that ParABnormal Magazine has published my short fiction Wild Darkness.
Here’s a peek …
The ghost beneath the hickory trees is a women. She appears as a shivering presence among the leaves drowning in the summer sun. Her name is Falling Water.
Why do we love ghost stories? I read them because there is usually a truth creeping inside the story, an other-worldly element that suggests we are more than what we see or hear. Or maybe because ghost stories cannot be absolutely proven and who doesn’t love a mystery? Or, maybe ghosts have something important to tell us.
Come meet Falling Water at Hickory House in the deep woods.
From Editor H. Blalock, ParAbnormal Magazine
“The world is filled with strange and wondrous things; things beyond explanation, beyond imagination. Step into the world of the strange, the mystic, and the Beyond in parABnormal Magazine and find that which shouldn’t exist, but lurks just outside of that we can see.
“As the editor of the magazine, I believe it contains work from some of the most talented writers and artists. I recommend their work to anyone interested in paranormal fiction, non-fiction, and art.”
You can purchase a copy of ParAbnormal Magazine on Amazon.com
Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, ‘quiet horror,’ crime, sci-fi, and mainstream fiction.
Follow or sign up to join me in reading one short story every month. Comments are welcome! Feel free to click “LIKE.”
Let’s go video today. Girl by Jamaica Kincaid is an unusual story with two characters in a conversation, a mother and a daughter. While most moms are ready and able to give their daughters advice about becoming a woman, this mother in the story focuses on the practical side of life. And then some. The ending has a zinger, and I dare you not to smile. Listen to the author read her story here at Chicago Humanities Festival. This is a 5-minute story (flash fiction at its finest), extraordinary writing, with a theme that is meaty for debate. I loved it!
The short story is available at The New Yorker but not all can access it online as a free read:
Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener. Born in St John’s, Antigua, she lives in North Bennington, Vermont during the summers and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year. At the Bottom of the River was her first collection of short stories and reflections. Her novels See Now Then (2013) chronicles the late-life dissolution of a marriage by way of the jilted wife’s acerbic ruminations.
If you have any thoughts or comments about this story, do post your opinion.
Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, ‘quiet horror,’ crime, sci-fi, and mainstream fiction.
Follow or sign up to join me in reading one short story every month.
. His stories have appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1992. The short story collection Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has taught, since 1997, in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.
Paula Cappa 